Disgraceland

by Jake Brennan

  Elvis was hyped on it. He believed in Barbra and had ever since he saw her show back in ’69 at the International Hotel in Vegas. She seemed taken by him. He vibed on her. He could tell she was more than just an eager-to-please starlet. So when she and her hairdresser-boyfriend came to him with A Star Is Born six years later, he knew Barbra could deliver the goods. Plus, the role was perfect for him: A self-destructive singer-songwriter rock star dealing with his midlife demons as his star begins its descent? Sign me up, Elvis thought. Plus, Streisand was one of the biggest stars of the decade, and Elvis hadn’t had a hit since “Burning Love,” three years earlier. Elvis agreed to do the movie.

  So the Colonel went to work negotiating for his boy.

  He wanted top billing for Elvis, despite the fact that it was Barbra Streisand’s project and that Streisand was arguably the bigger star at the time, having received an Oscar nomination for The Way We Were in ’73, after sharing the 1968 Best Actress award (with Katharine Hepburn) for Funny Girl. Nevertheless, the Colonel went on to demand that all drug references be stripped from the script because they would be harmful to Elvis’s image, despite the fact that drugs were the motivating factor behind the male lead character’s demise and thus integral to the story line, never mind the fact that drugs were actually behind the King’s own slow decline. Finally, and perhaps most stupidly, the Colonel insisted on a million dollars up front. Streisand countered by offering Elvis points on the film’s back-end revenue, a deal structure that would have been far more lucrative in the long run than that million.

  But the Colonel passed.

  Streisand, despite her pitch to Elvis, was leery of the physical shape Elvis was in and suspect of his ability to get back down to camera-ready weight in time for filming. She was quick to count Elvis’s pass on the film as a blessing and swiftly moved on to Kris Kristofferson for the part. The film was a mega hit. It won five Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture and a Best Actor nab for Kristofferson. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and a Grammy Award for Best Album of Original Score for a Motion Picture.

  Elvis was sunk. The film, had he done it, surely would have broken him out of the professional and personal rut he was in. Just as important, it would have allowed him to stretch out creatively, to express himself through something other than tired live Vegas revues. A Star Is Born would have made him relevant again.

  But instead, he was barely relevant. In truth he was barely living. Awake but far from alive. The lost opportunity burned at him inside. He couldn’t let the Streisand thing go. He demanded to speak to the Colonel. Alone.

  Elvis stumbled into the adjacent room, shut the door, had a seat, dropped his head into his hands, and began talking. Quietly, politely but with passion and directness. He had something to say to the Colonel. Something he’d been holding back for some time. He ignored the gathering storm in his stomach and began:

  “Colonel, you been good to me. For a long while. You done things for me that no one else coulda done, and for that I’m eternally grateful. But listen, you don’t understand what I need. I don’t think you understand where I need to be going. With my career. With my singing. With my acting. It’s all Vegas this, Vegas that. Big auditoriums, coliseums, civic centers, and stadiums. But Colonel, I’m tired of that. Man, I’ve been playing for the back row for the past twenty years. I gotta hit ’em in the gut now. I gotta be making albums. Full artistic statements like that one Spector wanted to make with me. And no more cheesy movie soundtracks. And I need to be making films. No more lot-produced campy movies. Man, I shoulda done that second movie with Ann-Margret. You shoulda let me do that and you shoulda taken that offer from Streisand, man. I coulda killed in that role.”

  With that, the Colonel’s famous temper made a predictable appearance. He snapped. The blowback was quick. Like it always was when they were behind closed doors.

  “KILLED?!?! Killed what? Your career? How exactly would you have killed? As a drug-snorting has-been singer? What do you know about killing anyway?”

  It was then that Elvis did something he’d never done before. He gave it back to the Colonel. Still seated, he pulled his head out of his hands, looked his manager in the eye, and let loose.

  “Now you listen TO ME! I’m done. Done with the Cow Palace. Done with the Vegas revues. Done with the studio flicks and I’m done with you. That’s it!”

  The Colonel kept quiet for a second. Stared at his client. Collected himself as he endeavored to bury his temper and began to lay out his case.

  “Elvis, what was I supposed to do? Let you record with Spector? Why? He needed you more than you needed him.

  “Remember what you said back in ’53 when you was getting started? You said, ‘I don’t sound like nobody,’ and you were right, and I took that to the bank and you made a lot of money because of it. You didn’t need a producer or some high-handed songwriter to make you a star. You were bigger than the stars. Still are. You’re Elvis.”

  He kept going. Starting to feel like he was beginning to get through to Elvis.

  “So what? You want to be an artist? Why? You heard that record that Burton and Glen did with that country boy, Parsons. They called it a record, but a record of what exactly I don’t know. Maybe it was a record of ‘how not to have a hit’ ’cuz there wasn’t a-one on the entire thing.

  “What is it, boy? What is it you want to do? You want to make pure country records like Jerry Lee does now? Why? He’s playing one-night stands, even with radio at his back. I’m telling you, being an artist is a race to the bottom. You’re bigger than that. You’re your own thing. And I can sell that thing. I can’t sell a heaping slab of ‘listen to how interesting my goddamn feelings are.’”

  The volume in the Colonel’s voice started to increase. He caught himself, recalibrated his tone, and continued.

  “Being an artist requires a lack of discipline. Artists are out there on the edge. Elvis, you of all people do not need less discipline. There is danger in a lack of discipline. You ain’t capable of living high up on that wire. Look at you. You’re barely capable of living down here with the rest of us. You’re gonna what: Crawl into a studio for nine months with some overpriced producers and overhyped songwriters and a big bag of your feelings? And for what? To come out the other side with something worth the people’s time and money? Please. The records you been cutting have been making us money hand over fist since we started out. I know there ain’t been a hit in a while, but you should look in the mirror to answer why that is. You ain’t fit enough to go in for no studio work. Not without a strict plan in place, and that’s where I come in. I keep you on track.”

  Elvis slumped into himself. His body language indicating that as usual, he was coming around to the Colonel’s way of thinking. The Colonel saw that he had his boy on the line and continued reeling him in, leaving just enough slack.

  “You ain’t no artist. You’re an entertainer. If I’d let you chase that rabbit down that hole you woulda ended up like that Cooke fellow. Look at him. Tremendous entertainer. Mediocre artist at best, and what did he get for chasing his muse? Got himself shot to death in a two-dollar-a-night motel. Maybe he shoulda been working with the Colonel insteada Klein. I woulda kept him honest. Like I did you.

  “All I’m saying is, why be something you ain’t? You gonna chase the trends? What, you gonna cut your hair next and put safety pins in your clothes like them crazy kids EMI just dropped? You’re better than that. You’re an original. You don’t need to shock and I’m telling you, that’s where this business is going. In twenty years you’re gonna have to wear your medicine on the outside just to get noticed. You’re gonna have to either be crazy or just act crazy, ’cuz that’s what the fans are gonna want—pure insanity. They’re gonna demand that their rock stars act the fool ’cuz everything else will have been done by then. BUT YOU THE MAN WHO DONE IT FIRST! You broke the mold. You invented rock ’n’ roll, boy! Not Bo Diddley. Not Chuck Berry, and sure as shit not Jerry Lee Lewis. You! Elvis Presley. Y
ou’re the greatest entertainer of all time. You set the trends. You don’t follow them. You know how many little wannabe Elvis Presley fans are born each day? They’re gonna be recording new versions of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ into the new millenium and long after both you and me are dead and in the ground.”

  The King and the beast within.

  Elvis took his head out of his hands. The Colonel’s voice was still echoing but there was no Colonel in sight. Elvis felt his stomach roil. His legs were numb. He’d been sitting, in the same position, on his supermodern black toilet, in the bathroom adjacent to his master bedroom for too long. There was no Colonel in the room with him. Not in the flesh, anyway. This was a familiar version of a similar scene Elvis would play out in his head whenever he got his mind around to confronting the Colonel. Seldom did it advance to reality, a concept Elvis currently had no real grip on.

  He sat, in agony, waiting for relief. He closed his eyes. Pushed. Nothing. When he opened them, what he saw sent fear bolting down his backbone. It was a reflection of himself. But not as he currently was, the overweight, speed-addled insomniac caught somewhere between delirium and delusion. Instead it was a reflection of his younger self, or perhaps just a version of his better self: svelte, perfectly styled hair, but wearing clothes Elvis never would have chosen. They were torn and frayed, second-hand-looking but perfectly fitted, casual, and thrown together. Denim jeans, ripped, patched, snug at the crotch, and tapered at the ankles with rolled cuffs. Black elevator boots with exposed steel toes. A cowboy shirt, tucked in with hand-stitched psychedelic designs, and mother-of-pearl snaps opened at the collar to expose the hair on his chest. A thick, black leather wristband and a white gold pinky ring. No belt. No need. The clothes fit that well. He was in perfect shape. Tall. Handsome beyond compare, just like he was in his youth but now with the added benefit of gravitas that only age and experience can suggest. His style was more bohemian than showbiz schmaltz, and cool in a way that Elvis couldn’t quite figure out. And then there was the beard. Full. Nearing unkempt but with its wildness contrasted against an expertly coiffed pompadour; jet-black with a touch of gray slightly peppering the sides of his head. It all added up to an impossibly cool avatar of 1977 rock ’n’ roll, a thinking man’s Elvis brimming with sex appeal and fuck-all attitude. Southern charm by way of East Village cool: Skinny Elvis.

  Fat Elvis knew this day would come. He knew that rumor was too ugly not to be true. The rumor that was whispered back in Tupelo during his youth. The rumor that followed him into adulthood on the lips of spiteful Southern music industry vets, the rumor that the Memphis Mafia all knew but dared not whisper, the rumor that Jerry Lee Lewis would tell to anyone who would listen, the rumor that that rock journalist in New York City was threatening to expose: The rumor that Elvis Presley’s brother, Jesse Garon Presley, who had supposedly died at Elvis’s side during birth, had actually lived and was given away by Elvis’s parents to be raised by distant relatives in the hills of Mississippi because they were too poor to raise two children. Elvis always feared it was real. That his brother was alive and well. And that this day of reckoning would come.

  Fat Elvis spoke with hesitation. “Jesse?”

  Skinny Elvis was quick to reply, “You gotta be fucking kidding me, man. Jesse?” He mocked his overweight counterpart, “You stupider than I thought. Jesse. Shit. You believed them rumors? I ain’t Jesse. I ain’t your brother. C’mon. You really thinking all this time that your twin was alive? I can’t believe you actually bought that jive.”

  Fat Elvis visibly cringed. Listening to someone, something, give voice to the shame he’d carried his whole life, it sent his blood pressure through the roof. Hearing it all out loud made it real. He was nervous. The pain in his stomach undeniable.

  Skinny Elvis continued:

  “Nah, man. I think you used that Jesse bullshit to hide from who you really were. Hide from what you were truly capable of. Your twin wasn’t given away by your mama and Vernon to some hillbilly relatives up in Guntown. He’s been dead for forty-two years.”

  Fat Elvis meets Skinny Elvis.

  Fat Elvis sat, mouth agape. Caught between an epiphany and an epic breakdown.

  Skinny Elvis pressed on. “The Colonel heard them rumors, too. That’s right. He hung that shit over your head and you bought it. You jumped when he said jump because you was afraid he’d tell the world all about the Presleys and their dirty little secret: That your mama, Saint Gladys, and ol’ boy Vernon gave Jesse away after he was born. Bullshit. Tupelo tabloid innuendo.

  “The Colonel tried hanging it over your mama’s head, too, and she was too afraid to confront him. Didn’t want even the hint of a scandal out there. Afraid it woulda submarined your career before it got started. So she rode shotgun to your ambition, swallowed her pride, and let you sign on with the Colonel. The biggest mistake of her life. And yours, too.

  “Problem was, you believed the wrong rumors, man. You believed that bullshit about Jesse when you shoulda given more account to the rumors about the Colonel.”

  Fat Elvis held focus on Skinny Elvis. Listening intently but unable to ignore his own envy. Skinny Elvis had all of his shit in one bag. He looked incredible. Fat Elvis couldn’t believe those threads. They looked like rags spun into whatever the next generation of cool was going to wear. And his voice—his speaking voice—it had a command to it that Fat Elvis had completely lost. It had the air of an exotic down-home intellectual. Skinny Elvis spoke with the perfect mix of authority and empathy. He was listening to you, even while he was doing the talking. And he wasn’t afraid to tell it like it was. He had some hair on him. The type of confidence that comes to only those who dare themselves to succeed. Fat Elvis watched and listened in awe as Skinny Elvis kept on with his monologue.

  “‘Colonel’ Parker. He’s about as much a ‘colonel’ as you is an ‘actor.’ That title is straight-up bullshit. The man ain’t even American. You knew it, too, but you were too afraid to admit it. Ask yourself this, who loves money more than Colonel Tom Parker? No one! That’s who. Promoters in Saudi Arabia offered you $5 million in cash for one show. The Colonel turned them down. Then they countered with $10 million and the Colonel turned them down again. He also turned down lucrative tours from promoters in Europe, South Africa, Asia…all at a time when frankly your outta-shape, uninspired, bordering-on-nonrelevant ass coulda used the money. Why? I’ll tell you why: Because he ain’t got no passport.

  “He’s an illegal. Tom Parker is a myth. Tom Parker was the name of the officer who enlisted a twenty-year-old Dutch carny barker named Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk into the U.S. Army in 1929 after his illegal entry into the United States.”

  Fat Elvis sat still on his toilet. Gripped.

  Skinny Elvis continued: “It gets better. Or worse, depending. Andreas, now aka Tom Parker, went AWOL and was later, upon capture, diagnosed as psychotic. Yes sir. You been letting a legitimate psychopath manage your career all these years. Once he bounced out of the Army he took his carny talents to the music business and got his ‘colonel’ title off’a Governor Jimmie Davis for ‘services rendered’—meanwhile his service record was a dishonorable discharge. That’s right. That temper ain’t no joke. Take that to the bank along with your 50 percent. Fifty percent!!!! Are you fucking kidding me, man? You’re ELVIS PRESLEY! You gave that psycho half your money so he could lam it in style here in the States.

  “That’s right. Lam it. He’s a bad, bad man. And not just for what he did to you. He might’a killed your spirit, but he might’a killed something else entirely back in the Netherlands.”

  Fat Elvis sat, transfixed, attempting to keep his face in an expression that said, Tell me everything, which was getting harder and harder for him to pull off while trying to simultaneously keep the pain in his gut at bay.

  Skinny Elvis was undeterred. “He came here on the run, man. Twenty years old and penniless. Just days after that girl died in the back of the grocer’s store Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk worked at. Yards away from where Andr
eas lived. That girl was beaten. To death. By someone with a temper. She wouldn’t give it up, either the money or the sex. No matter. She pissed someone off and that someone killed her. Ransacked the joint and doused the body with white pepper to throw the dogs off the scent. After it all went bad, Andreas vanished. Without a trace. Left no word with his family. Left everything behind. His money. His identification papers. His fancy clothing, including his expensive yellow topcoat that he was known to peacock around town in. He became a ghost. Split for the States. Penniless and alone and never once contacted his family again. Witnesses stated to police that the man seen entering the back of the grocer’s store—the suspected killer—was a sharply dressed young man who wore a bright light yellow coat.”

  Fat Elvis’s slack jaw fell into his lap.

  “That’s right. Light yellow; Colonel Tom Parker’s favorite color.”

  Fat Elvis shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  Skinny Elvis kept going. “Next thing you know, Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk is in the States enlisted in the Army as ‘Tom Parker,’ and the rest, as they say, is history. Tom Parker, the man you let manage your career and protect your interests. You know who he’s really protecting? Himself, that’s who. The art of it all ain’t got nothing to do with it. Who’s happier right now, man, you or Jerry Lee? Jerry Lee doesn’t have them crowds no more but he’s making the records he wants. He’s tearing the ass outta them small rooms every night and raising hell with his band. Staying true to who he is. What are you doing except expanding your belt size? You’re a far cry from what you coulda been because you were too afraid to risk it. Too afraid to confront the Colonel and your own past—blaming that bullshit on account of your brother might still be alive and the Colonel might out the truth—but deep down you knew that wasn’t the reason. What you were really afraid of was failing. You wanted to be an artist? My ass. Real artists take risks in the service of their art. They’re free. Like me. Unafraid to expose themselves and brave enough to open themselves up to the criticism. Brave enough to corner that raging beast and to expose it through song. To set it free and to get down to who you really are. Even if it means cutting loose the one who brought you to the dance. You coulda dug in. Went for it. Done whatever the hell you wanted to do. Recorded your own damn version of Ain’t That Good News. Written your own generation-defining version of “A Change Is Gonna Come” and exorcised all your demons in the process but you were too afraid, man.”