Authors: Alanna Nash
Ten days later, as Elvis began his fifth tour of the year, his stage moves were little more than perfunctory, his voice worn and tired. The Colonel, distraught at reports of a string of bad
shows, confronted Elvis in Hartford and again bellowed that if Elvis didn’t shape up fast, he was in danger of losing not only his fans, but his Vegas contract and recording deal. Presley,
shaken by the encounter, sought out Tom Hulett for solace. “You are the biggest entertainer there is, and everybody loves you,” Hulett said reassuringly. But Hulett, too, knew that
Elvis couldn’t go on much longer.
In Houston, on August 28, Elvis gave such a dismaying show that critic Bob Claypool described it as a “depressingly incoherent, amateurish mess served up by a bloated, stumbling and
mumbling figure who didn’t act like ‘the King’ of anything, least of all rock ’n’ roll.” For more than twenty years, Claypool wrote, Elvis had been breaking
hearts. “Saturday afternoon in the Summit—in a completely new and unexpected way—he broke mine.”
“It was really bad,” says Lamar Fike, who’d replaced Sonny West as security chief. “We almost lost him in Houston. But nobody would say it, even though it was just
tearing us up, ripping us to shreds. I felt like some sort of voice in the wilderness. I said, ‘God almighty, guys, look what’s happening here! He’s going on us!’
”
Larry Geller was equally disturbed but, like Fike, found most of the people around Elvis in denial. “It took him more and more time to get ready for the show. I would go to people’s
rooms and literally cry. I’d say, ‘Look at him. He’s sick and something’s got to be done.’ And they’d say,
‘No, man, in twenty years
Elvis is going to look better than he does today. He’s going to pull out of it.’ ”
But Dr. Nichopoulos knew better and, with the help of Billy Smith, stepped up the efforts to quell Elvis’s craving, diluting his shots, draining his capsules, and substituting placebos for
the harder pills, delivered as “attack packets” at appointed hours by Elvis’s stepbrothers. Like any drug addict, Presley caught on quick, demanding more and stronger stuff. If
Nichopoulos refused, he’d fly to Vegas or L.A. to find another source.
Despite Elvis’s physical condition and faltering shows, the public had no knowledge of the extent of Presley’s drug habit, believing he was simply ill. All that was about to
change.
In September, rumors swirled that Red, Sonny, and Dave Hebler were writing a book about their life with Elvis, intending to reveal his terrible deterioration as a kind of wake-up call. Jackie
Kahane had encouraged members of the group to go to the newspapers months before. “What would the point be?” Joe Guercio asked him. “To save his life! He’s on dope,
he’s on everything!” Kahane said. “Forget it,” Guercio told him. “You’d look like an ass.”
“When Elvis found out about the book,” Larry Geller remembers, “he was so hurt. We were in Mobile, Alabama. I can still see him, sitting in bed, with tears running down his
cheeks. He said, ‘How could these guys do this to me? They could have anything they want.’ He wasn’t so worried about how it would impact him, but rather his family. He kept
saying, ‘How is it going to affect my father and my little girl? When she grows up, what is she going to think about her daddy?’ ”
Through Vernon, Elvis asked Parker to have the book stopped. The manager hired John O’Grady, who learned that the tell-all was being cowritten by Steve Dunleavy of the tabloid
Star,
and offered the Wests and Hebler $50,000 to cancel the project. But the bodyguards refused. Nothing more was ever done.
Geller believes the Colonel didn’t find a way to stop the book because he wanted it to be published. Fike says that Parker tried to halt it, but by the time he learned of its existence,
the authors had already signed their contracts. Elvis, however, believed the matter had been taken care of, though his obsession with the book caused him to overindulge his love of fattening foods,
his weight ballooning even higher.
When he returned to Las Vegas that December, Elvis was so large that Bruce Banke couldn’t believe his appearance (“I said, ‘He’s putting us
on.
That’s got to be padding in there.” His belt buckle was down below his belly”). He injured his ankle on stage, railed about his frustrations, cursed the “tinny”
microphone, and one night, told a perplexed audience, “I hate Las Vegas.” Bill Burk of the
Memphis Press-Scimitar
wrote what everyone was thinking but few would say: “One
walks away wondering how much longer it can be before the end comes.”
By the last months of ’76, Linda Thompson, tired of watching Elvis self-destruct and “feeling that I wasn’t worth anything without him,” had all but phased herself out of
his life. In November, he met twenty-year-old Ginger Alden, another dark-haired Memphis beauty queen who currently held the title of Miss Mid-South Fair. Ginger reminded Elvis of a young Priscilla,
but several factors hampered the courtship, including - Elvis’s physical condition, the twenty-two-year difference in their ages, and Ginger’s feisty independence.
Unlike other of Elvis’s girlfriends, Ginger refused to build her life around Presley’s, preferring to be with her friends much of the time instead of spending the night at Graceland
or going on tours. In January 1977, when she was to accompany Elvis to Nashville for a recording session, she changed her mind at the last minute and refused to go. Elvis, moody and angry, checked
in to a Nashville hotel, but never made an appearance at the studio, complaining of a sore throat.
He returned to Memphis the next day, prompting the Colonel to once more lay down the law: “Get off your tail [and] fulfill your commitment, or there will be no more tours.”
The canceled recording session made its way into the
Nashville Banner,
where a columnist reported Presley’s aides “contend the singer’s new girlfriend . . . [is]
absolutely running him ragged.” Later that month, Elvis presented Ginger with an 11.5-karat diamond engagement ring. Then in March, he took her family on vacation in Hawaii, bringing along
several of the guys.
Larry Geller was among them. When the men were alone, Geller spoke to Elvis about his health, advising him on his diet and suggesting foods and vitamins to strengthen his immune system. Elvis
needed rest, he told him, and the singer vowed to take off six months to a year and come back to the islands to relax and restore his well-being. He also pledged to make other changes.
“He was adamant about firing the Colonel,” says Geller. “I’d never heard him so resolute, and I’m convinced he was going to get rid of him.” In several
conversations, Presley brought up the ’74 incident, saying he
was sorry he hadn’t gone through with it then. “He even had the time picked out when he was
going to make his move, and he was certain he wanted Tom Hulett to manage his career. He said, ‘Larry, I promise you, this is exactly what I’m going to do.’ ” He would see
to it after the last tour wound down in August.
Several days later, Elvis cut his vacation short after suffering an eye infection, and when he went back on the road at the end of the month, he did not appear well. Billy Smith could barely get
him on the plane. In Alexandria, Louisiana, on March 30, he stumbled through “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” and finally improvised his own prophetic lyric: “Wise men know/
When it’s time to go . . .”
The next day, in Baton Rouge, Elvis woke up feeling ill, and summoned Dr. Nick, Joe Esposito, and Larry Geller to his suite. “I told Daddy and Nick I’m sick, man, I can’t go on
tonight,” he moaned. “I’m canceling the rest of the tour.” But Geller had obtained galley sheets of the West and Hebler book through a fan, and knew that the tabloids would
see a cancellation as verification of the story. The awful details were already beginning to appear in the British press.
Presley’s entourage had kept the news from the star, but now Geller thought he should hear it. Elvis exploded in anger (“Get me the Colonel!”) and was so traumatized that Dr.
Nick felt the need to sedate him. When he awakened, he insisted on flying back to Memphis and going into the hospital, as much for insurance reasons as health.
The Colonel would add the canceled dates on to a later tour, but the crowd in Baton Rouge would never forget the bizarre way Parker handled the last-minute cancellation. “He had us go on
stage and take our places as if Elvis was coming out,” remembers Kathy Westmoreland. “Then he faked a blackout, and whisked us out of the building into police cars. Tom Hulett said they
were trying to get everybody out without getting hurt. In fact, there was a riot afterwards.”
Three weeks later, with Ginger in tow, Elvis was back on the road for his third tour of the year. One review described the performer as “seeming not to care.” A Detroit columnist
wrote, “He stunk the joint out.”
Although a few industry insiders knew the relationship between Parker and Presley had broken down, perhaps irretrievably, a story in the
Nashville Banner
in late April came as a
surprise to most. The Colonel had put Elvis’s management contract up for sale, and a group of West Coast businessmen had expressed interest, the paper reported, quoting sources in Nashville,
Memphis, and Los Angeles.
The reasons were said to be the Colonel’s failing health and financial problems, particularly his high-rolling habits. Parker and Presley had reportedly “not
spoken in two years,” wrote columnist Bill Hance.
By the next day, Parker, in St. Paul to advance the singer’s concert, was on the phone to dispute the story, telling Nashville’s morning paper, the
Tennessean,
he had
“absolutely no plans to sell Elvis Presley. . . . I’m here working with Elvis, I’m in good health, and I don’t have any debts—at least none that I can’t
pay.” Joe Esposito, who parroted the Colonel’s words, also dismissed the report that the two men didn’t talk. “They’re on the road together all the time, and the
Colonel just spoke to Elvis yesterday.”
What prompted the story isn’t known, but clearly Parker was exploring new directions, including one he had shied away from for so long. Around this same time, he contacted Peter Grant, the
corpulent manager of the British rock group Led Zeppelin, whose U.S. dates were handled through Concerts West. Could Grant promote a European tour for Elvis, since Parker was too busy stateside to
accompany his star? They made plans to talk about it after Presley’s last shows of the summer.
But in truth, Elvis was not up to performing. By May, on his fourth tour of 1977, he wore the same white, Aztec-calendared jumpsuit thirteen days in a row. It was the only one that fit him.
In Knoxville, a doctor who saw Elvis backstage reported that “he was pale, swollen—he had no stamina.” Then in Landover, Maryland, he left the stage, tossing two microphones to
the floor, to answer “nature’s call.” A week later, in Baltimore, he again walked off for thirty minutes. “At the finale,”
Variety
wrote, “there was no
ovation, and patrons exited shaking their heads and speculating on what was wrong with him.”
Presley himself knew the signs. Not long before, he’d invited the songwriter Ben Weisman to come up to the suite in Vegas. Elvis, his face puffy, sat down at the piano. “Ben,”
he said, “there’s a song I love, called ‘Softly As I Leave You.’ But it’s not about a man leaving a lady. It’s about a man - who’s going to die.”
Before the taping of a CBS-TV concert special in Rapid City, South Dakota, Elvis showed Kathy Westmoreland a blue jumpsuit he planned to wear that evening. “I’m going to look fat in
that faggy little suit,” he told her, “but I’ll look good in my coffin.” Westmoreland found herself unable to say a word, “because I knew that it was inevitable and
could come at any moment. He wanted me to wear white, not black, at the funeral.”
Westmoreland consoled herself with the news that after the fifth tour
ended in June, Elvis would have the entire month of July to himself. Though the Colonel often gave
the band very little notice, the next dates weren’t scheduled to start until August 17, and Lisa Marie was coming for a two-week visit. Ordinarily, Elvis liked to work, and other than the
times he was ill, he never thought of Parker as pushing him to tour, even asking him to book more shows when the Colonel suggested he slow down. But now he knew he needed time off.
“I’m so tired,” he told Westmoreland. “I don’t want to go out on this next tour, but I have to. The Colonel owes $8 million.”
Elvis, too, was feeling the pinch. Recently, he had issued Priscilla a deed of trust to Graceland, guaranteeing her nearly half a million dollars still owed on the divorce settlement.
Lamar Fike also looked forward to Elvis’s last show before the midsummer break, which fell in Indianapolis on June 26, the Colonel’s sixty-eighth birthday. Like Geller, Fike had
encouraged the singer to go to Hawaii and change everything he hated about his life. Now Fike wondered if it might be too late. On stage, Elvis had summoned new strength, giving his best
performance in months, and ending his eighty-minute show with impassioned renditions of “Hurt” and “Bridge over Troubled Water.” But moments before, he’d looked so
fatigued, as if the life had already drained out of him.
“He’ll never see the snow fly,” Fike told the entourage. “I promise you.”
The Colonel had seen irrefutable evidence of Elvis’s dire condition himself as late as May 21, in Louisville. Larry Geller was in the anteroom of Elvis’s hotel suite, waiting for Dr.
Nick to finish administering the drugs that would transform Presley from a sick, lethargic man to an energized performer. Suddenly, Geller heard a loud knock at the door. He answered it to find an
angry Parker leaning on his cane. Geller was shocked—never had he known the Colonel to come to Elvis’s room on tour.
“Where is he?” Parker demanded.
Geller said he would let Elvis know he was there. “No, I’m going in,” the Colonel said curtly, brushing Geller as he passed.
The Colonel opened the door to a devastating sight—Elvis, semiconscious and moaning, with Dr. Nick working frantically to revive him, kneeling at his bedside, dunking the singer’s
head into a bucket of ice water.