Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  The halfhearted workouts didn’t diminish in any way what he could do on stage at the time, and I never got tired of watching him from the wings. And, to his credit, he never quite gave up on our fitness program. It became fairly predictable that each night, just as I sat down to dinner, I’d get the call: Elvis wants to exercise.

  Elvis would often stay in town a few days after a Las Vegas run—sort of waiting out his fans—before he’d go out and see some of the other shows on the strip. Sammy Davis Jr., Tom Jones, Fats Domino, and Ann-Margret were particular favorites. In the right mood, he’d jump on stage to join Tom in a song or two, and I remember him doing a Valentino-style slide across the stage on his knees to make a surprise entrance during one of Ann-Margret’s shows (Ann and Elvis were both married now, but remained very close friends). And one of my fondest Vegas memories is a night when Elvis was bringing Sammy back to his suite after a show. He and Priscilla, Sammy and his wife, Altovise, and I were making our way through the lobby when from the lounge we heard some unmistakable guitar riffs. Elvis looked at Sammy. Sammy smiled. Elvis said, “Let’s go.”

  The five of us strolled into a nearly empty lounge—this must have been a final three A.M. show—and saw Chuck Berry up on stage, finishing a tune. We got into a booth right up front. Chuck was extremely happy to have Elvis and Sammy in the room, and started addressing them directly between songs. “Hey, Elvis, remember when you were number one with ‘All Shook Up’ and I was trying to catch you with this one,” he said, hitting the opening riff to “School Day.” Elvis loved it. When he was watching a show he enjoyed in a comfortable setting, he was not a quiet audience, and this night he was hollering all kinds of encouragement to Chuck. He also had a great camaraderie with Sammy—an easy friendship that grew from their respect of each other’s music and talents. It was Chuck up on the lounge stage, but the real show was in the great, loud interaction between him and Elvis and Sammy (Priscilla and Altovise were also enjoying the show, but had a little more ladylike poise).

  “Play ‘Promised Land,’ Chuck,” Elvis shouted out at one point, and Chuck went right into the tune, the story of a poor Southern boy making his way to California that was one of Elvis’s favorites (in 1974, Elvis would reach the Top 20 with his own version of the tune). Elvis and Sammy started singing along from the booth, shouting out “Yeah’s” as Chuck name-checked his way through Norfolk, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Birmingham. When Chuck got to the line about buying a “through train ticket” so that he could be “Ridin’ cross Mississippi clean,” Elvis and Sammy cracked up, both of them understanding completely why Chuck, or any black person, wouldn’t have wanted to make any stops within those state lines back in the 1950s. It was another of those reality-check moments for me: I was sitting in a Las Vegas booth with Elvis and Sammy Davis, watching Chuck Berry do a private concert for us. That’s a good night out.

  The showbiz personality that Elvis became closest with was Tom Jones, who he considered a trusted friend. They’d crossed paths several times through the sixties and had hit it off with each other right away, and eventually spent some together in Hawaii. When they were both in Las Vegas, they enjoyed hanging out and partying after each other’s shows, and I can vividly remember Tom’s stunned-but-game reaction the first time Elvis offered to put on a karate demonstration for him up in his suite.

  Tom had come several times to see Elvis at the International, and one night after Elvis’s run was done, Elvis, Priscilla, and some of us guys went to see Tom’s show at the Stardust. We went ahead and worked out the usual arrangements for a visit like this with the Stardust maître d’—Elvis and our group would be seated after the lights went down and escorted to the backstage dressing room before the end of the show to avoid being a distraction. But Elvis was still in the habit of drinking bottle after bottle of Mountain Spring water, and in the middle of Tom’s show, he had to go to the bathroom. I got up to go with him. At this time, Elvis often carried a cane with him, both for its looks and its potential as an emergency weapon. But his best defensive move was speed—Elvis had learned to do a very fast power-walk through the lobbies and casinos and showrooms just to avoid being stopped, and I’d do what I could to keep up with him.

  On our way back from the bathroom, we were walking even faster than we had before. We passed a little lounge where a cover band, an Irish “show band,” was playing. Their lead singer was a big burly guy who happened to be in the middle of singing an Elvis Presley tune. The big guy wasn’t bad, but he was overdoing the Elvis vibrato just a bit. Without breaking stride, Elvis said, “Jerry, wait here,” and stormed into the lounge. He walked right up on stage, hoisted his cane like he was going to clobber this guy and said, “If you’re gonna do it, do it right.” He gave the crowd in the lounge a great big wink, hopped off the stage, and zoomed right out of there. But the big singer didn’t see the wink—he’d been so startled that he’d fallen over on stage.

  We were cracking up about it all the way back to our table. But no sooner did I get settled in to see the rest of Tom’s show than Elvis leaned over to tell me: “Jerry, go back and invite that guy and his band to come up to the suite after the show.”

  Elvis loved a laugh, but he didn’t want to be the superstar bully who’d left some poor, hardworking lounge musician feeling humiliated. I delivered the message to the guy, and I was up in Elvis’s suite that night when the singer showed up. He mingled with the rest of us, and Elvis talked with him for a while, and from the huge grin on the big guy’s face you could tell how much it meant to him to be where he was. In the space of a few hours, he’d gone from having an onstage nightmare come true to having the night of his life up in Elvis’s suite.

  In the spring and early summer of 1971, Elvis had that rarest of luxuries—some time off. He made use of that time to further develop a couple of his passionate pursuits. In Memphis, he began to receive karate instruction from Master Khang Rhee, a slight, quiet martial arts master with a studio near Graceland. Elvis liked the no-frills setting of the studio, along with the fact that Master Rhee seemed uninterested in his new student’s fame outside the studio. Pretty soon Elvis had some of us guys working out there while we were in Memphis (in Los Angeles, I had already begun studies with Ed Parker). Master Rhee came up with the idea of fitting each of us with a nickname that somehow reflected our approach to the discipline: I was “Mister Cougar,” Red was “Mister Dragon,” Sonny was “Mister Eagle,” and Charlie was “Mister Cobra.” Elvis, of course, was “Mister Tiger.” Priscilla began working with Master Rhee, too, and though I’m not sure she received a nickname, she ended up with a lightning-fast reverse kick that put us all to shame.

  On the domestic front, Priscilla had spent months renovating and redecorating what she hoped would be her and Elvis’s longtime home in Los Angeles—a large house on Monovale Drive, formerly owned by director Blake Edwards, that offered much more privacy than the Hillcrest house.

  There were still a lot of boys’ weekends in Palm Springs, but in his own way, I know that Elvis still wanted to think of himself as a devoted family man. And whatever strains his schedule and his actions might have put on his relationship with Priscilla, it was always clear that he still loved being a father. I remember getting off a private plane with Elvis at Santa Monica Airport, when Priscilla had brought Lisa Marie to meet him at the airport. We came down the steps of the plane, and Lisa broke free and just came running to her dad as fast as her little legs would carry her. She had tears in her eyes, she was so happy to see him. And he scooped her up and held her like he didn’t need anything else in the world. You couldn’t doubt for a second that she adored him and he adored her.

  By the end of 1971, the domestic situations for all of us were harder to maintain. Elvis began touring again, and for the better part of the next year I was on the road with him, hitting everything from a Kentucky State Fair to New York City’s Madison Square Garden. The road can be awfully punishing—it takes a toll physically and psychologically. On a tour, it doesn’t take
long before you’re disconnected from anything resembling the “real” world, and you’re just living from city to city. You don’t eat right and you don’t sleep right. You lose track of what time of day it is, what time of year it is, what part of the map you’re on. Still, I loved being on the road with Elvis Presley.

  Working with Elvis, I’d eventually found that soundstages and studio lots could become pretty boring places. But concert tours never felt that way. I loved getting on the planes, smelling the jet fuel, and hearing the roar of the engines, I loved hopping into limos, with police lights around us as we drove to or from an airport. I loved being in the wings to watch a show, and I loved the adrenaline of running off the stage with Elvis at the end of a show, geting back into the limo and trying to beat the rush of fans. Hearing Ronnie Tutt’s drums rumble at the end of the show, and Al Dvorin’s famous “Elvis has left the building” announcement. I loved using the back entrances to the hotels, the secret elevators. I loved hanging out in the hotel rooms with the guys and the band, watching Elvis laugh and entertain and sometimes even do a little impromptu singing.

  As undisciplined as Elvis may have been with something like a checkbook (or sit-ups), he was masterful at putting together and maintaining a smooth-running touring operation. And he took a great deal of pride in his organization. I think it was on tour that I finally realized the true value of what we guys did for Elvis. He never hired an outside accountant or road manager or security chief—he had us to take care of all that. Everybody had a job to do, from Red West handling security to Lamar Fike running the stage lights. When people wondered about the value of the Memphis Mafia, Elvis used to say, “You don’t think these guys are important? I’m a multimillion-dollar operation, and I can’t do this on my own.”

  On the road, we developed an “us against the world” camaraderie, and though a good portion of the world loved Elvis, we never let our guard down. One of our prime responsibilities was to make it possible for him to relax and be the entertainer he wanted to be. Because I was an ex-football guy, I was sometimes in the position of a “bodyguard” for Elvis. I worried about that at first—that wasn’t the job I’d stepped away from my own career for. But I knew it was part of the job—it was for all of us—and on tour, I felt especially protective of Elvis. It felt good to take care of him, and to know that he felt more secure having me around.

  I didn’t learn much about the country, or get a feel for any new places I was visiting—one city had the same trash cans around the back entrance of a hotel as the next. But—just as I had on those film sets—I tried to learn as much about the process and mechanics around me as I could. I’d watch how the gear got moved and set up, and see how the sound equipment was handled. There was as much craft in that work as there was in what was going to be presented on stage, and I felt I was getting another great education watching it all happen. With everybody doing their part, we got our city-to-city hops down to a science. The Colonel would fly to a city with his staff and maybe one Elvis guy (usually Sonny West) the night before a show. The Colonel would make sure that all the promotions and preparations were being properly handled, while Sonny would work on security at the hotel and inside venue, figuring out the best entrances and exits and making sure that access to Elvis’s dressing room could be controlled.

  Right after a show, Elvis would be ready to head to that next city. Given his sleep habits, and the rush of adrenaline after a show, it made more sense for him to get to the next city late at night than to try to get him up for travel the next morning. When Al said “Elvis has left the building,” he was telling the truth—we were already on the way to the airport. This meant that there was never much of a backstage scene with Elvis on the road—six Cokes and six Pepsis was as elaborate as our backstage ever got, and sometimes that didn’t even get touched. But when Elvis and a couple of us were invited to meet Johnny Carson after one of his Vegas stand-up appearances, we discovered an even tamer backstage scene. Elvis was a huge fan of Johnny’s and wouldn’t leave for screenings at the Memphian until after Johnny’s monologue was over, so he was very excited to meet him. We didn’t quite expect a raging, Rat Pack–style party in Johnny’s dressing room, but what we found was Johnny sitting by himself on a couch with a glass of water and a legal pad on a table in front of him. We sat with him awhile, made small talk, and left. Johnny hadn’t left the building, but his backstage was quieter than ours.

  After a show, we flew with Elvis on his chartered plane, and when we got to the next town, no matter what time of night it was or what the weather conditions were, the Colonel would be waiting for us at the bottom of the steps off the plane, ready to brief Elvis. Looking back, I think the Colonel was as energized by the touring as Elvis was—I’ve never seen a big act’s manager do so much hands-on work with so much dedication.

  The band followed later that night or the next morning on another plane. One of two sound systems would have been trucked in, while the second was sent ahead to an upcoming destination. The big details of security and travel plans had to be taken care of, but the small ones were important, too—Elvis’s room would be prepared by some of the newer guys, who would eventually include Dr. Nick’s son, Dean Nichopoulos, Vernon’s stepsons, Rick and David Stanley, and Al Strada, a private security guard who worked at Elvis’s L.A. homes before Elvis made him a part of his personal staff. Room preparation on the road was a process that still included blacking out the windows with aluminum foil and making sure that the AC could keep the suite just shy of freezing cold. The next day, the Colonel would head off to the next city, Elvis would do his show, and the whole routine would repeat itself.

  There was just one big problem with life on the road, and that was that we all had lives off the road, too, and those lives suffered. Inside the bubble of our traveling organization, things could feel balanced and right, but outside that bubble, we were, for the most part, absent husbands and family members. As much as Elvis wanted to think of himself as a family man, he and Priscilla had begun to pull apart. In a strange way, Elvis was a one-woman man—it’s just that he had a number of those one women. Priscilla was the most important woman in his life, but he felt he could be loyal to more than one person at a time—admittedly not a very traditional view of marital fidelity. In the years I knew him, he was never particularly interested in meaningless groupie encounters. He had a real romantic streak, and he wanted companionship—someone to talk with, read with, and relax with. When he was with Priscilla, he had all that. But Priscilla, now the devoted mother of a small child, couldn’t travel as freely as she once had. And since Elvis couldn’t always be with Priscilla, he developed friendships and relationships with women who would be part of his life for weeks, months, or even years sometimes. He was living a one-of-a-kind life, so maybe ordinary rules of romance and commitment didn’t apply to him. But that certainly wasn’t fair to Priscilla. She had been a little girl when she first stepped into Elvis’s world, but now she was becoming a stronger, more aware, more independent woman, and she wasn’t living anything close to the kind of life she wanted with Elvis. Something had to give.

  In February of 1972, Elvis finished up an engagement at a familiar showroom with a new name—the Las Vegas International was now the Las Vegas Hilton. Priscilla was there for closing night, and between Elvis’s two final shows, she and he spent a long time in his dressing room together. When they were done talking, Elvis asked me to walk Priscilla back up to his suite. I got her to the elevator and up to the room, and I don’t think we talked much on the way. Before I left her in the room, I asked if there was anything I could get for her. She turned, looked at me a moment, and said quietly, “Jerry, you’ve always been a good friend.” This was unusual. As close as we’d become over the years, and for as much time as we’d spent together with Elvis and Sandy, Priscilla didn’t normally say things like that. And I couldn’t think of anything to answer her with. I just smiled, said good night and left. But I knew something felt very different. It all came out the next
night: She was leaving him.

  Elvis stayed in Vegas for a while after the Hilton shows. It was obvious that he was hurt, and angry—with himself as much as with Priscilla—and it was also pretty clear that he didn’t want to talk about his problems much. He stayed up in his suite a few days, and each night one of the guys would be with him. One night it was just me sitting with Elvis up there. I casually asked if he was in the mood to go downstairs and play blackjack—knowing full well that the answer would be no. Elvis wasn’t a big gambler to begin with, and in this situation I thought he’d be in no mood to be around people. But he surprised me. “Yeah, let’s hit those tables,” he said.

  We changed our clothes and went downstairs to the casino. We started playing, and, of course, began to draw some attention. The casino put the usual red ropes around us, but after a while I started thinking we should move along before we drew a real crowd. We headed back to the hotel lounge, which was bigger than most showrooms at the time, and when we saw that the Righteous Brothers were up on stage there, we decided to hang out at a small casino bar just outside the lounge entrance. Elvis and I basically were not drinkers, and I think we probably intended to order one cocktail and nurse it for the night. But as people noticed Elvis, they’d come over and say hello and offer to buy us a drink. Norm Crosby was one of the first well-wishers who wanted to pay for a round, and to be polite we said yes. The drink went down easy. And our place at the bar started to feel very comfortable—Elvis didn’t feel like he was in a spotlight, and it felt normal and natural to be hanging out to have a drink. The people who stopped by didn’t overreact either—they’d stop, say hello, buy us another drink, talk for a moment, then move on. We must have had four or five drinks apiece that way. We drank clear through the Righteous Brothers’ set and then some. Finally one of the Brothers himself, Bill Medley, showed up with his girlfriend Darlene Love of the Blossoms, the group that had backed Elvis in the ’68 TV Special. We had a drink with them and those went down even easier.