Me and a Guy Named Elvis

by Jerry Schilling

  Myrna had been handling business for the group, and doing a good job of it. But Sylvia and Estelle suggested bringing me on as manager, and Myrna agreed that it was a good idea. I liked the idea of doing work that would keep me close to Elvis as a friend, but would give me some satisfaction of having my own career. What I suggested to the group was this—since they’d already worked out all their deals with Elvis, I wouldn’t have anything to do with that side of their business, and obviously wouldn’t take the usual manager’s cut of whatever money they made through those deals. I’d earn money only on deals made as we moved forward. I was still an Elvis guy, but the Sweet Inspirations became the first act signed to a brand-new company: Jerry Schilling Management.

  There were nights on the road when Elvis was still every bit the master entertainer. But there were other times when you could sense just how tired he’d become of night after night of one-night stands, and when you could see what a toll it had taken on him. His stage jumpsuits had originally been designed to accommodate his intensely physical performances—the way he moved on stage he’d rip regular clothing to shreds. But now his jumpsuits were designed to mask his heavier frame. As he got bigger, so did the cut of the suits and the size of the belts he wore. We guys had once jokingly had an “Over 200” Club—membership was based on our ability to work up a belly when we were back in Memphis between films. Now there wasn’t anything funny about Elvis’s battle to keep himself in shape.

  Though his big hopes for his movie career had been crushed with the fizzling of A Star Is Born, in the fall of 1975 he made a move that showed he still wanted to change the routine: He bought a plane. To be exact, he bought an out-of-service Convair 880 jet that had previously belonged to Delta Airlines. But this wasn’t just an impulse purchase of some sort of ultimate flying Cadillac. Elvis thought that if he had his own plane with his own crew, he had a better chance of making that overseas tour happen. I know that’s what he was thinking, because before that Convair was purchased, Vernon and I had made a trip to New Jersey to look at an available Boeing 707. The plane was in great mechanical shape, and had already been customized to include personal quarters, a meeting area, and even a dance floor. But the previous owner had been Robert Vesco, the fugitive financier who had fled to South America after allegedly embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from international investment firms. Buying his plane would involve some complicated wrangling with the IRS. And Elvis was warned about another complication: If the plane ever landed in any of the countries Vesco was establishing a base in, there was every reason to believe that he might try to seize it. On the other hand, the Convair had a clean record and would have no problem flying to any country around the globe. So that’s the plane Elvis purchased. He immediately rechristened it the Lisa Marie.

  The plane was in a hangar at Meacham Field in Fort Worth, and for months Elvis took great pleasure in flying friends—including Priscilla—out to Texas to check on progress as the interior of the plane was refurbished to his very specific design requirements (he bought another plane to make those trips—a smaller Lockheed JetStar). Elvis wanted a seating area, a conference room, and a private bedroom on the plane (with space for an in-flight reading library). He picked fabrics, decided on color schemes, chose the onboard audio-visual system, and even OK’d the gold fixtures in the bathrooms (he counted heavily on some aesthetic input from Priscilla, too). He was especially excited about the fact that the same design team working on the Lisa Marie had previously customized Air Force One. Every trip out, he’d proudly walk a group of us through the plane, and he’d take Polaroid pictures so he could check the progress of the renovation. The craft slowly came together as an airworthy mix of modern function and Graceland elegance. When the final paint job was applied to the exterior, there was a prominent “TCB” logo on the tail.

  The Christmas season in 1975 was not the usual family event at Graceland. Priscilla and Lisa Marie were in Los Angeles. Myrna had gone back to Newark. On Christmas Eve, Elvis and I were sitting alone up in his bedroom, while a mix of friends and visitors waited down in the living room. I could see that he just didn’t have any excitement for the occasion.

  “You know, I really don’t want to go down there this year.”

  “Then don’t, E. You don’t have to.”

  It would be the first time Elvis didn’t make an appearance downstairs to at least go through the routine of a gift exchange with the guys. He was simply not feeling in much of a Christmas mood, and didn’t want to deal with a holiday party. So we just sat and talked for a while. Around ten o’clock he said, “You know, I want to get something for Grandma. Why don’t you call Harry Levitch and see if he can come up.”

  Harry, Elvis’s longtime Memphis jeweler, was used to being on call for Elvis’s holiday purchases, and he arrived at the house shortly with a wide selection of items. Elvis picked out something for his grandma, then decided he’d get something for Vernon, too, picking out a ring for his father. I made out the check for Harry, and then Elvis had a private moment with the jeweler to thank him. After Levitch left, Elvis and I were alone again.

  Elvis sat down on the edge of his bed and said, “I want to read you something, Jerry.” He picked up his well-worn copy of Cheiro’s Book of Numbers. Over the last couple of years, he’d returned to his interest in all forms of spirituality. He was reading The Impersonal Life and Autobiography of a Yogi again. He’d been in touch with Daya Mata at the Self-Realization Fellowship. He had even, much to the Colonel’s dismay, resumed a friendship with Larry Geller, who was now often on the road with us.

  With a favorite work like the Book of Numbers, Elvis didn’t just read it once or twice and move on. If the work grabbed his imagination, he went back to it again and again, scribbling notes to himself on the pages and marking off significant passages. Now he flipped open the book to a page he’d marked. “You’re a number six, Jerry. You know what that means?”

  “No, E.”

  He began reading. “‘They are very determined in carrying out their plans, and may, in fact, be deemed obstinate and unyielding, except when they themselves become deeply attached: in such a case, they become devoted to those they love. When roused by anger they will brook no opposition and will fight to the death for whatever person or cause they espouse. But the Number 6 people have got the power of making more friends than almost any other class, and they lean to the romantic and ideal in all matters of affection.’ That sound like you, Jerry?”

  “That’s dead-on,” I laughed.

  “There’s one more thing. It says a number six should always have an emerald close to his skin for good luck.” He closed the book, laid it on the bed, and reached into his pocket. He produced a beautifully detailed ring with a carved emerald set in it. He reached out, took my hand, and slid the ring on.

  “I want you to have plenty of good luck, Jerry.”

  I thanked him, but it hardly seemed enough. Even when I was so worried about him, he was still giving so much to me.

  “What does it say about your number, E?”

  He picked the book back up and flipped it open. He began reading. “‘Number 8’s have deep and very intense natures, great strength of individuality; they generally play some important role on life’s stage, but usually one which is fatalistic, or as the instrument of Fate for others…They often appear cold and undemonstrative, though in reality they have warm hearts towards the oppressed of all classes; but they hide their feelings and allow people to think just what they please.

  “‘All persons who have the Number 8 clearly associated with their lives feel that they are distinct and different from their fellows. At heart they are lonely; they are misunderstood, and they seldom reap the reward for the good they may do while they are living. After their death they are often extolled, their works praised, and lasting tributes offered to their memory.’”

  He put the book back down. We sat quietly for a moment. He smiled a bit. “Merry Christmas, Six.”

  “Merry Christma
s, Eight,” I answered.

  Elvis had always taken a break from performing during the weeks between Christmas and his birthday, but this year the Colonel squeezed in a New Year’s Eve show at the huge Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. The show drew a huge crowd and was a financial success, but it was not a good experience for Elvis. The freezing weather had everyone shivering through the night, and the situation was made worse by a two-tiered stage setup that had Elvis separated from the band. At showtime, Joe, Dick Grob, and I walked Elvis to the upper platform of the stage, and I could tell right away that he was very uncomfortable—the spontaneity of his shows depended on direct contact with the band, and up here that would be impossible. He met the challenge and put out a great effort that night, but the sound system in the domed stadium functioned so poorly that, at midnight, many of the 60,000 fans turned their attention from the stage and treated the event as their own large-scale New Year’s Eve party.

  Elvis was extremely agitated about the show afterward and thought it was a lousy way to start the year. But in Memphis, a couple of days later, he came up with an idea that he thought would get the year started right: a big, group vacation ski trip to Vail, Colorado.

  The impulse was wonderful, but the vacation was far from relaxing. After a two-week December run at the Hilton, the not-so-festive Christmas, the New Year’s in Michigan, and a quick flight back to Memphis, the group around Elvis was feeling a little ragged. Whipping together a ski vacation on the spur of the moment felt more like work than time off—especially since our group of Memphis boys didn’t have a single skier in it. And there were some tensions and differences emerging between the older guys and the newer guys—differences that mainly centered on whether you considered Elvis a friend who was also your employer, or whether you simply considered him an unpredictable boss. The Memphis Mafia had once prided itself on our “us against the world” spirit, but now the differences in lifestyle and attitude among us made it increasingly harder to pull together as a group.

  We flew out of Memphis—Elvis and Linda Thompson, Myrna and myself, Joe and girlfriend Shirley Dieu, Billy Smith, Sonny and Red, Lamar, Dean Nichopoulos, Al Strada, and several others. As it was already the height of the holiday season, we all holed up in a Denver hotel while Joe Esposito took on the almost impossible task of lining up accommodations—we needed a house for Elvis, and condos for everybody else. Not so surprisingly, Joe got the job done.

  In Vail, Elvis settled in to a large house right by one of the ski lifts. After three days in a hotel, he wanted to get out on the slopes that night and have some fun, and we all joined him. But it looked to me that the work of getting the arrangements together had exhausted Joe—the last thing he was interested in was night skiing. He stayed in to catch up on sleep.

  One of the first full days in Vail was January 8, Elvis’s forty-first birthday, but Elvis let it be known he didn’t want to celebrate it at all. That seemed to be fine by everyone else—we all split up and settled into our own separate condos. But that night, Linda called over to my place—Elvis was feeling down. Did Myrna and I want to come over?

  We joined Elvis and Linda, and before long it felt like we were all having the kind of vacation fun Elvis had been after. He seemed really pleased to have Myrna and me with him, and we just stayed in and had a simple, friendly celebration. Linda even made a little cake for Elvis. But the evening had, literally, a dramatic ending. We began to talk about favorite movies, and Elvis asked Myrna if she’d ever seen one of his recently rediscovered favorites, Across 110th Street, a gritty New York City Mafia flick starring Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, and Tony Franciosa. Myrna hadn’t seen it. And so Elvis acted it out for her. I don’t mean he told her the story and quoted a few lines of dialogue. He began to act out the whole movie, setting up each scene and then presenting just about every line of dialogue in the script. He brought each character to life with walks, vocal mannerisms, and the subtlest of gestures.

  It was a bravura performance, and Elvis drew upon that photographic memory of his, the talent for voices that had always made his Dr. Strangelove and Monty Python reenactments so funny, and the intense physical movements of his stage performances. Elvis loved 110th St.’s story of mob betrayal and revenge, but he was also taken with smaller elements of the film—the kind of perfect details he was so good at focusing on. Tony Franciosa had a way of stroking his chin in a subtly menacing fashion—Elvis had the move down cold. And Yaphet Kotto barely raised his rumble of a voice above a whisper in the film, which Elvis perfectly mimicked.

  It was great to see him up and excited, and a thrill to be his private audience. Linda, Myrna, and I would have been happy to just sit and talk with Elvis, the way the evening had started. But Elvis didn’t stop until he got to the final scene of the film, which took us into the very early hours of the morning. I’d seen the film with him two or three times in Memphis, but I had to admit—this was the version I enjoyed the most.

  Everybody started to have a good time over the next week. Guys, wives, and girlfriends did get out on the slopes, and though Elvis never put skis on, he insisted that everybody else take lessons. At the end of the day, when the slopes were closed to the public, Elvis would appear, bundled up in his snow gear, and we’d go snowmobiling or ride inner tubes down the bottom of the runs. There were times when the fun seemed a little forced and there were times when the fun got dangerous—riding inner tubes down dark sections of the slopes was an easy way to get hurt, and one night we had to take Dean Nichopoulos to the emergency room with a broken foot. We took some forbidden nighttime snowmobile runs across the slopes, and one night Lamar, taking an uncharted path through the woods, rode his snowmobile over the deep, soft snow that had piled over a building foundation. He sunk down well over his head, and probably would have been there until the spring thaw if Elvis hadn’t found him and pulled him out.

  Off the slopes, Elvis spent a lot of time with Ron Pietrafeso and Jerry Kennedy, Denver policemen he’d met on past trips to the city. They had always been supportive of Elvis, even welcoming him into their own inner circle of police officers, and during this trip, Elvis bought them Cadillacs as thank-you gifts.

  After two weeks in Vail, we were all thoroughly exhausted—I think everybody needed a vacation from our vacation, and, probably more importantly, needed some private time before our next tour began in March. Lack of sleep had become a terrible problem for Elvis. As much as his body needed rest, he just couldn’t get it, and he was often in a state of almost manic energy. Trying to keep up with him put a lot of pressure on an already fractured group. The physical activity of the ski trip hadn’t seemed to do anything to diminish Elvis’s restlessness. And the fact that his vacation idea had actually worked out pretty well didn’t seem to give him any satisfaction. If two weeks in Vail was good, wouldn’t a few more days be better? Elvis wanted arrangements made so that we could all continue to stay on the slopes. The rentals that Joe had worked out were up, and Joe himself had already headed back to California with Shirley. Myrna had also left, flying back home to Newark. Elvis wanted me to take on the job of finding a whole new round of condos for the group.

  Now I was the one who had to stay up for a day and a half, doing everything I could to get some available condos to materialize, and figuring out who would go where and how everybody would be moved around. Somehow, I got it done, and the arrangements were made. I’d found a house for Elvis and had extended the rental period on one of the nicer condos that he had also been using (he and Linda had been switching between the house by the lift and this condo). The place I’d been staying at with Myrna was gone, so I moved my stuff to Elvis’s condo and went to sleep in the master suite.

  The phone rang at three in the morning. It was Billy Smith. He told me that Elvis was coming over. Elvis wanted to move from his house to his condo. And he wanted me to move out of the condo to the house. I couldn’t imagine why we had to make this switch at three in the morning. And I was tired enough that I didn’t really feel like moving
anywhere. The condo had the master suite and two smaller bedrooms, one of which wasn’t much more than a closet. I moved my stuff into that smallest bedroom, figuring I’d be well out of the way if Elvis wanted to take over the master bedroom.

  I fell asleep again, but was woken up once more by Elvis’s voice: “I thought you were asked to move back to the house.”

  I was tired enough to be in a rotten mood. Instead of being shown any appreciation for making the moves happen, I was getting moved around some more.

  “You’ve got the suite, Elvis.”

  “Yeah, but I need Red and Billy to stay here.”

  There was an ugly edge in his voice, a dismissive tone—like I was just another one of his problems. He was talking to me as if I were one of the new guys in the group. One of the guys who called him “Boss.”

  “Damn it, Elvis, I’ve been up two days working all this out. I need to sleep.”

  He didn’t answer. He stormed off into the master bedroom, and I heard him yelling with Red. Then he came back to the room I was in, said loudly, “All right,” then mumbled, “You can stay.”

  Something ripped inside me. “You know what, E—I don’t want to stay here,” I shouted. “In fact, I’m leaving.”

  “I said you could stay, damn it.”

  I looked at him. He’d been acting like someone I didn’t know. But I could also tell he knew he had pushed me too far. I was so tired. Maybe he was tired, too. Everybody around us was worn down. It was time to go.