CHAPTER 48
LAMAR FIKE: Early in January of ’75, Elvis canceled his Vegas engagement for later in the month. He was going to work on his weight and try to feel better. Really, he just didn’t want to be there.
Just when Elvis was trying to figure out how to quit Vegas altogether, the Hilton was trying to figure out how to get him to play to more people. Barron Hilton came up with the idea of building that big room [the Hilton Center] off to the side of the son-of-a-bitchin’ hotel. That was so Elvis could do one show a night and play to four thousand or five thousand people.
When he canceled in January, the hotel released a statement that the cancellation was just a postponement until March. And they announced their plans to build the big showroom.
Shit, that showroom wasn’t finished until after Elvis died. He never played it. They had to turn it into a convention center.
BILLY SMITH: At the end of January, Linda woke up real early in the morning and heard Elvis breathing kind of strange. He’d overdosed, and he was having respiratory problems.
I think that was a pretty close call. When they brought him down to the fire department ambulance, Patsy Presley was there, and she said he looked like he was dead.
Dr. Nick took him to Baptist [Hospital], and he stayed more than two weeks. They said it was for a general medical workup, but he was there to be detoxified. While he was in there, they did a biopsy on his liver. It was enlarged, and somewhat fatty, because of the drug abuse. The medical term for it is “hepatomegaly,” I think.
The shame of this, see, is that pretty much each time he went in the hospital, people would still smuggle [drugs] in to him. In ’75, I stayed with him some. And one of the guys was on duty at all times, and Linda stayed the whole time. But he still got stuff. I’m pretty sure he got some from the nurses. Elvis was a very persuasive person. But if he didn’t get the stuff in the hospital, he’d go right back to taking drugs the minute he got out.
None of these attempts to detox really worked. This one in ’75 was the longest “cure,” so to speak. Boy, he lost weight, and he looked good. And he started doing some tremendous shows.
LAMAR FIKE: People blamed us for him being like he was. But you can’t keep me from eating, and you can’t stop a drunk from drinking. Unless he wants to do it himself.
MARTY LACKER: Linda mentioned that Elvis would ask for tranquilizers or sleeping pills, and he would save them up. They were supposed to be mild, but when you save them up and take them all at once, you get a buzz.
I went to see him in the hospital. He had a suite at the end of the hall. I walked in, and he was lying there, and he was coherent, and he looked pretty good. He was in great spirits. At one point, he shifted in the bed, and the top sheet sort of tilted up on an angle, and I could see under the bed. There were all these hoses coming out. It scared the hell out of me. It was like they had him punctured everywhere, and all this gook was just draining out of his body.
When he’d come back out on the road, Colonel would send him back to the same old shitty-ass towns. Over and over and over. I’m sure Elvis thought, “I’m supposed to be the most famous guy the entertainment business ever saw. And there ain’t nothing new out here for me to do.”
BILLY SMITH: On February 5, when Elvis was still in the hospital, Vernon had a major heart attack. They took him to Baptist, too. And Elvis went to see him. They got to talking, and Vernon made Elvis feel bad. He said, “This is all your fault. I can thank you for this.” And Vernon blamed him for Aunt Gladys, too.
He said, “You worried your mama right into the grave.” Elvis broke down and cried. It about killed him.
MARTY LACKER: The middle to the end of ’75, Elvis started getting really bad. He was popping more than the prescribed amount of sleeping pills.
After Elvis died, and the state of Tennessee went after Nichopoulos, they got a year-by-year breakdown of the prescriptions Nick had written for him. In ’75, Nick prescribed 1,296 amphetamines, 1,891 sedatives, and 910 narcotics. In ’76, it was 2,372 amphetamines, 2,680 sedatives, and 1,059 narcotics. And in ’77, until the day Elvis died on August 16, he prescribed 1,790 amphetamines, 4,996 sedatives, and 2,019 narcotics.
And you’ve got to remember—this is what Elvis was getting from Dr. Nick alone. He had all those other sources, too.
LAMAR FIKE: That March, Elvis got two offers to play England. One was for a million pounds, and the other was for two million pounds. And a pound was worth an average of $2.20 back then. When Colonel turned the first offer down, he said the ticket prices were too high. And then on the second one, which was to appear at Wembley Stadium, Colonel said Elvis didn’t like to play ballparks.
God, the times Elvis got cranked up to go over there and then have it fall through. One time, we thought we were going to go over to Saudi Arabia because Adnan and Esam Khashoggi wanted to make a deal with Elvis. Esam came backstage. And they wanted Elvis to do the thing that Frank Sinatra eventually did at the pyramids, at Gaza. And Khashoggi was going to pay Elvis a truckload. I forget what it was, but the amount of money was unbelievable! And all of a sudden, the Colonel stopped the deal.
BILLY SMITH: The best I remember, Colonel presented the Khashoggis with a number, which he didn’t think they’d meet. But Colonel forgot who he was dealing with. And they met his price. Which I believe was $5 million.
The Colonel said, “Well, I’ll get back with you.” And he thought, “They didn’t even hesitate. Now what am I going to do?” So he jumped the price from $5 million to $10 million. And you know something? They met that, too!
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis came out to the bus, and he said, “Lamar, it’s this now.” And he held up ten fingers. And he said, “You’ll all get a lot of stuff out of this.”
BILLY SMITH: Elvis was really worked up. And then, bang! It just slapped him in the face. I never did find out how Colonel crawfished out of that one. You could almost see the blood drain out of Elvis’s face when the deal fell through.
LAMAR FIKE: In April, Elvis bought a Delta Airlines Convair 880 jet. That’s the one he later named the Lisa Marie. At the time, Elvis was the only entertainer who owned his own private four-engine jet.
He bought it out of Florida for $250,000. And then he spent close to $1 million customizing it. It had a front lounge, where we all hung out, a conference room, and a big bedroom in the back. He put a queen-size bed in there, with a seat belt on it. And gold washbasins. And closed-circuit TV, a sky phone, and an intercom.
It wasn’t ready until November. So he bought a bunch of airplanes in between. Like the Lockheed JetStar, which was a little smaller. You know the name of the pilot on the JetStar? Milo High. Believe it or not.
Elvis ended up buying about eight planes in all, four in one day. He had airplanes out the ass.
The money he spent! He had eight pilots and copilots on the payroll at one time! And everything was in Elvis’s name, not in a corporate name. That’s why Vernon had a heart attack! Hell, the fuel costs were staggering.
One time, we had the [Convair] 880, and we set down in El Paso because we’d get fuel cheaper there. And Joe went to pay for it, and he discovered he didn’t have a thing. No cards, nothing.
Elvis called me back in the room, and he said, “Do you have an Exxon credit card?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Give it to [the pilot] Elwood for the fuel.” It was right at $5,000. They brought me that slip to sign, and I said, “Good God Almighty! I don’t know if this will even go through!”
I signed the bill, and we started taxiing, and I got on that phone. I was practically rotating. I called Vernon and said, “I have just used my credit card to fill this damn thing up, and I don’t know if it’s going to clear. Can you help me?”
Vernon said, “I’ll meet you at the airport.” Not only did Vernon meet me, but two executives from Exxon were with him to make sure they got paid.
BILLY SMITH: When it come to those airplanes, Elvis was like a kid with new toys. The Lisa Marie used to really thrill him. He’d say, “Do you believe anything this pretty can actually fly?”
LAMAR FIKE: I don’t know how pretty it was, but eventually the estate made money on it. They charge admission to go through it now.
When he was buying all those damn planes, Elvis was frequently broke. He had a lot of money going out and, when he wouldn’t work for three or four months, very little coming in. And with his lifestyle, boy, you had to pump money through the well.
BILLY SMITH: In ’75, Elvis mortgaged Graceland to meet his payroll. But he wasn’t really broke. He always had $1 million in the bank. And he wouldn’t go below that because he had one thing in mind: “I always want to be a millionaire.” So he mortgaged Graceland to keep his money in the bank.
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis never ever missed paying the guys on time, every week.
Let me get my figures right. It cost $40,000 a month to run Graceland. With the payroll, a little over $100,000 a month. My God! He had twenty people working on the grounds alone at Graceland. That place was a monster to maintain.
BILLY SMITH: Elvis thought, “Once the tour is over, I’ll pay that back.” And he did. He hated the grind of being at a certain place at a certain time, but he enjoyed the shows. Sometimes they were just mediocre. And other times, they were good. It depended on how he felt that day. But he had to be out there on the road, and I believe wholeheartedly that the reason was financial in the later years.
MARTY LACKER: As much as Elvis grossed, he didn’t make much money. Because Colonel always lowballed the tickets. He wanted the arenas sold out.
BILLY SMITH: You know one other reason Elvis liked to go on the road? The tours were a way to get drugs. Because Dr. Nick, and sometimes Dr. Ghanem, went with him. Elvis would say, “I’ve got to have this, man. I’ve got to be up.” And it was easier to play that scene on tour than when he was just home relaxing.
That’s why Elvis took a lot of quick trips to Palm Springs or Las Vegas. Somewhere around this time, Elvis took out a life insurance policy, and the company required a urine test. Well, he just got somebody else to pee in a bottle.
MARTY LACKER: At the end of April, Elvis went on his first tour of the year. The reviews were full of comments about how overweight and tired he looked. He said, “I keep hearing that shit about being fat and forty.” And he wanted to do something about it. He couldn’t take seventy-five pounds off overnight, but he could do something about looking tired. So he scheduled a face-lift for June, to take the bags from his eyes and to tighten his facial tone.
He showed it to me after he came home. He was in bed, and I was standing by the side of it. He tilted his face up, and he said, “Do you see anything different?”
I looked around his room, and I said, “No, everything looks the same.” He said, “No, no,” and he held his face up even higher and put his fingers up around his eyes and his cheekbones, like he was pointing things out. He said, “Now do you see any difference?”
I said, “Elvis, you look the same to me.” And that’s when he told me he had plastic surgery. Dr. Asghar Koleyni did it.
LAMAR FIKE: It was a minilift. Any performer worth his salt will stretch his skin to about a B-flat to look good. It’s like he said, “As long as there’s doctors out there, I’ll still look a certain way.”
BILLY SMITH: Me and Jo went to the hospital with him. They blocked off the second floor, so there weren’t any other patients there. We put aluminum foil on the window for him, and we took a room across the hall. Stayed up there with him the whole time.
He needed a face-lift like he needed a new rear end. I tried to tell him. But, of course, he didn’t listen. Even Dr. Koleyni told him, “You don’t need it. It’s hard to improve on a face that’s almost perfect.” And Elvis said, “Well, I want it done. I want this excess skin taken out of my eyelids.” So he had the lids pulled up somewhat and some of the fatty tissue taken out of the jowls in his cheeks and his throat.
I could have kicked his rear. He never looked the same again. To me, it ruined his eyes. He always had those sleepy, sexy eyes. And they took the droop out. The droop was part of his mystique. Gladys had it. And that’s how Lisa looks.
He hated that he was getting older. His hair was thinning somewhat. And if he hadn’t dyed it, he would have been real gray. His beard was a giveaway. If he’d let his beard grow out, it would have been damn near white. He was a very vain person. Elvis would think, “Give me some hair color, man. As long as I’ve got hair color, I’m in good shape.”
MARTY LACKER: It wasn’t too long after he had this plastic surgery that Elvis started talking about possibly switching identities with someone. He wanted to get out from under it all. So it had to be someone who was about to die. Because if the person lived, he would have been found out immediately.
Whoever he would have gotten to take his place had to have plastic surgery to at least come close to looking like him. That way, even his father, or one of the guys, could look down in the coffin and see the [surgery] marks and be satisfied it was Elvis. He already had the surgeon picked out.
BILLY SMITH: We were talking and carrying on one day. He was in a good mood, one of his joke-pulling moods. And he said, “You know something? At the time I had my plastic surgery, another guy was there having plastic surgery, too.” I wasn’t following him. I said, “Who’s that?”
He said, “Well, this guy was having plastic surgery to look like me.” I tried to pin him down who it was, and he came up with some crazy name. I knew dang well he was making it up. And then he said, “I think I’m going to swap places with him. He can have this shit, and I’ll just take the everyday, normal life.”
Well, I knew better. That right there give it away. But anyway, a minute later, he said, “It could be done. They can do wonders with plastic surgery now. They could make him look just like me.”
I said, “Elvis, where would you go? There would be two Elvis Presleys. People would think you’re the traveling-est person that ever was.” And Elvis said, “Oh, I’d get secluded somewhere. They wouldn’t know where I was.”
Well, a few days later, Elvis had somebody call me in the wee hours of the morning. The guy told me he was terminally ill, and for the right amount, he was going to swap places with Elvis.”
I asked where he was from. He said, “Up north.” I said, “Why would you want to do this? You got a family?” He said, “Yeah, I’ve got a family. I’d do it to get the money for them.”
I didn’t believe any of it. So I said, “Let me ask you this. How is Elvis going to get away from here?” He said, “Oh, he’s met this woman.” I said, “He has? Who is she?” He said, “Maria.” I said, “Is that right? Who in the hell is Maria? I don’t know her.” He said, “And you ain’t going to know her.”
After a few minutes more, I got bored with it. And I think he did, too. I said, “Well, maybe you’re on the level, but I think I’ll ask Elvis.” So I went over to the house, and Elvis carried it on right on down the line. He said, “Man, I’m telling you now, that’s what I want to do. I’m tired of living like this.” Then he said, “Mind you, though, I’m going to take most of my money with me.”
I said, “In other words, you’re not going to give up a lot!” And he said, “Well, I am giving up a lot. I’m giving up being Elvis Presley.”
A little later, he wanted to go somewhere, so we got in the car, and we went out the gate. And he went out so quick, not a damn soul recognized him. We went up to the Whitehaven Plaza, which is about a quarter of a mile up the road, and he said, “Let’s go back. I forgot something. Go back through the gate.” He couldn’t stand it, see. And when he went back in, he waved at everybody. To make sure they knew it was him. I said, “You really want to get away from it all, don’t you?” He said, “Aw, shut up, you son of a bitch!” He never brought it up thereafter. And I have no idea who called me.
LAMAR FIKE: You know, Elvis thought a pill cured everything. Dr. Nick says he got psychologically hooked on some kind of Swedish herb he took to cleanse the body so he wouldn’t have to take a bath. What I remember best is some kind of chlorophyll pill.
He showed it to me one time. I said, “What the fuck is this?” He told me, “You take a couple of these three times a day, and you never have to take a bath. It cleans your whole body.”
I said, “Elvis, there ain’t such a damn pill. What happens, you take it, and you break out in lather and wash yourself off? What the hell are you talking about?” He got so goddamn mad. But it made no sense. He said, “You ought to try it.” I said, “Shit, no.”
BILLY SMITH: They’re called Nullo deodorant tablets. A little company down in Jacksonville [Florida] still makes ’em. Linda introduced him to them, and he pursued it thereafter. Linda took them to keep down menstrual odor. But Elvis took ’em because he thought they’d take care of his body odor. Actually, the box says they’re for “Control of body odors including odor due to problems of bowel control and colostomy.”
They’re sold over the counter, but Linda used to fly to New York to get them. They look like candy pills, real dark green. And you take ’em by mouth. Elvis thought they’d kill any type of body odor, from bad breath to butt. Even underarm. Hell, he ordered bottles of ’em. And that was his bath.
I’d say Elvis got bad about bathing about ’74 on. You never smelled him—never—until the later years.
MARTY LACKER: When Elvis went out on his third tour of ’75, it was pretty obvious he was getting even more erratic. On July 20, in Norfolk, Virginia, he started one of those long, rambling monologues. He introduced the Sweet Inspirations, who are black. He started out by saying he could feel all 11,000 members of the audience breathing on him. Then he said he smelled green peppers and onions, and he said, “The Sweet Inspirations’ breath smells like they’ve been eating catfish.”
Well, they took it as a racist put-down. And they were hurt by it. And he made a disparaging remark about [high soprano singer] Kathy Westmoreland. On a couple of shows, he’d said, “She doesn’t care where she gets her fun.” Or, “She’ll take affection from anybody, anytime, anyplace. In fact, she gets it from the whole band.” Which was a rough thing to say, because Elvis had dated Kathy a little. Well, she’d told Joe to ask Elvis to stop saying that because she said she was getting ugly phone calls. So this night, Elvis said, “This is Kathy Westmoreland. She’s our soprano singer who doesn’t like the way I introduce her. If she doesn’t like it, she can get the hell off the stage.” And the audience went silent.
Well, two of the Sweet Inspirations started to cry. And they left the stage. Kathy did, too. So Elvis walked over and gave a ring to [the Sweet Inspirations’] Myrna Smith. She happened to be going with Jerry Schilling, who’d gotten divorced from his Hawaiian wife, Sandy. I guess Elvis gave Myrna the ring for staying onstage.
This was the same date he started giving away rings to the audience. He had two shows in Norfolk. The first show, he had a pretty sedate crowd. So he told Lowell Hays, the Memphis jeweler, to bring in about $30,000 worth of rings. And this wasn’t costume jewelry—it was real diamonds and precious stones. Well, the audience went nuts, grabbing for this stuff. And Elvis got what he wanted—a screaming crowd. He later apologized to everybody onstage and gave them all rings. But he was clearly more peculiar than he had been.
LAMAR FIKE: Giving away rings onstage meant nothing to Elvis. He was always giving J. D. Sumner big diamond rings. J.D. had what he called his “Elvis Presley hand.” Every ring on it came from Elvis. About $100,000 worth.
MARTY LACKER: Two days after the Norfolk show, Elvis performed in Asheville, North Carolina. In the middle of the act, Elvis took a $40,000 ring off his finger and gave it to J.D. He was just wild that night. Before the show, they were at the Rodeway Inn, and Elvis went to put his arm around his father, and his pistol went off.
Well, this time the bullet ricocheted, and it whizzed past Vernon’s head and hit a chair and went on to hit Dr. Nick in the chest, just under his heart. Luckily, it was pretty well spent. It gave him a little burn, and that was it.
LAMAR FIKE: I never heard that until recently, and I thought it was bullshit. But apparently it’s true. I’d tell Elvis to try again. He should have shot the son of a bitch between the eyes.
BILLY SMITH: In the seventies, he had a lot more periods of violence. I’m talking about when he wasn’t drugged. Violence out of frustration. It’s funny . . . at one point in ’75, there was a little story in the paper that said “an emotionally unstable boy” got into Graceland and shot up one of the rooms. Well, you know who that was.
He was angered about something that was taken out of the show tour. And the more he talked about it, the madder he got. He reached over and grabbed a .45, and he started shooting, just willy-nilly.
I said, “Elvis, you’ll destroy the house!” He said, “I don’t give a fuck! I’ll build another one!”
He shot the commode one time. I laughed ’til I couldn’t see straight. It was the funniest damn thing I have ever seen. I got a call out at the trailer. It was pretty late at night. Whoever it was said, “You need to come over here. Elvis is mad and shooting his gun off.” I said, “All right. I’ll be out there in just a minute.”
Well, water was just pouring off the chandelier in the entry hall. I said, “God Almighty, damn! What in the hell has he done now?” It was beautiful—water just glistening off that glass and off the lights, too.
I went on upstairs, and I went in his room, and I said, “What in the world has happened?” He said, “I need a new goddamn commode.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I never did like that black motherfucker.” His toilet was black, see. The lever would stick, and the commode would run. He had told ’em several times to get it fixed, and they didn’t do it. And the water kept running. And it drove him crazy. Anyway, that sucker was all to pieces, and water was still going everywhere.
He shot the ice maker in Lisa’s room one time because it kept making noise when he was trying to talk. Jo and me were in there, and he was telling a story, and every time he’d get to the punch line, the ice maker would make this big “Rrrrrhhhh” and drop the ice. And he got pissed about it, ’til he just pulled a gun and said, “One more time, and I’m shootin’ it.” And it did it. Well, he shot the hell out of it. With a .45! That bullet could have went anywhere.
LAMAR FIKE: He’d shoot up all kinds of shit. But the television remained his favorite target. Elvis was connected to the outside world through the TV. He loved to watch the news.
We had quite a collection of TVs. We’d come back off a trip with eight or nine sets. Joe would go to the desk and tell them that Elvis liked the TV and wanted to buy it. Well, shoot, he’d already blown it up. So Joe would buy it, and we’d put it in the cargo hold of the airplane, and bring it back and throw it away. If we’d left it there, it would have been in the news the next day.
BILLY SMITH: It’s kind of amazing that nobody ever saw us carrying out a busted TV. But we’d wrap a sheet or a bedspread around it so they wouldn’t know what it was. And nobody ever asked. Elvis had better security than the president.
That’s why we always did a general inspection on the road. Joe would say, “Anything out of the ordinary, clean it up. Whatever needs to be done.” He might drop a pill on the floor. Well, these housekeeping people know who stayed in the room. You had to be real careful with stuff like that.
If it was a sheet, and he had messed it up, we took it with us. We just paid for the sheets. That way, the hotel didn’t know what happened to them. One of the fans could have come in afterwards and got ’em. You never knew. But after we left those hypodermic needles, we didn’t want anything else embarrassing to happen.
LAMAR FIKE: This guy was so pampered. He certainly had the best drugs, I’ll tell you that. The grass, the acid, and whatever else he got into later on was always primo.
I’ve said this before, but I want to say it again. I know Marty and Billy see this differently. Marty thinks he had no alternative to turn to, nothing new to do, so he just continued to take stuff to escape. I think Elvis did mega amounts of stuff not so much to get away from things, but because he liked to get fucked up. He loved it! It wasn’t because “Well, I’ve got these burdens.” It was nothing that sophisticated. He just liked to get fucked up!
None of this stuff was really to escape any kind of reality. Shit, there was no reality in the first place, so how can you escape it? Where was there reality in that group? Jesus Christ! We’re not talking about a sword of Damocles hanging over Elvis’s head all the time. He just said, “Shit, I liked the way that made me feel. Let me do it again.”
About ’75, when he got into really high-grade dope, he entered his third and final stage of drug use. That was cocaine, Dilaudid, and morphine, in addition to the Demerol and codeine he was already doing. That’s when it really became very, very serious.
With the cocaine, we did regular dust, Peruvian gold flake. Elvis wasn’t all that crazy about it.
BILLY SMITH: I think Elvis only tried the powder cocaine a couple of times. We finally cut that supply off. Somebody—it might have been Sonny—talked to Elvis and said, “Look, you’re talking about street drugs now.” And I think he finally convinced him.
LAMAR FIKE: After that, maybe late ’76, Elvis got into liquid cocaine. Ghanem prescribed it for him to use with sleeping pills and amphetamines. Ghanem would always say it was Lidocaine, which is a local anesthetic. Elvis wouldn’t shoot it. He’d put that on cotton swabs and stick it up his nose.
I used to do it, too. We’d take square strips of cotton—about three or four inches long—and soak ’em in that liquid cocaine and stuff ’em up our nostrils. Man, you’d stay high forever. If you’d take a line of coke, you’d stay up for twelve, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five minutes. If you stuck that liquid cocaine in your nose, you’d stay high for three or four hours.
MARTY LACKER: In August, Ricky Stanley got arrested for trying to get Demerol from the Methodist Hospital pharmacy with a forged prescription. Elvis bailed him out of the Shelby County jail that night, and he got the charges reduced to malicious mischief, with a fine of fifty bucks and a six-month suspended sentence.
You know, at some point, Linda got Ricky fired. Ricky smarted off and said something bad about her, and she overheard him and told Elvis. But he hired him back again later. Elvis would have been better off if he hadn’t. Of all the Stanleys, Ricky, in particular, was really into drugs, and I mean heavy street drugs—cocaine, hallucinogenics, in addition to marijuana and downers. And he washed it all down with tequila and bourbon. Ricky was an alcoholic by the age of nineteen. Billy Smith says all three of the Stanleys—Ricky, David, and Billy—drank quite a bit. I do know that Ricky had been busted two or three times, and by the time Elvis died, it was up to five.
Elvis never referred to the Stanleys as anything but “Dee’s kids.” When they were younger it was “Dee’s brats.” Since Elvis died, they keep referring to him as “brother.” They never did that while Elvis was alive. He probably would have slapped the hell out of them. He hired a couple of them to appease his father while he was still living with Dee.
Towards the end, the Stanleys were there for three reasons: One, to procure drugs for him. Two, they would listen to him. Because most of us got tired of hearing the same stories over and over again. And three, Elvis would preach to them and think he was teaching them stuff.
LAMAR FIKE: Oh, listen. Ricky was “The Whitehaven Raven.” He had all kinds of script [prescriptions]. He was always going down and getting stuff. But a lot of that was Elvis’s stuff. Ricky just took the fall.
We were in Vegas one time, and I got a call. Whoever it was said, “Ricky’s been arrested for presenting a falsified prescription.” Ricky was getting it for Elvis, and he got caught. I turned around to Elvis and said, “What’s this about?” And Elvis said, “Well, he shouldn’t have been doing it.” I said, “Oh, okay.” It was like “If the trapdoor’s open, and you fall, adios and adieu, motherfucker.”
That particular arrest was written up in the newspaper. It was a bad situation. Elvis called up one of his cop pals and got Ricky off. But Ricky had frequent run-ins with the law. He just stayed screwed up. Ricky was really a heroin addict. And I think you have to blame Elvis for that. He exposed him to all that stuff. Of course, at the same time, Elvis was hoping all three of the Stanley boys would become narcs.
BILLY SMITH: Ricky and David both could have been drug addicts. But then a lot of times when we were on tour, they were straitlaced. Because I didn’t allow drugs, to start with. Not that I’m a saint, but I had been down that road, and I knew how easy it was to get on that shit.
One time, I made Ricky flush his marijuana down the commode. He was hollering, “That’s my Colombian gold!” I said, “I don’t give a damn what it is! Either you can go back to Memphis without a job or you can pour it in the toilet here and flush it.” And his sleeping pills, too. It liked to killed him.
MARTY LACKER: When Ricky started bringing cocaine to Elvis in Vegas, the sparks started flying. He got it from some of the guys in the vocal group. I think they got it from some pusher in Nashville. And Red and Sonny found out about it, and they told Dave Hebler. Dave went to Ricky and said, “If you bring it to Elvis one more time, I’m going to break both your fuckin’ legs.” And Red went in and said the same thing to the guys in the vocal group. So what did Ricky do? He went back and told Elvis.
The next day, Red tried to talk to Elvis about trying to get off pills. This was up in the suite. Red was sitting up at the bar. Elvis was at the bar, too, and somehow the conversation got on that. Red said, “Elvis, this stuff is really bad for you. I wish you’d stop doing it and go get cured. I can tell it’s really getting to you.”
Elvis sat there, and he said, “Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re saying. But don’t worry about it.” He was real calm. Well, a few minutes later, Elvis went to bed. And brooded about it all night long.
When he got up the next afternoon, Elvis came out of that room screaming. He just went nuts. If I’m not mistaken, he pulled an AK–47 [automatic weapon] on Red and threatened to shoot him. Sonny was there, too, standing right next to him. Elvis screamed, “Goddamn, Red, mind your own fuckin’ business! Telling me how to run my life!” Everybody always says, “If you guys really cared about him, you could have done something about him.” These people have no idea what went on. They have no idea of how Elvis was.
BILLY SMITH: You had to pick and choose your times. Like a couple of occasions, I said to Elvis, “Why do you need so much? Why don’t you let up on it some and see if you don’t feel better? Or maybe quit taking this one medication altogether? Maybe you don’t need as much.” And Elvis said the same thing each time: “You don’t know what all is wrong with me. I need it, man. I know what I’m doing.” I later found out that’s every addict’s excuse. But at the time, who was I to say that he didn’t need it?
MARTY LACKER: One night in ’75, he was sitting in the middle of the bed, higher than a kite. He had all these karate certificates in front of him from the Kang Rhee Institute [of Self Defense], and they were all phony. He had them for all three of the Stanleys, and some for the other young guys. They were up in the room, too. None of them earned them.
That kind of stuff never did impress me, so sometimes I’d just antagonize the hell out of him. Well, this was not a good time.
He had a gold-plated .45, which is in the Trophy Room at Graceland now. And he was so out of it that he was patting these certificates and talking to these guys, just slurring his words. He said, “Now, I want you to put these in frames. I got these special for you.”
Elvis looked at me, and he was so drugged that he was weaving. He said, “I’m going to get you one of these, too.” I said, “Elvis, that don’t mean nothing to me. It ain’t real. I haven’t earned it.” And he looked at me, and he was gritting his teeth.
He said it again, and I said, “No, Elvis, it’s worthless.” And just real quick, he whipped out that .45 and stuck it straight in my face. That gun barrel was no more than two inches from my nose. I was looking straight down the hole. And he said, “You son of a bitch! You know I love you, but If you don’t shut up, I’m going to blow your fuckin’ head off!”
So I just sat there, and I looked straight ahead for a minute. He put the gun down, and he said, “Okay, that’s better.” Then he said, “And by God, I’m going to get you one of these.” I said, “Yeah, okay, Elvis. Okay.” After all these years, it still scares me to think what could have happened, by accident. When a guy puts a gun in your face, you remember it forever.
LAMAR FIKE: At the end of the summer, Elvis went back out to Vegas to begin his gig there. He took the Jet Commander. And all of a sudden, he couldn’t breathe. He got down on the damn floor to the air vent, and he said, “Land this plane right away! I’m suffocating!” They clamped an oxygen mask on him, and Milo High dived down and got on the ground as fast as possible.
I think they landed in Dallas. And he checked into a motel to rest for about five hours. Then he was all right, and they got back in the air again. That was August 16, 1975. And Elvis died on another August 16. Boy, that wasn’t a good day for him, was it?
BILLY SMITH: I remember the incident, but I don’t know if it was just from the cabin pressure or from drugs. Red and Linda were on the plane, and they said he’d been taking his pills.
There were just so many frightening situations. In Vegas, he would order his food, and then he would take his sleeping pills on an empty stomach because he had to get that feeling. And then, by the time the food got up there, he would be just groggy as hell, and he would try to eat.
One time, Linda said he was eating some soup, or some chili, and he just fell face over, right into the damn bowl. He could have smothered slap to death. Another time, he got choked on his dinner because he’d fallen asleep. Just sitting up. Once again, Linda opened his mouth and reached in there and dug the food out of his throat. She saved his life at least three times.
LAMAR FIKE: It wasn’t like every day at four o’clock he passed out in his mashed potatoes. But it happened more than a couple of times. The load [of drugs] would hit him, and he’d have no control. He’d keel over wherever he happened to be.
BILLY SMITH: For a long time, I didn’t see that he was killing himself. I always imagined that Elvis would die in a plane crash and all of us would be with him. We even talked about it. But never once did I think about him dying from drugs.
MARTY LACKER: If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—we thought we’d die before he would. We thought he was invincible. I’d get up in a plane with Elvis, and I didn’t think the plane would go down as long as he was on it. I didn’t think God would do that.
BILLY SMITH: I could see Elvis overdosing back in the early years, maybe mixing two drugs that interacted with each other. But not in the seventies. I guess over the years, the drugs just took their toll. Now that I look back on it, I see it could have happened anytime.