The Colonel and the King, page 31
“Silence is the resting place of the soul. It’s sacred. And necessary for new thoughts to be born. That’s what my pills are for… to get as close as possible to that silence.”
THERE WERE TRIUMPHS, to be sure.
Elvis’ first, and what turned to be his last, appearance in New York City, at Madison Square Garden, turned out to be a triumph as much of image and public relations (playing New York City was very different from playing Fort Wayne, Indiana) as of musical firsts. In a feat of extraordinary legerdemain, Colonel was able to build a series of three concerts, with a fourth added and a press conference thrown in for good measure (the four shows sold out instantly and grossed $730,000), into a monumental historic event. “Once in a great while,” The New York Times declared, “a special champion comes along, a Joe Louis, a José Capablanca, a Joe DiMaggio,” and Elvis, the reviewer wrote, was that “champion, the only one in his class.” Colonel laid down a logistical marker as well when he insisted that an album commemorating the event had to be made instantly available in the face of RCA’s protestations that it simply could not be done. But, of course, Elvis as Recorded at Madison Square Garden was manufactured and released just one week after the last of the concerts, rising to number eleven on the charts and going gold (more than five hundred thousand units sold) just two months later. Meanwhile “Burning Love” reached number two on the singles charts by the end of October, effectively restoring Elvis to the top of the commercial marketplace and once again positioning Colonel exactly where he wanted to be in his always ongoing negotiations with RCA.
Las Vegas, August 1972. Courtesy of the Graceland Archives
There was a second, hastily arranged MGM documentary, too (it began the day after the Los Angeles recording session ended), which would chronicle the April tour. It had its musical moments, particularly some of the off-the-cuff gospel rehearsal footage, but its real highlight was an audio-only interview conducted by the film’s two directors (but prompted by the advocacy of Jerry Schilling), in which Elvis offered notably candid, at times even introspective thoughts on his life and career, casting much of what might have been carried off with an athlete’s or entertainer’s ready-made collection of clichés in a fresh and thoughtful light. It served as well to highlight the well-founded thinking behind Colonel’s long-standing dedication to synergy, as the film generated increased interest in Elvis’ concerts, while at the same time adding $250,000 to the $1 million they were already guaranteed for the tour by Management III and RCA Record Tours.
And yet, as much money as they made, and as much as Colonel could point to statistical benchmarks, Elvis only seemed to need more money, and the calls and letters from Vernon accelerated in both their number and their desperate tone. The thank-you notes were less frequent, too, and in fact the more support that Colonel provided, the more income he generated, the more he felt that he and Elvis were at cross-purposes, the more it seemed his involvement was treated as, at best, a kind of unwelcome intrusion.
AND, OF COURSE, Colonel was beset with other worries.
Marie was never far from his mind.
He would call her two or three times a day from Las Vegas, even put old friends on the line to try to cheer her up. She made it clear, both to him and to others, that she couldn’t understand why he had to be gallivanting off to Las Vegas all the time. And once the touring started, it was worse. He had people with her twenty-four hours a day—cooks, nurses, housekeepers, companions. But when he was able to enlist the help of old friends like Brenda Williams’ mother, Clannie, or George Hamilton’s new wife, Alana, they never lasted long—Marie’s testy, even hostile behavior always drove them away. He was home every weekend except when they were on the road, and he tried to entertain her sometimes with a little hand puppet (sometimes it was just a sock), which he would animate with a squeaky little voice, doing his best to coax a smile out of her.
She barely left the house anymore, spending all of her time indoors, while he baked in the sun. When friends visited, he liked to put on his chef’s hat and apron and barbecue on his elaborate cooking setup. He had a phone with an extra-long extension cord so he could conduct business by the pool. And he could spend hours at a time just hosing off the patio area or cleaning his ovens and grills. “Oh, he’s just an old coot,” Marie would say sometimes, shaking her head, as if, one of the visitors remarked, she wasn’t really buying his story. Or had simply heard it too many times.
The holiday season remained special for him. At Christmas, Colonel continued to don his Santa suit. In 1971, just before the holiday, he flew to Las Vegas and took a carload of toys to the children at St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. The following year, in addition to his usual home calls as Santa to the mothers of his Palm Springs neighbors Frank Sinatra and Liberace, he dressed up in his Santa suit for the Sinatra Medical Center and received a letter of thanks from both Frank and his mother, signed by Frank as “The Little Snowman.”
Loanne tried to tell him that he should take pride in the fact that he was still the manager of the world’s number-one entertainer, that there wasn’t a single person in the business who didn’t seek his approval or advice—but that didn’t seem to help.
“Elvis,” a reporter had asked at the New York City press conference, “are you satisfied with the image you’ve established?” “Well, the image is one thing,” Elvis replied, “and the human being another. It’s very hard to live up to an image.”
Colonel might very well have said the same thing.
Everyone saw him in a certain way—many people kept their distance, no doubt out of a combination of fear and respect. But the human being that hid inside that grizzled image was, in his own way, as vulnerable as the young boy who had first come to this country at the age of sixteen, terrified of all the trials that lay ahead but determined not to shrink from them.
What Elvis needed now, he was certain, was a challenge. And so did he.
He announced just what it would be at a press conference set up between shows on September 4, 1972, the final night of Elvis’ current Las Vegas engagement. He had gotten the idea for a worldwide satellite broadcast performance from watching the live broadcasts of President Nixon’s historic trip to China in February. The first thing he had to do was to sell Elvis on the idea, then convince RCA and Tom Sarnoff at NBC to go along. The fact that it had never been done by an entertainer before was, of course, the very thing that intrigued him. This unprecedented television event would be called Aloha from Hawaii. It would reach the largest audience ever to see a television show at one time, Colonel’s press handout trumpeted with an alacrity not always confined to the facts, “in excess of one billion people” (take all of this as a little bit of poetic license: among other things, after premiering live in the Far East, the show would not be broadcast until later in the day in Europe, and not till April in America), and would also represent “the first time in the history of the record industry” that an album (the follow-up soundtrack) would be released simultaneously on a global basis.
Flanked by a poster board drawn up according to the Colonel’s specifications with six rows of Elvis Summer Festival hats, each festooned with the name of a country in which the spectacular would be broadcast, RCA Records head Rocco Laginestra congratulated both the entertainer and his manager on their bold leap into the future while the Colonel beamed. As he had stated to reporters in an earlier press release, “It is the intention of Elvis to please all of his fans throughout the world.” And if it was “impossible for us to play in every city” throughout the world, perhaps, it was implied, this would serve as evidence of their good faith.
PART IV
CODA
TWENTY
Loss
THE Aloha concert was filmed on the night of January 13–14 and was an unparalleled triumph, just as Colonel had known it would be. He believed it could be the start of a whole new day. As he wrote to Elvis at the show’s conclusion, “I always know that when I do my part you always do yours in your own way and in your own feeling in how to do it best. That is why you and I are never at each other when we are doing our work in our own best way possible at all times.… You above all make all of it work by being the leader and the talent. Without your dedication to your following it couldn’t have been done.”
But then, very quickly, things returned to the way they had been, only worse. Elvis, who had lost a great deal of weight for the show, immediately regained it all, and then for the first time was forced to cancel several of his February shows at the Hilton while delivering erratic performances at many of the rest.
It was as if he had exhausted his limited fund of focus and commitment. His mania, too, seemed to be growing more and more out of control, as he entertained fantasies of killing Priscilla’s new live-in boyfriend, karate instructor Mike Stone, and pushed Red West to the point that he actually made contact with a reputed contract killer, who said he would do the job for $10,000. Red had no idea what he would do if Elvis told him to go ahead and give the guy the money; he didn’t think he could actually do it, but, with the hold Elvis exerted on them all, he wasn’t sure he could stop himself either. He stared into Elvis’ eyes when he delivered the news, and Elvis was silent for a moment before answering. “Aw, hell,” he said at last. “Just let’s leave it for now. Maybe it’s a bit heavy. Just let’s leave it off for now.”
Everyone had their theories about what was wrong, with Elvis’ increasing consumption of (mostly) prescribed medications being the first, last, and most logical explanation, but Joe Esposito offered a more probing description of the world in which they all lived. “Everything we did, we drove into the ground. What it would take somebody else ten years [to get tired of], we did in six months. Sometimes he’d get you so frustrated—I think he enjoyed doing it. You’d get pissed, and I don’t know if it was a test to see if people’d still be with him, but then he’d sit and talk to you, and there was just something about him—he’d smile at you, and he could convince you of anything. Sometimes I thought about leaving, but I liked him too much, and I figured things were going to change. Everyone was just waiting for that day to happen.”
Aloha from Hawaii, January 13–14, 1973. Courtesy of the Graceland Archives
In the meantime, Elvis and Colonel’s joint business venture had reached its tipping point with the sale of Elvis’ masters to RCA in 1973. The record company had approached Colonel in late 1972 with a proposal to buy out Elvis’ back catalogue. RCA, of course, like any record company, already owned the master recordings and the right to market them in perpetuity. That was never at issue, not even with Colonel. What was constantly at issue, in endless nagging skirmishes that never seemed to be fully resolved, were matters of royalty payments, the actual use to which the catalogue could be put (over which Colonel, whether by custom or contract, maintained absolute control), and other contractual elements that had never been put down on paper but that Colonel was always hinting might prove to be embarrassing to the record company if they were ever revealed to the world.
RCA’s vice president in charge of financial affairs, Mel Ilberman, was now proposing to do away with this source of conflict once and for all by buying out Elvis and the Colonel. In exchange for a single lump payment the artist would give up all claim on future royalties, his manager would give up any potential grounds for troublesome dispute, and RCA would establish in perpetuity their right to do whatever they wanted with all the music that had been recorded to date, using it to build up the RCA Record Club (one of Ilberman’s pet projects), exploiting the back catalogue in a manner the Colonel would never allow, and wiping out all the disputes over foreign royalties, container deductions, and European album content with which Colonel had continued to bedevil them for years.
It was a gamble virtually unprecedented in the record business, which, like both Colonel and Elvis, dealt almost entirely in “now money” and put very little faith in the future. (“Catalogue” was a much-derogated concept; publishing was where you built up a backlist, because a song could always have a new life, as opposed to an artist.) But, surprisingly, Colonel was against it for any number of reasons—though ultimately what it really came down to were matters of control. (Certainly no one could ever accuse Colonel of having blind faith in the future.)
Elvis and Vernon, on the other hand, were all for it, for reasons of their own. Well, just one, really: Elvis’ desperate need for money. Vernon outlined to Colonel the mountain of debt they were facing; he was afraid at some point they might actually lose Graceland, and in addition to his son’s profligate spending (which both of them knew they could not control), Elvis would soon be facing a substantial divorce settlement with Priscilla for which the money was simply not at hand. If Colonel wouldn’t handle the deal, Vernon said, he and Elvis might just go to Elvis’ personal attorney, Ed Hookstratten—he was sure Hookstratten would be happy to step in. (Although from my conversations with Hookstratten I doubt that he would have.)
It’s hard to say whether this was the convincing argument, but it didn’t really matter because Colonel was sure at this point that there was no way of persuading Elvis and Vernon that what they wanted so badly was not to their long-term benefit. And so he entered into talks with Mel Ilberman at RCA, professing great reluctance—but also sensing an exceptional opportunity.
Ilberman was facing his own challenges as well. When he first proposed a buyout offer of $3 million to the record company, “the financial people,” he said, “were very upset.” But then to his surprise, RCA president Rocco Laginestra, whose flair for the dramatic had led him to embrace the Aloha satellite-broadcast concept from the start, lent his wholehearted support—and with Laginestra’s imprimatur he was able to carry the day.
He and Laginestra flew to Palm Springs, confident that there would be no problem finalizing the deal.
Colonel heard them out, then just shook his head.
Three million dollars wasn’t close to enough, Colonel said, it wasn’t even in the ballpark. After the success of Aloha, Elvis would need to have at least $5 million. Ilberman was ready to shrug his shoulders and walk away, but then to his consternation Laginestra went for the deal on the same basis that he had gone for Aloha (and Colonel had pitched it): it was a bold action that had never been undertaken before.
“I was pissed,” Ilberman said, “because I thought we could have gotten it for four or four and a half.” But given Laginestra’s enthusiasm (and his position at the company), he didn’t say anything and contented himself with the knowledge that at least they had a deal. Or so he thought—until they went out to dinner at the Spa Hotel, and Colonel kept introducing all these perplexing qualifications. “The Colonel continued to talk in terms of there still would be restrictions on the catalogue—and Laginestra really didn’t know what the Colonel was driving at, but I did, and I was very upset. I kept raising the issue: we’ve got to have the catalogue free and clear, without any restrictions. And he asked me for some involvement in packaging in the future for [his promotion company] All Star Shows, and I said yes. And I did promise that on future packages I would use the new stuff as well as the old, so that he and Elvis would be getting [some] income. And that’s how he got the rest of [what he wanted].” But even Mel, a longtime admirer of the Colonel, was surprised at how much he took for himself.
Because as it turned out, the buyout deal became the signifier of a new understanding between Elvis and Colonel. Up till now their limited partnership had been conducted with relative restraint, as Colonel continued to take his usual 25 percent managerial commission on everything guaranteed by the contract, with the 50 percent partnership applying only to what could be termed “profits” from the original deal or “bonus payments” beyond the contractual guarantee. But now, with the catalogue buyout, they became for the first time full 50-50 partners in every aspect of their business dealings except for touring, which would continue to be divided on a two-thirds-for-Elvis, one-third-for-Colonel basis.
But even more than that (and you’ll have to bear with me on all these computations), in the end the buyout deal itself became something like the tail that wagged the dog. Because in addition to the $5.4 million that the buyout itself came to, there was a new contract extension that guaranteed $500,000 a year against royalties and, unlike the present one, was divided under the terms of the new agreement 50-50 between Elvis and Colonel. Moreover, at the conclusion of its seven-year term, Elvis and Colonel would each receive a $100,000 bonus, not to be counted against royalties.
In line with Ilberman’s determination to keep the catalogue unencumbered, Colonel got a number of contractual guarantees of his own. He was to receive a $50,000-a-year consulting fee for the duration of Elvis’ recording contract for assisting RCA in the “development of merchandising and promotional concepts” and for supplying RCA with “merchandising and promo materials,” plus $10,000 a year for exploiting merchandising rights for the duration of the expired contract. Finally, for his assistance in helping RCA Record Tours in “planning, promotion and merchandising in connection with the operation of the Tour Agreement” as well as the records made under the Record Agreement, in essence for the seven-year duration of the new contract, he was to receive a grand total of $1.35 million ($150,000 the first year, $200,000 every year thereafter) plus 10 percent of RCA Record Tours’ profits off the top.
In all, the Colonel was guaranteed $1.75 million on top of his $2.6 million share of the buyout itself (he only took $100,000 of the first $400,000 of the purchase price, as if it alone were the contractual guarantee, the $5 million the “bonus payment”) and the $1.75 million that he would get as his share of the new recording contract. Which meant that Colonel would receive roughly $6 million to Elvis’ $4.5 million from all of the deals combined. (This might be likened to a professional athlete’s seven-year contract for approximately $75 million in 2024 dollars, with his agent getting 57 percent of the money.) Taking touring money into account (at least $15 million, with Elvis getting $10 million, but only after Colonel collected his 10 percent of tour profits beyond the promoter’s guarantee), the overall package could be seen as close to a true 50-50 joint venture—which was undoubtedly how Colonel did see it, in one of the numerous alternative accounting approaches that he took to every commissionable transaction. And that is how he always explained it both to contemporary colleagues like William Morris lawyer Roger Davis (who, like many of Colonel’s professional associates, was largely in agreement with the arrangement) and, later, to reporters and would-be biographers like me. The explanation never varied. He was having increasing difficulties with his artist, who, however unique his talent and potential continued to be (perhaps even because of that very uniqueness), required far more managerial attention than the normal, everyday client. As did a career which, through Colonel’s own unique contributions, had risen to previously unimaginable heights. Moreover, by restricting his practice to a single client, Colonel was making substantial financial sacrifices, and to compensate for those sacrifices it was necessary to structure a different kind of deal. Which is what he and Elvis had done. Theirs, he always concluded, was nothing less than a true partnership.
