CHAPTER 47

BILLY AND JO

JO SMITH: I grew up in a family that didn’t show much affection. We were close, but it had always been hard for me to express my feelings until I met Billy. That was when I was thirteen or fourteen. I knew from the first time I saw him that I would be with him as long as we both lived. Mama and Daddy were always very protective of me and my two sisters, so I didn’t go with Billy. He came to see me. My daddy was so strict that Billy and I just married real young. I was fifteen, and he was eighteen.

I was never an Elvis fan. My sister was. When Billy and I were dating, I didn’t even want to meet Elvis. I think I was afraid of him. Maybe I had a premonition that this was going to change my life. Because I’ve known from the time I could walk that I wouldn’t be just an ordinary person flipping eggs on a gas stove. I guess I was destined for what was ahead. I think about it sometimes and still wonder if it all really happened.

Being with Elvis was Billy’s way of life. It was like a religion. He grew up that way. And once I married Billy, that’s all I ever knew, just Elvis, Elvis, Elvis. I grew up fast, and I still don’t know how I handled all the stress. I never wanted to be without Billy, but he was always leaving.

Elvis could be downright cruel when he wanted to be, and in the early years, he wanted to be. I lived by myself in Memphis, while Billy lived in California. And I was miserable. But Elvis would take him away on purpose. Because he wanted Billy. He couldn’t live without him. Billy’s mother said Elvis was always protective of Billy. Elvis loved him, and he trusted him. And Billy loved him.

So Elvis really didn’t want Billy to get married. And I hated Elvis for that. When he took Billy on trips, it was like he was taking him from me.

Sometimes Elvis was like the devil to me. I pitied him, but I also feared him. I knew the power he had over everybody who worked for him, and I lived in fear that Elvis would win and take Billy away forever.

I had both my children by the time I was nineteen. I was only sixteen when I had my first son, Danny. Elvis named him: Danny Mac Smith. Yet when Danny was born, Elvis wouldn’t let Billy come home. About the time I went into labor, they were coming home from L.A. by bus, and Elvis stalled as long as possible. So I had the baby alone, except for my mama and sister and grandmother. And then Elvis got as far as West Memphis [Arkansas] and stopped to wash the bus. And then they stayed overnight. Only to punish Billy for wanting to get home and be with me. I was just across the bridge—not even ten miles away—so Billy could have gotten a cab, but he didn’t.

Billy was special to him, but he didn’t want Billy to be special to me. And he didn’t put him in the same category as Joe and Jerry because Billy was Elvis’s own personal property. He didn’t want him to be independent.

God, I think of all the pain and tears that we’ve gone through, and I have so much bitterness still. Patsy Lacker, Marty’s wife, was my best friend then. Patsy used to say Elvis made her a hateful person, even to herself.

Elvis used to comment on how close Billy and I were. I think he wanted a similar lifestyle. But he wanted the closeness to be just on the wife’s part.

In later years, Linda Thompson would tell Elvis what a good relationship Billy and I had and Elvis would get irritated. He’d say, “Okay, that’s fine. To hell with that.” Because he didn’t want Linda to hold him that way.

I think Elvis made exceptions for us. I know he made exceptions for me. Even though Patsy and I were close, we didn’t agree on a couple of things. I wanted to go where Billy went. I wanted to go to the movies. I wanted to ride the motorcycles. Patsy didn’t. She stayed home. So for a long time it was just the guys, and then all of a sudden, it was me. Elvis let me do things with them, and he let me live in the house in L.A. in the mid-sixties. Lamar says I was one of the guys. But that didn’t mean I got special privileges.

When I was pregnant with our second son, Joey, in ’66, I thought I was having labor pains in the movie one night. Billy said, “I’m sorry, we can’t go right now. I can’t leave.” And he couldn’t because Elvis wouldn’t let him. Thank God, they were false labor pains. I just sat there like a fool ’til they passed. But I pushed myself to the limit to spend every minute with him.

When Joey was finally born, Elvis let Billy stay back for two days. But when I got out of the hospital, Billy had to leave for L.A. the next morning. I didn’t see him again for three months. Once, it was nine months before he came home. And Elvis did it for spite.

One time, Billy called and said, “We’ll be home in two weeks.” Then after two weeks, he called and said, “Well, we’re not going to get to leave yet. It’ll be about three more weeks.” It turned into three more months. The only way I got through it was to pretend Billy was dead.

It was awful to be that young and lonely. Yet I didn’t feel that I could ask anyone for help, so I lived by myself with our babies until I started to travel cross-country with Billy and Elvis and the group. That was only after Priscilla started to go out to L.A.

But I wised up about something. I picked up Billy’s check at home. Because all the guys used to have their checks sent to Bel Air. I thought, “If I’m going to be sitting here with these two kids, I’m picking it up, and I’ll send Billy what he needs.” And Vernon didn’t bitch about it. He probably liked it. That way, he didn’t have to pay postage. He was so tight. He was terrible. He saved Coke bottles. Billy says Vernon would have used candles instead of light bulbs, if he could have.

That’s another thing. I grew up poor. And then to be thrown into this . . . I was so unprepared for any of it. I was alone out there [in California in ’65] in the Watts riots. The guys were in Hawaii, making a movie. I was there at the house with my son Danny—I was pregnant with Joey—and Patsy Lacker and her three children. And that was my first time in California. I’d never been anywhere before. Patsy and I depended on each other. We even had our own little lingo that only we understood.

When Elvis and everybody took that trip cross-country in ’67, Patsy and I were the only wives who didn’t go. Because anybody who had children, Elvis and Priscilla didn’t want. So Patsy and I threw rocks at the bus. And we wished them all dead. We always thought the only relief we could get was if Elvis died. We thought, “Just die, and leave us alone.”

Marty says Patsy had a nervous breakdown. Hell, I probably had fifty. I was just too stupid to know what they were. If you get like you’re a zombie, you know you’re in trouble.

I begged, and pleaded, and thought of blowing my brains out many times. I remember once I was driving along the road in the country where we lived. There was an S curve, and I had a great urge to floor the gas pedal and keep going straight. I started not to care if I lived or died.

It was an awful life. I didn’t hear from Billy for three or four weeks when they went to Las Vegas. So I didn’t even know how they were. All I knew was what I saw in the paper. I would call there, and sometimes a girl would answer the phone. It was horrible. And especially during the Ann-Margret period. I was with Priscilla, and she was going crazy. I understood how she felt. Can you imagine being married to Elvis? Priscilla was a victim, in a way. We may not like her, but she was.

We all were, really. I’ve held a gun in Billy’s back, with the trigger pulled, thinking about killing him. Just because he was leaving the next day. I thought, “I can’t take anymore.” I was seventeen, and I figured if I killed him, I wouldn’t have to pretend he was dead. He would be dead, and I could move on.

In your wildest dreams, you can’t imagine what that life was like. But as bad as it was, it could be just that good.

I grew up in those years. And in ’74, ’75, I began to see exactly what Billy saw in Elvis. I used to think, “How could you leave me and go with him?” But then Elvis had to have Billy back, and to get him, he put the charm on me. And when he did that, I understood. He promised me everything in the world.

We were living in Whitehaven. Billy’s daddy had passed away. And we sold our house and moved into a town house so his mother could live with us. And Elvis wanted us to move to Graceland and live in a trailer out back. I said, “If we move up here, you have to promise me that you will not try to take Billy away. Because I swear I will never live like that again.”

And he promised me that if I would just move to Graceland, Danny and Joey could have the run of the place. They would be safe inside the gates, and they could do anything they wanted. Anything. And I could do anything. There were no limits. He said, “Just name it—cars, jewelry, money, anything.” And he said we would never have to worry. Because of his love for us, we would be well taken care of forever.

So I had to make a choice. I had sworn that if we ever got away, I would never go back. Never! And the whole time I was saying, “Never,” I was sitting there taking it all in. Then Elvis got my Bible out and swore, “I’ll never take Billy away again. Not even on tour. I only want to make sure he’s at Graceland. I have to have him here. I can’t trust anybody else.” And he was crying.

I told Billy, “I’ve got to get all this out in the open.” Because I was always afraid to say anything before. I’d try to get Billy to tell him things. But Billy wouldn’t do it, either. And then, finally, we grew up. I think that’s the main thing that really hit Elvis. Because Elvis always said he raised us. And in a way, he did. But all of a sudden, we had minds of our own.

I said to Elvis, “What about your daddy? And your aunt Delta?” Because I would not put my children through being around them when their behavior was bad. We’re real close to our kids. I drug my babies cross-country during the movie days. Everywhere we went, they went. I was so young and naive and dumb about everything, but I fought tooth and nail to hold on to them.

So I put this question to Elvis point-blank. His exact words were, “Jo, my daddy works for me. Not the other way around. And Aunt Delta’s up here by the grace of Elvis. Her ass can go at any given time.” And I will say, many times Elvis asked me if they had been rude to us or hurt my feelings in any way.

The whole time he was promising me this, I was scared to death. I was thinking, “I’m really stepping into it.” And then I thought, “To hell with it. I’ll just join ’em.” And the very next day, Elvis said, “We’re going to Nashville, Billy.” And I said to myself, “You dumb bitch.”

BILLY SMITH: I went to Jo first and said, “He wants me to go to Nashville. He’s filed a flight plan.” He’d bought what they call a G-1, which is a four-engine Rolls-Royce engine prop plane, as a present for the Colonel.

Me and Jo talked it over about me going, and since it was just for the day, we said I’d go. Well, we got up in the air with the thing, and Elvis said, “Let’s just go on and take it up to the Colonel [in Vegas].” I said, “Well, Colonel’s probably not there. He’s in California.” He said, “Well, we’ll fly on up there anyway.” I said, “Look, I’m supposed to be back home in a little while. You just promised Jo that we weren’t going to do this.” And he said, “Well, let’s go on out to Palm Springs and take Colonel the plane.” I said, “That’s even worse.”

He said, “We’ll fly back and get Jo and the kids.” And by that time, Jerry and all of ’em were begging me. They said, “Say no. If you don’t go, he won’t go.” So I had to put my foot down. I said, “I can’t. You all drop me back in Memphis, and go on ahead.” So we got back to Memphis, and we stayed home that particular time.

JO SMITH: That’s when his whole strategy changed. He saw that Billy wasn’t as easy to manipulate as in the past. And Billy gained Elvis’s respect. But from then on, Elvis worked on me. And God, I felt so good!

But I fell for every bit of it. Every damn bit of it! He just had a way about him. He wanted us to go on tour with him, and the whole time I was saying, “No, no, no,” I’ll be damned if I wasn’t packing my suitcase. I was saying, “No, I can’t do that. I don’t like to fly.” And Elvis was saying, “Nothing can happen to you if you’re with me.” And I believed it. I was right on that plane, and still saying, “No, I’m not going to do it.”

And when Billy would say, “We’d better not go,” I was saying, “Why not? We need to go. He needs us to go.” I couldn’t believe it was me saying that.

BILLY SMITH: I remember at one point, Elvis wanted to go to Palm Springs. He said, “We could have the plane ready in just a little while.” And I said, “No, I can’t. We got the kids, and I’m pretty sure Jo don’t want to go. I think we’ll pass.”

He said, “Oh, man, you’ll have fun. The kids can go. We’ll take Lisa.” I said, “I can’t because Danny’s up here [in Memphis], and Joey’s in Mississippi.” Elvis said, “That’s no problem. We’ll fly a helicopter down there and get him.” He said, “If Jo goes, will you go?” I said, “Yeah, but she’s not going to go.”

JO SMITH: Elvis called me and said, “You know, I haven’t been feeling well lately. And I really need you to go. I can’t trust anybody else. We’ll take the kids. Danny and Joey can play, and I’ll take Lisa. Because I need Billy to go. You don’t know how bad I need Billy to go. Will you go?” And I said, “I don’t know.” And he went, “Jo, I’m really depending on you.” And then he repeated it. And I said, “Okay, we’ll go.”

People ask me, “Why did he need Billy so badly?” He loved him—so much so that he couldn’t be away from him for even two days. I really think Elvis wanted Billy with him around the clock. I know he wanted Billy to be out of the trailer the minute he woke up. He’d call and say, “Is ‘Marble Eyes’ up?” That’s what he called Billy because he has such big eyes. And on tour, Elvis would say, “I don’t want anybody but Billy to wake me.” That started as soon as Billy went back to work for him, and it went on almost until he died.

When we lived at Graceland, and my kids would go to my mother’s in the summer, Elvis would have us come spend the night in Lisa’s room. Or sometimes he’d just want Billy. He called me one night out at the trailer, and he said, “Jo, I want you to hear this song.” He made Charlie hold the telephone, and he sang “Danny Boy.” The whole song. Because he knew I loved it.

And then he started the baby talk. He said, “I don’t really feel very good tonight.” I said, “You don’t?” Billy was over there with him. And he said, “Could Billy spend the night with me?” And I said, “Yes.” He never grew up. He was so strong in so many ways. And if you were with him, you felt so safe. But in other ways, he was like a little kid.

BILLY SMITH: Elvis needed me because I was family. And at that time, I was the person closest to him. And from this period on, a lot of times it would just be me and him.

JO SMITH: Billy was always like Elvis’s own personal, private companion. A brother, maybe a son. It might go deeper than that. Part of it is the connection to Gladys, I guess. Because Billy was close to her. It was like “You’re my life before. You’re what it was like back then.” Billy was a connection to Elvis’s past. He brought Billy with him from the slums. He said it a million times: “I saved you.” And by having Billy around, he could relate to what that life was like. And to their parents.

Part of it also is that Elvis’s father and Billy’s father were in prison together. There was nothing that Elvis had to be ashamed of with him. And Billy’s parents thought if he was with Elvis, he was with God.

Another thing is that Elvis could talk any way he wanted around Billy. You know how Southern and country we talk? So did Elvis when we were alone. Instead of saying something like “the only one,” he’d say “onliest.” You couldn’t tell him and Billy apart. When he was out in public, it was different, but he had to work at it.

After we’d been back with him a little while, my feelings about Elvis changed. He called me Josephine. That’s not my name. But every single time he came down the steps, he sang that Fats Domino song to me, “Hello, Josephine” [“My Girl Josephine”]. And he’d give me a big bear hug. He told me, “I’m going to make up for all the pain I put you through.” But he could never make up for that. I didn’t keep blaming him, but nothing could change that. And nothing could take it out of my memory. It’s like I tell Billy now and then, “Nobody will ever, ever, make me feel that way or do that again.”

It sounds like it was all bad, but it wasn’t. Elvis took care of us. He protected us. We went everywhere, saw everything, and we were right with him. And he made sure my children were cared for. He used to say he’d bring me out of my shell, make me more involved. And he did.

I came to love him very much, and I tell Billy to this day, I think Elvis loved me. But I’m not sure. He told me he did. But I still look back and think, “He loved Billy. Maybe he used me.”

BILLY SMITH: He may have loved Jo. Most of the time there’s no doubt in my mind that the man loved me. But at times, I wonder if he loved anybody.

JO SMITH: You have to be realistic about him. If he wanted a lollipop, and it took ten cars, he thought nothing of it. He got what he wanted. We were suckered. But I truly loved him.

There was never any romance between us, of course. That’s not how we were connected. Part of it was that he had to have a female around, somebody to do the little things that needed to be done. He just liked a woman doing things for him. In Palm Springs, where there wasn’t a maid, I washed his pajamas and his sweat suits. He wanted a woman to baby him, and take up for him, and defend him.

After he accepted me, and we were close, he told me, “You’re deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to anything that I do.” And I never told on him. That’s why he allowed me to go on tour or anywhere they went. If Billy went, I could go. If he went to a girl’s motel room, I went, too.

BILLY SMITH: Elvis tested Jo in a lot of ways. He’d been with Linda for over a year now, and Jo and Linda were close. Jo loved her. Well, one night, Elvis convinced Linda that she was sick. He said, “You need to stay home and wrap up and get your throat better. We’re going to go out riding. Billy and Jo’s going, and if Jo’s going, it’s going to be okay.”

He used her, see. And right on down the highway we went, to the Admiral Benbow [Motel]. He was seeing some young lady up there. And we just waited, like we were supposed to. Now, if that had ever gotten back to Linda, Jo would have been the outcast.

JO SMITH: Larry Geller wrote a book. And in it, Larry says that Elvis asked him to keep a personal diary. That’s not the Elvis Presley that I knew. I believe Elvis would have killed him if he thought he was writing something down about him. You didn’t even whisper around him.

He was very strict about all kinds of things. For example, in the last half of ’76, once Marty didn’t come around anymore, Elvis would not let me accept a call from Patsy at Graceland. I couldn’t talk to her. In our circle, we only had friends in the group. And if they left the group, and Elvis shut ’em off, you shut ’em off.

All these people say, “Oh, God, you got to be with Elvis!” Well, it wasn’t their life. And it wasn’t a job. It was a way of life.

I don’t want to make it sound like I thought he was evil. Because no matter what, Elvis had a good heart. And he believed in God. He knew that he was beneath God, and he never put himself above Him.

BILLY SMITH: He had some faults, and the drugs caused him to be certain ways. He could reach the depths of sheer misery and take it out on everybody around him. But eventually, he was going to come back to being that good-hearted person.

JO SMITH: He wanted everybody around him to be happy. And he wanted to be happy. But he just couldn’t be.

In ’75, we were going out for the day with Elvis and Linda in Memphis. Lisa was there, and she begged to go. And Elvis finally said okay. He had promised to buy her a puppy. Well, Elvis didn’t want to get the puppy first because he was a bigger kid than Lisa.

So Lisa kept saying, “Daddy, when am I going to get my puppy?” And he said, “We’re going to go to this place, and then we’re going to go to that place, and then we’ll get your puppy.” We were in the Stutz Bearcat, and Lisa was sitting in the middle, between Elvis and Linda. And Billy and I were in the back. And Lisa would interrupt us and say, “But when are we going to get the puppy?”

Elvis would get perturbed and say, through sort of clenched teeth, “Lisa, Daddy is going to do what Daddy wants to do first. Don’t make me shoot you.” Well, Linda gave him one of these “Aren’t you ashamed?” looks. And he shot back one of those pouty, little-boy looks. Then he said, “Just relax, kid. We’ll get the dog. But we’re doing what Daddy wants to do first because I said it first.”

So, we went several places, like the dentist. Elvis wanted us to watch while the dentist worked on his teeth. And then we went by the karate school. A class was going on, so Elvis just thought he’d do a demonstration. Well, time was running out, and Lisa kept asking about her puppy. So Elvis had Linda call the pet store over at the mall in Whitehaven, and they kept it open for him.

We finally got over there, and when we went in, Elvis said, “Look at all the dogs. They’re saying, ‘Oh, God, that’s Elvis Presley! Pick me! Pick me!’ They can already see themselves at Graceland, all reared back and taking it easy.” And then he started talking to the dogs. He said, “Yeah, that’s right. Here I am, it’s me, Elvis.” It was so funny.

I saw this little chow that I loved. He was just a bundle of fur. Looked like a little lion. So Elvis picked him for himself. That was Get-Low, who ended up dying of kidney disease when he was about a year old. Elvis tried everything to save him—even flew him up to a hospital in Boston for three months. And he got Lisa a little toy poodle, and I got a Great Dane. And he got three sheepdogs for Graceland, and Laura, Sandy Miller’s little girl, got a pug. God knows, we came home with about eight dogs in the car. Dogs were clawing and climbing at all angles. The whole back end was dogs. And he had four more on order.

The next day, Elvis sent everybody back up. All the guys’ girlfriends had to go get a dog, to clear out the pet store. Because he thought the animals looked pitiful. He said, “We can’t disappoint all those dogs.”

He could be very compassionate. Once, when he came back from a tour, he gave me a $5,000 bonus. And just because my dog—the one he’d given me—died. Linda told him I was upset. And Elvis couldn’t stand for anybody to be in pain. If anybody in the group had a problem, he had to solve it. And he meant it.

It’s like a lot of guys made fun of his interest in religion. But he was totally sincere. It was like a search—it wasn’t just a kick. Elvis liked to say, “God’s the Head Honcho.”

We spent hours and hours in his room, just me and Billy and Elvis and Linda. I grew up with the notion of hell, fire, and brimstone. And I feared it. But Elvis made religion feel good. He didn’t like it to be scary.

In ’74, we started this chant we’d read about. We’d dim the lights. And then we’d sit in the middle of Elvis’s bed and hold hands and picture our loved ones. Say somebody was going on a trip. We imagined them as they were the last time we saw them. If they were getting on an airplane, we pictured a white aura around that plane. Then we said, “Christ’s love, Christ’s light, and Christ’s peace.” To protect it. And we kept saying it, with our eyes closed. We did it every night for months. Billy and I still do the chant today. I do it every time he leaves for work or my children leave.

BILLY SMITH: During the Larry Geller period, Elvis even studied witchcraft. He was fascinated by the idea of getting away from somebody who might be wishing you evil. It’s a simple thing. You say, “I deny you. You have no control over me. You’re beneath me, and I deny you.” But he didn’t stay with it very long.

JO SMITH: He could twist 180 degrees. And a lot of people would have been offended. But there was nobody who knew the Bible better than Elvis. He didn’t go to church. But there were very few Sundays when he didn’t wake up and watch programs about gospel music and preaching. He liked Oris Mays, a black preacher.

He never got away from his religion, even though he said all those filthy things the guys said he did about Moses when he’d jump up on a table and preach. He had a big plaque in his room that said, “Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because I’m the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.” And it set right at the end of his bed. He loved it. I think J. D. Sumner, the gospel singer, got that for him.

Elvis was such a contradiction. As selfless as he was in religion, he always had to be number one in everything else. One time, everybody wanted to go bowling. So Elvis rented Bowlhaven Lanes, right down the street from Graceland, in the Whitehaven Plaza. I don’t guess he’d ever been bowling. And he couldn’t bowl. He guttered, and he tried to throw the ball too hard. But Billy had been on a team, and Red and Pat, and Richard, and several of the other guys had gone bowling in California. So they were pretty good. And Elvis wasn’t good at all. So that’s the last time we ever went bowling. If he couldn’t be the best at whatever we did, we didn’t do it anymore.

I think a lot of what drove Elvis was fear. Elvis couldn’t fail at anything. You might as well kill him. And he didn’t understand why everybody didn’t love him. If there was anyone that he knew of, he went after him until he won him over.

Lisa asked him one time, “Does everybody in the world know you?” And he said, “Probably so.” She said, “Do they know me?” And he said, “Yeah, they probably know you, too.” He loved that.

Even if we attended an outside affair, our group always stuck together. We were Elvis’s security, and we were also his security blanket. We knew his language, his feelings, his needs. And we knew his eyes. Those eyes showed it all. And they could change in a split second.

If his feelings were hurt, he expected you to hurt just like he did. And we did. We went to the movie one night, and an old woman was rude to him, and oh, God, I wanted to kill her. I just couldn’t stand for him to be hurt. And she hurt him so bad.

BILLY SMITH: This was in ’75. Elvis had rented the Memphian, and this woman’s daughter worked the concession stand.

It had been in the paper about Elvis giving a lot of people cars, including a black woman—a total stranger—an $11,000 gold-and-white Cadillac. Elvis had gone down to the automobile agency, and a lady by the name of Minnie Person was in there looking at cars, and it was pretty obvious that she was only looking, you know. And he walked over to her and said, “Do you like that car?” She said, “I sure do.” And he said, “Would you like to have it?” And she said, “Shoot, yeah, but there ain’t no way.” And he said, “Yeah, there is. ’Cause I just bought it for you.” That was the time he bought fourteen Cadillacs at a whack.

Anyway, during the movie, Elvis got up and went to get something to drink. I don’t even know what the woman was doing there, unless’n she was just waiting for her daughter to get off work. But when Elvis got up there, she said, “She hasn’t been paid yet.” Elvis said, “What do you mean?” She said, “The renting of the theater, and the concession stand. She hasn’t been paid yet.” And boy, that’s one thing Elvis wanted promptness on.

He turned to Al Strada and said, “How come she hasn’t been paid?” Al said, “I beg her pardon. She was paid for yesterday. And I’ve got her money ready for tonight. But we don’t pay for the night until we leave.” Elvis said, “Everything before tonight has been paid?” Al said, “Yeah.” And the woman said, “Oh, no. That’s not right.”

JO SMITH: She said, “Y’all don’t appreciate this girl. She works up here every night, and she doesn’t have a way to get back and forth to work, and you give away cars to total strangers.” And then she said to Elvis, “It wouldn’t hurt you to do a little walking yourself, you’re so fat.” Well, I couldn’t believe it. And I thought he was going to slap the woman.

BILLY SMITH: When she said that, the blood just drained from his face. I thought, “Ohhhh, God.” And when his jaw started flexing and bulging out, I said, “Uh-oh.” I knew what that meant. He was on the verge of striking. So I just eased over and barely touched him. I said, “She’s not worth it.”

Everybody else flew mad. But I was trying to keep my composure. Because I thought, “If I don’t, he’ll hit this woman, and there’ll be a lawsuit.” I said, “Elvis, she’s nothing but a big blow-off. Look at her. She’s calling you fat?” And she heard me. She said, “Well, he is fat. Not only that, he’s selfish as hell.” And then she said to him, “And look how you’re dressed.”

He lowered his head. And he said, “Yes, ma’am, I guess you’re right. I am. But as far as your daughter being paid, I assure you she’ll be paid.” And then he said, “I’m sorry she doesn’t have a way to work.” By that time, I was saying, “Let’s go. There’s no sense in arguing.”

JO SMITH: She was trying to get a car out of him. She figured he gave away all these cars, so they should have one.

BILLY SMITH: I could tell she’d really wounded him. And when we got out to the car, he broke down. He just fell across the car and cried. And he turned to me and said, “When we get home, take this car back up there and give it to her.”

I said, “Like hell I will. Get someone else. I wouldn’t give that bitch the time of day. If you go back and give that woman that car, it’ll be the worst thing you’ve ever done in your life. Because she won’t respect it, and she won’t have no respect for you.”

Jo and Linda tried to talk him out of it, too. But Elvis just cried and cried. Then he went wild. The more he thought about it, the madder he got.

JO SMITH: He was the most filthy-talking human I’ve ever known. There’s nothing he wouldn’t say. And at the same time, you’d think he’d just stepped out of church. He’d go from “Yes, sir,” “No, sir,” to “son of a bitch, mother . . . ” And just on and on.

When we got home, he went straight upstairs and got up in the middle of his bed and walked and pranced and cussed and raved and thought of what all he could do. He called her all kinds of names, starting with “slut” and then every filthy thing you can possibly think of. And he came up with all these horrible acts to mutilate and torture her.

He was spitting, practically, and stuff was coming out of his nose because he was like a wild stallion, just snorting and stomping. And the whole time he was walking on the bed, he was looking at himself in the mirror. We were sitting on the floor and looking up at him, and all of a sudden, he stopped and said, “Goddamn, I’m a handsome son of a bitch!” And then he died laughing. We all fell out. And then it was over.

When he was strong, nobody could outdo him. Because in a real fight, I assure you, he always came out on top. But then something like this could just bring him to his knees.

Lamar says that Elvis got bored being Elvis. I will never believe that. He loved it.

For example, in ’75, when Louise, Sam Thompson’s wife, went into labor, Elvis went to the hospital about one A.M. He went in the back entrance and caused a minor riot. He didn’t even think about how it would look, but he just barged into the labor room. He thought, “Well, they’ll be glad to see me. I’m Elvis Presley.”

And I guess they were. Some woman asked him to autograph her stomach! Here she was lyin’ there having a baby, and she wanted her stomach autographed. Elvis said she went, “Oh, Elvis!” And some other woman was screaming in pain, and he went right over and laid his hands on her abdomen and started his psychic healing stuff. He said, “Now, now, it won’t hurt anymore. You’ll be fine.” And she told him he was right.

He came out, and he had to explain everything. He said, “Man, she had one foot here and one foot here . . . ” In the stirrups, you know. And he said he turned to the fathers sitting around and got real accusatory, in this low tone. And he said, “Someone in here is a motherfucker.” Then he laughed like crazy. He said, “Well, it stands to reason. Just think about it!” I said, “Oh, my God.”

His world was so unreal. We were like vampires. We only lived at night. And eventually, his reality became ours. If he’d lived, we’d probably all be dead by now.

One time, everybody was going to Palm Springs. Danny and Joey were going, and Lisa, of course, and Sandy Miller’s two children, Rory and Laura.

In Palm Springs, we always stayed at the house with Elvis. Especially with the kids because Elvis wanted somebody to keep Lisa occupied.

Billy, and Elvis, and several of the guys were going to drive to Los Angeles to a motorcycle place. So Elvis asked me if I would watch Lisa while he was gone. And he gave me $500 to spend on toys. Then he gave me a pistol to take with me, just in case.

I didn’t even think about it. Later I thought, “God, if I’d gotten stopped with no permit or license . . . ” But I took the gun, and we went to a toy store and a 7-Eleven because Lisa loved Slurpees.

When we got back to the house, nobody was there. And the dadgum gate was locked, so we couldn’t get in. I had to shove Danny and Joey over the wrought-iron fence and then hand Lisa and Rory and Laura over. I had this other girl, Pam Smith, with me. She was the girlfriend of one of the boys. And we finally got up to the door, and they had changed the locks. We got into the house through a window.

That was some day. There I was with all these children to look after. And one of them was Elvis Presley’s daughter. As concerned as he was about somebody killing him, you’d think he would have been paranoid about somebody kidnapping Lisa. But he wasn’t. I think he gave me the gun to protect myself. I was more worried about Lisa than he was.

BILLY SMITH: In the last years, after Linda, his interest in sex went way down. The drugs were starting to affect his desire, if you know what I mean. Now, he didn’t come right out and say this, but a man has ways of knowing things like this.

He said he didn’t try to make love too much when he was getting ready for a tour, or if he was on tour, because he had to preserve his strength. He’d say, “I need to have all my bodily fluids to heal myself.”

There was nobody like him, boy. You had to tune into his world and know what to say next. If he had a date for the movies, and that was going to be it for the night, he would use a line like “We’re going on tour, and I’ve got to save my bodily fluids.” We’d be standing there, and, naturally, we weren’t going to say, “What the hell are you saving ’em for? Go ahead!” Instead, we were expected to say, “Yeah, that’s right. He always saves his bodily fluids before a tour.”

JO SMITH: There at the end, he got stranger. We had to take care of him and cater to him like a small child. I did things I never thought I’d do. Like, when it came time for him to go to sleep, he liked to be put to bed. And he liked to be told good night—the whole send-off. Sometimes, even if he had a girl with him, Billy had to sit in there with them, which I resented. Elvis would be in bed with the girl, and he’d have Billy come in there and pull up a chair close to the bed, or sometimes sit on the foot of the bed, and talk and talk. Like she wasn’t there.

BILLY SMITH: A lot of times I thought, “Well, what the hell does the girl think?” But we’d talk about whatever he wanted to talk about—maybe a movie or some book. And sometimes the girl would talk, although usually not.

JO SMITH: I’d say to Billy, “What do you do? Sit there and watch?” But later on, I had to do it, too. The girls would just lay there and smile, with their little negligees on.

BILLY SMITH: It didn’t dawn on me that Jo would be upset. Not that the girls weren’t pretty. It didn’t make any difference. My mind is not geared that way. I was only thinking of Elvis’s needs. And if you’d get up to leave the room, he’d say, “Where you going? Come on back here.” I’d have to stay until he fell asleep. A lot of times, I talked baby talk to him.

JO SMITH: I had to talk baby talk to him, too. One time, I’d started into the kitchen, and Elvis called me and said, “Come in here and sit with us.” I thought, “Billy’s in there asleep—everybody had been up for days—and he’s calling me back there to sit with ’em.” So I went into his room, and he was in bed with a girl. They were sitting up.

We talked for a while, and I got ready to go. He said to me, “Tell her all about the lamps.” So I started telling her about these lamps that he had bought to go in my trailer. And he was almost asleep. He nodded off. So I started to get up again, and he revived and said, “And tell her about the . . . ” and named something else.

Before I got out of there, he said, “Tell her that I have to have this medication because I’m getting ready for a tour.” He said, “I’ve got to get my rest.” He had this scratch on his hand. And he held it up, and he said, “This has to heal, and I need all my bodily fluids for it to get better.”

I said, “That’s exactly right.” Because I thought I could leave. But every time he’d almost go to sleep, and I’d get up and start to go out, he’d grab me and say, “Wait! Tell her about the . . . ” So I told about, and told about, and told about. Finally, he fell asleep.

There were times when Elvis had me screen the girls for him. This was at Graceland. George Klein would send a girl up to the house, and she’d wait downstairs in the living room. Elvis would have me go down and check her out, like she was a car or something.

He’d say, “You know if I’d like her or not. If her fingernails are dirty, or if her toenails are dirty, she’s a definite out.” So I would go down and meet her.

I didn’t ever ask any of them to take off their shoes, but in the summertime they wore sandals a lot. So I’d look at ’em, and I’d go back upstairs and say, “She’s this, that, and the other.” And he’d say, “Well, how do you think she’d . . . ” I’d say, “I think she’s real nice. I think you’d like her.”

So he’d say, “Well, go down. And in about ten minutes, send her up.” So I’d go in and talk. I’d say, “How you doing?” And then in a few minutes, I’d say, “Step this way.” Like, “Here we go. The spider’s upstairs.” And then I’d have to sit because he wouldn’t want to be alone. These girls had to think it was nutty.

When we were in Vegas, he would give me money to go down to the shops in the hotel and buy the girls outfits. Why he didn’t give the money to them, I don’t know. But he would give me money and say, “Go down and make sure they buy something. Let ’em try on something out of the ordinary—something really unusual that would look good with what I wear.”

So we’d go down and buy the whole works. And always white underclothes. Always. He insisted on that. Except for Linda. She could wear whatever she wanted. I remember she had a peach-color outfit, and when she wore it, he would bite at her. He would be talking, and as she passed by, he’d go, “And so and so . . . gnaw-gnaw-gnaw-hhhhnnnnhhhhh.” Like a shark or something.

At the end, he would have given me anything. But I could never ask for material things. Because I’d fallen right into what Billy was into. And then the roles were reversed. Billy saw what I went through all the years. We both learned a good lesson.

BILLY SMITH: Jo and me have always been close. But we’re closer from all we’ve been through together. Like right now, I know if something’s bothering her and basically what it is. It can be something she’s rehashed—thinking about Elvis or her daddy passing away. A lot of times, I even know what she’s going to say. And sometimes I’ll come out with it, and she does me the same way. And with Elvis, sometimes I knew what he wanted. I’d go on and do it before he even said it. But he fooled me sometimes, and I couldn’t do nothing about what happened.

JO SMITH: In ’75 or ’76, we were getting ready to go to the movie one night. Elvis had this new Italian sports car that only two people could ride in, this yellow Pantera [Didamasa Pantera 265]. He’d left it in the drive in front of Graceland. And Billy and I were parked right behind him in this new Lincoln that he had given us.

Billy always said, “You’d better keep the keys in the cars because you never know which one he’s going to want.” Elvis wanted the keys left in the cars at all times, so he could go out and leave whenever he wanted. But Vernon couldn’t stand it if there were keys in the cars. Probably, he just didn’t want any of the guys driving them. So Vernon had Delta start taking the keys out of the cars. And Elvis would pitch a fit.

This particular night, they didn’t think he’d want to go in the Pantera. So Delta had put the keys up. I think he overheard them talking about it because he would do something like this on purpose. He was ornery like that. And he and Linda got ready to leave, and he came down the steps and realized that he didn’t have the keys to the Pantera, so he went straight to it.

They looked and looked, but they couldn’t find the keys. Finally, they had to wake Delta up. It was about one o’clock in the morning, and he just said, “Get her up. I want my keys.”

Well, she couldn’t find the keys, either. And she was looking and looking because she had this big keyboard hung in the closet.

Finally, Elvis got real mad, and he went out to the Pantera and he pulled his gun. Billy followed him out, and he said, “Wait, wait, don’t shoot!” And Elvis said, “Why not?” Billy said, “’Cause I’m parked right behind you! The bullet might ricochet and hit my new car!” And Elvis said, “To hell with you!”

I was already sitting in the Lincoln, and when I saw Elvis pull that gun, I just laid down flat in the seat. He could have killed me. Or the bullet could have bounced back and hit him. And Billy was still yelling, “Wait! Let me move my car!” And Elvis just, Bam! Bam! Shot that Pantera up. And then he opened the door and shot all inside it. He said he was trying to shoot the ignition. Then he ran out of bullets, and he and Linda went and got in another car and went to the movie like nothing ever happened.

BILLY SMITH: It could be pure pleasure or total disaster. But on the whole, I think all those experiences made us better people.

JO SMITH: Right now, I’d give anything if Elvis were here. I wish that we could go back to being twenty and have it all over again. And have it normal. When I say that, Billy always says, “Elvis couldn’t have been who he was if he’d been normal.” And I guess he’s right. Elvis could never change.

You know, I loved him more than anything. And it broke my heart when he died. But if I hadn’t known him, my life would be so different today. I don’t think I would be so paranoid. I can’t even watch a movie where somebody leaves. If I know ahead of time that they’re going to leave, even for overnight, I won’t watch it. I hate it. Anything like that just throws me into a state. It’s more than abandonment. It’s like death.

I get panic attacks sometimes. I still have dreams that Billy and the guys are getting packed to leave with Elvis. I wake up sobbing. It’s crazy, but I have all these phobias. I see couples where one of them goes away for maybe just a night. And I think, “How can you waste time apart? You’re soulmates.” At least, Billy and I are. We do just about everything together.

BILLY SMITH: We spent a lot of time apart. And what time we’ve got left, we try to spend together. Because we have that fear that if it can happen to Elvis Presley, hell, it can happen to us, maybe tomorrow. We cling to one another.

JO SMITH: I feel like Billy and I are the same person. I regret a lot of things, though. Because when Billy would come home, I wanted all his time. He spent as much time as he could with the kids. But it wasn’t very much. Then his brother died. And I felt guilty about that. And I feel guilty that he didn’t get to spend as much time with his daddy and mother.

I look back at this experience, and I don’t know how we didn’t go the easy way and just pill out. For relief. We did some. But not like some of the others. And it didn’t solve anything. But I don’t blame Elvis so much anymore. The bottom line is, we were with Elvis because we wanted to be.