His behaviour onstage was getting more bizarre all the time. On his third tour that year, Elvis introduced singer Kathy Westmoreland one night and then told the audience, "She will take affection from anybody, any place, any time. In fact, she gets it from the whole band." As a result, Kathy became the target of lots of indecent propositions. She complained to (singer) Joe Esposito, who gingerly asked Elvis to stop referring to Kathy like that.
Onstage the next night in Norfolk, Virginia, Elvis said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Kathy Westmoreland, our soprano singer, who doesn't like the way I introduce her. And if she doesn't like it, she can get the hell off the stage." Estelle Brown and Sylvia Shemwell of the Sweet Inspirations (a girl band who performed as background singers for Elvis) began to cry and walked offstage, followed by Kathy.
A few days later at the Civic Center in Asheville, North Carolina, the crowd wasn't responding the way Elvis wanted, so he started saying things like, "Y'all can clap you know?" and, "This is the part where the audience usually applauds." In Elvis's hotel room later, Dr Nick said he was cutting off Elvis's supply of medication, and Elvis pulled out a Beretta pistol and started waving it around. The gun accidentally went off, and the bullet ricocheted off the television and a chair and was spent by the time it thumped Dr Nick's chest.
"Son, good God almighty!" exclaimed Vernon. "What in the world made you do a
thing like that?"
"Aw hell, daddy, so I shot the doc," Elvis said blithely. "No big deal. He's
not dead."
At the second show in Asheville, Elvis was again unhappy with the audience. He passed around a request box hoping to whip up interest and enthusiasm, but that didn't fly. So then he introduced J D Sumner of the Stamps (his back up band) and said, "JD, hold up that right hand and show them your jewels." JD did as instructed, and then Elvis said, "Now hold up my hand," meaning JD's left hand, which held about $100,000 worth of jewelry Elvis had given him over the years. The line always drew a laugh, but what happened next triggered a near riot.
Elvis twisted off a ring, bent down, and handed it to a man in the front
row. A woman rushed the stage, and Elvis gave her a ring. Then he tossed one
out into the crowd and started handing jewellery to members of the band. The
crowd was going nuts, and so was Vernon, watching from the wings with his
hands on the sides of his head. Elvis got his roar of approval, but it cost him $35,000 in jewellery.
One night as we were in the dining room of the Imperial Suite in Las Vegas, Elvis took out a gun, put his feet up on the table, and proceeded to shoot up the ornate chandelier. At Graceland, he blasted a black commode to pieces because he didn't like the colour.
He spent $140,000 on fourteen Cadillacs and gave them away. One went to a
complete stranger who just happened to be in the showroom at the time. She
was checking out a very expensive model when Elvis sidled up and asked, "Do
you like it?" She did, and Elvis promptly bought it for her.
When cars weren't enough, Elvis started buying planes. He bought himself a
Jet Commander, which is a small corporate jet, and a G1 prop plane for Colonel Parker, who declined the gift because it would cost so much just to maintain the aircraft. Then Elvis decided to upgrade to an 880 Convair, a four-engine jet previously owned by Delta Airlines with a hundred-passenger capacity. That set him back about $250,000, and he spent another $800,000 having it customized by an outfit in Dallas.
The 129-foot plane he called the Lisa Marie (after his daughter) had a bedroom (with a seat belt over the queen-sized bed), three closed-circuit TVs, a six-seat conference room, a lounge area with gold-plated seat belt buckles, a fake fireplace, two half baths, and gold wash basins with flecks of twenty-four-karat gold and brass fixtures imported from Spain. To give it his personal touch, he had the TCB logo painted on the tail. It set him back about $400,000 a year in operation costs.
While the Lisa Marie was getting its makeover, Elvis shelled out close to $900,000 for a business jet called The JetStar to use in the meantime.
Elvis gave Dr Nick (Dr George Constantine Nichopoulos, his personal physician) a $200,000 interest-free loan to build a home out of redwood. The staff payroll alone was about $100,000 a month, and Graceland's monthly upkeep came to around $40,000.
As Elvis was en route to Vegas on a Jet Commander for the start of another summer engagement, the plane had to make an emergency landing in Dallas
after he suffered severe shortness of breath. Joe and I were already in Las Vegas waiting on them to arrive there, but Red was on the flight and told us Elvis had taken a bunch of pills before takeoff and was in trouble once up in the air.
"I can't breathe!" Elvis gasped, "I can't breathe!"
Red said he spotted an open vent on the floor of the plane, with air streaming out. He grabbed Elvis and placed his face in front of the vent. Elvis thought he was done.
"I'm not going to make it," Elvis screamed hysterically. "Land!"
The group landed safely in Dallas and checked into a motel for five hours, until Elvis had recuperated enough to continue the trip.
The date of that incident was August 16, 1975. Exactly two years later, Elvis wouldn't be as lucky.
This excerpt has been printed with
the permission of Triumph Books
Image: US President Richard Nixon meets with Elvis Presley at the White House in December 1970. Apparently Presley wished for the meeting to show his patriotism and to lobby for an appointment as a US federal agent at large so he could get a badge to his gun and badge collection. Photograph: National Archives Handout, courtesy Getty Images
Earlier slide show: Showbiz's golden couples
Advertisement
