BILLY SMITH: Right after Elvis passed away, Vernon closed off the house. A few days after he did that, Patsy Presley [Gambill] called me, wanting to know where Elvis kept his important papers. I said, “Is Vernon looking for Elvis’s copy of the will?” I figured they couldn’t find it because I had it hid so well. And stupid me, I told her right where it was.
MARTY LACKER: On August 22, Elvis’s will was filed for probate. It was thirteen pages long. And there was nothing in it about Elvis leaving anything to any of the guys. Apparently, Vernon also found the handwritten will, but I heard from a very good source that it was destroyed.
BILLY SMITH: Two or three days after I told Patsy where Elvis’s copy of the will was, they burned a lot of papers out behind the office. It still bothers me deeply. When that thing was probated, and I saw it wasn’t anything like what I read, it just floored me. Because either Elvis was the biggest liar in the world or somebody altered that will.
MARTY LACKER: There for a while, almost everything was a freak show. At the end of August—right after Elvis was buried—three guys were arrested for trespassing at the cemetery. They were after the ultimate souvenir—Elvis’s body. They had a crowbar, some wire cutters, some bolt cutters, a wrench, a screwdriver, and a shotgun.
How they thought they were going to get into the mausoleum, past the wrought-iron door that separated Elvis from the rest of the crypt, and get a nine-hundred-pound casket and a corpse out of there undetected, I don’t know. But supposedly they were going to pry out the marble marker and the concrete slabs sealing the crypt, drill a hole in the casket, screw an eyebolt in there, and use a hand winch to pull the casket out. Then they were going to load the thing in a gold Chrysler New Yorker, and take it to a refrigerator in the Armour meatpacking house. There, some other guy was supposed to pay them $40,000. And then he was going to hold the body for $10 million ransom.
The cops staked out the cemetery for three nights. The first night, they didn’t show. The second night, they drove by real slow, but didn’t get out of the car. Then the third night, two of the guys got out, came through a hole in the wire fence, and rattled the wrought-iron doors on the back of the mausoleum. But then something spooked ’em, and they took off.
The cops caught ’em at the corner of Person Street and Elvis Presley Boulevard. All they could charge them with was criminal trespass, which is a misdemeanor, because they never got around to actual grave robbing. Bail was fifty bucks apiece. And a couple of days later, the charges were dropped. The main guy, Ronnie Lee Adkins, told Southern Magazine, “There’s only two people on earth that everybody has heard of, and that’s God and Elvis. I was just trying to get at the only one I could.”
BILLY SMITH: After that, Vernon applied for a variation in the zoning regulations. He wanted Elvis and Aunt Gladys brought up to Graceland and reburied in the Meditation Garden. They moved them in the middle of the night, early in October [of ’77].
By that time, Elvis had been dead about seven weeks. And I was still having a really hard time dealing with it.
I’d be walking out to the gravesite, and something—a click, like—would tell me to look up at his window and I’d be able to see him. And I did see him a couple of times. But not real vividly. And twice I heard him calling me in a loud whisper, like “Billy!” I heard it so plain. But I guess it was just in my mind. Then I started going out to the gravesite in the wee hours of the morning. I was still mad at him for dying, and yet I was hurt so deep. I talked to him a little bit. I said, “All these promises you made to me, man! I moved back up here to Graceland because you wanted me to, and then you kick out on me like this? What the hell do you mean doing that?”
Pretty soon, I started dreaming that Elvis was alive and that he was saying, “I didn’t die. I’m not really dead.” I’d walk around Graceland and think, “Hey, he’s here.” It was hell.
In November, I knew it was time to go. My grief was not going to get better as long as I was there. To this day, when I talk about his death, I get teary-eyed. Sometimes I just want to break down and sob.
MARTY LACKER: When Billy and his family decided to leave, they were still living in a twenty-four-by-sixty-foot trailer behind Graceland. Elvis gave them that trailer, and he even went out to the store and bought furniture for it. He told Billy in front of me that he was putting the trailer in his name.
Well, Vernon had kept the title of the trailer in Elvis’s name. And when Billy went in to tell him that he wanted to move down to Mississippi, where Jo’s family lived, Vernon said, “That trailer doesn’t belong to you, Billy.”
Billy got really mad, and he said, “Well, by God, just keep the damn thing! But I’m taking my furniture.” And Vernon said, “No, that furniture goes with the trailer.” Billy said, “I’m taking my furniture, and I’d like to see you try to stop me.”
BILLY SMITH: You can turn bitter towards somebody, and I did towards Vernon. I guess I could have fought it in court, but we just went on down to Mississippi. We had nothing to speak of. And to go back into the normal world was a hell of an adjustment.
MARTY LACKER: A year after Elvis died, we had a memorial ceremony at the ranch in Mississippi. Billy asked me to come and talk and sit on the stage with the dignitaries. When it came time for me to speak, I got so emotional that the only thing that would come out of my mouth was, “I hope he’s happy and that he finally realizes we all really did love him.”
LAMAR FIKE: Essentially, Elvis’s death fucked up everybody’s life. Most of us weren’t trained to do anything but look after him.
MARTY LACKER: In 1978, Charlie got a little taste of his own medicine. He’d continued to live at Graceland, and I guess he thought he was going to stay forever. Because Vernon and Charlie acted like old country buddies. Vernon sold his house on Dolan and moved into the garage apartment there at Graceland. So he and Charlie used to sit around the kitchen and drink coffee and smoke in the mornings, tell all these old country stories and talk about everybody behind his back.
One Friday morning, Vernon was his same old self, patting Charlie on the back and laughing. And then Charlie went out to the office and got his paycheck, and there was a pink slip in the envelope. Charlie was out on the street. He didn’t know what to do.
LAMAR FIKE: If I learned anything from Elvis, I learned loyalty. And yet, some people thought I was incredibly disloyal for working on the Goldman book. But it was 1978, and I was dead broke. Elvis didn’t leave us any money, but he left us a hell of a legacy.
It bothered me when I saw the galley proofs. The problem was Albert’s personality. At first, he liked Elvis. But then, he started disliking him. And by the end of the book, I think he hated him. I said, “Albert, you can’t do this.” But I couldn’t stop him.
I own one third of the copyright on the book, and I did a lot of the research. But Albert requested my name not be on it as coauthor, and it thrilled me to death. Still, a lot of people looked at it as “Lamar’s book.”
When I finished the research, I left Nashville and moved to Texas. I got down to Waco in early ’80, I think, and got married again, to Janice Fadal. Her father was Eddie Fadal, who used to have us over a lot when Elvis was at Fort Hood. I was married for eight or nine months, tops. It just didn’t work. My intestinal bypass was starting to go wrong, and I was losing weight so fast, I was beside myself.
I was under so much stress with the book, and the marriage, that I went from 155 pounds to 118 in about a year’s time. My shirt size was down to twelve and a half in the neck, and my waist was twenty-three inches. After a while, it got so a meal was through me in two minutes. I was literally dying.
I never had anything scare me as bad in my life. But I still wouldn’t have gone for surgery if it hadn’t been for a motorcycle accident in ’81. I was on a friend’s 750 Suzuki, and a gust of wind caught me. The bike started drifting on me, and I couldn’t stop it. I was moving into the curb, so I hit both brakes at once, and the bike laid down. I went over the handlebars and landed on my shoulder and crushed the ball joint. They had to put a rod and five pins in there.
When the surgeon opened me up, he called my doctor and said, “This guy’s bones are like an eighty-year-old’s. They’re cracking and coming apart. You better do something quick.”
They had to give me four pints of blood to bring up my oxygen level, and then they hooked my intestine back up. I’m all right now. I never could maintain the 155 again, but at least I haven’t gotten back up to four hundred pounds.
MARTY LACKER: On June 26, 1979—Colonel’s seventieth birthday—Vernon died of heart failure at sixty-three. They buried him in the Meditation Garden, next to Elvis. Then the next year, Grandma died, at eighty-six. And they buried her on the other side of Elvis.
Right after Elvis died, Priscilla tried to get into acting, and for quite a while, she didn’t have much success. So a year before Vernon died, she began maneuvering to gain control of the estate.
In early 1978, Priscilla and her sister, Michelle, stopped in to see us in California. They were on their way to the La Costa Spa in San Diego. I’d call Priscilla from time to time and say, “Anytime you need me to do something for you or Lisa, feel free to call me.” I did it for Elvis, really. But she would always say, “Oh, thank you. Thank you.”
Vernon was still alive, and he was the executor of the estate. And Priscilla sat there and whined to me that Vernon wouldn’t name her as his successor. She said she wanted to be sure that Lisa Marie was protected. But that was only half the truth. Priscilla wanted control of the estate for her own sake.
She said, “Marty, what am I going to do? I keep pleading with him, but he won’t do it.” I said, “Priscilla, you’ve got to find a way to convince him that you don’t want it for any other reason than to look out for Lisa.”
Elvis’s will said that if Vernon died without naming somebody, the National Bank of Commerce in Memphis would become the executor and/or trustee. So Priscilla was desperate.
During that visit, she told me her father wanted to buy a liquor store in northern California. And she said she had asked Elvis if he would give her father $100,000. I’ll never forget this. She said, “Elvis was going to do it, but then he up and died.” Just like that. “And there went my father’s liquor store because Vernon won’t honor what Elvis said he’d do.” But that’s Little Miss Goody Two-shoes for you.
The fact is, she aced her way into being an executor, even though she wasn’t Elvis’s widow and she wasn’t in his will. Elvis had no intention of Priscilla running the estate.
LAMAR FIKE: Priscilla knew that Vernon was just mean enough to go to his grave without naming her executor. She hated Vernon. She called him a son of a bitch and everything else. And when he died, it was the best thing that ever happened to her because at the last minute, she’d finally talked him into naming her his successor, along with Joe Hanks, who’d been Vernon’s accountant since 1969, and the National Bank of Commerce.
I read what she said about what a burden it is to have to run the estate and how she wants to be her own person. She told USA Weekend, “When I was first named executor, I thought it was a curse. Here I was, trying to get my career going and my life in line . . . ”
Who’s she kidding? Boy, she’s milked it for all it’s worth! And she hasn’t treated family members the way the will stipulates. It provides a trust for any Presley relative in need of emergency assistance for “health, education, support, comfortable maintenance and welfare.”
BILLY SMITH: In 1979 or so, Priscilla filed a lawsuit against Marty. Over fifteen or twenty years, Elvis had given the guys a lot of cash. He’d give you $10,000 a pop. And a lot of times, when Joe, or Marty, or Charlie wrote the checks, he’d tell them to mark it “personal loan.” But Priscilla knew that Elvis never expected to see that money again. He’d tell you, “Don’t worry about paying it back. This is a gift.” But after Priscilla became executor, the estate decided to go after that money.
LAMAR FIKE: That brilliant law firm of Priscilla’s let it slip to another lawyer—who told Marty’s attorney—that they were using Marty as a test case. If she won from him, she was going to go after all of us. So we were all going to testify against her.
Marty went for his deposition, and when it was over, he said to her attorney, “I’d like you to give Priscilla a message for me. Tell her that she knows what she’s doing is wrong. And tell her one other thing: She opened up a can of worms, and I’m going to slam it right down on her head.” And then he gave him Elvis’s variation on General MacArthur’s farewell speech: “With that, I bid you a fond, affectionate, fucking farewell.”
BILLY SMITH: Marty meant what he said. So when they asked for a second deposition, he was ready. He told his attorney that Elvis had started this karate film, and we were all going to be in it, and Elvis was paying us $50,000, plus a percentage, for either participating in it or helping out. Which was true.
When Priscilla went after Marty, the estate was trying to do something with that film, and none of the guys had been paid. So Marty told his attorney to file a countersuit for $50,000. And two days later, Marty’s attorney got a phone call saying, “You drop your suit, and we’ll drop ours.”
MARTY LACKER: Just before she sued me, she called and said, “I wonder if I could ask a favor of you and Patsy and the kids. I’m making this deal on my home movies.” She was involved somehow with [producer] Burt Sugarman, who owned an amusement park. And she said, “Burt wants to run these movies as part of an attraction.” Priscilla wanted us to sign a release.
She didn’t offer any money, and I didn’t expect her to. We did it just to be nice. And one week after we signed it, she filed the lawsuit against me.
I picked up the phone and called Joe Esposito, who was still tight with her. I told him, and he said, “Hey, man, that’s the way the game is played.”
The irony is that about ten years later, Joe was trying to market the 8mm films of Elvis he’d taken on our trips. He had a big deal for them over in England. But Priscilla filed suit to stop him. When I heard that, I had such an urge to call him and say, “Hey, Joe, that’s the way the game is played.” I didn’t, but Priscilla sure keeps her lawyers busy.
LAMAR FIKE: Priscilla’s the chairwoman of Elvis Presley Enterprises. She’s the keeper of the flame, the number one Rock ’n’ Roll Widow, the way she paints it.
The fans literally cannot stand Priscilla. She gave an interview to McCall’s last fall, saying she thought the fans realized she wasn’t the bad guy anymore and that they’re treating her with a little more charity these days. She said, “In the beginning, I was the enemy because I married Elvis, and then, because I left him. A lot of people felt that when I left he started his downward spiral, and that if I had stayed I could have helped.” She essentially said she left because there were things she didn’t want Lisa to see.
That’s neither here nor there. The estate has obviously done something right—it’s gone from being worth $4.1 million when Elvis died to something like $100 million today, and it grosses $15 million a year. That’s more than Elvis ever made in any one year while he was alive and a hell of a lot more than any dead entertainer takes in.
BILLY SMITH: I understand that she wanted to look after Lisa’s interest. But I think Priscilla was gold-digging when she took over the estate. She makes a real good living from it. Lamar thinks it’s about 1½ percent of what the estate earns.
She did this video tour of Graceland, where she went through telling this and showing off that. To be honest with you, she couldn’t give a damn. It goes back to the root of all evil—money.
MARTY LACKER: I’ll tell you how greedy this woman is. After Elvis Aaron Presley: The Tribute concert last year, Larry Nager, the pop music critic for the Commercial Appeal, wrote that the reason there weren’t any stadium-filling names on the bill was because the big names perform only at “pure” benefits. Meaning that all proceeds after expenses go to charity. But the estate set up the concert, and the video, and the album as for-profit ventures. Just a small portion of the money went to Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and the T. J. Martell Foundation, which raises money to fight AIDS. Nager wrote, “It was a business venture worthy of that ace dealmaker Colonel Tom Parker himself. But do you think Elvis would have done it that way?”
BILLY SMITH: I’ll never really understand why Vernon let Priscilla step in and take over. And now she sits up and complains that the Presley name has hurt her more than it’s helped. I’ll tell you what—if it’s such a disadvantage, why doesn’t she call herself “Beaulieu”?
LAMAR FIKE: Elvis’s will states that Lisa Marie should inherit everything—including control over the estate—at twenty-five. Well, that birthday came and went on February 1, 1993, and Priscilla is still in charge. The Memphis probate court oversees the executors, and they’ve decided to leave everything in place until Lisa turns thirty.
Priscilla’s shepherding her deal very carefully now because she doesn’t want it messed up. If Priscilla knew she could make it without the estate, why did she extend the guardianship of her daughter five years? It’s obvious what she’s doing. It’s not concern over Graceland.
I think Priscilla’s a smart business lady. But she’s not the brains behind the estate, no matter what you read. The advisers have helped her a lot. She, and Hanks, and Fletcher Haaga, from the Bank of Commerce, set up a management team. It’s made up of California businessmen and Memphis lawyers and bankers. Priscilla definitely couldn’t handle it all by herself. She had a couple of businesses—a boutique and a line of children’s clothing—go under.
MARTY LACKER: Graceland is a cold piece of nothing. None of the people up there have anything to do with Elvis, with the exception of maybe an uncle and a cousin. There are a couple of fanatical fans, but for the most part, these people are just doing a job. All they care about is how many paying customers come through that gate.
BILLY SMITH: After I moved away from Graceland, me and Dick Grob got to talking one day. I said, “Why don’t they open Graceland to the public?” He said, “Vernon had talked about that.” Except Vernon was so chintzy that rather than pay somebody to run it, he just let it be.
I don’t think that Priscilla particularly wanted to open it. But she saw that it cost something like $480,000 a year just to maintain the place, with taxes, and insurance, and twenty-four-hour security for the graves. And the inheritance taxes were something else. In 1981, the government looked at how much money the estate made since Elvis died, and reappraised it at $25 million, instead of $4.1 million. The IRS said they owed an additional $14.6 million, plus $2.3 million in interest.
Back in the mid-seventies, Elvis grossed about $130,000 a concert. And each new album brung in about $250,000 in royalties. But now there wasn’t no more concerts or new records. The estate took in about $1 million a year in ’79, but it had dropped way down to about $500,000. Expenses were going up, and income was going down.
It was looking like they might lose Graceland. So Priscilla decided to open it to the public. It took the whole $500,000, plus $60,000 more, to get the place ready. Priscilla hired Jack Soden, a stockbroker and investment banker from Kansas City, to be the CEO of Elvis Presley Enterprises. He was a pretty good choice because they made back that $560,000 in thirty-eight days.
When I moved down to Mississippi, I went back to work for the railroad. I was a car inspector for Illinois Central Gulf. But I stepped in a hole in the train yard and twisted my back, and I couldn’t work on the railroad no more. Things were pretty tight for us. We had to sell a lot of the things Elvis give us to stay alive.
In early ’82, when I found out Priscilla was going to open Graceland, I thought, “What the heck?” And I went up there and applied for a job. I didn’t see Priscilla. I saw one of Soden’s aides.
At first, they seemed kind of reluctant to hire me, although I never knew why. But after a day or two, I had the job.
Because I knew where Elvis kept everything in the house, and how it looked when he was there, they had me set up certain of the rooms. Mostly I worked on the Trophy Room. I had to coordinate everything, like find all the records and put them in order and catalog everything. And I had some fairly good ideas, which were taken. I thought I did a hell of a job, to be truthful.
When I finished, they stuck me in the position of tour guide. I even had to buy my own uniform. I thought, “My God, what am I doing? This is pretty demeaning.” But I needed the job.
Well, one day, Priscilla come to Graceland, and she saw me working as a tour guide. She hugged me, and she said, “It’s good to see you again.” I thought she might pull me off to the side and say, “You don’t need to be a tour guide.” But I never got that respect.
A little while after that, they raised my salary. I guess Priscilla thought it didn’t look good and said something. And in time, they made me a tour guide supervisor. But after almost two years, I was still making less than what I’d been making with Elvis in ’77. And far less than what I made at the railroad.
So I was pretty dissatisfied. And I didn’t like it that Priscilla started acting like Elvis. One time, she come into town, and they showed some clips of Elvis down in the racquetball court. Everybody come in, and she sat in the middle, and people gathered around her the way they did Elvis. And she seemed to expect that.
I also didn’t like the way she treated Patsy Presley [Gambill]. She yelled at her, and gave her orders. So a lot of bitterness set into me. And in 1983, Jack Soden fired me. He said, “You’ve got this love/hate relationship with Graceland.” And he was right. I loved Graceland, but I hated the suckers that were running it.
After I got fired, I tried to call Priscilla. Lisa answered the phone. But Priscilla never called back.
LAMAR FIKE: Priscilla played favorites. Jerry Schilling worked himself into the estate and made a good living from it for quite a few years out in California. Billy got the shaft.
BILLY SMITH: I don’t have much feeling for Priscilla, but I can let bygones be bygones. What I can’t comprehend is why she doesn’t have much feeling for Elvis. She says now that she understands him better and that she thinks of him in a different way. Maybe so. But when I knew her, she was just like the highway out there, cold and hard.
Since Elvis died, Priscilla’s kept Lisa away from the family. It was like she said to her, “They’re lower-class. You don’t want to associate with them.” And that hurts. The last time I saw Lisa was when I worked at Graceland. We talked for about five or ten minutes. She was growing up to be a pretty young lady. But she hasn’t made an effort to contact any of us since then.
I think about Lisa, and I miss her, really. She should have an opportunity to judge this side of the family for herself.
MARTY LACKER: You’ve got to question Priscilla’s judgment in a lot of ways. Like how she handled Colonel Parker’s relationship with the estate. When Elvis died, Vernon and Colonel agreed they’d split whatever money came in exactly as they had when Elvis was alive. Colonel said, “We’re going to treat Elvis’s death the same as if he was in the army.”
Vernon wrote Colonel a letter on August 23, 1977, which said, “I am deeply grateful that you have offered to carry on in the same old way. As Executor of Elvis’s estate, I hereby would appreciate if you will carry on according to the same terms and conditions as stated in the contractual agreement you had with Elvis dated January 22, 1976, and I hereby authorize you to speak and sign for me in all these matters pertaining to this agreement.” In other words, Colonel still got the lion’s share of everything.
Then in ’80, the new coexecutors wrote Parker a letter and said, “We do want things to continue as they have and as set forth in the letter of August 23, 1977, from Vernon Presley as the then executor of the estate.” They were going to let him get away with it forever!
But when they went to probate court to get the compensation agreement approved, Judge Joseph Evans got suspicious about Colonel’s 50 percent commission. And he appointed Blanchard Tual, this young Memphis lawyer, to be Lisa Marie’s guardian-ad-litem, since she was a minor.
In September of ’80, Tual submitted a report that opened a lot of people’s eyes. He was flabbergasted at what he found in Colonel’s dealings with RCA, with the William Morris Agency, with the publishing companies, with Boxcar, and the merchandising partners.
Tual came to nineteen conclusions. The most important one was, “All agreements with Elvis Presley terminated on his death.” And he chastised both Vernon and the new coexecutors for not obtaining opinions from experts in the entertainment field about the fairness of those agreements.
Essentially, Tual said that Colonel had handled affairs in his own interest. And that he was guilty of self-dealing and overreaching, and he violated his duty both to Elvis, when Elvis was alive, and to the estate.
Tual recommended that any money that came in go directly to the estate and not to Colonel, and that the court prohibit the estate from paying Parker any more commissions until Tual finished his investigation. Most of all, he asked the judge not to approve Colonel’s receiving the 50 percent commission. He said such a figure was “excessive, imprudent, unfair to the estate, and beyond all reasonable bounds of industry standards.”
Finally, Tual said Parker had no claim against the estate for the $1,693,125.39 he said Elvis owed him at his death. And Tual wanted Parker to pay back whatever monies he’d retained since Elvis died. Then he called for Colonel and everybody he did business with—including RCA and all the movie companies—to open their books for an audit and complete accounting.
LAMAR FIKE: I don’t know why Vernon or the new executors never insisted on an audit. Except that the estate didn’t have much money. They probably thought, “Why get into something that could cost $400,000?”
MARTY LACKER: Tual filed a second report on July 31, 1981, in which he specifically singled out the 1973 RCA buyout agreement as “unethical and fraudulently obtained.”
Tual said, “These actions against the most popular American folk hero of this century are outrageous.” Then he pointed to examples of Parker’s poor management and arrangements that were extremely favorable to Colonel but not to Elvis. Like his failure to register Elvis with BMI so he could receive his share of writer’s royalties; Elvis’s surprisingly low figure for playing Vegas; Colonel’s failure to tour Elvis overseas; and his side deals with most of the people Elvis did business with.
Among Tual’s recommendations this time was that the court direct the coexecutors to file a complaint against Parker to void his contracts with RCA and the estate. Tual said it should “allege collusion and conspiracy with Colonel Parker in an effort to defraud Elvis of his royalties from such masters.” And he suggested the estate should file another complaint against RCA to void the 1973 buyout agreement.
LAMAR FIKE: When all this started, Colonel didn’t say a peep. For one thing, he’d had an accident. He was leaving his office in the RCA building in Hollywood one night, and he stumbled as he was getting on the elevator. He fell across the doorway and couldn’t get up. The automatic door kept trying to close, and I don’t know how long he laid there, but that door just pummeled him and permanently disabled his right shoulder.
When the second report came out, though, Colonel decided to defend himself. He picked up the phone and dialed a couple of newspapers to plead his case.
MARTY LACKER: Colonel told the Memphis Press-Scimitar, “You should remember that I was not involved in Elvis’s personal financial affairs. If Elvis or Vernon asked my opinion on such matters, I’d give my advice, [but] Elvis wanted to always make the final decision on business matters. He had a mind of his own.” As examples, he cited two foolhardy investments Elvis made—the Robert Vesco jet and the racquetball-court chain.
About the RCA buyout, he said, “When [RCA] approached us, I was not interested. I thought it was a stupid idea to even consider it. I knew there wasn’t much coming in [from the older songs], but it could change. I said the money wasn’t enough . . . Keep in mind that Elvis approved all of the contracts with RCA. He was fully aware of the entire transaction, and it was his decision. I had absolutely nothing to hide from Elvis.”
Then he went on about how Elvis was moody and headstrong and that he had little self-motivation. He said, “Sometimes it was such a heartache to keep [Elvis] going. We had to have a way to [do that].” Finally, he complained that Tual hadn’t presented the whole picture.
The upshot was that everybody filed a lawsuit. The estate sued Parker and RCA—which, according to Goldman, Elvis’s death saved from bankruptcy, they sold so many records. RCA sued Colonel and the estate. And Parker brought a countersuit against the estate.
But Colonel strung it along for a while. He probably wanted to drive the estate into insolvency and then reach a compromise.
At one point, in June of ’82, Colonel acted like he thought he was cornered. Because that’s when he finally admitted that he was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk—a man without a country.
Now, why did he admit the very information he’d hoped nobody would find out? Maybe because if he was stateless—he said he’d given up his citizenship in Holland and never was naturalized as a U.S. citizen—he could argue that he couldn’t be sued in federal court.
After that, the estate must have realized it had no course but to settle with him. So in November, Colonel gave up all his claim to future income from anything connected to Elvis. But he was still entitled to 50 percent of all royalties before September of ’82. And RCA gave him $2 million, paid in installments, for his “right, title, and interest in all Presley-related contracts.”
The estate was now entitled to all royalties after September of ’82. And RCA agreed to give them $1.1 million. But while the label pays them royalties on the records Elvis made after March of ’73—the date of the buyout agreement—it still doesn’t pay any royalties on the pre-1973 records. Elvis scored sixty-six Top 20 hits before March of ’73. You know how many he had after that? Two.
And here’s the kicker: Even though a June ’83 settlement outlined that Parker was no longer affiliated with the Presley estate, and he was supposed to cut all connections with them, it didn’t end up that way.
LAMAR FIKE: In late 1990, the estate made a deal with Parker to rent a lot of his memorabilia—photographs, letters, documents, and artwork. They hauled it to Memphis in seven semitrucks. It weighed thirty-five tons. The estate sent out a press release that said, “Because of Colonel Parker’s fondness for Elvis and Elvis’s many fans and friends, Colonel Parker has graciously agreed to furnish a sampling of his collection.”
Somebody told me Colonel cleared another $2 million out of that deal. The estate plans to build an “Elvis and the Colonel” museum. When Colonel dies, all the stuff comes back to Loanne, his wife, to sell it.
It’s interesting . . . in ’93, when the estate sanctioned a coffee-table book about Graceland, they somehow failed to read [music journalist] Chet Flippo’s introduction. Flippo essentially said Colonel ripped Elvis off or, at best, mismanaged his finances. When Priscilla found out, she tried to get the publisher to pull the book off the shelves.
MARTY LACKER: Was it part of the settlement not to speak ill of one another? I don’t know. But I do know that in ’94, the estate kicked off a yearlong tribute, and published an Elvis and the Colonel magazine for him. Jack Soden gave a statement to the Commercial Appeal. He said, “Elvis and Colonel Parker made history together. They also shared an abiding friendship that is often overlooked and misunderstood by the press and the general public.”
LAMAR FIKE: It may simply be a situation of keeping the image intact. No matter how much anybody bitches and moans and groans. Colonel’s the one who saved the estate. I don’t like him, but that’s the way it is.
MARTY LACKER: Priscilla is protective of Parker for some reason. Barron Hilton threw a big eighty-fifth birthday party for Colonel last June [1994] in Las Vegas, and Priscilla went. The newspaper reported that she hugged and kissed him and his wife and that Colonel pointed a finger skyward and said, “I’m still working for you, Elvis.”
LAMAR FIKE: I think they just don’t want to destroy the myth.
MARTY LACKER: When Elvis died, nobody could foresee how hard the fans were going to cling to his memory or how affected they were going to be by his death.
In 1982, the year Graceland was opened to the public, they held the first Candlelight Vigil. Every August 15, the fans line up at ten P.M., and walk up the long driveway with a lighted candle to pay their respects at the graves.
That first year, I was standing by the gate watching. And I moved up by the guard shack because the crowd started getting heavy.
All of a sudden, I heard this sobbing from inside. I went in there, and this woman was just completely torn up.
I said, “What’s wrong?” And her husband started to speak in broken English. They were from France. He said, “The doctors told her eight months ago that she has cancer, and she wasn’t supposed to live this long. But she said she wouldn’t die until she was able to go to Graceland.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and patted her, and I said, “You’re here now. You got your wish.”
She tried to say something, but I couldn’t understand her. Her husband said she was saying, “Yes, but the one thing I want to do is go up to see the grave, but I can’t walk.”
I said, “Don’t cry. Elvis wouldn’t want you to cry.” And she looked up and said, “How would you know that? Who are you?” I said, “My name is Marty Lacker.” And this woman jumped up and grabbed hold of my neck and got almost hysterical. Her husband said, “She knows everything about Elvis, so she knows who you are.”
I said, “If you like, your husband and I will help you go up there.” And she quit crying, and she let go of my neck, and she said, “I can do this on my own now.” And honest to God, with her husband at her side, that woman walked up to Elvis’s grave. I’ll never forget that as long as I live.
BILLY SMITH: One of the things Blanchard Tual recommended was that the estate not file a wrongful death action against Dr. Nick. In 1979, the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners went after him for overprescribing. I think that was the same year somebody took a shot at him at a football game here in Memphis.
MARTY LACKER: That was pretty strange. Around the time of the hearing, Dr. Nick took a guest, Dr. Charles Thomas Langford, to the Memphis State–Utah State football game at the Liberty Bowl. Dr. Langford sat directly behind Dr. Nick in the stands. And near the end of the game, Dr. Langford got shot in the shoulder. The police don’t know if someone just randomly shot a bullet up in the air or if they just missed the guy they were after.
BILLY SMITH: In January of ’80, the board suspended Dr. Nick’s license for three months and give him three years’ probation. Then a month after he started practicing again, the Shelby County grand jury indicted him—on criminal charges of overprescribing drugs to ten of his patients, including Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Marty, and Alan.
Dr. Nick’s attorney was James Neal, the Watergate prosecutor. He presented the defense that Dr. Nick was trying to cure Elvis with what they call “drug maintenance.”
LAMAR FIKE: The defense called me to be a witness. And I said, “You don’t need me there. He’ll go to prison if I come.”
MARTY LACKER: When all this first came down, I told everybody, “The only way you’re going to get me there is if you subpoena me.” So they subpoenaed both me and my wife as witnesses for the prosecution.
When Jim Neal heard that, he asked me to come and talk to them. So I went down to the Pilot Hotel, by the Mississippi River, where they had this huge room set up.
Neal started talking to me, and I noticed that Nick wasn’t in the room. I said, “Wait a minute. Where’s Nichopoulos?” And Neal said, “He’s in the other room.” I said, “Well, I’d like for him to hear what I’ve got to say.” So they brought Nick in, and I said, “I want you to know how most of the guys feel about you and what you used to do.” And I told him that he and Joe and Jerry walked around like privileged characters and that it caused a lot of dissension in the group.
Then I said, “I’m not going to get up in court and say anything that will hurt you. I think you’ve suffered enough.”
BILLY SMITH: I have to look at both sides. I mean, why not go after Dr. Ghanem? He wrote a hell of a lot of prescriptions. I’d like to see Elvis’s bill from him. Or from Dr. Shapiro. How about Dr. Kaplan? Dr. Nick wasn’t a damn bit worse than these other guys. If he hadda been, I might have testified against him. The difference I saw was they’d give it all to Elvis at one time and Dr. Nick kept most of it in his bag.
So I testified for the defense.
The assistant district attorney [James D. Wilson] thought he was bein’ real cute. I told him about the placebos me and Dr. Nick tried to slip in on Elvis. And about how we drained the Placidyls. But he was trying to catch me.
He said, “How do you drain a tablet?” I said, “You don’t. You try to find something close and replace it with that.” I said, “Have you ever looked at a morphine tablet? It’ll look just like a damn saccharine tablet.”
The fans don’t understand why I testified for Dr. Nick. I think a lot of them felt ill towards me because of that. It’s hard to explain. But the man cared. And I’d hate like hell to have been Dr. Nick and had Elvis Presley for a patient.
Even now, people say, “Why didn’t you all help Elvis?” You know how I answer that? I say, “Pick the damn spot I was in, and tell me in a year how you’re handling it.”
MARTY LACKER: Evidently, the jury believed Billy and that Good Samaritan defense. Dr. Nick got acquitted in November of ’81. On all counts.
LAMAR FIKE: It’s funny the turns things take. In 1990, Dr. Nick went around saying he thought Elvis was murdered. He hooked up with a writer named Murray Silver, who did that Jerry Lee Lewis book [Great Balls of Fire] with Jerry’s child bride [Myra Lewis]. They sent a book proposal all around New York saying Elvis probably died from a karate chop to the neck.
Red West saw that and said, “I’m glad I didn’t see the son of a bitch [Dr. Nick].” Red would have torn his head off. Nick is tired of being blamed for Elvis’s death. But he’s also desperate for money.
BILLY SMITH: You know what else Dr. Nick said? He hinted to an editor at one of the tabloids that Elvis was gay. I guess he thought it would sell his story, and he needs money. Because they’ve done got him again.
MARTY LACKER: The state filed new charges against Dr. Nick in 1992. They’ve got him on three charges of overprescribing, and “unprofessional, dishonorable or unethical conduct, with gross malpractice, ignorance, negligence or incompetence.” They want his license for good this time.
LAMAR FIKE: We’ve all been through a lot. But there are bright spots, too. Before I married Janice, I was dating a girl named Mary, a flight attendant for one of the major airlines. I was very much in love with her. But I was doing the Goldman book, which was terribly difficult. I worked three solid years on it, and I was just totally burnt out. Mary wanted to get married, and I said, “I’ll never get married. You can take that to the bank.” So she married another guy, and then I married Janice.
After I divorced Janice, I called Mary, and we’ve been married now for ten years. Ricky Stanley, who became a minister after Elvis died, married us in Waco.
Mary’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. We laugh a lot, and carry on insane conversations, and just have a lot of fun. She’s more than a wife. She’s a buddy. When she looks at me, she doesn’t see how big I am. She sees me the way she wants to see me. And, at best, I am very hard to live with. I have a difficult time sharing myself with a person. I think we all developed that trait from Elvis.
Down in Waco, I didn’t know that I’d ever get back in the music business. I went into the car business, and I had two van-conversion plants. I thought I knew what I was doing. Boy, I learned quick I didn’t. The Texas economy did a nosedive, and I lost a little more than $1 million.
That was a very cataclysmic fall. I washed out and bankrupted. Mary said, “Look, I’m moving to Nashville. I think you should go back and work in the publishing and entertainment business.” She said, “If you don’t go, I’m going without you.” So we packed up and left in ’83.
I pretty much had to feel my way back. Jimmy Bowen [then president of MCA/Nashville Records] was an old friend, and he put me on as a consultant at $500 a week. Then I went back into publishing, and I’ve done well these last twelve years.
A lot of other guys never got that lucky. Knowing how to order a limo isn’t a strong qualification for anything. With some of the guys, it was like Death of a Salesman. And still is. It’s really sad.
We all have terribly bad habits that we developed during that time. Lack of discipline for one. In a way, we self-destructed when Elvis self-destructed.
MARTY LACKER: Red’s done well. When the furor over his book died down, he got back into acting. He’s turned into a very good character actor and done a lot of pictures, like Road House, with Patrick Swayze, and a lot of television. Red has an acting school in Memphis now.
Sonny and Judy raised Arabian horses in California for a while. But they wanted to come back to the South, so they moved near Nashville. Sonny was road manager and head of security for the band Alabama. For the past couple of years, he’s been trying to write movie scripts. He’s a born-again Christian now, and he’s real serious about it.
LAMAR FIKE: Joe Esposito was with the estate for a while. He lives in Sacramento. He had a book out last year. After Elvis died, he worked as road manager for some of the rock-pop acts—the Bee Gees and John Denver. After that, he became a partner in a limousine-rental company in L.A. Then he got involved in a celebrity food company. Joe’s had a couple of auctions to sell his Elvis memorabilia. And he makes a little money at the fan conventions.
BILLY SMITH: Some of the guys have done real well, and some have done the best they could. I heard Dave Hebler went into real estate in California. Sam Thompson is a judge now. And Gene Smith is still in Memphis. He drove a cookie truck for a while.
Dick Grob became head of security at Graceland after Elvis died, and Al Strada and Dean Nichopoulos worked with him there. Then Dean went into the wholesale liquor business in Memphis, and last I heard, Al was working for Federal Express in Memphis. Dick managed Charlie Hodge for a while.
MARTY LACKER: Charlie sings in a little Elvis show over in Gatlinburg now. He’s just perpetuated the same old stories about Elvis for years.
When the state first went after Nichopoulos, Larry Hutchinson, the chief criminal investigator for the attorney general, interviewed Charlie about Elvis’s drug abuse. Hutchinson said, “He was in love with Elvis and would tell any lie he could to protect Elvis’s image.” I don’t think it was just Charlie being loyal. He was also trying to jump back on the gravy train. During the first couple fan festivals after Elvis died, he charged people $5 to $10 to have their picture taken with him.
Richard Davis has done some of those Elvis conventions, too. For a long time, he helped George Klein set up DJ booths in nightclubs. Right now, he’s working internal security for one of the new gambling casinos in Tunica, Mississippi. Klein picks up a few pennies with the estate, but mostly he works in a casino in Tunica, too.
LAMAR FIKE: Jerry Schilling had that cozy estate job. He managed Lisa Marie’s singing career for a while and coproduced the [short-lived] TV series Elvis. He had a couple of film editing jobs in Hollywood and then tour-managed Billy Joel when Joel started out. I think he’s doing freelance production work now. He was involved with The History of Rock ’n’ Roll, that syndicated mini-series.
Marty has his own advertising and sales firm. He does marketing and promotion projects for various companies.
MARTY LACKER: The Stanley brothers weren’t really part of the Memphis Mafia, but some people thought they were. Ricky got himself into drug rehab and became a born-again Christian and an evangelist.
David was in evangelist work, too, but he’s not anymore. He got a degree in communications and traveled the country giving antidrug lectures. He cowrote The Elvis Encyclopedia [in 1994] and produced a video on it.
LAMAR FIKE: Billy Smith has a factory job now. He works in maintenance, and he’s an apprentice machinist, tool and die. He’s blue-collar, but he’s done very well. He’s kept it together, which is something, considering what he’s been through.
MARTY LACKER: Since his death, Elvis has become an even bigger magnet for crackpots and con artists. There are a lot of devoted fans, but a whole array of opportunists have come out of the woodwork. Even Elvis’s undertaker was writing a book, but the man died.
A couple of years ago, Entertainment Tonight took a poll that showed that somewhere between 6 and 16 percent of all Americans think Elvis is still alive. As late as ’94, some crazy group called the Presley Commission issued a “report” that said Elvis was working as a government agent—that threats from organized crime forced him to fake his death. The head of this group, Phil Aitcheson, says the body found in the bathroom was Colonel’s cousin. And that what everybody saw in the coffin was a wax dummy. For proof, he says it was sweating, and dead men don’t sweat.
What started all this was Gail Brewer-Giorgio’s [1988] book, Is Elvis Alive? She never actually said Elvis didn’t die, but she fed people’s hope that he was still around. That’s what started all the rumors that Elvis was seen in Michigan and at Burger Kings coast to coast. There’s no end to it.
LAMAR FIKE: Somebody said to me, “Lamar, are you sure that Elvis is dead?” I said, “I think a rock’s got more life than Elvis.”
When you think about how this story continues to evolve, it’s really amazing. In ’93, Dee Presley had her lawyers look into her divorce from Vernon. She thinks it wasn’t binding. The judge in the Dominican Republic supposedly caused some kind of a problem.
Dee’s after the estate, and I think she’s got ’em cold turkey. If she’s still legally married to Vernon, just think what that means. Whoa! That could change everything.
MARTY LACKER: It’s interesting to see how the women have gained control of it all. Or tried to. And how they’ve handled it. Lisa’s a high school dropout. For a while there, it looked like she was going to end up like her father, a drug addict. She’s talked in an interview with Life magazine about going on a three-day coke [cocaine] high when she was fourteen. That was before she decided to go off drugs for good. Priscilla put her in the Church of Scientology’s main facility out in L.A., the Celebrity Centre International, which is a kind of detox center. Scientology is pretty antidrug.
Now, of course, Lisa’s marriage to Michael Jackson puts everything about the estate into question. In ’88, when Lisa married Danny Keough, she seemed to want nothing to do with the estate. But after she married Michael—something Priscilla says she didn’t know about ahead of time, by the way—Lisa started making noises about turning Graceland into a private home again. Which must make the estate real nervous. Because Lisa says that’s why she extended her mother’s executorship to begin with—to quell the rumors that when Lisa took over Graceland she was going to sell it. The investors were freaking out.
When Michael and Lisa got married, Jack Soden put out a statement that said, “I know very well that [Lisa’s] very content and secure with the way things are . . . Lisa is very intent in leaving all of Elvis Presley’s assets independent and intact.” But Lisa’s only given them authority to manage the estate through 1998. And then she might just claim what’s hers.
LAMAR FIKE: Lisa’s marriage to Michael Jackson is the single most shocking event. Hell, it’s the most shocking marriage since Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis. People have gone stark, fucking nuts over this. Did you read what Michael said about proposing? He said, “I made love to Lisa in my Mickey Mouse pajamas. And then I asked her to marry me.” Watch. If they move into Graceland, Michael will change its name to Never-Never Land.
MARTY LACKER: I think when the rumors of that marriage first came out, Elvis started doing flips in his grave. And then when it was verified, he probably tried every which way to get back here, to slap the shit out of both of them.
Elvis wouldn’t like it for a number of reasons. One, because Michael is black, or used to be. Elvis wouldn’t want Lisa to marry out of her race, just as there are black people who don’t want their children marrying white people. Two, he wouldn’t have liked Michael’s weirdness. Elvis would want the best for his daughter, and Jackson ain’t the best. And three, with Elvis’s ego, there’s no way he would want any other entertainer to have a claim on Graceland, although there’s supposedly a prenuptial arrangement.
I’m sure Michael has an agenda, but I don’t think it’s money. I think most people believe he married Lisa as a cover-up, to draw attention away from the charges that he sexually molested a thirteen-year-old boy. The only person I know who says he believes they’re actually in love is George Klein.
The really goofy thing is why Lisa did it. Lamar says it’s a marriage made in defiance. Lisa and Priscilla were on the outs for a while. And Priscilla’s kept her on a short leash. That $100 million is Lisa’s, but her mother won’t let her have it. She wants to manage it for her. I’ve heard that Priscilla gives Lisa an allowance of $4,000 a month. And Lisa has supposedly said, “You’re no longer going to tell me what I can and can’t do. I’m going to show you.” That’s why she wants to be called Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson.
LAMAR FIKE: Then there’s the theory Lisa wants Michael to help her with her singing career, which never got off the ground. I got news for you—she has the talent of an anvil.
MARTY LACKER: There’s also a possibility that the Church of Scientology is behind this. “Auditing” is expensive and Michael sure can afford it. I’m sure they’d welcome him with open arms.
It’s funny . . . The one religion Elvis put down was Scientology. He couldn’t stand it. And then Priscilla brought up his daughter in it. Jo Smith thinks that’s why she did it.
LAMAR FIKE: Danny Keough’s father is a minister in the Church of Scientology. And Danny’s brother, Thomas, and his wife were witnesses at Lisa and Michael’s wedding in the Dominican Republic. What does that tell you?
MARTY LACKER: One night, I was sitting in my house all by myself, and I was feeling a little lonely. I started thinking what a friend Red has been for forty years. And then I started thinking about the relationship I had with Elvis and the group as a whole, and how the camaraderie was gone. So in April of ’92, I put together a reunion of the Memphis Mafia.
The original six or seven guys have never had any serious arguments. But since Elvis died, three of the guys—George, Jerry, and Joe—don’t want to have anything to do with a few of the other guys, especially Lamar because of the Goldman book. So George, Jerry, and Joe turned me down.
I said to them, “Who the hell are you to judge? There wasn’t one soul around Elvis who didn’t take advantage of him when he was alive or after he died.” I said, “We’ve all been through a lot together. We shared something special. And to try to pull that apart just because you don’t like somebody isn’t right.”
I thought that once everybody got together, there was a good chance that they’d bury the hatchet. But it didn’t work.
LAMAR FIKE: I tried to get George and Jerry to come to the reunion myself. Jerry said, “I can’t do that.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Well, you know, that book you wrote.” And George said the same thing. I said, “What do I have to do, make a cross out of that book and put it on my back and crawl up the Graceland driveway?”
George changed a lot after he got so involved with the estate. He’s pretty much of a prick now. When the book came out, Albert [Goldman] was on a radio talk show, and the host said, “George Klein said . . . ” And then he rattled off a bunch of accusations. Albert said, “Isn’t it amazing that someone would take the word of a convicted felon over a person who has never had a police ticket?”
But George is right—the estate still hates my guts. And that’s how the guys split down the middle these days—by those who want to play footsie with the estate and those who don’t.
MARTY LACKER: George and I were like intertwined fingers for twenty-five years until he did something that really hurt me. The falling-out was over a book I wrote [Elvis: Portrait of a Friend] in ’79. It didn’t say much of anything. But my wife wrote some things George didn’t like.
Later on, I came up with the idea of having an Elvis memorial gathering each August at Memphis State. I mentioned it to some people, and lo and behold, it got under way. But next thing I heard, the person in charge was George Klein.
I called George up and asked him how that happened, and he said, “Well, we thought it best if you weren’t there.” I said, “Really? Why is that?” He said, “Well, because of your book. We took a vote—me, and Dr. Nick, and Charlie Hodge.”
I said, “Klein, go fuck yourself.” And I didn’t talk to George for twelve years.
Finally, I said something to him at a funeral in ’91. I watched a friend of ours being lowered into the ground. They were shoveling dirt on the coffin, and I went over to George and put my hand out. I said, “Hey, life’s too short. Let’s forget about it.” He took my hand. But we’re still not friends.
BILLY SMITH: I still have strong feelings for all of them. You can’t live with a group of guys that long and not be tuned into their feelings.
LAMAR FIKE: After the reunion in ’92, all of us went to see Alan Fortas. He was battling kidney cancer, and he hadn’t felt good enough to come up to the hotel.
You know what was odd? Alan was sick for a couple of years. And when Colonel heard Alan had cancer, he called him every Sunday. When Elvis was alive, Colonel didn’t particularly like Alan.
Maybe his feelings changed later on. But I also think the Colonel has turned into a rather benign figure. He’s got an empty saber—he can’t rattle his sword anymore.
MARTY LACKER: You know what else was strange? When Priscilla was back in Memphis making a video, she called Alan and had him picked up in a limo and brought over to Graceland. It was really nice of her, and it meant a lot to Alan. And it shocked a lot of people that she would do that.
When Alan got cancer, he was kind of pitiful. We all pretended he’d get better. But the doctor told him that there was nothing they could do for him. He laid up in the hospital and said, “I wish it would just come on and get me.”
He’d alternate between crying and making jokes. The pain was just so bad. He even went to Reno for some kind of quack cure. One day, he said, “There’s 50 million cars on the street. Why can’t one of ’em just hit me?”
LAMAR FIKE: One morning in September ’92, Marty called me at seven A.M. and told me Alan was gone. I was really upset. Alan was the first member of the core group to die. It was just overwhelming. The invincibility of the group was shattered.
The day we buried him, I sat on the side of the bed getting dressed, and I said, “I hate to go to this funeral. I cannot explain how bad I hate this.” And I choked up. It was just so shocking. Mary said, “I’ve never heard you talk like this.” But it was unbelievable to me that somebody could fall from the group.
After Alan’s funeral, Marty, Red, and David Stanley, and I went to Corky’s for barbecue. I turned around to everybody and I said, “Boys, now it begins.” They said, “What do you mean?” I said, “It’s going to come quicker for all of us. You have no idea what we’re getting ready to go through.”
MARTY LACKER: We’re still feeling so many repercussions from the old life. In ’92, Patsy divorced me. After thirty-one years. She waited until all the kids were grown, and then finally, she did it. She said, “One day I just fell out of love with you.” My only bewilderment is why she waited so long. I’d been trying to make it up to her for the last fifteen years. Maybe I should have stayed a bastard. Maybe she’d still be with me. But we’re still friends.
LAMAR FIKE: There’s no doubt that we’re all haunted by this experience. Even now, I dream about Elvis three or four times a week. Very vivid dreams. In one, I said, “Where are you?” He said, “It’s not anyplace you’d want to be right now.” I said, “Well, where is it?” He said, “Son, it’s not Cleveland.”
Last night, I woke up and heard him call my name. I sat straight up in the bed. It scared the hell out of Mary because she felt Elvis was in the room. I can just be walking down the hall and I’ll hear him. His voice is as plain as mine is right now. Usually, we have long, protracted conversations.
After Elvis’s death, I went to a psychiatrist for three fucking years. I had two or three hundred hours of psychotherapy, trying to get over it. The doctor said, “You’re going to have these dreams for the rest of your life.” And he’s right. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of Elvis.
MARTY LACKER: Elvis is in a lot of my dreams. The funny thing is that he’s always trying to avoid me or avoid other people. What it means, who knows. I think of him all the time. He’s just always in my thoughts. Always will be.
LAMAR FIKE: In 1986, USA Today ran a computer-generated portrait of what Elvis would look like at fifty-one “as he left the Betty Ford clinic after kicking drugs.” He still looked handsome, but older, of course.
Musically, I think we have a pretty good idea of what he’d be like today. Marty thinks he would have been doing up-tempo stuff. But I think Elvis would have been like Sinatra. When he died, somebody said he looked like a rock Sinatra in Liberace drag. But at sixty, which is what Elvis would have been in 1995, he would have been a personality. He wouldn’t have needed a record label or even chart records. He would have done about one big tour a year, and millions of people would have gone to see him.
MARTY LACKER: Sonny says he doesn’t listen to Elvis’s music much these days. He says, “How can you listen to those songs the same way anymore? They’re different songs now. They say something else.”
LAMAR FIKE: Every one of us is exactly like Elvis in some way. My cousin said to me one time, “You play a guitar like Elvis.” That’s because he taught me. And David Stanley tries to act like Elvis, and he doesn’t know he’s doing it. We all became one bundle, wrapped up with the same string. I know that when I die, Elvis will still get top billing. Like, “Former Elvis Employee Dies.”
For better or worse, we are what he left behind. He lives through his music, but he also lives through us.
We all have these carryovers. I’ll go to the grocery store and buy fifty pounds of sugar when I don’t need but five. In my mind, I’m buying for the whole group. My wife will say, “What are you doing?” I’ll say, “I’m doing what I’ve always done.”
We’re all handicapped in a way. You can look at every one of us, and we all have the same problems. We try to survive with him not around, and it’s not easy. It’s even colored the way we interact with people. I don’t make friends very easily because I don’t know where they’re coming from. And Marty is always suspicious of everybody. I think we had the rug pulled out from under us too many times. We carry our insecurities around like a knapsack.
BILLY SMITH: Back in the early days, I would have give anything to have been Elvis Presley. Now, I don’t know. I guess it’s easy to see somebody else’s insecurities and not be able to face your own. But it makes no difference what kind of person he was. It’s what he done to change everything. And what he left. Did he leave total bad or total good? Or did he just leave a little bit of both? That’s my thought. He had it all, and he misused a portion of his life. He dug his own grave. That’s all you can say.
LAMAR FIKE: What’s incredible is how Elvis has endured—his popularity eighteen years after his death. Nobody’s generated that kind of devotion except Jesus Christ. Elvis is the quintessential American icon—the personification of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. He’s an artistic genius. And he’s the premier symbol of wretched excess, a guy who had everything and squandered it all. He’s both a hero and a joke. The face on a postage stamp.
I was at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York some years ago, and Eric Clapton was there. He and some other rock ’n’ rollers sat at the table with us talking. Somebody mentioned a musician who had a pretty heavy drug problem. And I just left-handedly said, “I’m not going to get sanctimonious here, but Elvis died for your sins.” And they all passed out from laughter.
Nobody’s ever done what he did, and no one ever will. The guy’s sold more than a billion records! If you put ’em end to end, they’d circle the earth twice. He did what everybody wasn’t supposed to do, and he died for it. He’s a prototype, a blueprint. And an example of what everybody in the business doesn’t want to turn into.
Because of all that, he’s become the messiah of rock ’n’ roll. We just happened to be the guys who sat on the right and the left of him. It’s a permanent label. Whether we like it or not, we wear it.