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Peter Guralnick · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Weftsetts Podcast. My
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: guest today is Peter Garralman, who has a new book,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: The Colonel and the King, Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the Partnership that Rocked the World.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Peter, why this book? Why? Now?
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Well, it's been thirty years. It's been it's almost exactly
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: thirty years from the time I first got access to
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: the Colonel's archives in nineteen ninety five. And although I
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: had known Colonel at that point for almost ten years,
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: and I'd had engaged in a considerable amount of correspondence
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: with him. This and I had done a great deal
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: of research for my Elvis biography, this opened up an
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: entirely different picture of the Colonel than I had ever
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: had before. And really, from that moment I wanted to
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: do a book that I mean, I just thought, we've
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: got to do a collection of Colonel's letters. Well, that
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: didn't happen, and a lot of things intervened, and here
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: we are thirty years later.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: So what made it happen.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: What made it happen was it was just I stayed
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: at it. You know, this is the same. This is
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: a good example of the little engine that could you know,
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: the tiny engine that could not. I mean, I just
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: stayed with it. It was something that I wanted to do.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: But by the time I finally got around to it
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: and I started working on it six or seven years
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: ago by then. Colonel's widow, lo Anne Parker, actually quite
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: some time before that, and I had known her for
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: a while. I talked to her about the book I
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: was doing, this book of letters that I wanted to do.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: She said, can I help, well? Who knows where that where?
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: A thing like that can lead? But I said, sure,
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: you know, I figured why not? That led to so
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: many revelations beyond the letters themselves, which for me were
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: a window into a world that Colonel had never revealed
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: in public. He didn't reveal it in interviews, and reveal
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: it in his letters, which were great playful things in
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: which no matter what I put out in my letter,
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: he taught me every time. It was like I was
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: playing checkers and he was playing. He was a grand
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: master at chess. But in the letters themselves he revealed himself.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Then when I started talking to Loeanne, she began to
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: tell me all the stories he had told her about
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: growing up in Holland, and also about his vulnerabilities, his weaknesses,
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: his sensitivities, things that I just never could have gotten.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: So that at that point I realized I can't just
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: do the book of letters. I've got to do something
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: which includes at least a biographical portrait. And I started
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: doing interviews for that, and you know, books take a
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: long time, but that's where it began.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, Historically, Colonel Tom Parker has not had a good
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: image in the public. Ay when you first started with
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Colonel Tom Parker, what was your perception of him? And
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: what is your perception of him now? And what does
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: the public get wrong or right?
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean there are a number of things about
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Colonel's image. You've got to remember that, at least up
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: until nineteen seventy, Colonel was considered the most brilliant manager
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: in the business. All of the things which have attached
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: to him since Elvis's death were simply not applied to him.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: And if Brian Epstein wanted to find out about the business,
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: he went to Colonel Parker. If Brian Epstein beatles manager,
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: If George Hamilton, who's newly arrived in Hollywood and made
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: home from the Hill, if he wanted advice about how
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: to proceed with his career. This is in nineteen sixty
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: one or so. He sought out Colonel Parker because Colonel
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: was considered the canniest, the smartest, the funniest, the most animated.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: It it's nothing like what the image is of now.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: I'm well aware of what the image is of him now,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: But it wasn't the image that I started out with.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: When I I mean, in other words, I did not
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: have a negative image when I wrote Last Trained of
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: Mephic and Careless Love back in ninety four ninety nine,
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: my two volume biography of Elvis, I had an image,
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: in a sense of somebody who, as Jack soon Ceo
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: at Graceland, as Jack Soten said, a lovable rascal. I
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: thought of him if you look, if you read the
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: portrait of him in Careless Love, he plays almost a
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Falstaffian role, sort of a comic role, a grand master role,
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: but not a villainous role at all. Now again, I
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: recognize that through a combination of circumstances, particularly in the
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: wake of Elvis' death, but really even more so recently,
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: he has been cast in a role that he never occupied.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: In this villainous role, but that's not the way I
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: ever saw.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, historically people believe that it was a fift fifty partnership.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: In your book, you go through a lot of details
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: that every deal was different in that live was one thing,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: recordings were another. But also there was this concept of
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: special projects. What was really going on here because you
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: make the point that he had a rationalization for all
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: these different numbers, but in reality, was he self dealing?
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: He was. You know, I would say everybody in the
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: music business is self dealing up to a certain point,
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: that's what the music business is based on. But no,
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: he wasn't. And in fact, for the first ten years,
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: the first nine years of his management of Elvis, he
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: was operating on a twenty five percent managerial basis, straight
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: twenty five percent, no special deals, no bonuses, no nothing
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: like that. And this is a person who was not
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: just the manager. He was also the pr man. He
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: did all the advertising, he did the promotion of all
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: the shows, he did the promotion of all the records.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: He even designed the record the record covers got nominated
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: for Grammy. I don't know why, but he did. So.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: He was not only a one artist manager, he was
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: a one man operation. He had virtually no overhead. He
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: paid all of his expenses out of his twenty five percent,
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: out of his twenty five percent commission as manager, and
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: he was providing a service and all purpose service. It changed,
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: as you say, as you've indicated in nineteen sixty seven,
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: and there were a number of reasons that changed. One
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: was that Elvis by then had become a lot more
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: difficult to manage. Elvis was encountering problems of his own.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: He had, but his biggest problem and it was one
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: that stayed with him all his life. And I'm not
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: saying this is a criticism of just describing what happened.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: He simply spent, not just more than what he made.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: And he was making two million dollars a year, which
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: is the equivalent of twenty million today. He was making
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: four million dollars a year, which is the equivalent of
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: double that. He If he made two million, he spent
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: three million. And this is born out in the letters
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: that Elvis's father, Vernon Presley, the only other person in
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: the world other than Colonel and Elvis who knew what
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: the business in the room was. Vernon was part of everything.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Vernon and Elvis Presley were part of every business conversation
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: with colonel. But Vernon wrote not letter after letter, only
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: a few of which I have in the book, But
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: he wrote letter after letter to colonel, You've got to
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: help out. We're on the verge of losing graceland. We
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: can't pay our taxes, we can't pay our IRS bill.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: You've got to come up with more money. That began,
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: that became more and more of a problem as time
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: went on. And so Colonel's explanation, and you can call
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: it a rationalization, you can call it an explanation, is
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: he simply had to take or he felt he was
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: entitled to take a greater piece of the pie. And
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: with the deal that he made with Elvis in nineteen
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: sixty seven, he entered into a limited joint venture agreement.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Joint venture is like a partnership, as you know, and
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: that the partnership, the twenty five percent commission remained on
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: things like movies, on publishing royalties, on just about everything.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: But they split everything that colonel, every bonus payment that
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: Colonel got beyond the contracted amount fifty to fifty. Now,
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: anybody could understand that the temptation in that kind of
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: a deal is to have less and less, less and
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: less money in the actual contract, and more and more
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: put into bonus situations. And that basically is what happened
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: to a degree, not completely, but to a degree, over
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: the next five or six years. Nineteen seventy three, Elvis
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  Speaker 3: and Colonel entered into what I think can fairly be
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: called a partnership, except as you say, there were several
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: things that were exempted. Publishing was exempted, the personal appearances
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: were on a two thirds one third basis. But it
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: was entered into so gladly on Elvis's part. It basically
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: comprised six different contracts, all of which Colonel and his
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: assistant Tom Diskott went over in great detail with Elvis
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: and Vernon at Elvis's Hollywood home, and when everything was signed,
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: Elvis announced there were many things involved in this agreement.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: But when everything was signed, Elvis announced to the guys
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: around him, and he rarely told them about business. As
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: much as they put out the I mean it, as
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: much as they had ideas about what his business was.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Was they honest, they really didn't know, and I'm not
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: putting them down, but they didn't. But Elvis announced to
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: them what a great deal he had made with colonel,
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: so you can say, well, Elvis was foolish, he hadn't
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: made such a great deal. On the other hand, I
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: would say there was nobody else in the world who
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: could have made the money for Elvis that Colonel Parker did.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: There was no manager Moore Kenny, and there was no
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: one more who was better at both manipulating the record
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: company in particular and turning a chore into something which
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: generated so much money it almost met Elvis's expenses.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Let's flip the story over, as I say, if you
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: read the book, Parker looks pretty good. He is someone
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: you knew you subsequently interacted with the widow and the letters.
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  Speaker 2: What are some negative feelings you feel towards Parker.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: The simplest negative feeling and the biggest revelation to me
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: in the book, and the place where I really was
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: unhappy to end up with, was that his gambling predilection,
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: which was something again I think I mentioned to you
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  Speaker 3: I saw him as this, let's call him a lovable
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  Speaker 3: rascal if in my view, and you can read what
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: I wrote previously, and I'm not trying to disown it,
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: It's just represented my best understanding of the situation. But
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: my understanding of him over the years was simply that
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: if he lost a million dollars at the gaming table,
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: which he didn't, I think eight hundred thousand may have
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: been the most. It was the most I could ever document.
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: But he did lose that much that he could walk
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: away from that and just shrug his shoulders and not
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: care at all. Now I was write in one respect,
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: he didn't care about the money. He didn't care about
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: the money anymore than Elvis did. Neither one of them
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: cared the least bit about money. They weren't interested in
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: accumulating money. They weren't interested in accumulating in the state
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: that meant nothing to them. But from talking to lo Aanne,
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: and from having her document from her journals and diary,
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: something I want to say one thing about lo Anne.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: No one could have been a more loving wife than
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Loe Anne was. She adored Colonel She absolutely adored it.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: And as much as she adored him, she admired him.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Maybe she admired him even more. I mean, to him,
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: she was the greatest person in the world. And I'm
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: not knocking that. But and yet when we started, when
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: I started on the book, and she started helping me
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: out with it. She was committed to telling the truth,
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: and she said to me at one point after we've
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: been tied, and I can only imagine how painful it
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: was for her to say this. Colonel was a gambling addict,
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: and she could document that from her journals and her diaries,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: and you know, and say, no matter how difficult it
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: was for her to say this, and say there were
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: times when he would spend three days in the strait
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: in the casino, not come back to the room until
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: the fourth day, and then just collapse. He was no
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: good for anything. And she said, there's no other word
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: for Peter, He's a gambling addict. So I ended up
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: with a picture which I had not at all expected
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: to end up with, in which you have two people
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: addicted to two different things. Elvis to his pharmaceuticals has
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: prescribed medications, Colonel to gambling, and neither one of them
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: able to address the matter with the other because if
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: one said, hey, you're doing this, the other would say, hey,
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: what about you? And they literally they avoided it. For
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: the most part, Colonel did everything he could for Elvis.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: There are many letters in here where he's trying to
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: keep Elvis off the road, despite all the prevailing opinion.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: There are many letters in which he shares his concerns
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: about Elvis with others. There are many letters in which
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: he attempts to motivate Elvis to do better and to
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: say that, you know, Elvis is the greatest entertainer he's
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: ever known, and he Elvis alone can fix these problems.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: But nonetheless, neither one of them could confront the other's problems.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: And that was the revelation for me, and it's an
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: unhappy revelation for me. And it doesn't undercut Colonel's genius.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Is you know, Chuad de Vivra, his great sense of
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: his embrace of life. I mean, he was just a
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: true He was one of the most vital people I've
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: ever known. And he exemplified that spirit of vitality and
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: inventedness and sourcefulness all of his life. But that still
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: doesn't take you wanted to know what I saw is
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: his greatest weakness. Well, his other greatest weakness was a
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: trauma that he carried with him from childhood. He was
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: so mistrustful that it took a great deal for him
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: to give himself to other people, to demonstrate love, to
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: show his you know, to show his concern. But when
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: he did, he gave it all out. And that's another
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: thing in the book which surprised me, because I found
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: all these extended families which he formed in the absence
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: of the family he had left behind in Holland, Okay.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Eldest dies in sevent According to the book, the recording
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: rights were all sold to RCA before to help Elvis
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: out financially. Elvis dies in seventy seven. From Elvis, does
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: the colonel continue to make money after his death or
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: is it pretty much stopped there?
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: No, No, he made a great deal of money for
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: himself and for the estate. He again generated more money
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: I think than any other manager could have, and it
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: was an enormous amount of money for the estate. And
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: he found ingenious ways of getting RCA to pay more
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: money than they would have otherwise, to advance money. And
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: he made deals for the showings, basically with Colonel Parker,
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: just as with you know, most good businessman. Ownership was everything,
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: and the television specials that Elvis did the estate came
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: to all And so he made deals after Elvis died
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: for the reshowings of the very lucrative deals for the
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: reshowings of the television specials that Elvis had, so he
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: made a great deal of money for the estate, and
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: both Vernon Presley and Priscilla Presley were very at Priscilla
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: Presley wasn't part of the estate, but she was involved
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: as the mother of Elvis's heir, Lisa Marie, and they
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: were very happy with it. But when Vernon died, the
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: court came in and I think it was the Chancery
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: Court of Memphis, and they ordered that there'd be an
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: adlita attorney to take up the interests of the miner
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: who was now the sole heir of Elvis' estate. This
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: was Lisa Marie and she was at this point, I
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: think twelve years old. And the court ordered that the
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: estate sued the colonel. The estate did not want to
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: so the colonel and it ended up being a money
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: drained for everybody, but they were ordered by the court
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: to do it. The ad Leadam attorney made a report
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: which and you asked earlier what the source of Elvis's
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: bad reputation is, it was primarily, I would say, the
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: odd Leadam report, which involves involved a considerable misunderstanding by
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: someone who really did not know much about show business
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: or the entertainment world of many of the deals Colonel
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: had made by for simple example, he upbraided Colonel. Well,
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: first of all, one thing was he saw Colonel is
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: taking fifty percent of everything, which from the beginning, which
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: wasn't true. But the main thing that I think he misunderstood,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: he just misunderstood the terms of the deals. And for example,
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: he upbraided Colonel for having maintained for having let Elvis
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: continue to collect a five percent royalty on his records
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: at a time when other artists were making a great
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: deal more. That was not what the contract called for.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: The contract was improved every year. The first year, the
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: first year of the contract RCA in fifty six, eleven
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: months after the initial signing, it was improved by a
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: million dollars. It continued to be improved. The royalties continued
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: to be improved. But because of and I don't know
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: you want to hear all this, but because of the
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: most Favored Nations agreements, which everybody knows. You know, every
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: any manager worth assault is going to get the most
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Favored Nations agreement for his artist if the artist is
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: enough of a start. That means that you know, if
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: you get one hundred and ten dollars, I get one
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: hundred and ten dollars even if I signed for ninety.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: So the problem was that if Elvis got more than
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: five percent, which was a top royalty rate that RCA
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: was paying, that would mean a lot of other people
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: would get more than five percent. Well, Elvis got a
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: lot more than five percent, but it wasn't written in
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: the contract. It was part of an unwritten agreement of
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: the recon agreements which were attached to every contract that
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: he went on from nineteen fifty six on.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Okay to put a bow on it. Because Elvis dies
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: in seventy seven, it's a very different circumstance. And today
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: with streaming, where all the music of the deceased artists
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: at a fingertip, they have to produce albums, they get
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: all the factories, et cetera. The word at the time
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: was that all of these rights had been sold to
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: RCA and Elvis and Elvis's estate Elvis' is obviously deceased,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: did not get another penny from the sale of the records.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: Is that true? No?
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: I mean what was sold Elvis and Vernon's demand in
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three were future royalties on recordings made before
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three, that's royalties. The RCA, the record company
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: owned the masters, as every record company at the time,
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: didn continue to get royalties on everything that he recorded.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: After nineteen seventy three, Colonel continued to put in bonus points.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: I don't know how best to describe it, but for example,
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: one of the things that Colonel ensured was that if
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: pre nineteen seventy three recordings were released, post nineteen seventy
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: three recordings were included on the same album. Therefore the
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Elvis Elvis estate would get royalties. I mean, it's a
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: very complicated thing, but he got concessions. Having made one deal,
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: he got concessions out of URCA, first for Elvis and
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: then for the estate, so that Elvis would continue to
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: make and the estate continued to make extraordinary amounts of money.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't have all this my fingertips, But
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: for example, let's say, in order for the Colonel owned
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: all the photographs, and it was within in RCA's power
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: to pay a great deal more for photographs to Colonel
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: and into the estate than they would have otherwise. But
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: the income stream never stopped, and Elvis in the immediate
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: aftermath of his death was the Elvis estate was making
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: a great deal of money. One of the ways they
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: were making the money was it was the Colonel's greatest
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: concern and I think people who are concerned with intellectual
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: property today, which is you know, the word on the street,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: the word everywhere is IP intellectual property. Colonel was concerned
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: in the immediate from the day of Elvis's death on
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: that what he called vultures would come in, swoop in
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: and basically they would merchandise. They would sell merchandise, making
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: money off of Elvis's name and likeness. There was no
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: law at that time that prevented them from doing that.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: There was no lot exactly the prevented them. There was
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: eventually an Elvis Law which people in Hollywood, stars in
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: Hollywood were able to take advantage of. It was the
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: first law was in Tennessee, but that was in the future.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: But Colonel set up a Then he made a deal
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: with a company called Factors Incorporated, which had represented I
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: think Faara Facet Majors and made a huge amount of
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: money off of merchandise in her stuff. And he made
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: a deal which brought a great deal into the estate.
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: Factors actually ended up losing money, because what they guaranteed
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: was to go after every malefactor who attempted to make
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: money off of Elvis's name and likeness. And so you know, again,
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying this is a perfect thing. I don't
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: know what the perfect thing would have been. But Colonel
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: took an extremely proactive role. And if you look at
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: the I don't have this in front of me right now,
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: but if you were to look at I have all
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: the you know, all the information. And if you were
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: to look at the income there was general for the
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: estate in the three years between Elvis's death and Vernon's death,
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: the estate made a great deal of money.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: If this lead deep if RCA, if a song is
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: stream or a songness sould, does the eldest estique get
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: any money?
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: One of the things Colonel insisted on. And again, anybody
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: in the music business would understand this. Most people outside
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: of music business wouldn't. Where is the money situated in
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: the music business. It's in publishing. It's all very well.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: If let's say let's let's say I put out a
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: record and I have a hit. That's great. I'll make
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: a certain amount of money. Maybe I make five percent royalty,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: maybe at this point, I'll make twelve percent. I don't
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: know what I'll make. But when the record is done,
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: it's done. However you may go on. You may cover
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: that record. There may be a polka band that covers it.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: It may be come back as he hit twenty five
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: years from now. The person who owns the publisher is
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: the person who makes the money. The thing that Colonel
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: set up from the beginning was a partnership with for Elvis,
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: with Hill and Range, which is one of the pioneer
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: and BMI, which was the you know, the rebel rights group.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: I mean they set up against ASCAP back in I'm
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: trying to think when I think, probably in the early forties,
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: but they didn't come really come into their own. BMI
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: and Hill and Range is one of the leading publishers
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: until the late forties, and they essentially represented those groups
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: which had not BMI represented those groups which hadn't been
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: represented before, which was primarily hillbilly and black music. Elvis
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: had a partnership with Hill and Range, so that virtually
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: every song that he recorded, at least for the ten years,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: the songs that formed the basis for the Elvis Library,
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: the Elvis Archive. He was a fifty to fifty partner
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: with Hill and Range in the publishing, so he continues
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: to make to this day. Elvis, by the way, would
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: not participate in the more common practice of putting his
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: name on a song. He did that with three songs
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: at the beginning. One of them was Don't Be Cruel,
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: one was Love Me Tender, and he said, I've never
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: written a song. I don't want to do this, and
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: he dropped out. Hill and Range wanted him to do
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: it because it was a clearer it was a clearer
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: right of property. I think I read an argument about it,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: and I can't recapitulate it. But Elvis wouldn't do it anyway.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: But he did have the publishing, and he had the
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: publishing it because Colonel. There are several letters in the
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: book in which Colonel tells him, you know you've got
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: lots of friends. Your friends may come to you and
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: they'll say, Elvis, I have the most wonderful song for you.
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: It's going to make you more money, but I'm going
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: to keep the publishing. And Colonel said, those are not
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: your friends.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: If they are your friends, they'll want to see you
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: make money too. And it is that by owning the
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: by calling the publishing on all of his songs. As
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: Colonel wrote to me, he says, you will have income
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: coming to you long after you have ceased performing. And
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: to a degree that's true. To another degree it may
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: not be true because the problem I think with Elvis
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: owning the publishing and not having the co writing is
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: that once Elvis recorded a song on the hits anyway,
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: he put such a stamp on the song that I'm
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: not sure how many covers a lot of those songs got.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, they continue to be recorded, but I don't
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: know how many hits. I don't know how many people
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: have re recorded Jailhouse Rock and had a hit with it,
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: or don't be cruel or that kind of thing.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, So definitively, at this point in time, the estate
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: still gets publishing income.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: As far as I knows, unless they change the deal.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: But yes, okay to the destory.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: And although it is a smaller amount than publishing income,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: does the estate still get recording royalties?
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: No, they get recording recording royalties. They tried to reverse
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: the deal in more recent times, but the deal was
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: pretty much irreversible. They get recording. They get royalties from
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: the records that were cut after nineteen from nineteen seventy
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: three on, and that's a considerable number of records, and
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: they continue to be repackaged, so they do get those,
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: and they will also get and I mean if albums
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: still sell, and that's a big if they would continue
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: to get income from albums which include not only songs
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: recorded before seventy three, but signs recorded after nineteen seventy three,
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: which was something that Colonel insisted on during his tenure.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, back to the kernel. Elvis was the first big
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: rock star, organic rock star prior to the Beatles. Conventional
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: wisdom at this point in time is Brian Epstein was
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: great in promoting the Beatles, not so great financially. Brian
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Epstein dies in the late sixties. A lot of things
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: change in the music business in the seventies. First and foremost,
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: the record companies end up being owned by larger conglomerates, etc.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: But you get this era of supermanagers. You know, there're
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: a lot from Jerry Weintraub who worked with Elvis, to
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: David Geffen to Irving as Off, etc. Was the Colonel
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: just as good as them. It was a different era,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: or was he superseded by a later generation of managers, a.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: Lot of exempt Jerry Wintrop, I don't, I mean Jay,
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: but leaving that outside, I think he was just as good.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: I mean he The biggest thing was, as he said,
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: he says, I'm not a polo lounge manager. I don't
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: just sit back and collect my money. I don't have
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: a stable of artists, each of whom pay me my money,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: and none of whom I fully support. I am out
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: there with my artist, and I am out there one
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: hundred percent. And I'm not just out I'm out there
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: on tour with them. I'm involved in every aspect of
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: their business, of his business. I mean, you're talking about one,
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: one artist manager of so this is it's a very
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: different kind of situation. You would You wouldn't have this
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: degree of dedication, devotion or just pure I would call
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: love and admiration for the artist. You you don't see
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: that kind of thing to that extent. The other thing
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: is that Elvis's and Colonel's business was entirely separate. When
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Elvis's money came to Elvis directly, there was no pass through,
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: there wasn't anything. I mean, Colonel got his twenty five
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: percent in one check, Elvis got his seventy five percent
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: in another check. Whether it was from RCA or you know,
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: the promoter or anybody else, but the biggest thing, and
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: I honestly think that this is a huge difference, and
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: it's what was revolutionary. Well, Colonel did I I can't
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: you know the name. I know all the names that
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: you mentioned, but the only name that I would say
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: was comparable to colonel and I know a lot of
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: people would dismiss this would be Alan Klein. And the
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: biggest difference between Colonel and Allen and Alan Klein. I'll
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: say I knew Alan Klein very well. I would say,
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: against what most people would want me to say, he
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: was a very good friend, but perhaps the most difficult
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: friend you could ever have. But Alan Klein essentially did
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: attempted to do the same thing. I mean, if you
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: were to look at the situation that the Rolling Stones
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: were in through Andrew Andrew lou Goldham's management when Alan
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: Klein took over. I know that Mick Jagger hates him.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: I know Jack Keith Richards likes I don't want to
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: make it personal, and I know that Keith and that
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: this is not the way MC Jagger sees it. Keyth
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: Richards was always close to Alan. But the point is
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: what Alan did in terms of allowing them to be
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: in charge of their business well at the same time
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: taking control of all the publishing, which will be a
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: source of conflict to this day. But that was what
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: Colonel did for Alan. By the way, the huge, biggest difference,
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: a huge difference between Alan Klein and Colonel Parker was
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: that Alan didn't have a sense of humor. Colonel had
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: a great sense of humor. It was what kept him going.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: But the thing that with Colonel, and I think that
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: has to be taken into account, and the thing that
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: sets him apart from virtually every other manager you can name.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: He loved his artist. He signed his artist, the greatest,
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: the greatest entertainer, the greatest singer, the greatest visionary that
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: he had ever known. He believed in him one hundred percent,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: and he did everything from the very beginning. And this
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: is I mean, I call one of the early chapters
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: about his association with Elvis, and there's a lot of
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: story before Elvis and Colonel's career with Eddie Arnold mirrors
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: what he did with Elvis almost exactly and made out
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: Eddie Arnold into a superstar such as country music did
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: never saw again until Garth Brooks. But with Elvis, I
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: call the chapter defending Elvis, and he defended Elvis at
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: every turn, and most of all, he defended his artist
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: artistic choices. And no matter who came at him, whether
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: RCA came at him, whether William Barris said, look, the
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: way he's appearing on television is terrible, whether the movies
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: or television or anybody else asked him to change his
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: artist approach or change his approach to promoting his arts,
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: he says, you know, my artist knows what he's doing.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: He knows his business. I stand behind him one hundred percent.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: And that's something I don't think he's ever gotten credit for.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: And yet I think it's incontrovertible if you look at
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: the effects.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, you have all these letters, and some of them
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: are very lengthy. Needless to say, we don't live in
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: the same era now, we live in a text email world.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: But certainly when Elvis is the star, there is the telephone.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Do you find that he would write letters when other
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: people did not, or it was just a different era
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: and everybody wrote letters.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: I think it was a different era, you know. And
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: you mentioned the differences. Short attention span might be the
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: biggest difference of all. I mean, try writing an email
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: that people can will actually read. I mean, I'm told
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: by by kiss you've got to keep your email, show
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: one one topic to the email. But I'm not convinced
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: that even that will work. But no, I mean looking,
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: I mean looking at the correspondence. And I went through
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: thousands and thousands of letters, and they weren't just those letters.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: Everybody wrote letters. The thing that was most entertaining was
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: that everybody that Colonel liked, all of Colonel's pals in
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: a sense, tried to top each other even in the
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: midst of doing business with jokes with you know, just
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: it was a kind of a generation. It was a
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: generation that prized kid in as much as anything else,
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: and you get each of them that in the way.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: Was one of the things that was so wonderful was
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: to see the extent to which they engaged with each other,
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: and engage with each other even in business on a
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: kind of amicable basis, but definitely on a basis to
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: try to get the best deal possible in the Colonel's case,
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: for his.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Artists, when one reads the letters. To use the vernacular,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: the Colonel's kissing a lot of butt. You're so great,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: You're so great. I may not be aware of what's
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: going on, Okay, was his style in general.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't call it kissing, but I think that he
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: is having a He's having a laugh at their expensiveness.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: He's recognizes that nobody is going to take them seriously
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: when he says that, I mean, this is a very
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: very canny person. He's dealing with people, he's dealing with
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: Ivy Lee. I mean, one of one of the things.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: This is a class revolution on both his part and Elvis's.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: When they came to Hollywood, everybody looked at them and
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: they said, oh, look at those roofs, look at those
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: country bumpkins. And he and Elvis proved, you know, all
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: these sophisticated people may have gone to Cornell, might have
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: gone to Kolgi, might have gone to Harvard, might have
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: gone to well wherever, And they proved them wrong. And
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: within within two or three months. And I think one
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: of the great jokes that Elvis and Colonel shared was
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: to look at each other to recognize that Elvis had
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: overcome the doubters with his talent. Colonel had overcome, you know,
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: the doubters with his call it his brilliance, his sophistication
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: while playing the part of the country roup. And they
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: could look He and Elvis could look at each other
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: because they shared a sense of humor and they shared
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: an appreciation, I think for the way the world was
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: and for the way the world looked down upon people
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: of a lower class, I mean, of a lower economic class,
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: And they could look at each other and say, who's
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: the room now. But I know, I think that there
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: is an engagement in the letters occasionally, and they were
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: also there are so many letters in which Colonel just
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: upbraids when he is not writing to a friend and says,
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: how could you do this? How could you release the
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: movie follow That Dream as just another Elvis movie Following
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: a Dream? Actually, I think is one of them better
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: movies that Elvis made after I'm not a big advocate
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: of the movies, but but it was intended as a
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: different kind of comedy, almost an Andy Griffith kind of comedy.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: And when it was released, Colonel wrote to the record,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: to the movie company and studio and said, you know
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: you've released this out this record this. You've released this
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: movie which has its own unique tone in which Elvis
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: gives a good comic performance, and he released it as
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: if it were just another Elvis movie and people are
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: going to flock to it because it's another Elvis movie.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: That's not the way this business works. You have to
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: sell what you're presented, and you had an opportunity here,
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: or you maybe you still have an opportunity here to
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: sell the product which you are putting out, but you're
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: not doing your job. So I would say he was
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: pretty frank where he was really frank and where he
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: was direct and where he was in his dealings with RCA.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: And very soon after the Grand High Pubas at RCA,
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: Bill Bullock and Steve Sholes and well variety people expressed
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: their disapproval and displeasure with the direction that Elvis was
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: taking and Colonel was taking and promoting him. In early
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: fifty six, very soon after that, Elvis's success and Colonel's
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: belief in Elvis completely disproved what the people at RCA were,
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: what the executives RCA were calling for, And he became
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: great friends with someone like Bill Bullock and they exchanged
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: all kinds of all kinds of joky letters, but also
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: letters in which they were negotiating for high stakes. And
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: when Bill Bullock comes to Colonel, for example, I think
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: around nineteen sixty and says, I've had a great idea,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: we should record Elvis with a symphony orchestra. Colonel just says, look,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: that's a terrific idea, but it does a disservice both
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: symphony orchestra into Elvis, and that's a terrible idea, and
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: I don't think you should do it. I mean, he
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: wasn't hesitant about expressing his views, but always expressing his
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: views after first after first consulting with Elvis and determining
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: that these were Elvis's views.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, Also talking about conventional wisdom, which is debunked in
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: your book, A conventional wisdom is that Colonel was not
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: a citizen in the United States, and therefore he didn't
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: want Elvis playing outside the country. You debunked that. But
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: parallel to that in the book is ultimately the family
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: in the Netherlands find out who he is and that
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: he's had success. He keeps them at arm's length.
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: He does.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Do you believe how much was keeping arm's length because
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: he was fear of being exposed. How much was he
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: wanted nothing to do with these people? How much is
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: he he hated the family? How much he feel you know,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: what was really going on there? Why was she really
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: keeping the family at arms with?
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: All? Right, I'm going to say yes to all of
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: the above, because honestly, you've touched on I mean when
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: you say I've debunked, I hope I haven't debunked. I
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: hope I've introduced issues that can continue to be discussed
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: and debated and in which people can make up their
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: own minds by both the facts that I'm presenting and
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: sometimes the theories that I'm presenting. But this was a
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: very different world, and I want to be in terms
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: of citizenship. I want to put forward a few things,
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: but I want to start out by saying something terrible
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: must have happened to Andreas Cornelius one Kirk, the young
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: Colonel Drees was how he was known when he was
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: and I don't know what it was, And Colonel never
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: spoke of what it was. He spoke of his father
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: to his widow. He was a bad, bad man. He
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: said this several times. He loved his mother dearly. What
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: happened and what should have caused such a sense of
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: total dislocation and alienation. I don't know, and Colonel would
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: never address it, and I think that had to play
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: in to the sense. It was he adored his mother,
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: his sisters seemed to adore him, so I can't really
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: say what happened. But to get back to the citizenship question,
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Colonel served in the Army for more than three years
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: the US Army as Tom Parker, a Dutch national. I mean,
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: the name was made up, but he did not masquerade
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: as an American.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: He was.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: He went in as he's listed as a Dutch national.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: He married an American citizen, either one of which would
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: have gotten him American citizenship had he applied. Now, I
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: think not everybody agrees with me that life is full
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: of mysteries and that those mysteries cannot all be plumped.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: I can't, for the life of me, understand why he
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: didn't simply become become an American citizen. There was even
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: at one point around nineteen forty or forty one, amnesty
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: was offered to everybody who would now be called an
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: illegal or whatever, who could become American citizens. He didn't,
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: And when I spoke to LeeAnne about it. She could
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: offer no explanation either other than Colonel didn't ask for favors.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, he was friendly, he was great friends with
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Lyndon Johnson. He could have asked Lindon Johnson to intercede.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: I do understand why he wouldn't do that, because, as
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: you know, Colonel was the kind of person who might
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: say Colonel Parker Grant's favors. He doesn't ask favors. But
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: there's no good explanation for it. But to go back
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: again to the citizenship thing, the artist Will M d'cooney
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: came to America in nineteen twenty six, same year as Colonel,
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: as a stowaway, same as Colonel from Rotterdale. Same as Colonel.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: He did not get his citizenship until nineteen sixty two.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: He went to Venice in nineteen he was worried about
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: but he was worried about what this could mean. But
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty seven, as I understand it from reading
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: his biography, he went to Venice for celebration of his work.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: Obviously he had a passport. You know, not everybody had
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: a birth certificate in those days. Prince, oh God, Prince
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: Mike Romanov a prominent Hollywood restaurateur who claimed, you know,
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: everything he claimed was false, but he claimed my other
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: things to be an air. I think he was a Lithuanian,
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: but Lithuanian Jew, but he claimed to be heir to
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: the Russian throne. He entered this country before either Bill
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: helmdacone nor a colonel. He got his citizenship in the
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: last years of the Eisenhower administration. It didn't I got
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: thrown out of this country several times, but he always
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: came back. It didn't affect his life in any way.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: Colonel was planning a world tour for Elvis up until
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixty. You mentioned his brother coming over here in
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: sixty one. In some way way, I agree with you
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: that that was a traumatic record realization in his part.
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: There's a letter in the book which is the most
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: extraordinarily almost when I say schizophrenic, I don't mean it's
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: mental illness. But it's the most extraordinarily divided letter I've
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: ever seen, in which Colonel writes back to his brother's son,
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: his nephew, whom he didn't know, but writes back and
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: starts out in the third person as if he was
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: some obscure, obscure worker for this man, Colonel Parker, whom
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: he rarely saw. And by the end of the book,
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: it's almost by the end of the letter, which is
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: not that long a letter, it's a confessional and the
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: first person, somehow or that that really spooked to him
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: his brother coming over. There was no more talk of
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: a world tour after that. But what's weird if you
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: want to think about the differences in the world, and
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: we talked about reduced attention span, There's all kinds of
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: things we could talk about that are different the globe, well,
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: you know, network whatever. But everybody in Holland from nineteen
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: sixty one on knew that Colonel Parker was Andreas van Kirk.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Nobody in this country. Nobody, I mean, I'm not saying
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: one or two knew. The only person in this country
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: who knew that Colonel was Dutch was Elvis Presley, because
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: Colonel introduced him to his brother. I find that virtually inexplicable,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: So I'm not going to try to explain it. But
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: in the end, at the time when it was most
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: likely that Elvis would tour, in the seventies, when he
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: had begun making personal appearances again, and when the opportunity
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: seemed to the opportunity did come up, there were offers.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: There were two things about this. One was when I
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: spoke to Brazilla Press when I was writing The Last
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: Trained to Memphis and Caroless Love. She said, you know,
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Elvis was great for working up enthusiasm when he was
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: talking with the guys, the guys who worked for and
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: they were they all wanted to go to Europe. This
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: is in the sixties, and they were so excited about it,
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: and Elvis would be in there saying, man, that would
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: be the greatest thing we could ever do. Let's go
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: to Europe. And she said he would get back behind
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: closed doors. He said, I'm not going to Europe, but
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: I've been to Germany. Why don't I want to go
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: back to Europe? She said he had no win. Now,
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: maybe that's not just as Priscilla said, they didn't know
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: what he said behind the closed does with me. I
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: didn't know what he said behind closed doors with them.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: So maybe maybe that's not true, but that certainly appeared
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: to be the case as far as touring either Europe
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: or Japan in the in the seventies, and that was
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: born out by Tom Hewlett. You mentioned Jerry Weintraub. The
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: person who worked with with with Elvis was not Jerry Wintrub.
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: Who was Tom Hewlett, with whom Jerry Wintrub was partners
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: And he was a person who had pioneered in rock
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: in cross country rock tours with Jimmy Hendrix, with the
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: Creedence clear Water, with Everybody in the sixties, with concerts
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: West and he knew everything and he was the closest
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: per to Colonel. In the latter years he worked as
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: much as a partner. I mean, colonel had no partners.
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: Every people worked for him. Tom Hulett was a virtual
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: partner with him and they did the toys together.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, everywhere the Colonel goes, he makes these friends and
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: he maintains the relationships. You're someone who actually knew the colonel.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: Too many people write books about people they never met.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: You knew the guy. Is this just his personality? He
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: meets you, your best friend, he never forgets I realized
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: kept you personally at arm's length at first, but it
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: was a different situation. But he's in the army in Hawaii,
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: he meets his family, maintains the relationship for decades.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: You know, no, that's I don't want to pretend. I mean,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: you stated it correctly. I'm not pretending to an intimate
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: relationship with Colonel. I would have liked to have had one.
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: I've been friendly with lots of people. I could say, well, eventually,
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: after many years, Sam Phillips and I became true friends.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: I mean not just you know, but I would never
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: boast about something that wasn't true. And with Colonel I
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: loved the relationship I had, but it was not a
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: you know, intimate. But I would say, you can look
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: at Colonel's life and again this runs all through the book.
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: There was something missing in his life. He had left
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: his family behind. We don't know why he had left
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: his family behind. I mean, we don't know why he
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: never went back to it. You know, he stayed in
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: touch with his mother until thirty two or I think
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: thirty nineteen, thirty two or thirty three, and then he
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: was no longer in touch, although he always spoke fondly
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: and lovingly. But I would say he created these families,
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: these extended families which were too substitute for the family
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: he didn't have. And the Cuferrats in Hawaii, he met them,
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: they took him in when he was in the army
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: and in Hawaii station. In Hawaii, he met a man
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: walking a Russian wolf. Found he colonel loved animals. He
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: was drawn to the animal he spoke to. I can't
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: remember what. Carl Koufrath, Papa Koufrath took him home. He
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: became great friends with the youngest son in the family,
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: and also with one of the guys who was married
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: to one of the daughters. Very close friends and with
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: the whole family. He's transferred to the mainland. He's transferred
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: to Fort Barancas. I think in nineteen thirty two he
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: leaves Hawaii. The Kufirats, who saw him virtually every weekend
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: spent he spent almost all of his weekend with him.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: He couldn't have been closer. And they all say, we
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: don't know what's going to happen to our friend Tom,
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: the smartest, one of the smartest young man we've ever met.
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: But he's going to do something wonderful. They didn't here
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: from him again until nineteen fifty seven. He didn't have
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: the wherewithal to be in touch. He brings Elvis to
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: Hawaii in nineteen fifty seven on a bet with one
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: of his protegees, a promoter from Detroit who had taken
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: up residents in Australia, brought rock and Roll to Australia.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: He's a very interesting guy and another member of this
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: extended family of Colonels. The members of Alvin Colonel's extended
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: families didn't necessarily know each other, but anyway, he supposedly
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: he takes Elvis to Hawaii on a bet. It takes
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: him to Hawaiian a bet because he can't bring him
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: to Australia because there wasn't time to fly there. But
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: the real reason they went to Hawaii, I'm convinced, is
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: to make contact with the Cuparrats. And the first call
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: he makes when he gets there is to the Kupfarrass
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: Old number. He finds out that Papa Cufarrat has died.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: He goes the next day and places a lay on
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: his grave. Got a picture of that in the book.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: And he remains in contact with the family until he dies,
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: and they were and they remain friends. I mean, it's
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: a very close relationship and one that means a great
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: deal to him.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: Okay. In the book, there ends up being a tension
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: between the Colonel and the so called Memphis Mafia. Can
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: you tell my listeners about that.
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: Well, this is a direct correlation between Colonel's reputation and
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: that tension, and there's a real reason for the tension.
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: And I don't want to call the so called Memphis
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: Mafi and I try to avoid the term. I mean,
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: but they are the people who the men who worked
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: for Elvis, his closest associates in France. They were all
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: on the payroll. They're all quite different. Many of them
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: were very creative. Someone like Red West, who was a
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: tough guy, was a wonderful songwriter and a very good actor.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Jerry Show is entirely different from others in the group.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're all quite different. But the one thing
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: that and Joe Esposito, Jerry Shelling and Joe Esposito, Alan
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: Fordyce nephew of Justice fortis they all were ultimately became
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: great I don't want to say friends of Colonel's, but
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: they came to admire Colonel a great deal. But Colonel
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: from the very beginning, from the time that Elvis, especially
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: from the time that Elvis came back from Germany, saw
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: these guys around Elvis much as they loved Elvis, much
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: as they were devoted to him, has not fulfilling any function,
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: as not carrying out their jobs. And he wrote a
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: number of very sharp tons letters to Elvis and to
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: them saying, you know it's your business, Elvis, what you
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't have these people working for me because they're
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: not doing their jobs. And if they are going to
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: continue working for you, if I were you, it's up
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: to you. But if I were you, I would have
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: them work for their money because they would then be
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: they would think better of themselves if they did. Vernon
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: Pressley had a less shaded view of them. He just
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: viewed them really as people who were not worth hanging around.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: He really did view them as leeches. So you had
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: these guys who worked for Elvius who were genuinely dedicated
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: to Elvis in most cases in different ways. I mean,
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: George Klein was different from Lamar Fike would really be
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: doing a disservice to them to act as if they
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: all had the same motivations. But Vernon just would just
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: would just as soon have thrown them all out on
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: their ear. And he wrote letters also. I got one
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: letter in the in the book, but he wrote out
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: of letters, so it would It's totally understandable that they
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: should have had a certain resentment up to a point anyway,
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: and sometimes that point was exceeded of Colonel Parker and
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: of Vernon, who didn't think well of them. And in
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: the end, one of the reasons that I think Colonel's
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: reputation has suffered is that so many of these guys,
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: and maybe with the best of motives, have written about Colonel,
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: and sometimes their portrait of Colonel is not a negative,
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: but their portrait of the business dealings which they truly
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: knew nothing about and yet could make observations as any
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: of us can. If we're standing outside the room, we
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: can all guess what's going on inside the room. But
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: that is what has come to characterize Colonel's has come
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: to characterize Colonel to a fire greater extent than one
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: might have wished, and to a fire greater extent than
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: is merited by any of their involvement in the actual business.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: The Colonel breaks through in the carnival circus world then
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: gets into music. Did he care about music at all
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: or he just liked the action?
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: No, I think he loved music. I mean I think
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: in different ways. Instance, his first musical contact was roy
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: A and I think struck What struck him there was
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: the authenticity of the music. I don't think he knew
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: this is way back in nineteen thirty six or so.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: I may have the date run, but thirty six thirty seven,
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: somewhere in there, roy Acuff was the King of the Hillbillies,
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: and roy Acuff asked Colonel to be his manager, to
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: move to Nashville and be his manager, which shows the
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: extent to which Colonel made an impression on him. But
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: I think I don't think Colonel was drawn as much
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: to his music as to the authenticity of the music
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: and the way it reached its audience. What he was
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: drawn to was I think when he started managing Eddie
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: Arnold in nineteen forty four, and in the brief time
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: before then that he knew Eddie Arnold, I think what
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: he saw in Eddie Arnold was a different kind of music.
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: I want to back up one second. Colonel was not
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: on musical I mean, one of the things I have
• 56:04
  Speaker 3: in the book is what the story that Loanne told
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: me that he told her about his career as a
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: prepubescent opera singer. And this is the reason, because the
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: reason is that Colonel's mother, who was a whose whole
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: family were water peddlers. They traversed Holland selling all kinds
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: of things. Well, colonel's mother's one of Colonel's mother's sisters
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: was an opera singer who lived abroad, but she would
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: come back to Holland and Colonel and his mother and
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: maybe other members of the family would go to see
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: the operas. Colonel learned all the arias and as a
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: very young kid eight nine, ten would go out on
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: this lake where all the rich people lived outside of
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: Breda and seeing the arias, and they would come out
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: on as he told the table, they'd come out on
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: their porches and bravo, bravo, and maybe they would flaming,
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: you know, two coins at him. And he loved operating
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: the end of his life. But with ed Arnold, I
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: think he found an artist quite similar to Elvis, who
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: reached people with what was then called heart music, reached
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: them with a kind of music that truly touched them.
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: And I think Colonel was drawn to that music and
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: saw it. It wasn't It's not like you know, everybody
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: would want Elvis's manager should be a rock and roll fan. Well,
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: not even Elvis. Elvis was an everything music fan. He
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: loved every kind of music. Colonel definitely, it wasn't like
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: he was a rock and roll you know, impassioned rock
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: and roll fan. But first with Ddy Arnold, with Elvis,
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: he saw artists who had a vision that carried them
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: beyond the common heard, and also with a vision that
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: enabled them even if they couldn't articulate it, and I
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: don't think Elvis could at the beginning. But even if
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: they couldn't articulate, was going to carry them and allow
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: them to grow almost day by day. In Elvis's case,
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: from the time Colonel first met him, when he was funny,
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: just grow and develop and create something that had never
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: been created before. That's what I think he was drawn to.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: He was drawn to the wonderful world of show business,
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: and he to him, Elvis was the pinnacle of the
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: wonderful world of show business.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, this, of course is a theoretical question, but you
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: set it up in the book that Elvis is on
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: sun but he's on low rent tours. He's not always
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: performing in a way that's endearing himself to the local
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: authorities in the audience. What would have happened to Elvis
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: if he never met Colonel Tom Parker.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: Well, the story of Elvis is the story of the
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: confluence of three of the most extraordinary people I ever.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: I didn't know Elvias sciety, I don't want, but three
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: of the most extraordinary people I've ever encountered or known about.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: The idea that Elvis should first be taken up by
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: Sam Phillips, and the Sam Phillips, who was a person
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: of the most extraordinary vision, should have let's reverse it
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: should have been taken up by Elvis sort of seen
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: in Elvis someone a talent that he had never envisioned before.
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: And then for Colonel Parker, a person of a completely
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: different type of personality and vision, but with an equal
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: There were no true people in the world who believed
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: in Elvis more than Sam Phillips and the Colonel Parker,
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: however little they may have had in common, and however
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: little they may have liked each other. But I don't
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: know what would have happened. I mean, Sam Phillips as
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: little as he liked Colonel until Colonel until they actually
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: finally sat down at Colonel's eightieth birthday, which was just
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: an amazing private event. I mean, not the birthday party.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: But the dialogue which I just happened to, I was
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: trying to leave, and I happened to over here or
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: listen to. But but Sam Phillips always and all the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: time that I knew that nobody could have carried Elvis
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: to the heights that Elvis wanted to achieve. Elvis did
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: not want it. He wanted to be a movie star.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: He wanted to be a movie star like James Dean
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: and Marilon Brendo. He wanted the world to know him,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: which is similar to the ambition of another person that
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: I wrote about extensively, Sam Cook. He wanted to be
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: accepted and loved by everyone. Sam Phillips, first of all,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: would have gone bankrupt if he hadn't sold Elvis' contract.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: Second of all, was not equipped, as he himself said,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: to promote Elvis. And even if he happened and equipped
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: to hisself, that wasn't what he wanted to do. And
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: he saw in Colonel Parker someone who, as I say
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: at the beginning, he loathed. He saw one of the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: few people in the world who could have taken Elvis
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: to the heights to which Elvis aspired, not the artistic heights,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: Colonel had nothing to do with Elvis's music, nothing to
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: do with his artistry, and I think Sam Phillips was
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: well of that. But you know, again, Sam Phillips did
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: not believe in coincidence. I don't know what I believe in.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: Colonel believes in the wonderful world of show business. I'm
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: not prepared to state my beliefs, but I've got to
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: say it's an amazing thing that the three of them
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: should have interacted in that way, and that it should
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: have resulted in such extraordinary achievements by all three of them.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, to get the contract to RCAA. Actually it's the
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: Colonel who makes the deal, and it seems like an
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: incredibly small amount of money that RCAA balks at and
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: ultimately pays. What happened to Seam financially after that? Did
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: he blow the money or did he manage to live
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: on that money for the rest of his life?
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: Neither one. I mean, Sam had enormous ambitions of his own. Again,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: I've never met anyone who's more of a musical visionary
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: than Sam Phillips. He did not want to be a
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: one artist label. Well, he couldn't have been. He was
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: literally on the verge of losing his company because his
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: brother Judd owned something like fifty percent, was about to
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: turn it over to the bank. He was out of money.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: He was out of luck. With the thirty five thousand
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: dollars that RCA paid for Elvis's contract, Sam was finally
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: able to get his label, Son, this tiny little label.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: He was like Colonel. He was a one man operation.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, the two of them, it's an amazing parallel story.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: Is as unlike each other as they were. But Sam
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: was finally able to get his label, tiny little label.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: Son was one man operation on point and with the
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: first record that he made, the first record that he
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: released after selling Elvis' contract was Kyle Bracon's Blue Sweede Shoes,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: which was a bigger hit at least from the start
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: in Elvis's first record for Urica Heartbreak Hotel and which
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: went to the up with the country R and B
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: and pop charts. That was the beginning and from that
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: point on, Sam had the money to operate his to
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: operate his label. He had. I think Johnny Cash was
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: then next person to come in, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: h Kyle Prikins was the first person. Johnny Cash and
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: the others Charlie Rich and he operated one of the
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: most extraordinary labels, one of the most extraordinary musical presentations
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: that the world has ever seen. And before Elvis, he
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: had done the same thing with blues and rhythm and blues. So,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's an amazing story there too, But that's
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: not our story today.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Okay. Vernon is writing letters and constantly telling the colonel
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: that Elvis is spending more than he's making. The press
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: are portrayed a Hillbillies. It's one thing to be the
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: conveyor of the message, Hey, we're in the red. We're
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: in the red. Was Vernon Street smart to me, have
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: any level of sophistication or was he just flipping out
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: that Elvis was spending more than he was earning.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: Well, you're really you're understating the case. Elvis was making
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: millions of dollars and he was spending millions of dollars more.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: And Vernon was very similar, I think to his son.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: He actually had a singing voice, very much like his sons,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: and he I think he had a dry sense of humor.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: He didn't have the talent that Elvis had, But no,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't I wouldn't call them hillbillies. They were people
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: of limited education, like so many of the people I've
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: written about, like virtually all of the people I've written about,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: but with you know, with extraordinary innate intelligence. I mean,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: the thing with Vernon was he loved his son. He
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: did everything he could to protect his son. One of
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: the most heartbreaking scenes that I've ever or encountered, or
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: ever had to write was Vernon's reaction on Elvis's death
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy seven. But nobody, absolutely nobody, I mean
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: I could start up, but nobody could control Elvis's spend it.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: And everybody knows the story about Elvis going to Washington
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: to get his BMDD batch, you know, his narcotics batch,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: but not everybody knows what started that. And what started
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: it was Vernon and Priscilla trying to tell Elvis that
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: he had this is in nineteen seventy that he had
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: to limit his spending. Elvis stormed out of the house.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: Because nobody told Elvis that he had to limit his spending,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: he stormed out his house. He flew first to La
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: got the idea. I think maybe he flew on the
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: same plane with George Murphy I'm not sure about that.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: But turned around, came back, had a girlfriend to see,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: Joyce Bovn in Washington, d C. Someone he was very
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: close to. But he also was going to get that badge.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: But it all started with someone telling him that he
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: had to control the spend and nobody threw out Elvis's
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: life was able to do that. But it's not because
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: Elvis was definitely not a hillbilly and neither one. I mean,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: I just wouldn't talk. I mean, that's not it was
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: not limitations of common sense, it wasn't limitations of vision.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: But Elvis's Elvis was a very generous person towards others,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: and he was very generous towards himself. And he just
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: and he had zero interest in saving money making money.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: Look at how he had at the beginning of his career.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: Colonel set up a savings account for Elvis in the
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: bank in Madison where he lived, and the president of
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: the bank of the vice president wrote Elvis about what
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: a lucky young man he was to have such a
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: wonderful manager, Colonel. Colonel deposited twelve hundred dollars of what
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: appears to have been his own money. Although I wouldn't
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: bet on that. But that's that's that's what that's what
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: it said Elvis. Colonel also wrote letters to Vernon Elvis
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: we're talking about back at the beginning in fifty six,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: about saving money, conserving money, conserving their assets. Recognizing that
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: as much money as Elvis made, the government was going
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: to demand a huge share of it, they should buy
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: savings bunds. He set it up for Elvis, maybe for
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: RCA to purchase savings bunds for Elvis. In any case,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: there was this money in the bank, the twelve hundred
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: dollars the Colonel set up in Madison, there were the
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: savings buns. Within weeks, maybe months, Elvis had cashed it
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: all in. There was no savings account, there were no
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: you know, there were no there were no savings bonds.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: That was all gone. And this was at the very beginning.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: And again it's not because Elvis was stupid. It's not
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: because it's that's Elvis did what he wanted to do,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: and he had the ultimate belief that whatever he did,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: his talent was going to be able to save the day.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: And Colonel had the ultimate belief that whatever he did,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: his brains, his intelligence, resourcefulness, would be able to save
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: the day. And they were both right.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: Okay when you met earlier. But which is made repeatedly
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: in the book is that the Colonel left absolutely everything
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: creative musically to Elvis. Subsequent to the Elvis generation, we
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: have the Beatles and the people who come after them,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: who write all their own songs and seem to be
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: very in control of their musical careers. That is not
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: the image of the Elvis. So what was really going on?
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: You know, the Colonel was hands off, and he would
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: defend Elvis, but it was Elvis really good at picking material,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: getting the songs right, et cetera.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: He was great at it was fantastic. I mean, he
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: was an autodidact who probably knew more about music and
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: more about different kinds of music than any PhD in
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: ethno musicology you could run into. I mean, you have
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: only to look at the hound Dog Don't be Cruel
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: session on July second, I think nineteen fifty six, where
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: Elvis for the first time becomes his own producer and
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: for the rest of his life, with one exception, will
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: be his own producer. And you look at him. He
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: still had Steve Sholz, the RCA executive as the an
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 3: R man. What Steve Sholz was reduced to. And I'm
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: not knocking Steve Shulz. I mean Steve Sholz had been
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: a great an R man for Eddie Arnold and for
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: Hank Snow and was a friend of Colonel's prior to this.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: But Steve Sholz was reduced from this point on to
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: essentially being a timekeeper, announcing the takes, keeping the records
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: of what was going on. But what Elvis did, for example,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: with hound Dog, which was a song initially he didn't
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: want to record it was the showstopper on his live show,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: and he wasn't convinced they could get that same energy
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: or just explosive in the studio. And one of the
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: people who encouraged him to do it was Colonel and
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: other I mean not to tell him you should do this,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 3: but to encourage him to believe that it was something possible.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: Scotty Moore was another. But Elvis went to and I'm
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: not going to remember thirty two takes thirty five takes
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: way past the point that Steve Schulz was ready to
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 3: call it a day. Early on, Steve Schulz was ready
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: to call it a day because he didn't say, then
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: get it. Let's say after the eighth take or something.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: But on the twenty eighth take, Steve Shows is saying Okay,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: we've got it, and Elvis saying, no, we're going to
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: do more. Then he goes on to a court. Don't
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: be cruel. This is one of the great greatest sessions
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: just in terms of the share, success and output of it.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: But this was true of all of Elvis's sessions. The
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: sense of perfectionism, the sense of everybody I'm speaking now
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: against myself as a kid, I mean myself as a kid,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: would just be horrified by what I'm about to say.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: But the recordings that Elvis made after he got out
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: of the army, starting with the Elvis' Back Sessions, which
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: is just such a great album, but the recordings he
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: made in sixty sixty one, sixty two, sixty three are
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 3: some of the most extraordinary recordings he ever made. And
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: they're all the product of his vision of himself as
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: something entirely different from what the world sees. And it
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: includes Sure, it includes some great rock I mean Little
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: Sister or all kinds of you know, songs that rock,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: but it includes some of the most beautiful ballads you'll
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: ever hear, because Elvis saw himself as that too. And also,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: and maybe this is another parallel with Colonel. He was
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: drawn to Italian Aria or something like Italian area, and
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: so he's recording, you know, it's now or never songs
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: like that because they were his ambition. So yeah, I
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: mean Elvis was the thing that if you want to
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: compare him with the Beatles, say or Bob Dylan for
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: that matter, I mean what they brought to it was
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: they wrote all their own songs. Elvis wrote one song
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: in his life about about his mother, It's a Beautiful Sign.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: But and he may have only contributed the title, but
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: he took credit for that. But but but but as
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: far as the business hand of it, the Beatles were
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: and like the Rolling Stones, we're in a complete fountain.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: What do we what do you call it? They were
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: completely lost in terms of the business, Brian Epstein, as
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: you said, you know, it was not somebody who was
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: in command of the business. And Elvis, through Colonel, was
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: far far more in control of his business and of
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: his ability to force the record company to do whatever
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: he wanted, whatever he wanted to do then than any
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: than any artists for many years.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, it becomes clearer that Elvis is going in the
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: wrong direction with drugs, food, et cetera. But a tour
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: is booked and the Colonel is in the northeast promoting
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: that advance to the dates and Elvis dies. If one
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: reads the book and the letters, it appears relatively cold
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: that I'm talking about. On one hand, you have the
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: colonel saying, I'm the manager, this is my job. We
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: put one foot in front of another. On another level,
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: it's very dispassionate. So I have two questions. What were
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: Colonel Tom Parker's real emotions at that point? And did
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: he really foresee this was going to happen or was
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: he shocked?
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: I got so many yes and no answers. You know,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 3: so this will be another one. But no, he was devastated.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: He was absolutely devastated. And the picture that I've drawn,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: and I hope it comes across, but I try to
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: state things not in extreme ways, not in over the
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: top ways, but you know, in flat description he was
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: in shock when he was in Portland and got the
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: news from Joe Esposito and then from Vernon, and the
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: shot carried through. I would say for I don't think
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: he was ever the same, ever the same after that.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, Elvis was the person that he apart from
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: his wife, I don't know who, you know, Elvis was
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: the person that he loved the most. Elvis was you
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: could say he was like a son, he was like
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: a brother. It doesn't matter he was, he was. He
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: was absolutely from the time he first met Elvis, immediately
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: it was it was like he was just totally captured
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: by Elvis as well as a person. He was Elvis
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: was a kid, but as a person, as an as
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: an artist. But once the new he got the news,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: he was behaved almost as an automaton. And he held
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: a meeting of all the people who were in Portland.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: He said, we must uh. Nobody wanted to be this dinner.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: They had this dinner that he called. But he said,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: we have to carry on. We're still working for Elvis.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: We are you know, we can't shed a tear. We
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: have to carry out the business because we're still carrying
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: out the business for Elvis. We want him to be
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: proud of us. But it carried through, I mean to
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: the point where as they flew to Memphis and Colonel's wife,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: Leanne was horrified by this. Everybody who's crying, and Colonel says,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: stop your tears. We're representing Elvis. And when they got
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: to Memphis, he told them, we will dress as we
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: dressed when we were working for Elvis. Nobody will wear
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: a suit and type because we never He never saw
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: us like this, and we're going to do now. This
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: can be vastly misunderstood and you and it's easy to
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: take a negative view of it. But I don't think
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: he went Colonel went from from Memphis too directly to Tampa.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: He hold up with another one of these families that
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: you mentioned, the Renaldy family who had the Reality printing.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: The father the it's the grandfather by now, who started
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: in Aldi printing, had been the first person to sort
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: of take give him advice in business. He gave him
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: when he could. He had no business of that. When
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: he met them in thirty five thirty six. He gave
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: them all the business, all the Elvis business forever after.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: But he holed up with them. He could speak with
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 3: virtually no one, and he did everything he could to
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: protect Elvis in the sense that he set up the
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: deal with Factors Factors, Inc. I think that he felt
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: would protect Elvis's name and image and the ability to merchandise,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: which would be the only thing or the principal thing
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: that would bring income to Lisa Marie. So no, I
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: think that he was He was absolutely devastating, but he
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: did not behave like other people.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, you came up when Elvis was the star. Did
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: you always have a fascination and want to write about Elvis?
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: Or it's like, well I wrote about this person, I go, well,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: next we have eld this.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: No, No, not at all, neither one. It's just no.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: I what you know, as I always wanted to be
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: a writer. I mean that has been my motivation from
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 3: the beginning. I've written ten novels. I've got a collection
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: of short stories coming out next a year from now,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: which is that's what I started out with when I
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: was twenty. The first book I published when I was
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: twenty was a collection of short stories, and I published
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: the second when I was twenty three. Fell I fell
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: into the blues when I was fifteen or sixteen. I
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: had never heard anything like this. I can't describe what
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: it was that captivated me, but it just totally, it
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: just totally turned me around. And aside from baseball. That
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: was the only thing that I was, you know, that
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: I was drawn to, and it was just what happened though,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: and when I had the opportunity. This is when I'm
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: fifteen or sixteen. A few years later, the underground press
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: started up. I knew this kid who started a magazine
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: called Crawdaddy, which preceded Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone started up
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: after that, the Boston Phoenix and Boston after Dark. They
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: were essentially the same thing. And I knew some people
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: in different ways, and I got an opportunity. A couple
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: of people said to me, well, how would you like
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 3: to write about it? Maybe they might have said, how
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: would you like to write about Cream? I said no,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: but I'd like to write about Skip James. I'd like
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: to write about Muddy Waters. I'd like to write about
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: Lightning Hopkins. I'd like to write about Howland Wolf. There
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: was no money in it, there was no This was
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: not a career. This was nothing other than pure love.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: And it was the opportunity to put those names down
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: in print. You just didn't see those names in print
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: at that time. And to put those names down on paper,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: see them in print, and tell people about this music.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: I thought it was so great. It was absolutely thrilling
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: to me now to get back to Elvis when he
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: was in the Army in nineteen sixty because Colonel had
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: limited the number of things, the number of songs that
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: could be kept in not the catalog, but I mean,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: there was no overage and Konnel was not going to
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: have ourcas issue record after record. They and they put
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: out an album called A Date with Elvis in nineteen
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: six I think in fifteen nine or sixty, maybe it
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: was fifty nine. This is after I had discovered the blues.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: On that record, On that album Date with Elvis, there
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: were a number of the Sun sides. I'd never heard
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: the blues sides, Mystery Train, that's all right, maybe good
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: Rocket tonight. I had heard the originals of all these
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: at that time I hear Elvis's versions, I said, oh
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 3: my god, he's a blues singer. He's a great blue singer.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 3: Not a great blue singer who was going to take
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: the place for me of little Junior Parker who originated
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: a Mystery Train, or after Crudup originated. It wasn't that
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: Elvis was taking their place. He was taking the place,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: taking a place beside them. For me, that's what motivated
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: me to write about Elvis, and it was the first
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: I wrote about Elvis in nineteen sixty seven was when
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: he put out three essentially blues singles in a row,
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: and I wrote the thing, he's coming back, He's coming
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: back to his first love. You know, he's rediscovering his
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: love of the blues, his roots music, and that's what
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: I wrote with I then reviewed the sixty eight specials
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: sort of along the same lines. I was very myopic.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: I told you that my younger self would really reject
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: some of the things I'm saying today. You know, for
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: me at that early stage, you know, I would think
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: every time Elvis sigen as On that wasn't a blues
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: I would think, always selling out. I didn't recognize the
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: full scope of his ambition or his talents. But what
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: drew me to Elvis was the blues. And then Elvis
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 3: educated me to a lot more.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you grow up where.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: Grew up in Brookline, Mass.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: Brookline, Mass. What did your appearance do for a living?
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: There was an oral and Maxillo facial surgeon.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, so how many kids in the family?
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: My family three?
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, what happened to your two siblings. What did their
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: lives turn out to be?
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: They turned out to be great people, you know they
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: I mean my family. I wrote quite a bit about
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: my family in my last book, Looking to Get Lost.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: It's as close I had my father, my two grandfathers,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: something about other members of the family in a book
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: that was primarily a book of profiles of Johnny cash
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: Merle Haggard, Howland Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, it also includes
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: profiles of people in my family. And all of them,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: you know, just each of them went his or her
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 3: own way. My mother went back to school, got her
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: master's and social work, went to work and Grove Hall
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 3: in Roxbury and found them as satisfying, you know, work
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: of her life in that. My father just you have
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 3: to read about it, but he was just a very
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: very admirable person. And my brother and sister. My brother
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: became an out an outside an outside solo jazz saxophonist,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 3: traveled around quite a bit, now runs a performance space
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: in Albuquerque which has been an incredible service to the community.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: My sister was a teacher and a counselor who you know,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: was equally notable. So I mean, I mean, none of
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: us are perfect. But they were all great.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: They are. Okay, there's a couple of things. I'll get there.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: So you go to Boston University.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: I went to, I went, I went to I went
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 3: to Columbia first.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: Then maybe I'm wrong. You went to Columbia undergrad.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: I hated Columbia.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: You went to Columbia undergrad and then you went to
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: be You for graduate school.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: No, no, you, you weren't wrong. I went to Columbia
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: for a year and a half, hated it, dropped out
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: for two years. Then I went to Boston University. Okay,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: I'm sure you're right.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: What did you hate about Columbia and what did you
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: do for those two years? This was an era when
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: people didn't take time off from college.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: I felt that it was Columbia was a very closed off,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: prejudiced kind of self granddas, you know, I'm talking about
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: the students there, and also the whole thing about you're
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: going to learn enough so you can go to the
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: cocktail of life and you can talk about any subject
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: on a superficial level. This was a great books program.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: So I but you know, I was you know, I
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 3: tell I tell my granddaughters, I say, you know, I
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: was just a little asshole. I mean, yeah, I so
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: don't take me seriously. I but I but I believed
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: myself so but I I it was a very the
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: community that I saw there was a very I felt,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: a very self serving self whatever you call proud.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: Of itself, self satisfy.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, self satisfied community. I mean. And I had some
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: friends there, but it just wasn't where I wanted to be.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: But I'd say that says more about me than it
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: does about any than it does about the school.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: So what did you do for those two years? And
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: then how did you decide to go to be you?
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: I went to bu because it was convenient and because
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 3: I finally I realized the advantage there would be to
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: get in a degree staying out of the draft. You know,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: there were there were many aspects to it. But for
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: the two years I worked for the Paperback Booksmith, mainly
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: bookstore which was modeled on the Eighth Street Bookstore in
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: New York, run by a guy named Marshall Smith who
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: had been something like a stockbroker and then had a
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 3: vision of paperbacks were the wave of the future and
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 3: started a chain of stores in the Boston near He
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: called the Paperback booksmith, and I worked most of them,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: and eventually I ended up driving as a kind of
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: delivery driving the delivery trucked around to the various and
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 3: I loved it. It was just great. And I love the
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: people who worked there. And everybody was a dropout in
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: one way or another, and everybody had a dream, and everybody,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: you know, had imagination, and they were not self satisfied.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: And how'd you get out of the draft?
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: Well, I never I actually never got classified. I went
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 3: back to school. I was two s I was married,
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: so that was the second thing. And then just as
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: they were started drafting married people, Alexander got pregnant, and
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 3: so then I was a father. So all in all,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: I was just lucky. I don't know what I would
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: my grandfather. My grandfather taught English at the Boston Latin School.
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: He was prepared, I mean spoke seriously. I don't know
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: if whatever would have happened. He was going to buy
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: land in Canada and we could all go up there.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: So he was very approving of me. I mean, he
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: was just he was a great grandfather, and both grandfathers
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: were but he and he but what was best of all,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 3: even the only thing he disapproved of was my arm.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: He was a great athlete himself. He was a three
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: sport athlete in college and a terrific baseball player. And
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: you know, he thought I was a good hitter. I
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: was a good fielder, you know, but I just didn't
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: have much of an arm. I played the outfield, he said.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: I said to him. I said, well, I've got a
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: quick release. He says, yeah, you got to work on
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: the iron though. Other than that, though, he approved of
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: everything I did, and he was talking about buying land
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: in Canada so we could all go up there if
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: I got drafted. But it never came to that.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: Of the three kids, where are you in the hierarchy.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: You should be able to guess you're the.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: Old obviously, right, Well I could tell that, but whatever, Okay,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: so you go back to college. Where in this story
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: do you want to be a writer.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 3: From the time I was probably you know, eight or
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: ten years old, I always wanted to be a writer.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 3: I wanted to be a writer and a baseball player.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: Those were my two ambitions. And I wrote and I'll
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: tell you that when I was fifteen, that you know,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: seminal year. Maybe I don't know if that happened at
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 3: exactly the same time I discovered The Blues. But I
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: also read the interview with Ernest Hemingway in the Paris
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: Review where he talked about his I think George Plumpton nos.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: Was it Terry Southern? No. George Plumpton conducted the interview
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: and Hemingway spoke about his writing habits, and the thing was,
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: no matter what you do the night before, and no
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: matter what you plan to do with the rest of
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: your day, you write every day, and you try to
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: write a certain number of and not a specific number,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: but you and you don't stop until you you're If
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 3: you're not satisfied with what you produced, at least you're
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: satisfied you put in the effort. And I started that
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: when I was fifteen, and I continued to this day.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: I mean to a degree. I mean, my life, life
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: has gotten more complicated, but it's in essence, it's the
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: same thing. And so all the time that I was
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: in school, all the time that I was working at
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: the book smith, you know, if work started at if
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: classes started at eight o'clock, if work started at nine o'clock,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: I'd get up at five and I would write for
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: an hour and a half before I went to work
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: before and you know, it wasn't that I was. What
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: I was writing was so great, And in many cases
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 3: it was really painful because I would say, Okay, if
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: he mary Way can do it. I'm not saying I've
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: got the talent of him anyway, but at least I
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: can put in the effort. And I would, so I
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 3: would just force myself to I remember being at Columbia,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: just force myself to write five hundred words, some seven
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: hundred words, and it just words that I might hate.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: Sometimes it was good. Then I'd go out to Tom's,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: which is the place where they filmed so much of Seinfelder.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: If they didn't film it, they they recreated it. And
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: I would have French tows at times and go to class.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: But I mean, to me, it didn't matter if I
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 3: came in at two in the morning, I was going
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 3: to get up to write. And you know this sounds
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 3: talk about self satisfied. You know this sounds like, oh man,
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: I was so great. I mean, I'm not saying that
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: I just but but I was determined to be a writer.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: And that's why, you know, when this guy in Cambridge,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: Larry Stark, decided that Cambridge in the sixties was just
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: like Paris in the twenties, and said, I'm going to
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: start my own press, and you called it the Larry
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: Stark Press. Not surprisingly, the first book he published was
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: a book of my short stories, and I think it
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: was if it didn't come out the day I turned twenty,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: It came out just ye. It was supposed to come
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: up before that, but came on when I it was
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: just twenty, and you know it was cool.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: Okay, So you wanted to write fiction. Okay, you're writing
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: these reviews and stories about blues musicians because you have
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: a passion. You get out of school, what is the
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: direction you take and how do you pay the bills?
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: Everything I did was for the writing, to support the writing.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: You know that sounds like a an idealistic or maybe
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 3: it sounds like a really selfish thing. I mean, you
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: have to support your family, and you have to and
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: the secondary thing is you had to support the writing.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 3: So everything I did as it happened. I fell into
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 3: a job teaching classics at Boston University for seven years
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: because it was a great guy named Charlie buy who
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: ran the classics department, which is probably the most creative
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 3: department at Boston University, and a woman who was to
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: teach first year of Greek pregnant, I don't remember. She
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: didn't show up, and he asked me if I would
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: do it, and then I talked of for the next
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 3: seven years, or I talked for the next seven years,
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: a couple of years full time, but all of it
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: was designed to support the writing, support the family, and
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: support the writing. And he almost he almost. At the
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: same time, my grandfather, who taught English Boston Latin School
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: and to whom I was so close, ran a summer
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: camp on Lake Winnipesaki, and he was kind of guy.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: He was like Colonel Parker. He didn't ask anybody's help.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: He did everything himself. And he was still running the
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: camp himself, about two hundred and fifty campers in nineteen
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: seventy when he was seventy eight years old, and it's
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: still very vigorous, and still took his cuts once in
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: a while to play. The council would throw to him.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: Was just be scared to death that he was going
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: to hit him. But he would call. He would call
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: his fields, you know, he would still call his fields
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: right fields, centerfield where he was.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: Going to hit.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 3: But in seventy he asked me in the middle of
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: camp if I would help him out the next year.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: This was not what I wanted to do. It's not
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: what I intended to do. It was not in my thoughts.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 3: But I would never turn him down, and so I
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: said yes. Within I think within a few days, he
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: had what appeared to be a stroke. It turned out
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: to be a brain tumor. But he and I ended
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: up finishing out the year at camp having no idea.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: Nobody knew how camp ran. I learned quickly and I
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 3: was like working a forty eight hour day. And then
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 3: I kept camp going over the winter because it looked
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: like he was going to get better, he was improving
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 3: from what appeared to be the stroke. And then he
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: didn't get better, he got worse. And I carried on
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: and I ran the camp the twenty two years, and
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: again it was a wonderful thing, an incredibly rewarding experience,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: but also something that was very very it was it
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: was no selling. It was all word of mouth. I mean,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: I wasn't going to go out and you know, go
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: out and sell the camp.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: I was going to write and but the camp sustained itself.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: It remained a wonderful experience. It was a very rewarding experience.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: It was probably the best thing in the world I
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 3: could ever have done in terms of writing, because it
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: took me out of myself. It took me out of
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: my If I had an ivory it wasn't so much
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 3: an ivory tower. It's my own head, you know. And
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 3: I had to deal with all these different people, all
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 3: these different problems, all these different you know, and it
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: was so it was great. And I ran it for
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: twenty two years, and you know, so it was it was.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: It was a terrific experience.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 2: So what happened after twenty two.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: Years we sort of reached the end of the line.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, the last few years I think were the
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 3: best years of camp. But I've felt like I was
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: just repeating myself that I didn't want to do that
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: I didn't. I mean, I think that's unfair both to yourself.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: It's unfair of the job, it's unfair of the people
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 3: who are dependent on you. And I reached a point
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: where I and also I was working on the Elvis biography,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: the writing was becoming more and more demanding, involving you know, it,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: and so I tried to find someone to take it over.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 3: I mean I tried and and and didn't and so
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: we so we ended up I ended up closing camp.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: And two years later we were able to sell it.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: Is it still a camp or just you sold as
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: a piece of property.
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 3: I didn't sell it as a piece of property. I
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: sold it to a nature conservancy thing that said they
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: would never let it be sold as a piece of property,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 3: and then sold it as a piece of property. Okay,
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 3: you know, you do you do the best you can.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 3: And as Sam Phillips said and Colonel said, you never
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 3: looked back, because what's the point. You did the best
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: you could. You looked into every aspect and you know,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 3: and that was it.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, subsequent to your twenty two years of camp? Did
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: you ever have a so called day job after that?
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, my life has been a series of
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: somewhat of a series of fortuitous events. And in two
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: thousand and five I was offered a one year appointment
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 3: at Vanderbilt teaching teaching creative writing at Vanderbilt as a
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: I can't think what the title was, and so I
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 3: thought this would be interesting, this to be great. I
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: would never do it for more than one semester. We
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: camp took about three months of the year, maybe four
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: months of the year, but that left me free to
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 3: write eight months of the year. And with Vanderbilt think
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 3: it was a one semester thing. And so I did it.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 3: And I wound up staying there teaching one semester a
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 3: year until twenty sixteen. So I got twelve years out
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 3: of it out of a one year appointment. Was pretty good.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 3: And that was also very rewarding. And you know, and
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: for the most part, during the time that I was teaching,
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 3: it was very difficult to write, but I recognized that
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 3: I was being given the opportunity to support the writing
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 3: through my commitment to this teaching for a period of
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: time that was three and a half months, and the
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: rest of the year I had free So that worked
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 3: out great. It wouldn't have worked out great if I
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 3: hadn't found it, but you know, so rewarding, and I
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: hadn't enjoyed the teaching and enjoy it. I'd say I
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: enjoyed the kids I taught, both undergraduates and MFAs. I'm
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 3: not sure that I enjoyed the faculty aspect. I didn't
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 3: have any faculty aspect. I wasn't interested in it, but
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 3: that would not have been something I would have enjoyed.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: It as a lifelong writer, someone wanted to be a
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: writer as a young age. How do you feel that
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: you're mostly known for your non fiction as opposed to
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: your fiction.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 3: That's a question I ask myself all the time. But
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 3: you know, I've never been asked that on Zoom. I
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: know we're not on Zoom. We're whatever we're on. But I,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 3: you know, I sometimes I think that, you know, maybe
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 3: it just turned out that I was better at the
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: non fiction and the fiction. But say, I've never stopped
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: writing the fiction. I'm working on a novel that I
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 3: broke off at one point while I was writing the
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 3: Elvis biography because it became so all consuming. The biographies
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 3: are just a matter of total immersion. But I've worked
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 3: on it off and on since then, and I'm working
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: on that again now. I've worked on these short stories
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 3: which are coming up next year. If the world doesn't
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 3: come to an end, you know, or I don't come
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: to an end, but some work. I've been working on
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: these short stories over the year, so I never gave
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: up the fiction, but it has occurred to me that
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 3: maybe I was just better. But the other thing, and
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 3: this was really the great revelation to me, was when
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 3: I was working on the Elvis, it suddenly occurred to me,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 3: this really is a novel. This is a novel on
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 3: a grand scale. I mean, it's not that everything is
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 3: nothing is made up, everything is factual, everything is based
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 3: on research. But it's developing. It's a great story with
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 3: great characters on a landscape that maybe I couldn't imagine
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 3: in terms of fiction. I probably couldn't. And so that
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: was all of this was satisfied. Writting about Solomon Burke,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 3: watting about Dick Curlis, writing about Muddy Waters, all of
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 3: those were satisfying, particularly when I started working writing Profiles,
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 3: which was my first couple of books from books of Profiles,
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 3: and they were like short stories in a sense, but
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 3: not in quite the way that the Elvis biography and
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 3: then the Sam Cook and the Sam Phillips were. These
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: they were they were like novels to me, and to me,
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: the whole thing it was all about telling the story,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 3: developing the characters, and always making sure that you moved
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 3: forward and that you didn't introduce either anecdotes or you
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 3: didn't repeat the same thing over and over again. You
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 3: tried to have a sense of development of the How
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 3: did the characters, each character, whether it was Dewey Phillips
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 3: or it was you know, Sam Phillips, or it was
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 3: Sam Cook or J. W. Alexander, how did they develop
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 3: over the course of the time of writing about them,
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: and how does the story proceed. So in a way,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 3: it became very much like writing novels. So I don't know.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's not a very good answer. That's the
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 3: best I've.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: Got, Okay, In terms of other than assemblage of previously
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: written pieces. Prior to the Elvis books, you did one
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: on Robert Johnson, and what else was a book from
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: scratch prior to Elvis.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 3: Well, the first book Feel Like Going Home. Those were
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 3: not previously published pieces. The most recent book, Looking to
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 3: Get Lost, although it's a collection of profiles, two thirds
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 3: of it is new to you know in its form,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 3: Lost Highway probably comes closest to being previously published pieces.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 3: But given that every single piece I've written has come
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 3: out of my personal commitment, I've never written anything on assignment,
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 3: which is not a good way to make a living.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 3: I should say if we have any you know, kids
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: listening out there, any writing students don't do what I did,
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 3: but because you know, it's probably smart to take the
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 3: assignments you've give them, But I didn't. I never did.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 3: Every single story I've ever done has come out of
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 3: personal commitment, So even Lost Highway, which in some ways
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: is as personal as any of the books, although I
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 3: think in that case each of the stories had been
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 3: published elsewhere. It's written as a book with interpolated passages
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 3: and with you know, with the profiles rewritten to fit
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 3: a format and not to include and chosen. I guess
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 3: that's the thing most of all, chosen to represent a
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 3: progression within this book, rather than this be random pieces.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 3: So I none of them were collections per se.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, And you had these ideas you started writing before
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: you had a publishing deal on these books.
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 3: No, the well, yeah, I mean I feel like going
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 3: Home came about. This is a sad story, Is that? Okay?
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: With you?
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 3: I can see you've got a tissue there, so you
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 3: know you're ready for No. I knew this editor who
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 3: was sort of the enfantiable of publishing at the time,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 3: and he had turned down two or three of my novels,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 3: and he told me the next novel you write, which
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 3: I think was called improvised people. He says, I'm positive
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: I'll publishing. He was, he was doing pretty well in publishing,
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 3: and he was the good guy and everything. So I
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 3: sent it to him, and you know, he couldn't. He
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 3: rejected it. He just and maybe he was right. You know,
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to argue with him, but I think
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 3: he felt badly about it because he had promised me
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 3: that he was going to take the next one. So
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 3: and this is this is a whether this is a
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 3: sad story or cynical story. Somebody had come to him,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: let's call it an agent with the idea of doing
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 3: a history of the Blues. Now I know editors never
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 3: do this, publishers never do this. Agents never do this.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 3: But he came to me and he said, look, somebody
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 3: wants to write a history of the Blues. Why don't
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 3: you write a history of the Blues? And I said,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: I don't want to write a history of the books.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 3: And then I proposed I did the book that I wrote,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 3: Feel Like Going Home, which was a progression of profiles
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 3: telling a story that I wanted to tell. So that
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 3: was how I got How I got that, and I
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 3: brought the Last Highway I put together. I wrote it,
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: and I brought it to David Godean, who's the head
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 3: of Godean in seventy nine started publishing house, and who
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 3: are going to publish. David Godean is no longer at Godean,
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 3: but Godan is going to publish the Short Stories, my
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: collection Short Stories next fall.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: Just to be clear, Lost Highway, you wrote it before
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: you made the publishing deal, or you made a deal
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: and then wrote it.
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 3: I had feel like going home, I wrote after I
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 3: made the publishing deal, but it basically was you know.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 3: For instance, I did a story on Muddy Waters, first
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 3: time I ever got on an airplane. I never thought
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 3: I'd get in an airplane in my life, only for
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 3: Muddy Waters, you know, to write that story. So I
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 3: was very excited. But the Last Highway I had in
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 3: my mind to do a book that sort of covered
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 3: the range of American music, country or roots music, the
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 3: music that I loved. And so I was writing stories
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 3: for various periodicals, stories which I initiated. In many cases
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 3: I had to figure out ingenious ways of financing them
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 3: because nobody was going to pay me to go to
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 3: Memphis to write a story on Rufus Thomas or Charlie Feathers,
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 3: let's say. And so I put together on my own,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 3: I put together a sequence, a kind of itinerary in
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 3: which one publication might put up a certain amount of
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: money another and another. But it was all to do
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 3: the work that I wanted to do. And it was
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: all with this aim of what else wanted to do
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: in Las Vegas, bring all the various strands of his
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 3: music together and present them in one thing. And that's
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: what I wanted to do with Last Highway. So having
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 3: written these stories, all of which, as I say, were
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 3: self initiated, whether it was Charlie rich Or as Charlie
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 3: Feathers or howld Wolf or it was, and I put
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 3: them together to otis span Big Joe Turner. And so
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 3: I put them together, rewrote them, wrote them so that
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: they would they could be presented both in a sequence
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 3: and in a way that sort of made them into
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 3: what I thought of as a book. And that's what
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: I brought to God in So it's somewhere in between
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 3: what you said.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: The Robert Johnson book. There was the double CD set
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: around the turn of the decade from the eighties to
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: the nineties. Your Robert Johnson book comes out in eighty nine.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: Certainly people are aware of Robert Johnson, certainly all the
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: English blues musicians. I'm not sophisticated enough to know. Was
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: it your book that really broke it wide open? Were
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: you really pushing the envelope further? Was there something before?
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: What was the experience there?
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 3: I would never claim that kind of credit. I mean
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 3: I was fortunate in the sense the book came out,
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 3: as you said, in eighty nine, the box set came
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 3: out in ninety. The book achieved a certain amount of
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 3: success and reached a niche audience, as we say. But
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 3: then when the box set came out, although Columbia, I
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 3: mean nobody was aware, the publisher was not aware of
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: the box set. In the box that may not have
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 3: been aware of the book, but they got placed together
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 3: in tower. But you know, I wouldn't call it a
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 3: great popular success, but I think it reached a lot
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 3: of people. And the point about the book was that
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 3: one of the things I write about in the book,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 3: which is more like a biographical essay, a personal biographical essay,
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 3: is that there were all these people around the world.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, who discovered Robert Johnson at the same time,
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 3: But they weren't that many, so that Mick Jagger or
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 3: Keith Richards or Eric Clapton and I were all discovering
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 3: the music and equally moved by it and equally passionate
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 3: about it, let's say, in nineteen sixty one, all discovered
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 3: at the same time, and yet Robert Johnson did not
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 3: certainly become a household name in any way. And much
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 3: like the early writing that I had done about Howland
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 3: Wolfer Muddy Waters, the opportunity to write about Robert Johnson
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 3: was a thrill for me. But what it came out
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 3: of was entirely out of going to Texas, going to Houston,
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 3: going to Otaga Street. That's one of the things I
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 3: can remember a few things still to talk to interview
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 3: Mack McCormick, who had done all this incredible research about
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 3: Robert Johnson. This was back in Oh God, I'm gonna
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking it was. Could it have been seventy two.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 3: I'm not getting the right date on this. I just can't. No,
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 3: it's seventy six, I'm sorry, right, it was around Jimmy
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 3: Carter's inauguration. But so I went there because he was
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: in a dispute with Columbia about who owned the photographs
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 3: of Robert Johnson. Columbia was going to put out that
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 3: Blox cent it would have been a series of three
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 3: LPs at the time, and Mack McCormick was disputing their
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 3: right to use the photographs. And in the end the
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 3: Block Center the collection got held up for fourteen years.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 3: But so I interview mac McCormick, who had written a
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 3: book called Biography of Phantom. He'd finished it at that time.
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 3: It didn't come out until two years ago, I guess.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 3: But and he was very generous in the time he
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 3: spent with me, and he told me a great deal,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 3: and he shared some of his research. And I wrote
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 3: an article in Rolling Stone about this great work Mike
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 3: McCormick had done and how his book, Biography of a
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 3: Phantom would be coming out any day. Well, it didn't
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 3: come out, and it didn't come out, and I think
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 3: after five or six years I wrote to him and
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 3: I said, would you mind if I wrote about Robert
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 3: Johnson using some of them beyond the Rolling Stone article,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 3: using some of the material that you spoke to me
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 3: about crediting you for your research, and he said, no, no,
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't mind at all, go right ahead. I mean
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 3: his book, like I say, he had a lot of
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 3: problems with completion. I think he was a really great guy,
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 3: but parts of them maybe weren't that great or whatever.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 3: He had problems and he didn't and so so I wrote,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 3: I wrote this essay and it came out and Living
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 3: Blues I think in eighty two, which again talking about
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 3: making money. There's no money in that. It was it
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: was a great opportunity to get the word out about
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 3: something I was passionate about. And then a guy named
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 3: Toby Byron came along and had the idea of packaging
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 3: it and you know, as the book that stood alone,
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 3: and and I did it with Susan myershes designed all
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 3: my books, and it came out in eighty nine.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: So how did the Elvis Journey begin? Which which which
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: party were you end up writing the first book of
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: the trilogy? How did that come to be?
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 3: It was, well, I'll tell you exactly how. I mean,
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 3: I had retained I'd written about Elvis considerably over the years,
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 3: but always from the outside. I mean, I wrote the
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 3: chapter on Elvis and the Rolling Stone Illustrated History, which
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 3: is the same as the chapter on Elvis in Last Highway.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 3: It's the longest chapter in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History.
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 3: And that had been after I had reviewed from Elvis
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 3: in Memphis, which was such a revolutionary album in Rolling Stone,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 3: and I had written about him in The Phoenix and whatever.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 3: So at a certain point a filmmaker, to a pair
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 3: of filmmakers came to me about writing the script for
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 3: a documentary called Elvis fifty six, which is going to
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 3: be based on al Werthheimer's just incredible photographs. And they
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 3: have formed a partnership or made a deal without work
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 3: time whom I met at that time and saw six
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 3: thousand whatever you come up negative six thousand contacts, you know,
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 3: contact sheats with six represented six thousand negatives, something like that.
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 3: But in the course of writing the script, and I
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 3: dropped out of this after a while because our visions,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 3: our visions clashed. But I mean I wrote a couple
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 3: I wrote a draft of the script, or maybe a
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 3: couple of drafts. But in the course of doing it,
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 3: I got access. And you remember this is in the
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 3: days before the internet. You remember those days before the internet,
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 3: yea and so, and I got access to all the
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 3: interviews that Elvis had done prior in fifty five fifty six,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 3: actually a coupled from sixteen sixty two, but mainly, I
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 3: think mainly fifty five fifty six. And I listened to them.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 3: I'd never heard them before. They weren't available, and I said,
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 3: oh my god, he can speak for himself. And that
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 3: was when I sort of had his vision, which was reinforced.
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 3: I was driving around Memphis with a friend of mine
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 3: named Rose Clayton while I was writing Sweet Soul Music,
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 3: which was another book that was from inception to I
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 3: mean it just it was self generated entirely. But I
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 3: was driving around Memphis with Rose Clayton, who was a
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 3: native of South Memphis, and we drove by the drug
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 3: store where Elvis's cousin Jean had worked. It was all
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 3: boarded up, and she described how Elvis would come in
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 3: to wait for Jean and sit at the counter and
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: his face was sort of all pimply, and he was
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 3: just all he was beautiful, but pimply, but he and
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 3: he was just you know, he would tap his fingers
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 3: on the countertop and stuff. And she said, Rose said,
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 3: poor baby, and that was really that was the thing
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 3: that crystallized everything for me. It was just like Elvis
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 3: poor maybe. And it was right after that that I
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 3: wrote a proposal for the Elvis, which I didn't think
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 3: anybody would take because nobody took Elvis seriously. And it
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 3: turned out I was wrong, and I'm glad.
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: I was. Okay, you've written books previously, you write about Elvis,
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: it becomes a phenomenon, it makes your name. What was
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: it like for you?
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't think you know. It was
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 3: an opportunity. I mean, the point is the next book
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 3: I wrote was Sam Cook, and I didn't have an
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 3: agent at that point. I don't have an agent. I've
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 3: been agenting myself for twenty five years now, but I
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 3: was looking for an agent at that time, and so
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 3: I I wanted to do this book on Sam Cook
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 3: because I had interviewed Sam Cook's business partner J. W.
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 3: Alexander and eighty two and from that moment I knew
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 3: I wanted to do book on Sam Cook. So I
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 3: go around and I met a lot of agents I
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 3: think it was seventeen or eighteen, and they all said
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 3: they wanted to work with me. I mean I didn't
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 3: test the proposition, so maybe they didn't, but they said
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 3: they did. And many of them said, hey, listen, I
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 3: can get you a seven figure advance if you do
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 3: a book on the Rolling Stones, on Bob Dylan, on whatever,
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 3: Eric Clapton, and I said no, no, I'm doing a book
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 3: on Sam Cook. And they all made a face and
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 3: walked away, until finally I ran into someone, David Gurnett,
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 3: who said, what a great idea to do a book
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 3: on Sam Cook. Well, the book on Sam Cook I
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 3: got a third of the advance that I've gotten for Elvis,
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 3: as opposed to the seven figure advance that these guys.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 3: So that's not what I'm in it for. I mean,
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 3: it means as much to me to write about Dick Curlis,
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 3: who's the centerpiece of Looking to Get Lost, my last book,
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 3: as it does to write about Elvis. Not to denigrate
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 3: Elvis in any way, but just because it's Stony Edwards.
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 3: You know, these are people that I care about. Charlie Rich,
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, what did I I met Charlie and Margaret
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 3: an Rich at the Vapors in nineteen seventy out by
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 3: the airport, where they had a tea dance that went on.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 3: They had three acts and they all did about five
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 3: or six sets, and I talked to Charlie and his
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 3: wife Margaret in between sets, and I've never I just
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 3: fell in love with him. I've never liked anybody more.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 3: And the music was great and it was something. And
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 3: I wrote about him and feel like going home, and
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 3: I thought he'll never talk to me again, because he
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 3: had spoken about the guilt that he felt over being
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 3: from a fundamentalist background and also being an alcoholic. And
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 3: he was also a what do you call it, somebody
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 3: who hates crowds. It's a great it's a Latin word. Anyway,
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 3: didn't like to be out among people, which is a
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 3: difficult situation for entertainer. But I write about him like
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 3: this because it was honest. And I wrote about how
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 3: much I loved his music and how much admired him.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 3: But I thought I'll never see him again. I liked
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 3: him so much. Then he ordered thirty I got a
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 3: call from the secretary at the publisher who said, well,
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 3: Charlie Riches called and ordered thirty books. And afterwards he
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 3: said to me, he said, well, it was painful, but
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 3: it was honest, and that's what's important. And I was
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 3: very close to him till till the end of his life.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 3: But these are the things that matter. It doesn't matter
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 3: what people think of you.
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 2: So who deserves a book? Who doesn't have one?
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 3: So many people, so many people. I mean I always
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 3: said that after I'd finished Sam Cooke Sam Phillips biography
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen, and that began with first meeting Sam
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 3: seventy nine. But after I finished that, I said, I'm
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 3: never going to do another biography because it just it
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 3: takes too much out of you. I mean, I've done it,
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: I've been doing it. This is twenty fifteen. I'd started
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 3: the Elvis in eighty eight, so this is now in
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 3: twenty seven years. You know, I figured I've done my time,
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 3: I said, but I will. The only thing that would
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 3: change that. There were two things that would change it.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 3: One was I would have loved to have done a
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: book with Solomon Burke, and he would have loved to
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 3: have done a book with me. But you know, he
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 3: wasn't the kind of guy. If he said I'll fly
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 3: you out to la well, that would be the first
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 3: stumbling book. Never accept an airline ticket from Solomon, because
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 3: you just don't know where that airline ticket has come from.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: But more than that, you don't wait wait, what does
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: that mean? You don't know where the airline ticket has
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: come from?
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 3: Actually, it doesn't mean. What it means is how much
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 3: the cost if it's free?
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, just want to make sure. But I don't
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 2: know whether you were speaking of his financial situation.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, No, no, no, no, not at all. No, It's
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 3: just Solomon was a man. He was a great fabulous
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 3: to a great dreamer. But I never felt that I
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 3: could count on the fact that if I would fly,
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 3: if I was going to fly out to LA, would
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 3: I would fly out under my own I mean, on
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 3: my own money. But but I couldn't be certain that
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 3: you would be in LA. So it's just as much
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 3: as we talked about it, and we talked about it
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 3: a lot. But the other thing was, I said, the
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 3: only thing that would cause me to write another biography
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 3: would be if Merle Haggart called, and if he said,
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 3: you know, Pete, i've been reading some of the stuff
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 3: you've written, and it's not too bad. You know, I
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 3: think maybe we could do something together. And I know
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 3: that I knew that this would have been not a
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 3: disaster would have been very, very difficult to do, and
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 3: yet I would have felt compelled to do it. So
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 3: that's the kind of person that I mean. There's so
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 3: many people that that that you know, deserve a real
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 3: biography or just telling that story, just you know, giving it.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 3: It's not so much that it has to be defined
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 3: into something. I mean, you know, biography is a biography,
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 3: but it could just it could be a book, it
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 3: could be a voice. It couldn't. Solomon's book would have
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 3: been in his voice and it would have been incredible,
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 3: but I couldn't get him to commit to it enough
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 3: to make me believe that it was going to happen.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: Can you name a couple of music biographies that you
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: feel strongly positive about that you didn't write, If there
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 2: are any.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 3: I tell you I don't read much nonfiction, so it's
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 3: I don't. I just read a wonderful book by Paul Birch,
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 3: a musician named Paul Birch, called Ridy and Rising, which
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 3: is a fictional biography of Jimmy Rodgers, and it's it's
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 3: really uh uh in rapturing or it's just it's just
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 3: a wonderful book. I know there are books I'm not
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 3: thinking very We've been talking a long time, and I
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 3: don't want to do an injustice to books.
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: Well, let me shift the gears here. We only had
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 2: a couple of minutes left. But since you're a reader
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: of fiction, what are two of your favorite fiction books?
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 3: Were two of my favorite writers? My favorite writer of
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 3: alved I guess Chekhov would be up near the top,
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 3: But of contemporary writers, Aliceman Rowe was for years and
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 3: years my absolute favorite. And I would tell all the
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 3: classes of the writing classes at Vanderbilt that she would
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 3: never win a Nobel Prize, first because she was a woman,
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 3: and second because she was a Canadian. But of course
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 3: I was wrong. I have not gone back to her,
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 3: to reading her since all these you know, the writing
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 3: about her has come out, and that's not a fair thing.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 3: None of us are perfect, none of us. But it's
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 3: just it's such an awful story, and it's my own failing.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 3: Perhaps I haven't gone, but she Another writer that I've
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 3: read my enormously is Grace Paley, and she's somebody whom
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 3: I knew very slightly, very slightly, but the voice that
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 3: she achieves and the surprises that come from that voice
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 3: and she wrote a fair amount of nonfiction towards the
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 3: end of her life, and also very politically socially committed writing.
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 3: And those were as good as but the little diservances
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 3: a man enormous changes at the last minute. It's just
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 3: fantastic books. There are so many. I really feel terrible
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 3: and I'm not thinking of all these great books.
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, that's good. There's a lot of great stuff.
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 2: Let's wrap it up here. Elvis, Okay, Elvis dies in
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: seventy seven. Certainly, for at least the first decade, all
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 2: the tabloids are He's still alive, He's you know, somewhere whatever.
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 2: They have the eldest character in Honeymoon in Vegas. Still
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: have Elvis impersonators in Vegas. However, the audience that remembers
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: the heyday of Elvis is dying off. And my understanding
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: is that actually Elvis business is off. Memorabilia prices have dropped.
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 2: What is the future of Elvis in Tom Parker in
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 2: the national consciousness, will be a moment in time or
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: is it forever?
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 3: I don't know about merchandising. You'd have to talk to
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 3: Colonel about that. That just doesn't enter into my into
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 3: my consciousness. But you know, I would say that Elvis,
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 3: Colonel Parker, Sam Phillips, Sam Cook there there, they're they're
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 3: in eternity. I mean, they're as long as people care
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 3: about music and or aren't. It doesn't you know, it's
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 3: like talking about writers. I mean they you can go
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 3: in or out of fashion. That really is not Robert
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 3: Johnson took he died in thirty eight. He became an
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 3: international icon in ninety. Look at John Donne, it took
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 3: him three hundred years. Look at her in Melville. It
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 3: just doesn't matter what the state of acceptance of somebody
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 3: is at any given moment. I think that the impact
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 3: of Elvis's voice, let's just talk about Elvis, is the
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 3: same today in his best work as it was when
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 3: he first arrived on the scene in nineteen fifty four,
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 3: nineteen fifty five. It just there's no way to describe
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 3: it exactly. Somebody like Jake Hess, the great lead singer
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 3: for The Statesman, one of Elvis's idols, whom Elvis News
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 3: from the time he was a little kid said about,
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 3: and he's a much technically, he's a virtuosic singer, and
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 3: he's a better singer in many ways than Elvis. But
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 3: he said Elvis had something. It just reached people in
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 3: a way that you simply can't define. And I would
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 3: say that's what you know, Elvis fans today are going
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 3: to have very different tastes. I mean, individuals always are
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 3: going to have different tastes. If I tell you that
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 3: one of my favorite songs is I need Somebody to
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 3: lean on that, it's a sign that just kills me.
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 3: Every time we're trying to get to you. That might
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 3: not be what you know. Maybe somebody else is going
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 3: to tell you it's burning love. But there is that
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 3: direct impact, emotional conveyance that existed in Elvis's voice from
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 3: the start, long before he developed his voice. I mean
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 3: just from the start, and say, I think Sam Cook
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 3: there are very few people who have that. I mean
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 3: Sam Cook had it, whereas somebody like Johnny Taylor, who
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 3: sounded just like Sam Cook didn't. And I think that's
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 3: what continues to make the impact. And I just think
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 3: art exists, you know, whether it's music or writing or
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 3: theater or film, it exists in a realm outside of
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 3: time if it's good enough, and the sales just don't
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 3: anything to do whether it's continuing relevance.
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 2: We've been talking to Peter Geroalnick his new book about
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: Colonel Tom Parker. I have to say, generally speaking, to
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 2: be a little bit extreme, but not much. I have
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: no interest in Elvis because if you're a person of
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: the Beatles of my age Boomer, Elvis was the enemy.
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 2: Elvis was already you know in Hollywood, the Beatles come along, etc.
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 2: Then of course we do get suspicious minds in the ghetto,
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: which are good Top forty tracks. Then we have Elvis
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 2: in Vegas. So ay, I went to Memphis, which is
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 2: so different from Nashville, and I went to Graceland blew
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: my mind. And without making a whole speech about that,
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: I got your book, and I have to say two things.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 2: I am trying to read this very well reviewed biography
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 2: of Robert Crumb. The information is there, but it's not
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 2: an easy book to read. You are a good writer
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 2: because the book is easy to read on the subject
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 2: and it calls out you want to read it more
• 2:07:16
  Speaker 2: certainly for those of us interested in music business. Just
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: the managerial style of Colonel Tom Parker was amazing. And
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 2: I had not read the first two books, and needless
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 2: to say they're on my list because you go so
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 2: deep and you make these characters come alive. In in addition,
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 2: as a student of the game, you know you're peeling
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: back the layers, revealing truth that were previously unknown because
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 2: you've done this level of research. So this is not
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 2: blowing smoke. I mean really, I was stunned, how interested
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: and how fascinating the book was. I really have to
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 2: give you credit, and I want to thank you Peter
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 2: for taking this time to speak with my audi. Well.
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 3: Thanks, I've really enjoyed it, and we certainly ranged Firefield
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 3: to areas that I have rarely spoken about in an interview,
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 3: although in real life I may have. But it's been fun.
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 3: It's really been fun.
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, you want to know where somebody is
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 2: coming from informs what they do. Any event, till next time.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: This is Bob left Sex