Original subtitles

Elvis was a searcher.

It's a part of him that never left.

The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC.

Singer presents Elvis, starring Elvis Presley in his first TV special.

His first personal performance on TV in nearly 10 years.

In '68, he was a nervous wreck.

Nervous because he didn't know if his audience was going to accept him.

People had not seen him perform in so long.

Felt like his record career was over as well.

It was intense.

The '68 special, it was either the beginning or the end of his career.

You know, God bless him.

He was a light for all of us.

We all owe him for going first into battle.

He had no road map. And he forged a path of what to do and what not to do.

We shouldn't make the mistake of writing off a great artist...

By all the clatter that came later.

We should dwell in what he did that was so beautiful and everlasting...

Which was that great, great music.

Elvis always remembered what it was like to have nothing.

And to have no respect, to be looked down upon.

Elvis never forgot the experience of being in poverty, ever.

It stuck with him all his life.

When I look at photos of Elvis when he was young...

I see that little boy in him...

That playfulness, the curiosity in his eyes.

But I also see how he felt responsibility for his mother.

Elvis was born in a shotgun house. The poorest of the poor lived in those houses.

His twin brother did not survive birth.

It's said that his mother would tell him that if he sang...

When the moon was full at night, his twin brother could hear him.

Gladys was a doting mother, but she could be firm as well...

Always very protective of him.

He was her only child.

She lived for him.

And he lived for her.

When Elvis was 3 years old, in 1938...

His father was sentenced to three years in prison for forging a check.

The check was to buy food to put on the table.

Gladys would take him to see his father.

Vernon was so embarrassed.

Thankfully, he doesn't have to spend the three years.

He only spends six months in prison.

But what it does is it starts a pattern of Vernon being away...

And Elvis and Gladys being left to their own devices.

They move around and live in boardinghouses.

This was the end of the depression.

Vernon, after that experience at Parchman Prison...

He had a hard time finding jobs.

Elvis told me that his father really lost his spirit.

And his mother had to work really hard during that time.

Ready here, with a slate. Eight-oh-two.

Where I first got the phone call to get involved with Elvis...

My partner at the time, Bones Howe, who was a successful record producer...

Was really flabbergasted when I said, "no."

He came over to me right after I hung up the phone and said:

"Steve, I engineered an Elvis Presley album.

I know Elvis Presley, and I think you guys would hit it off great."

Elvis was a guy who sang from his gut.

This is something you're born with, that commitment to the music.

The one thing I remembered, that stuck with me all these years, was binder said:

"People need to see him the way he really is."

He had to dig back to find his real self...

And it was like looking back into the past.

Vernon and Gladys heard this loud roar, half in their sleep.

They picked Elvis up, thought they were putting him out a window...

To get him away from the train that was coming.

Threw him right into a wall, and he bounced off and fell on the floor.

His crying woke them up.

They saw that it was no train. It was a tornado that went through Tupelo.

Southern religion reminds its believers that we're here for a short time.

If you lost your life or you were spared, it was because of divine Providence.

The loss of life, the destruction of property...

It was a reminder of the fragility of life.

Going to church, hearing Gospel music...

Being a part of people getting in touch, moving with the music...

Getting lost in the music...

If you lived in a rural area...

There wasn't much else but the music and the church.

It wasn't like you'd be there, sitting, crossing your legs, relaxing.

You get very involved and very energetic.

It's as much of feeling as it is of hearing.

I've always liked music.

My mother and dad both loved to sing.

They tell me when I was about 3 or 4, I got away from them in church...

Walked up in front of the choir and started beating time.

The hymns were more than religious...

They were fundamental building blocks of music.

Rhythmic, hard-hitting, you had the foundation of rock 'n' roll bands...

Playing in churches.

People came to be excited and taken out of their daily experience.

Elvis was like Huck Finn, exploring.

At night he would slip into black churches.

He would listen to Gospel music and to the sermons.

Gladys would let him pursue the music that he could surround himself with.

Elvis was very different.

Color lines were rarely crossed.

You just didn't find white people that tuned into black music...

And stayed there, and found it interesting, and studied it.

When the country was into racism and segregation...

Here was a young kid. He was not afraid to go and be exposed to it...

So he could learn even more about it.

He was doing what he enjoyed doing.

I don't think it was conscious, but he absorbed everything that he saw.

He would seek out people in his neighborhood...

Who could play music or had records, or had a radio.

You could turn a dial and hear Gospel.

Turn a dial and hear country.

Turn a dial and hear Blues, turn the dial and hear Sunday-night preachers.

It was all just there in the southern atmosphere he grew up in.

I always felt that someday, somehow...

Something would happen to change everything for me.

And I'd daydream about how it would be.

Once he moved to Memphis...

Everything started opening up for him. He was 13.

As BB. King once said, when he moved to Memphis...

It was like moving to Paris. It was a different culture.

And a sense in which things were connected and happening...

That someone like Elvis could not even imagine in Tupelo.

The wealth, the affluence, the scale of buildings...

The power of that river flowing by.

Memphis is a very diverse city. Not an integrated city, but a very diverse city.

So you had a lot of people moving there after the war.

It was really the hub for people from that southern cotton-plantation area...

To either stay or use it as a stepping stone to go somewhere else.

Like many southern families...

The Presley�s moved to the big city seeking a little better opportunity.

Memphis developed a very vibrant entertainment district.

Because people brought with them their music, their culture.

You've got that spill there of the Blues, of Gospel...

Pop music, country music.

All those things, they cross over each other.

And radio definitely had to play a big role in his influences.

Because I don't think he was carrying the kind of dough...

To have an enormous record collection.

WDIA was a 50,000-watt African American radio station...

That artists like Bobby "blue" bland were being played.

The emphasis was black music.

Black music was just beginning to take root in our area...

And there's no doubt in my mind that Elvis Presley listened to WDIA.

It's a real pleasure to invite you to keep your radio dial turned to 1070.

That means WDIA.

That's 50,000 watts of powerful entertainment for your pleasure.

We were both just above the poverty level.

I lived in one housing project.

He lived in Lauderdale Courts, about three or four miles away.

We grew up the hard way.

The apartment in Lauderdale Courts that the Presleys moved into...

Was part of the early new deal housing program.

It was affordable, but it was bigger than anything they were used to.

They gave him everything. They let him sleep in the big bedroom.

They saved what little money they had...

So that he could buy a guitar, buy a record player.

And they gave him that same sort of independence to go out in the city...

And be exposed to other music�s.

He loved the bright lights.

He loved the music in the city. He loved hearing people on the street.

He loved listening to music coming from the bars.

And he'd study them.

Elvis was a student. As a kid, I would go to the flamingo room myself...

And Elvis would hang at the flamingo room.

When you realize that Elvis knew where Beale Street was...

And knew what that all meant, you could sense that he was different.

Walk in the flamingo room on a Saturday or Friday night...

You're in another world. It's like Mardi Gras except the music is soulful.

There was so much color, and clothing and dress and vibe...

And the music was tremendously upbeat.

You're not seeing that for one night, you're seeing that every time you go.

Beale Street was the black man's haven.

When he'd come here, everything lit up.

Lit up like a slot machine. Everything was fired up.

Beale Street was the place.

You'd go out on your weekend night.

You were an African American at that time, making small wages...

You were in a prejudiced time, you had to have an escape.

The legitimacy of the flamingo room experience...

And the Beale Street experience...

Was something that took your mind totally away from those things.

But if you had the right kind of personality and spirit about you...

Regardless of who you were, you could come and check out the music.

BB. King, Rufus Thomas, Johnny Ace, Bobby "Blue" Bland...

These giants were playing neighborhood joints.

Looking at that, you'd see how powerful it would be connecting to an audience.

If you're a young kid, a black kid or a white kid...

You were not analytical about it.

But you knew the differences between feeling and not feeling.

And you heard it, and you felt it.

Elvis, he would park his truck in the alley behind the club.

And he used to come around to the back of this place...

And he would watch me play the old upright piano.

When you see him standing, he be doing his legs when he'd be playing guitar...

All this came from back in those days when we used to do it.

Elvis picked up everything.

He was the most eclectic human being I have been around.

He would pick up something from another singer...

Or he would pick up something from a guy walking and say:

"Jerry, look at that walk. I'm gonna use that walk."

He's looking around for pockets of expression...

And putting together his version of himself...

Based on these highly expressive models that are often quite different:

The Dean Martins of the world, the Mario Lanzas, the Black Church.

At this point, Elvis and his parents are going...

To a lot of Gospel services...

Musical events around the town in Memphis, both black and white.

Quartets were the alter ego of the Christian people back in those days.

Because they wore tight, cool suits, had slicked-back hair and sideburns.

We looked at those people like they were our pop stars...

Which is what Elvis wanted to do.

He wanted to be in the Blackwood Brothers.

Elvis, he longed to be a great Gospel singer.

I think he wanted to be in a Gospel group. He would've been a great tenor.

Those Pentecostal preachers were pretty dynamic individuals, you know.

Back and forth across the stage, shouting, raising their hands...

Being very theatrical.

"Front man" is something that was derived from...

A preacher fronting the choir in church.

So whether you're James brown or Elvis or anyone...

Your position basically is always proto-religious, you know?

Those are its roots.

Elvis always was seeking a way...

To manifest his musical interest in some way.

I went to Humes High School in Memphis.

I was taking music. I flunked music.

Just flat. Phew. F, only thing I ever failed.

They had a little talent show every year. People sang, danced, whatever.

They entered me in this talent show.

When I came on-stage, I heard people rumbling and whispering and so forth.

Because nobody knew I even sang, really.

I had a little four-piece band. I was playing the trumpet.

Elvis had a guitar. He got up and sang "Old Shep"...

Red Foley's sad song about his old dog that died.

I think that's the moment where the school sort of throws down...

And goes, "that's what this weird kid's about."

The moment that applause broke through...

That's probably the first real validation that he's had.

Singing that tearjerker, he put emotion into it, sang the heck out of it.

And he won first place.

And my little band didn't do shit.

That's a big step for a young man.

At that moment, he had to see the power of the material.

He had to go, "this is what I am. This is what I am going to do."

It was amazing how popular I became in school after that.

During the time I was working for the electric company...

I was in doubt whether! Would make it.

You have to keep your mind on what you're doing.

When he wasn't driving the truck, he'd help the electricians pull wire...

Or whatever.

He had long hair. It was thick and looked like it was pasted down.

We all laughed at him about that.

Me, I always thought I looked a little more mature or something.

He just said what he wanted to do is to get in some kind of business...

Where he could make his mother a living...

Where she would not have to struggle for it anymore.

At that time, the Prisonaires recorded their hit "Walkin' In The Rain."

The Prisonaires were a group Sam Phillips was recording.

Sam Phillips grew to be one of the most famous...

And celebrated record producers of all time.

But, at first, he started his own label.

The Prisonaires, they were brought out with handcuffs into Sun Records...

To record.

To even conceive of that as a source for great music people should hear...

There's just a democratization of art, of the possibilities for art.

What happened in Memphis at that time...

Was a convergence of forces...

The emergence of radio, DJ�s and artists.

And then you add to that concoction...

The genius of producers like Sam Phillips.

There wasn't much in the way of...

Rhythm and Blues, black-music recording infrastructure.

It was very much a do-it-yourself, mom-and-pop business.

Sam Phillips loved the Blues.

And he was interested in recording...

As many Blues performers as he could.

Elvis was aware of what Sam had recorded at Sun studios:

Rufus Thomas, Ike Turner, the Prisonaires.

I really believed Sam Phillips, for a long time...

Had the idea of finding a white singer...

That could bring black music into the white mainstream.

For a lot of noble reasons, not just commercial.

Everybody thinks that Sam was looking for a white boy to do black music.

But Elvis was looking for Sam Phillips.

I'd seen him go by in his crown electric truck...

A number of times, because we had an open storefront.

He'd go by and go back, and go by and go back.

This guy would not come in the studio and ask me to audition him for nothing.

Elvis had never been in a studio.

There was a newspaper story about how you could get lucky at Sun Records.

Elvis just went for it.

See, I worked five days a week, Monday through Friday.

And on Saturday, well, I called this recording company up.

I asked them, could they make me a little record?

Elvis went in to do what he thought he should do to get a record deal.

He had this beautiful voice, high voice, singing slow love songs...

."Bahads.

And he sang Dean Martin. He sang Ink Spots...

Black but white-accepted music.

There was nothing that was exciting Sam.

I didn't want that. It had to have a feel.

I did have the feeling that this guy...

Had something in the raw that we could do something with...

If we knew what the hell we were doing.

Brought in Scotty Moore. He was working at his brother's dry-cleaning plant.

And Scotty played the guitar and was not afraid to experiment.

Bill Black, I knew, could play a good slap bass.

Black was working in an appliance store, repairing appliances.

And I said, "go and woodshed, boys."

Sam said, "all I need is just a little background noise.

Don't worry about arrangements. I don't need the whole band...

Just a little rhythm stuff."

I knew Sam was looking for something...

But he couldn't tell you what he was looking for.

This day we had wound up, just about ready to give up...

On having any success on a session.

About ready to bag up the instruments and go home.

I knew Sun Records had to make it on something out of the ordinary...

Or we may as well forget it.

Things aren't going well. Elvis is nervous.

We've been there two, three hours. It's late. We're getting tired.

We stopped and had a coke or something.

Elvis was just about a year out of high school, 19 years old.

He wanted to please Sam.

And he knew...

He had to prove himself.

It was in that moment that the world changed.

Elvis sets his Coke down, picks up the guitar...

Starts just frailing fire out of it, just beating this rhythm thing.

Bill picked his bass, started slapping, playing along with him.

Just all rhythm. Guitar was leaning up on the amp.

I picked it up and started vamping along with him.

Although Elvis knew a lot of Blues, Country and Pop...

It shocked me because here is a classic Blues number.

And here is a white cat not imitating or mimicking or anything...

But just putting his feel into it.

Blew me away.

You hear performers in the thrall of the beauty of invention...

Not knowing quite where they're going to go...

Not knowing exactly what they're doing.

Just discovering and doing it literally, as the music is being played.

You're out on the frontier...

And it's a very pristine and exciting place to be.

One more time, baby.

Yeah, baby.

Here we go, baby.

We knew it was a little different. We didn't know what it was.

There was no mention...

Of where to get this out or anything, because we didn't know.

Good to see you so full of excitement. Got Kennedy by this hospital, ward 24-e.

Fixing to bring you the hottest thing.

Red, hot and blue coming to you through WHBQ...

In Memphis. It's Friday night. Tomorrow is payday...

And bath day. That's a good deal.

Growing up in Memphis, I'd been listening to Dewey Phillips...

And his red, hot and blue show before Elvis came on.

He was the number-one jock in Memphis.

When Elvis was played, it was just different.

It wasn't really Rhythm and Blues, it wasn't country.

Dewey started playing it and phones was ringing off the wall.

They dug Elvis out of the movie he was at...

And told him Dewey wanted to talk to him on the radio.

He came on, did the interview.

He was nervous, and he stuttered.

"That�s All Right, Mama" was a hit in Memphis overnight.

It was quite phenomenal...

Getting that kind of response off a local radio station.

Dewey played it on the air just once and Sam got a hold of us.

"We gotta have another side of this record."

I said, "do you know anything else that's as wild as that?"

That one record summed up his roots.

The very best of both black Blues and white bluegrass.

He knew the Blues. He knew Arthur Crudup, Bill Monroe.

He knew that stuff by memory.

The elements there that came together...

Were things that I had prayed for So long.

To record a black, lowdown, almost gut-bucket Blues...

And turn around and put a classic, classic bluegrass number...

"Blue Moon of Kentucky," on the other side.

It didn't have to have a color.

It didn't need a color.

I don't know if Elvis was looking at it all in that noble a light.

It was just music he liked.

On "blue moon of Kentucky," he has got this entirely original take...

On the bluegrass.

And it transforms into what would later be called "rock 'n' roll."

Fine, man.

Hell, that's different. That's a pop song now.

There's no one that creates music in a vacuum.

We're all influenced by what we've heard and what has come before.

But, occasionally, you have those crossroads moments...

When something completely new is born.

It was a beautiful thing. It was high art.

In the greatest degree, this is Picasso.

I mean, this is really taking your influences...

And going somewhere with them, to a place that's new.

Now Elvis had a hit record, and he was touring every night.

Each night a different place.

The basic mistake people make about Elvis...

Was that he got lucky. No, he didn't get lucky.

He worked hard, and he created the music with great musicians.

He had a drive that motivated him, and it was there from day one.

The order of the day, whether it was slim Whitman, Jim Reeves or Elvis...

If they wanted to survive, they had to hit the road.

It's an old-fashioned experience, in the sense that...

He was part of a touring band.

Night after night, he was putting on his act.

There's something that happens through extensive touring...

That you can't get anywhere else.

You look back at the calendar of his dates...

And he's literally playing dates every night.

The circuit that they're working is probably one of the most thankless...

And low-paying, just grind of a circuit that you could imagine.

There's a depth of craft that's attained through simply...

Constantly doing it night after night...

Having to satisfy all different types of audiences.

You have the stereotype of the bass being tied on top of the car.

That was true. They really did that.

Where did you pick up your style?

My first appearance after started recording...

I was on a show and I was scared stiff.

I came out. I was doing a fast-type tune.

Everybody was hollering. Didn't know what they were hollering at.

Everybody was screaming. I came off-stage.

My manager told me they was hollering...

Because I was wiggling my legs. I was unaware.

And so I went back out for an encore, and I did a little more.

And the more I did, the louder they went.

Sam Phillips was able to get Elvis on the Opry in Nashville, which was massive.

You don't just get on the Grand Ole Opry.

The Opry, you had to be a member, be in this club.

A traditional Nashville establishment.

You had to dress the way they wanted you to dress...

And sing the way they wanted you to sing.

The Opry was very, very segregated.

This was an older audience. They had their artists that they went to see.

And here's a kid dressed funny...

Coming out doing one of their idol's songs...

In a blasphemous way.

They didn't get up and cheer and holler.

If you're faint-hearted, you'll give up in a hurry on a situation like that.

We were not faint-hearted.

We certainly didn't know whether we would win it.

We knew, in time, that something this great...

Could not be kept under a bushel.

You cannot understand Elvis apart from country music...

But he was pulling it away from the traditional...

Grand Ole Opry sound and shaping it...

As a new, Bluesier version.

While country music could recognize it, they also knew it was...

A threatening sound that would ultimately...

Destroy the power of the Grand Ole Opry.

So four months after the release of the first single...

They play their first Louisiana Hayride show.

- You ready? - Yes, sir.

- Let's see what comes out of you. - All right.

The Louisiana Hayride was strictly a country show.

Webb Pierce, Faron Young, Nat Stuckey, George Jones...

Just about everybody played the Hayride.

The Louisiana Hayride was really the place...

Where country music and Blues hit one another and exploded.

It was a critical moment in his career.

The radio broadcast had had an enormous impact in Memphis.

But the Louisiana Hayride was a whole different audience.

The Hayride could be heard all through the western part of the south.

So it had a pretty wide geographical audience.

That was a kind of testing...

Of his ability to reach audiences...

Beyond his own home in Memphis.

The Louisiana Hayride did send out road tours to surrounding towns.

The entire show would move.

They start to build these touring routes that bring them back...

To Shreveport once a week.

That's a big turning point...

Not only from a financial perspective, but also from an exposure perspective.

Elvis played a lot of these first shows...

With Jim Ed and Maxine brown...

Bud Deckelman, Betty Amos.

Successful country artists, but not on a real top level.

Those performers are competing with one another.

Somebody wants to leave there feeling like they won.

Being on bills like that, you are amongst people...

Who are gonna teach you things. That's a big part...

Of what made Elvis, in those early becoming years...

Was that he had an antenna that was up, and he was stealing tricks.

He was learning lessons.

He was bringing it all in without it seeming like...

He was just doing somebody else's act.

He could go out there, the audience wouldn't be on his side.

But somehow or another, he'd turn them around.

He could read an audience.

He could tell if it didn't seem like he was doing it right. He'd do something.

Something you wouldn't even expect.

He often started a song by, like, a "well..." And left it hanging there.

People were like, "what's going on?" He would stop...

In the middle of a song and turn around...

Or walk away and then go back, or do something with a microphone stand.

And he would grab that microphone...

And he would drag it across the stage.

He was so sophisticated already about making contact...

With the audience.

If the audience reacted a lot to something he did...

He did it again.

He just had this look, like a wild captured animal.

Shook his head and his hair was down in his face.

And just to watch him walk from that curtain...

To the microphone, you felt a part of it.

He gets presence on the charts, and his records kept doing well.

And, eventually, he gets voted the most promising new artist.

And finally got a Cadillac.

When I was driving a truck, every time a big, shiny car drove by...

It started me sort of daydreaming.

I'd daydream...

About how it would be.

The first car I bought was the most beautiful car I've ever seen.

It was secondhand, but I parked it outside my hotel...

The day I got it.

I sat up all night just looking at it.

And the next day, well, the thing caught fire and burned up on the road.

I've got a lot of cars.

But none will ever take the place of that first one.

The story that we hear about early rock 'n' roll...

Is that the major labels, in the main, passed on rock 'n' roll.

So the indie labels took it up. And it took the major labels a while...

To see that rock 'n' roll wasn't going away.

The RCAs, the Capitols, the Columbias, the Deccas...

They were called "the majors."

All the other people were independent businessmen...

Who sold records to stores.

I was a small record company, been in business five years.

Worked the lower of my anatomy off.

Peddling days of me on the road to the tune of 70,000 miles a year.

When we say "independent," Sam was connected to no one...

At the major labels in any way. He would produce what he wanted.

It means record it, it means edit it.

They went into the lab and did the mastering.

Packaging was already done. They put a bunch of singles...

In the car and got on the road and went into the hills of Tennessee.

And this is really a very traditional way of doing it.

Now, what the record company would like to see happen...

Is they could spread that regionality...

Get it from Northern Georgia to Alabama...

And from Alabama across to Mississippi.

You know, then they got national distribution.

I knew, really, so little about the business...

When it came to merchandising records and this sort of thing.

The main thing that did more for us than anything else...

Was it created excitement amongst the major labels.

A lot of hard work went into this thing...

Both on the part of Elvis and on the part of Scotty and bill and myself.

Elvis, when he was 19 years old...

He knew what he had to do to get where he wanted to.

He was a very driven man.

Every two months he was releasing another single at Sun Records.

Sam knew what to ask for, what to push for.

And all of those pieces, the way they fit together...

It was like Sam Phillips was the other member of that group.

The Sun space was pretty indicative of most small recording studios of the era.

You know, they were intimate, they were small.

You were up close with everybody and everything.

In those early records, they almost knock you off your heels...

Because all that big sound is coming from so little.

I think people make the mistake when they think of rock 'n' roll...

They think of drums.

If you listen to a lot of the early rock 'n' roll...

Rhythm came out of the slap bass, rhythmic hitting of the guitar...

And the swing of the singer's voice.

There was only a couple microphones.

It was straight forward.

You could feel the true artistry...

Because there was not a lot of equipment...

To make records sound a certain way.

Elvis listened to everything that came his way.

Sam was the same way, only he was into the technical aspect of it.

But very much a natural.

Didn't want to over-produce anything. He wanted to capture raw sound.

In Elvis, he found a combination of rawness with that vision.

The drive of the black music...

You can hear just as well the twang on the white side of music.

Scotty Moore, he and Bill Black and DJ Fontana...

Were an enormous blessing for Elvis...

And the coherence of the records they made together.

Tried to play what I thought fit the way he was singing the song.

Tried to do solos and fills that made sense on that song.

Scotty is brilliant, one of the great musicians of all time.

Never plays unless it's necessary.

Bill black, the bassist, the way he pops the strings...

It's him plucking the bass string rather than just striking it.

Pretty fierce stuff.

But the basic setup, when it was just Elvis...

Scotty, bill and a beautiful echo, tape delay...

It was all you needed. With that voice, you could do anything.

Elvis' early recordings are marked by, one of the things...

The freedom of not having heard yourself very often.

So they're very, very unselfconscious.

Elvis' voice has plenty of space...

And beautiful geography to it.

And the way it was recorded by Sam Phillips...

Is tremendously pure.

You know, there's a looseness...

As there usually is in your early recordings.

You're excited about a sudden discovery of self.

Of your powers, your abilities, and what you can do with them.

I hear all that on the Sun sessions.

What's this Elvis Presley productions?

"Enterprises." that's not anymore.

Last year my manager was Bob Neal, who's a disk jockey in Memphis.

But when I signed up with Colonel Tom Parker in Nashville...

We didn't figure we needed the office, so he's handling everything.

Colonel Tom Parker has given you a lot of advice and help.

-What kind? Everything.

In other words, he's the one guy that really gave me a big break.

In other words, I don't think I would have ever been very big.

In 1955, Colonel Parker was booking shows down through Florida.

People like Hank Snow, Marty Robbins.

I saw the reaction this boy received from the people.

So I started booking him on some of my shows.

And I knew I could help him exploit his talents all over the world.

He knew he had something very special...

And he knew from the audience reaction.

He promoted him, he dropped his other artists...

And devoted himself entirely to Elvis.

The Colonel, he's a very hard guy to understand.

His past was complicated.

I think there was a real respect between Elvis and the Colonel.

But he was a promoter, he wasn't a creative guy.

He was a brilliant promoter.

There was a big tour in February '55.

Hank snow was the headliner, and Colonel Parker...

Had managed as a favor and a plot to get Elvis on...

As an extra added thing.

Being on a Hank snow show was a real big step toward.

The Colonel planned it to be a big step forward.

He wanted to see how far Elvis could go.

Just three months later, they realized that the star...

Hank snow, couldn't close the show anymore.

After Elvis had performed, people left.

From June of '55, basically a year into Elvis' stay at Sun...

People are making offers to buy Elvis' contract.

The Colonel was afraid that if Elvis became much more successful...

Than he already was that he was eventually...

Not gonna be able to take over his management.

He would be so big that he was no longer needed to bring it further.

So over the next months, he actually starts manipulating everything.

And after that, it became obvious between the management...

Of Bob Neal and Sam's independent record company...

They couldn't push a record the way the big companies could.

Elvis starts worrying about that element.

My listeners have seen you and they've heard your records.

They think they're wonderful. You skyrocketed to fame...

On "That�s All Right, Mama."

Yes, ma 'am. That was the one that got me on my way.

I wasn't well-known down here. I mean...

I'm with a small company and my records don't have...

The distribution they should have.

Of course, that's coming. It takes a bit of time, and to get distribution.

But I think you are one of the fastest-rising stars in the field.

You know what I can't understand is how you keep that leg shaking...

Elvis, he knew, "I've gotta make a choice."

He and Sam spoke the same language, creatively.

And they loved each other.

But he knew that Colonel Parker was about national...

About movies, and about television.

And that if he chose Colonel Parker, Sam would be gone.

Sam Phillips saw in Elvis what Elvis dreamed of...

And no one else could understand.

Elvis was still underage, under 21.

The Colonel set up an appointment with Vernon Presley...

And Gladys and talked to them. "I'd like to buy his contract from Bob.

I think he has a lot of potential."

They were suspicious of everybody.

They should've been suspicious of the Colonel...

But the Colonel filled them with all kind of hope. They said okay.

In that whole scenario here, we have the Colonel...

Locked in on the idea that he wanted RCA...

Because he knew RCA from Hank snow.

And he even puts up money of his own...

As an opening to the dealings with RCA...

Which he would lose if he didn't bring in the RCA contract.

He really believed in Elvis' potential.

When I got into the music business in November of 1956...

In those days, most of the... Most, not all...

But most of the records that were being recorded were ballads.

You know, they weren't stuff like Elvis was doing.

It wasn't what, unfortunately, had the "nomer" of "race music"...

And rock 'n' roll. And they released as little of it as they possibly could.

They felt they had the shareholders of the company to worry about.

They had distributors, stores, radio stations to worry about.

They said, "our whole world is tied up in white music."

So they were very, very reluctant to expose black music...

Until such time as they couldn't avoid it anymore.

After a lot of going back and forth...

The Colonel pushes RCA to buy the contract...

And the recordings, both that were released and those that weren't.

I think he's the test object for the majors to really get in the game...

And it worked.

People have asked me repeatedly, "do you regret selling Elvis Presley?"

I do not.

- Just be one second, Elvis. - All right.

- My boy, my boy, give me my guitar. - Steve?

Can we have a lot of gain in this playback?

- Yes, sir. - Right.

Are we on television?

- Are we on television? - Just a minute.

One day, in the middle of taping a production number...

We're called into Colonel Parker's office.

Colonel says, "it's been called to my attention...

That we don't have a Christmas song in the show.

Elvis wants a Christmas song in the show.

Don't you, Elvis?"

His hands cross, his head goes down...

And I hear Elvis mumble, "yes, sir."

I watched Elvis cower to Parker.

I said, "if that's what Elvis wants, that's what I'll do."

The Colonel says, "okay, then we're all in agreement."

Elvis walks out the door.

Head goes up, a lot of energy, and he jams me in the ribs...

And says, "fuck him."

Elvis was one of the first artists that actually produced himself.

By the time he lands at RCA, he's in charge.

They're a rock 'n' roll band, and Steve Sholes didn't know...

How to make one of those records, Elvis did.

Elvis was a very different person and a very different artist...

Going in to make the first RCA record than he was walking in...

As an absolute rookie at Sun.

He'd been out touring and playing in front of people...

For those months in between. He had experience in the studio.

He had had the inspiration of Sam Phillips...

Watching, pick the songs and the arrangements.

You can hear "Heartbreak Hotel" has got echo chamber...

Because he's clearly asking for echo.

And they don't know how to give him the slapbacks...

So they're turning up the chamber and he's like, "okay, I'll make this work."

And he does.

My function was in the booth.

But I always spent a lot of time out in the studio.

What you saw from Elvis was that being in a recording studio...

Or being on-stage was exactly the same thing to him.

He was always a real organic part of the music physically...

Extremely animated when he sang.

Never stood still.

And the guys, they just shifted right into that mode that Elvis was in.

If something wasn't working right or Elvis was too slow or too fast...

They all looked to him, and then he would move to the music.

If the music was right, he was a show out there.

He was a captivating person, and nobody made suggestions to Elvis.

Elvis' music was shot through with the Blues...

Which he played quite a bit of. But he was always mixing genres.

Elvis, by the first RCA record, is already showing...

That he can pull in a wide range of genres...

But they all come out Elvis.

He didn't invent rock 'n' roll, per se.

You've got little Richard and Joe Turner...

And all these people on that tip, but what Elvis did isn't that.

You know, what he did is different.

It's bringing the country music in, bringing white Gospel music in...

And it becomes pop music.

Most of Presley's first recordings were basically covers of black singers.

Little Richard, Arthur Crudup, Joe Turner, Lloyd Price.

Elvis and Elvis' music pointed to black culture and said:

"This is something that's filled with the force of life."

If you want to be a complete and fulfilled person...

If you wanna be an American...

This is something you need to pay attention to.

The American teen just knew it rocked.

No white music had ever done that. Plenty of black music had.

Elvis was able to bring a value to the presentation of black music...

African-American artists, at a period they were being ignored...

By the great artists, in a credible way...

Because he learned it from the source.

- Can't stop me now, man. - All right.

In the Colonel's view, whatever the songs were...

Whoever played on it didn't matter. It was Elvis.

It was, in his mind, about the merchandise.

He always called it "the merchandise." And that's what it was to him and to RCA.

We think tonight that he's going to make television history for you.

Meet him now: Elvis Presley.

Colonel knew how to do it, and had the contacts...

With the show in New York, the Tommy Dorsey show.

RCA didn't seem to be able to secure TV performances...

And Colonel Parker secures Elvis four shows...

To coincide with the release of the record in January.

The earliest shows, he doesn't have that much material to draw from.

What he's doing, really, are the covers.

These songs initially recorded by black songwriters, black performers.

"Shake, Rattle, and Roll," and "Money Honey," and "Flip, Flop and Fly."

He was an incredible performer in that his body really picked up...

All the intricacies of the rhythm.

It's so lighthearted, but it's so deep...

And meaningful at the same time.

It's such a magical thing to see.

He looks really supernatural, because of the kinescopes...

Just the way it distorts the image.

There's some beautiful thing going down there...

And it must have been really incredible to see it with no warning.

He just did all those Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey shows.

That was nationwide TV.

It all went through the root from then on.

That's when we saw somebody that could sing better than other people...

Could move better...

Had style that was better than other people.

In the pop world, when this came along, it broke glass.

When you look at those television performances...

You see the band watching Elvis. They all got their eyes on Elvis.

That was essential to the way the band swung.

Elvis is simply swinging your world with the way he's swinging his hips...

And moving his legs and his shoulders. He's pushing and pushing his musicians.

We were doing the Milton Berle Show, and we were doing "Hound Dog."

Right at the end, we usually go out.

All of a sudden he went into this half-time Bluesy...

"You ain't nothing but a hound dog," slow.

We had never did it that way. We all looked at each other:

"What do we do now? We'd better follow him."

I figured I'd better catch his Blues licks...

And his legs and arms and do everything I can.

It was like every man for himself, actually.

Every time he'd move a finger, a leg, an arm...

Or run across the stage, I'd go like a machine gun:

Just every lick I could catch, you know?

My parents are watching it.

They don't know I'm watching it.

They're looking, and...

My mother is saying, "that's disgusting."

As a little kid, I can remember the living-room discussion.

His appearances on TV were of a sexual nature.

He had really stepped over the line of what's decent on television.

After that, our parents wouldn't let us see him.

The ministers, reverends, told our parents:

"Keep him away from your children. He's the devil."

So he's forbidden fruit.

On your personal appearances, you create a mass hysteria...

Amongst your audiences of teens.

Is your shaking and quaking an involuntary response to this hysteria?

- Involuntary? - Yeah.

Well, I'm aware of everything I do at all times, but it's just the way I feel.

Do you think you've learned anything from the criticism?

- No, I haven't. - You haven't?

Because I don't feel I'm doing anything wrong.

Do you read the stuff?

One of the paradoxes with Elvis is how could a boy so in love with God...

So obsessively in love with his mother...

So decent and "yes, ma'am," and "yes, sir," and all of that...

How could he be so unconfined on-stage? How could he do this?

That was just totally unacceptable, because the mid '50s being...

The beginning of the civil-rights movement...

The biggest fear that most southerners had was so-called race mixing.

Elvis' first television appearances were earth-shattering.

He sang at a moment in the history of the south in the early '50s...

When his music was truly a revolutionary sound...

That bridged the black and white musics of southern worlds...

In a way that had never been heard before.

I don't think he was necessarily trying to shake the world in that sense...

But I think he knew what he was on to.

He knew it made him feel great, and he knew there was a rebellious streak in it.

He had to know that, and it made him powerful.

They're clearly afraid of him.

To some degree.

If you see a large social anxiety on the horizon...

There's probably issues of bodies and control involved.

Young people, whether they were physically mixing black and white or not...

They were culturally mixing black and white.

The way they were expressing themselves...

The movements in space as that mixing happened, were sexual in nature.

And I think in the case of Elvis...

The fearful response, it had a racial component and a sexual component.

It's all about fear and the body.

I and millions of other kids, growing up...

We all had this feeling that Elvis was...

Sort of sent to us to lead us out of the darkness of our own confusion:

Sexual confusion, social confusion, ineptitude.

Here's what it was for me. Elvis came along...

And this soundwave came out that ran right through me.

You felt like he was looking at you.

I mean, he had these eyes, and he was connecting with his audience.

As teenagers, it was liberating. Now we had something to claim for ours.

I don't think there was any context for the kind of shift Elvis represented.

I don't think there was any possible way to know that that was going to resonate...

And shake young people to their core in such a profound way.

The reason I booked him, I recognized right away that he had something...

A cuteness. It was chiefly his face, but a beautiful sound he really never had.

The thing is that it was well-known that Steve Allen...

Who fancied himself a major songwriter...

Hated rock 'n' roll. And his purpose in having Elvis...

Was first and foremost, he needed the ratings.

But, secondly, to be sarcastic and condescending to Elvis...

And to the music he openly despised.

Steve Allen, he was out to humiliate...

An entire culture of what he would've called "hillbillies."

It was all a sneer.

It's a control thing. It was humiliating.

After that he didn't like Steve Allen at all.

As a child, I was deeply offended. There was something wrong there.

"Elvis, why are you letting him do this to you?"

We can look at Elvis as a southern trickster figure.

You deal with power by yes-ing them to death...

And that's what Elvis did.

Very polite, very deferential...

But with his eye on the sparrow.

He was basically a good-natured southern kid...

But he was on a mission to deliver this music.

By 1956, Elvis was coming into his own.

The RCA singles were enormous. "Hound dog," "don't be cruel"...

They sold 3 million copies.

When Elvis' first album came out, that sold 300,000 copies.

"Heartbreak Hotel" topped all three billboard charts: Country, pop and R&B.

This was now a career that was going to these unimaginable heights.

I often wonder if there had ever been a 21-year-old that had that power...

That could mold the lives of millions of youths with the wave of his hand.

His mother worried so much about him. He always wanted to be a good son...

Mostly to his mom, and didn't wanna give her fears.

They would talk every single day, and he was comforting her...

That he'd be okay and not to worry so much.

By the time Elvis made the first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show...

It was already something everybody was waiting for, watching for.

There was all kinds of pressure and all kinds of expectation.

The Sullivan show was the crown Jewel. That was the biggest game in town.

It was like, "okay, I'll do these shows.

I'm doing my song, I'm doing my thing."

But he's not letting go of his roots.

He wanted to do "peace in the valley."

They said, "we've never had a religious song. You're not gonna sing one now."

That's one of the songs his mother loved, was "peace in the valley."

He fought for that song. No one wanted him to do that song.

But it was important for him to sing it for his mother, to his mother...

And keep his roots intact.

If you really look at Elvis on the Dorsey shows, that's the rebel.

But then you see him doing "peace in the valley" on the Sullivan show...

That's the good-natured southern kid.

This is sort of off-the-cuff, but how does it feel to be right up there on top?

Right with the best of them, since you're one of that class. How does it feel?

It all happened so fast, so I don't know.

I'm afraid to wake up, afraid it's liable to be a dream, you know?

In the long range, do you feel you've got your eye on...

An objective in the future that you're headed for?

Yeah, I do. I would like to learn how to act in the movies.

We got a seven-year contract with Paramount pictures.

It's a dream come true, you know?

I've had people ask me, was I gonna sing in the movies? I'm not.

I see you're signed by Hal Wallis out of Paramount.

- Yes. - Can you tell us anything...

About the first movie that will be made?

We have a movie coming out, we start making it in June.

It's a movie with Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn, The Rainmaker.

He didn't get the rainmaker.

They talked him into doing Love me Tender...

And then talked him into four songs.

I think that Elvis brought a lot of insecurity with him.

He wanted to be a movie star, that was much bigger than being a recording star.

And he was fairly disheartened when he learned he had to sing for these movies.

In the first four movies, you see him so into the part.

You see him really taking the role seriously.

He learned everyone's lines. He thought that's what an actor did.

Training himself to be more like a Marlon Brando...

Or a James Dean or a Humphrey Bogart.

He respected these actors, and this is where he thought his future was going.

The movie people took him very seriously.

These were carefully made films. They had scripts, they had emotion.

King Creole, Love me Tender, Jailhouse Rock.

They assigned him stellar people.

Michael Curtiz, who directed King Creole...

Is the same Michael Curtiz who directed Casablanca.

So they treated him with respect.

King Creole, it was being prepped for James Dean...

Before the fatal crash.

Out of all those movies, King Creole was really his favorite.

It was Leiber and Stoller songs. It was songs that he loved.

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were two of the greatest songwriters in America...

During the late '50s and early '603.

When we first met him, we hit it off.

We were talking about different records that we knew.

Elvis was into Blues.

We thought we were the only white guys who were into Blues.

In order to control music, and in order to make more money...

Colonel Parker set up music companies that would deliver songs.

We were given assignments, but they also went to all the other writers...

Who were assigned to hill & range songs.

Thus, the owners of hill & range controlled Elvis Presley music.

Hill & range was one of the biggest publishers in the United States.

And if you wanted to be on an Elvis record, you were gonna play ball.

The publisher gets half, and the writer gets half.

As Elvis is becoming an A-list superstar...

He's reaching a level of success that nobody had ever had before.

The fact that several big pop hits into his career...

He makes a feature film...

And then very soon signs a contract for a bunch of feature films.

Nobody had ever done that. There's nobody who, this early in their career...

Is given all of this territory between the radio...

The television and the movie screen.

There was no blueprint for how you navigate something like that.

Actually, it was Vernon and Gladys that found Graceland and showed it to him.

He fell in love with it, but more than that...

It was to give a beautiful home to his mom.

And, of course, his father too...

But, really, for his mother, because he saw her working so hard.

He wanted to be a great son.

He was living the most hectic time of his life, career-wise.

This was his controlled escape.

Graceland. Just the name of it itself pulled directly out of Gospel tradition.

It's an idealized home.

The perfect symbol of someone who's come up from the bottom...

And enjoyed the best the country has to offer.

It was a huge moment for Elvis to walk through those doors...

And call that place his home.

It had all of the things that Elvis had never known as a kid.

It's not a lavish home. It's not Tara.

But it is everything that money and fame...

Could deliver, according to his specifications.

You bought a home for your folks.

Even though your father is only 39, you've insisted he retire. Is that true?

Yes. Well, he's more help... I mean...

He's more help at home than he is anywhere else...

Because he can take care of all my business.

He can look after things when I'm gone.

Well, I think that's very smart. I, of course...

Elvis gave Vernon a huge obligation: "Take care of me."

He had an office. It gave him a job. It gave him something to do...

And it was for his son. They made sure that they kept everything in order...

Because he was really in fear of not doing the right thing.

Vernon's office, you can tell didn't come from a sophisticated business manager.

It came from a poor man from Tupelo, Mississippi.

Elvis had all the money in the world. He had anything he wanted.

He built Graceland...

Yet he had some sweetness about him...

That kind of breaks your heart. I mean, I don't think he ever lost that.

Any presents you got for your parents...

Aside from the house and furniture and cars?

Well, yes. We've gotten quite a bit of stuff. I mean, nothing really big.

I've gotten them anything that I think they might want.

I've gotten daddy some suits and...

Mother goes to town now, and she buys anything she wants.

Which makes me feel real good.

Elvis never wanted to go back to the days where they struggled...

The days of poverty.

In 1958, Elvis was drafted into the army.

No matter how much he'd been through on the road and making movies...

The notion of going to another continent, away from his family...

Was a difficult thing for him to consider.

The idea was that Elvis would do his duty, so he could come back...

And be respectable in the Colonel's new vision of the future Elvis Presley...

Which was a brilliant vision. He knew exactly...

- Where he wanted to take Elvis. - Colonel said, "we don't want no favors.

He won't be in entertainment. He's gonna be a soldier."

Elvis, you don't get out of the army until 1960.

If rock 'n' roll should diminish in popularity...

Or even disappear, what would you do?

Well, I would probably try acting. I mean, you know, I...

Being drafted was something he never thought about happening to him.

The army, which is odd, because there is no war on.

There's not a lot of people being drafted.

But Elvis, he goes along with it.

The biggest star in the world, going into the army.

From our historical perspective, that's a very strange episode.

But then if you try to get into his experience...

Having gone through this profound rise to fame...

There's total uncertainty as to what he will return home to, if he returns.

Elvis, in his 203, he was still inventing all the rules.

In those days there was no perception that a rock 'n' roll musician...

Could have a long and lasting career.

People expected that kind of a career to be over within moments.

RCA panicked. They pushed the Colonel to set up recording sessions...

Before Elvis left, so they could record a lot of material.

The impulse was to flood the market, give the fans...

As much as possible and keep riding this as hard as you can.

And the Colonel works it the opposite way.

His idea was to have just enough material to keep Elvis' name alive.

He wanted to keep the mystery.

He kept Elvis away from performing, serving his country like a good soldier.

He had fans waiting for him to come back.

- I... - I, Elvis Presley...

- Do solemnly swear... - Do solemnly swear...

That I will bear true faith and allegiance...

That I will bear true faith and allegiance...

- To the United States of America. - To the United States of America.

His mother was concerned about him going to Germany.

Because all they heard at that time was Russia.

She thought he was going to war. Her son was leaving for two years...

And he'd never been out of the United States.

When he went to basic training in Texas, they talked every day.

And he kept saying, "mama, I'm gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay.

I'm not gonna be fighting."

But she just couldn't get it into her head.

Before he left to serve in Germany...

Gladys suddenly got sick and she passed.

When those things happen like that, you don't do a lot of talking.

Elvis and his mother, that's the closest I've seen anybody, as far as that goes.

Sure was.

She worried about him night and day, because he was such a sensitive boy.

And, yes, she was overly protective...

But because of the loss of the twin brother...

That protectiveness really lingered until the day she passed.

Easy to sneer that Elvis was a mama's boy and so on, but it wasn't that.

It was one of those relations between a mother and son...

Where you could hardly say where the mother ends and where the son begins.

And when his mother died, it left a hole in him.

He was never whole again, as it were.

He deeply feared not being a good man, being a Godly man.

He needed her there to say, "I love you.

You're doing the right thing, I know you're good." He needed her. Absolutely.

The loss was the most devastating time in his life.

It was all fun before that.

It was the skating rink, it was the theater.

It was making a movie, then going back to Memphis.

Being with his friends and playing.

And then, of course, having Graceland as the center...

Fixing all that up for the family, and so he matured a lot...

Because of the loss of his mother.

It was unbearable for him during that time.

As we 're getting closer to the time they're gonna pull that gangplank away...

And you'll be on your way.

Since this is the last chance you'll have to say something to your fans...

Do you have any particular message?

Well...

I'm gonna be very honest about it.

In spite of the fact I'm going away, and I'll be out of their eyes for some time...

I hope that I'm not out of their minds.

And I'll be looking forward to the time when I can come back...

And entertain again like I did and...

All we can do is wish you a wonderful trip...

And all the best luck in the world, and come home soon.

Well, thank you very much. I'll do my very best.

Elvis hadn't had much time to himself...

Between that summer day when he recorded "that's all right"...

And when he was shipped to Germany.

Suddenly, on a boat to Germany...

There was lots of time. That's where he meets Charlie Hodge...

And they start talking about music together. They start singing.

Charlie Hodge had been a Gospel singer who Elvis had heard sing.

He liked Charlie because Charlie was in the music business...

And somebody he could relate to that way.

Elvis was so down that Charlie would tell jokes and try to keep him up.

To have somebody who understood him...

That he could lean on, and also to be able to turn to that music...

Was tremendously important for him to get through that time...

And everything that was going on.

When he gets to Germany, yes, he's...

He's obviously committed to the hours every day...

But there's, again, a lot of spare time in an apartment...

Or at a house in Germany, where he doesn't know anybody.

So there's a lot of time for reflection.

He goes into the army, which was where he gets the pep pills...

For the first time, the Methedrine, to stay up on watch.

That was the beginning. He started with the uppers...

To get him through the army, through the cold days...

To get him through the lonely nights.

Do you have any time for music anymore?

Well, only at night. You see, I get off work at 5:00 in the afternoon...

And I have a guitar up here in the room, and I sit around up here.

- I don't wanna get out of practice. - I should hope not.

The struggle while Elvis was in the army...

Was a mandate from Colonel Parker that he not record...

And not make new music, since he wouldn't be able to promote it.

What Elvis didn't know was Parker was not a legal resident in the United States.

And without legitimate papers...

Any travel he took could present big problems for him trying to get back in.

The Colonel would come up with excuses...

And explanations to Elvis, to his family.

There'd be telegrams from the Colonel telling him not to worry:

"I've done this, I've done this."

Parker was releasing songs for him every few months...

To keep the fans interested.

It's not a lot. Not at the pace they were used to and that the machine required.

This approach to Elvis' career was preying on his vulnerability.

This was certainly an opportunity for the Colonel to fully seize the role...

Of parent, mentor.

The one person who could take him through this difficult time...

And lead him out the other way.

Colonel was like a father figure. There's no doubt about that.

And he felt Colonel knew what he was doing.

I mean, Colonel brought him to where he was.

Sam Phillips couldn't do what Colonel Parker did.

He was bright enough to know that.

So he was gonna follow what Colonel Parker said.

He'd been right so far.

Any time Elvis was going through a really rough time...

He always went to Gospel music.

What is Gospel?

Gospel is a place where you go for transcendence...

Where you go for peace...

Where you go for a certain type of security.

It's a home. It's a deep home within your soul and your body.

We just went to Germany. My father was stationed there. Air force.

And a man came up to me and said, "would you like to meet Elvis Presley?"

And I thought he was kidding. I said, "sure."

He goes, "no, I'm really serious." I told him if I were to meet him...

He'd have to ask my parents, and my parents were very reluctant.

And I persuaded them to at least let me, you know, meet him.

What does anyone say to a famous person?

Elvis was sitting in a chair, his legs crossed.

Elvis walked over to me and he said, "oh, what do we have here?"

He started playing the piano, looking over at me, and I kind of smiled at him.

The more I looked over, the more he would entertain even more.

Three days later, I get a call that Elvis would like to see me again.

And the rest is history.

I learned so much from Elvis about music.

Songs that he played when I was in Germany...

With him for those six months, some of them I could hardly connect to.

I was listening to Frankie Avalon, Fabian.

And his selection of music, I'd never heard, really.

The Ink Spots, The Platters, Faye Adams, "shake a hand."

I didn't know any of these people.

That's when I realized that music was so much bigger than what my music was:

Songs of loss, songs of departing...

Songs of hope.

I couldn't really even see him as a movie star anymore.

That he was so much deeper.

Do you have any idea when you'll be traveling back home?

No, I don't, Dick.

I wish I did know, you know.

How about it? Do you miss home?

Oh, boy, you... you...

I can hardly talk.

That's kind of a silly question on my part, I guess.

Elvis, now you're really home. How does it feel?

It's hard to get used to it. I've been looking forward to it for two years.

That was the hardest part of all, just being away from show business.

It wasn't the army, it wasn't the other men.

It was that. It stayed on my mind. I kept thinking about the past all the time.

Contemplating the future.

All right, we have a wide shot, so no one can be in here.

Standing by.

Nine-twelve.

The '68 special really showed Elvis' career in its entirety.

They took Elvis' original songs, and they made them more modern.

This was bringing him back to the beginning, yet going into the future.

There was the jam session with his original musicians.

It had simplicity, spontaneity.

And it also had the choreographed pieces...

That really was a reflection of the movies and the post-army years.

The real spine of the special came from our writers.

They locked themselves in their office...

And played every Elvis record you could find.

We wove a story of Elvis from his beginnings to being a superstar.

It gave everybody a look at Elvis as a musician.

It's funny. It's telling Elvis' story, yes, in a variety show.

It's got the girls. It's got him playing guitar.

I look back now...

His life was so big.

I don't know if you can get it in an hour.

I started out when I was just out of high school.

I started out driving a truck, and I was training to be an electrician.

One day at my lunch break...

I went into this little record company to make a record.

The guy put the record out, and overnight, in my hometown...

People were saying, you know, "who is he?"

I started to play little nightclubs and football fields.

Like a year and a half I was doing this, and I met Colonel Parker.

In 1956, they arranged to put me on television.

So they dressed me in a tuxedo, had me singing to a dog on a stool.

I went to Hollywood, and I did four pictures.

I was really getting used to the movie-star bit.

Just overnight, it was all changed.

I got drafted.

Returning from the army, coming back home...

Getting ready to perform again, it's obviously not the '60s.

Those '60s haven't come yet.

This is pre-civil rights.

Things are happening in that regard, but it's not really coming to a head yet.

I'm sure he was aware of how much had gone on.

He could've gone in several directions.

Well, Elvis, now you're really home. How does it feel?

It's pretty hard to describe, I'll tell you.

It's hard to get used to. I've been looking forward to it for two years...

And all of a sudden, here it is.

It's not easy to adjust to it.

Do you think the music has changed since you've been out of the service?

I mean, since you've been in the service.

Possibly, yes. I can't say, really. I haven't been here long enough to know.

The only thing I can say is if it has changed, well...

I would be foolish not to try to change with it, you know.

When Elvis gets back from the army...

He was still one of the biggest stars on the planet, but rock 'n' roll...

That force that happened between '54 and '59...

Basically had evaporated while he was away.

And you see immediately the results of the Colonel plotting:

"How do I make him as widespread as possible and Polish his image?

Get him on the path towards being a Frank Sinatra or a Dean Martin...

Pop singers who have very long careers?"

This was a curious crossroads in his career.

It was open field to see what was he gonna do and where was he gonna go.

The work that he had done during his time in the army...

Broadens the scope of the music that he was interested in.

He didn't wanna do the same music. He wanted to grow.

He wanted to evolve in a way he could offer something different in his music.

With Elvis, he was always about the challenge, the motivation.

He's already in the recording studio in Nashville...

Two weeks after coming home. He knew what was at stake...

So did the Colonel and the engineers.

There was this tension in the room: "What's it gonna be like?"

You ready? Let's cut one.

Ltwboo81, take one.

They all relax after just a few takes because he's so on top of it.

He's been longing for this moment.

Both to get his career started, but also to express a new range of music...

His new understanding of music, everything he could do.

Since the last Ed Sullivan show appearance in 1957...

The Colonel decided to take Elvis off of television.

He didn't wanna give Elvis away when you could sell tickets in a movie theater.

But in the relaunch, he wasn't gonna gamble.

He wanted exposure to make sure they got a head start.

Now it was time to deliver.

The Colonel's plan was get Elvis on television...

In front of as many people as possible...

With the world's other most famous singer...

Make it fun and exciting, so that now the career can continue.

The Sinatra show, it was a very conservative move at the time.

It was just trying to find his place after coming out of the army.

He simply had to believe in himself, and that's what Elvis did.

Elvis put himself forth as somebody who was not a flash in the pan...

But who was in along line of a tradition of American pop singers.

They were saying there's a life for Elvis after Elvis.

Elvis, I tell you something, it was great.

I remember when he appeared on the frank Sinatra special.

That show was very much the opposite of the Steve Allen show.

There was a collegial atmosphere.

Frank Sinatra and Elvis had two different styles...

But were in an incredibly exclusive club.

We work in the same way, only in different areas.

Trading their own hits with each other is the big moment...

That the Colonel engineered for him.

You can hear the women in the crowd start screaming.

Elvis sexes it up a little bit.

Sinatra, he's fitting "Love me Tender" into that swing thing.

He's more on the beat.

Man, that's pretty.

He's embraced by the community that had previously put him down...

And that signaled he was now ready to take on this role of cultural icon.

You get this new Elvis, the Elvis that Colonel Parker wanted...

The Elvis that had grown up exactly the same way...

That his core audience had grown older.

They were gone from being teenagers to being young adults.

So for him, it was the perfect launch.

The public widely accepted that, but obviously this was a transition.

He knew that next album was important.

He gave it a lot of thought.

The Elvis is back! Album reveals new influences, new interests...

New arrangements.

He had been getting ready for this mentally while he was in Germany.

There's a little bit of R&B, there's a little bit of pop, ballads, country.

New songs that represented a different vocal approach...

Than anything that he had tried before that.

His voice was very much in tune always...

Because he didn't have to fight the band.

Those guys were soft and they didn't push him...

And they weren't too busy.

The band had the ability to play all this music...

That came from so many different sources.

That was the true magic of Elvis combining with this band.

They perfectly understood each other.

Those musicians were incredible.

Bobby Moore on bass.

Floyd Cramer on piano.

Man, those guys heard a demo once and, bam, they were ready to go.

They were a real tight group.

Nobody played anything that didn't go with what the other one was playing.

DJ and Scotty were still there...

But they began to play a lesser role, and that made it more sophisticated.

He liked the way the music sounded.

Technology, it evolved while he was gone.

RCA studios got a three-track recorder.

That immediately adds a technical professionalism...

As recording technology is moving into the future.

He started feeling confidence because these were his song choices.

These were songs that he was singing in Germany.

That's the freedom that he wanted. That's what he was looking for.

And that's why it was so successful.

Just blew people away.

Elvis, when he came back...

Clearly in finding the songs and making the records...

Was very driven. His vision was very intact...

And I don't think he could be distracted.

Elvis is so attuned to the emotional.

He was always on the search for emotional music.

I asked him one day, "what makes you pick out your songs?"

He said to me, "I wanna be able to reach and feel...

What we all go through as human beings."

This is the mysterious part about music.

How do we know, when we're listening to a song, that someone means it?

We just know.

And the people who mean it are generally the ones...

Who are processing some kind of loss through music.

And we can hear them negotiating their loss...

And we connect to it.

Those who are truly a recording artist...

You go into the artistic aspect of what makes whatever you're doing...

Alive and unique for that song.

So he would lose himself in an artistic way...

In order for people to feel it.

That's called "soul."

Usually, when we chat, Elvis, we ask you to select your favorite song...

Of all your recordings. What's the current favorite?

I think "Now or Never." "It's now or never."

Everything was a level up on the '50s.

The three singles, "Stuck on You," "It's now or Never"...

And "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" Were number-one hits.

It was a true triumph and a whole new ballgame...

Of what pop music was.

Rhythmically, his sense of time, his phrasing, musicality...

Elvis was impeccable.

He loved opera singers. He loved the range of an opera singer.

"It's now or never" is very much like that.

What he did that was unusual was he could slide up the scale...

Into a tenor voice and then back down, you know.

And he's just having fun.

He's sliding all over the scale.

It's so human, it's so real.

"It's now or never" was adapted from "'o sole mio," the Italian song.

Elvis had always had this interest in the Italian crooners.

When he was in the army with Charlie Hodge...

They were exploring that kind of drama in his singing.

That sound, that style, became...

One of the staples of Elvis' musical range from then on.

It's about challenge.

It was the challenge that made him do that extra thing.

And hitting the high notes at the end on "it's now or never" was the challenge.

He can't really reach it, and the engineer says, "we can cut the ending only."

Elvis says, "if I can't sing it the whole way through, I'm not gonna do it."

He challenged himself.

He got a thrill out of hitting a note so high.

For Elvis to have to do G.I. Blues...

Reflecting his two years in the army...

In a way that probably doesn't compare a lot to what it was like...

I don't think he really enjoyed that.

G.i. Blues was a family type of film...

Moving Elvis' image in a completely different direction...

From the very young, aggressive characters in the '50s movies.

But he was given the promise that...

There would be two films for 20th Century Fox...

Following this that were serious roles.

It may have been a reasonable bargain for Elvis at the time.

When he found out the songs he had to do in G.I. Blues...

He said, "baby, I don't know how this is gonna go. I'm a little disappointed."

The songs, they had to fit into the plot...

But musically they were not where Elvis was at.

He makes a compromise.

That was the really disheartening part for Elvis.

The soundtrack of G.I. Blues, it was the most successful album they had made.

It sold much more than the absolutely brilliant studio album...

That came out some months before.

Elvis is now a big business.

So instead of going out, getting the best songwriters in general...

Hill and range, from the Colonel, were hiring a couple of songwriters...

To write Elvis songs.

They would bring all of the material.

That was the unspoken rule.

Nobody else was allowed to bring any music into the session.

That was very tightly controlled by the Colonel...

By the publishing and record company.

The Colonel eventually started getting a percentage of everything.

He was a businessman. He didn't give a damn if it was worth a crap.

Elvis could care less about the songwriting, publishing, in general.

Some of it, he got and understood, but he cared more about good material.

It was more about the Colonel owning the publishing...

Which was a huge stone in his shoe the rest of his life...

Was this business of, "we must own the copyright...

Or we don't want you to do it."

Elvis said, "I'm starting to feel the pressure.

I'm obligated here. I don't think there's a way out for me."

I said, "well, can't you talk to Colonel?"

And that's when I think he started getting disillusioned.

Basically, Colonel was part of it.

Already, he's feeling that he's not in control.

And this is really early on.

I already had a feeling of what Graceland was like...

Through Elvis' description.

He told me in Germany, "I want you to come see Graceland."

And he would give me images.

When I came the first time...

He told me to close my eyes and not to open them.

We're driving, and then he said, "open them."

The gates of Graceland opened up.

It was everything that he described.

It was bigger than life for me, his safe Haven.

Graceland always represented something more...

Than just a house to Elvis.

Graceland was something, initially, that he had bought with and for his parents.

And it reminded him of his mother...

Her presence and her influence in his life...

Which didn't end after she died.

I opened up a closet, and it was filled with her clothes.

And I had such a sense of her.

She liked soft fabric.

Her hats, her shoes, he hung on to those personal things.

Even though it had been a few years...

There was still a lingering scent there of her.

It really showed me the love that he had for her.

She never really wanted anything. You know, anything fancy.

She just stayed the same, all the way through the whole thing.

There's a lot of things happened, and there are times when it feels like...

I don't know what I'm gonna do next, you know.

Once he got back to Graceland and wanted to reconnect with...

The spirit he was brought up in and the memory of his mother...

The best way was to go back to the music that he had grown up with.

The theme of return...

And in Elvis' case, a return to Gospel...

Is part of how we all experience music.

There are these profound experiences that happen with music...

At a younger age.

Through our lives, we're often chasing them.

If you were raised in the proximity of Gospel...

That's what launched you into the world of emotional music.

He was getting into another phase in his life...

And Gospel, religious music, was his favorite...

And that's why he did it.

Just on the heels of G.I. Blues...

He goes in and records a complete album of Gospel music...

With songs from all his old heroes:

Blackwood Brothers, Golden Gate, Statesmen Quartet.

It's a tribute to everything he came from.

And he does it with a voice at its best ever.

It was so close to those records...

The statesmen and blackwoods were making, it could've been those records.

He had the Jordanaires as the key element...

Of developing a Gospel feel...

With a band feel that was true to the music on the Elvis is back! Album.

Obviously, it's not really rock 'n' roll...

But there's drums and there's saxophone. There's a lot of swing to it.

The way he blended them together is an incredibly original thing to do.

Sometimes, you know, he wasn't traveling very far away from the Gospel.

I mean, some of it, it was just about putting a beat to it.

That angle of the two and the four slightly different than Gospel would.

You have a feeling that he's truly enjoying this.

It's a very joyous record to listen to.

His hand in mine was a passion.

The whole Gospel influence was as much a part of him...

And maybe even more so, as the rhythm and Blues.

This was just his opportunity to get it out.

And it was a mission to show others, the listeners...

That in his choices of music and how it's embellished...

Really what Elvis was looking for as an artist, to have that freedom.

It's that simple.

- How's Blue Hawaii going? - Going very well.

- We leave tomorrow for Kauai. - Yeah.

- I think we 7! Be there for about 10 days. - Tell us about Blue Hawaii.

- There's about 11 songs in it. - Some Hawaiian tunes?

- Yeah. - You got special material written...

- For you for the picture? - We had about 10 songs written...

Especially for the picture. We do that, you know, before the picture starts.

The film Blue Hawaii was an overwhelming success.

That is the point where it gets real interesting.

The two dramas, wild in the country and flaming star...

They're not as music-heavy, and they actually lose money.

That's when they told him, "this is proof, what the public wants.

People just wanna hear your music. They wanna hear you sing in movies."

The last concert he played for almost a decade...

Was a charity show near Hharbor.

That was like the ultimate charity show...

Because it was for the building of the Pearl harbor memorial.

Couldn't be more patriotic...

Couldn't have been more of a cause that people could get behind.

He's back. He's served his time.

He's a great patriot.

It was more to build that piece of the story that the Colonel wanted to tell.

He's cleaned up, and he's a good boy.

The band he brings with him is very interesting.

He has Scotty and DJ, but he brings with him...

His all-star Nashville session-guy band...

Including Boots Randolph, who was a great saxophone player.

Boots Randolph brings in a lead instrument...

That can balance out Elvis' singing in a way...

That Scotty playing rockabilly licks didn't do previously.

So it just becomes a much more full sound.

It's a tragedy that he didn't continue to play live for people at that point.

But the Colonel knew that the films got Elvis in front of millions of people...

Simultaneously, with as little work as possible.

The post-army films, I went to them.

They were in a separate category from what happened in the '50s

he finds himself in a situation where he's just churning out stuff...

That he couldn't possibly have believed in.

The Colonel negotiated contract after contract.

MGM, Paramount, United Artists, you name it.

He was inundated with work, work, work.

Everybody was trying to get every penny they could out of whatever they could.

He had to make three movies a year.

So these soundtrack albums became a big part of the contractual obligation...

To release music with RCA.

That was not his music.

It was killing his recording career...

Because they were movie songs, situation songs.

Obviously, in some of the movies, you got some hits:

"Viva Las Vegas," "Bossa Nova Baby." They weren't all bad.

But because it was connected to a movie, it wasn't like a real record.

The songs had to fit the scene.

And the Colonel obviously knew that the best format...

Was girls and beautiful locations.

I thought it was terrible direction.

The idea to do a bunch of corny-ass movies...

Where this is all being led, it's no-man's land.

He certainly knows this music is crap.

The movies were very harmful to his image...

As an innovator, as a great musician.

They were harmful.

He's very talented. I mean, he's very present.

It's an incredible image of him, but where he had a nice start in the movies...

And did do some creative things early on...

And you could see there was great potential for this guy...

There was really no way for him to become the huge movie star...

That he would've liked to have been and the Colonel keep control of it.

You know, there's too many creative aspects gonna come in.

And they're gonna challenge the Colonel's Carnival mentality.

Well, no, no, no. Far as I was concerned...

I was not involved other than making the contract.

He had the opportunity to say, "I don't wanna do it, " or "I'd like to do it."

No one told him he had to make a picture that he didn't wanna do.

When we had a script, we 'd deliver it to Elvis.

Elvis did refuse a bad picture.

In comes the Colonel...

In comes the studios, in comes the record company.

They would say to him:

"You don't fulfill your contracts, you won't do anything."

In viva Las Vegas, it's the closest he ever gets to having a true co-star.

That's a problem for the Colonel...

Because he doesn't want anybody to even come close to outshining Elvis.

The Colonel did not want Ann-Margret in his world after she got a lot of press.

Anybody who had influence on Elvis was a threat.

The tragedy of the old style of management...

Was to try and maintain control of the artist...

By limiting their exposure to opportunities.

The Colonel was not interested in Elvis becoming too independent a thinker.

He needed Elvis to think that everything good came from the Colonel...

And anything bad came from imagined enemies.

He kept that con game going for much too long.

The years spent chasing the movies, you know, seven years...

They were very destabilizing for Elvis...

Because music was always the buoy.

It's clear about halfway through that period...

He becomes very restless and very annoyed with the whole process.

Elvis didn't have script approval.

There weren't great budgets.

The humdrum movies he was given: Boy chase girl...

Boy gets girl, they get married, and it's happily ever after.

That was not Elvis Presley. He was not that man.

He was much deeper than that.

He had no inspiration whatsoever. He knew he had to make it work.

He knew he was under a contract, and he walked through every one of them.

After a movie, he felt trapped.

He dreaded the next script...

Because he knew it would be the same thing over and over again.

But the disconnect...

The disconnect in the two was really wearing on his mind...

That Colonel was not taking him to the place he needed to be.

This is what we'll never understand...

Is why did Colonel Parker have this kind of influence over him?

Why was he willing to knowingly humiliate himself for this man...

Or for the money promised him by this man?

He puts up with it.

I have never felt Elvis was lost.

He knew with all those movies, as is the case with every artist...

They're taking themselves away from their strength.

Many artists can't get back to where their strengths are.

An artist has to constantly grow and to continue...

Creating and changing, and being inspired by...

Things around him in a spiritual or a personal way.

I'd like to stay in the same vein.

I mean, I wouldn't like to be at a standstill, you know what I mean?

I like... I'd like to progress.

I'd like to do a lot of things, but I...

I realize that it takes time, and you can't...

You can't go out of your capa... Your limitations.

You have to know your capabilities, you know?

Like, I have people say to me all the time, "why don't...?

Why don't you do an artistic picture? Why don't you...

Do this picture and that picture?

Why don't you do something or other?"

Well, that's fine, but...

I would like to. I'd like to do something someday...

Where I feel that I'd really done a good job...

You know, as an actor in a certain type role.

If what you're doing is doing okay, you're better off sticking with it until...

You know, until just time itself changes things.

The great irony is that...

Elvis was such a significant force...

In the launch of rock 'n' roll, and the very revolution that he sparked...

Carries on without him.

There is a renaissance that is underway...

And he is, in effect, in a bubble in Hollywood as it passes him by.

'63, '64, '65, when all the bands were coming in...

He just didn't wanna hear music. He didn't wanna hear the songs.

Was there room for him now, being a solo artist?

Elvis wasn't interested in writing his own music, and all these groups coming up...

The Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys...

They all wrote their own songs...

So they could direct their careers in a way that Elvis couldn't.

There is no road map at this point...

As to what a rock 'n' roller does when he gets older.

The Beatles had each other, you know?

They had four people together to go through it.

And Elvis was totally alone.

There was no one vaguely his equal.

There was nobody he could bounce anything off of.

Elvis really didn't ask for anybody's advice.

He didn't ask the guys for their advice. Oh, my gosh, he would never.

You didn't tell Elvis what to sing or what movie he should be in or...

Elvis was truly his own man.

He needed someone to come with a plan and offer it to him.

"What do you think of this?"

But he hung out with the same people all the time.

We all lived in this bubble.

Very few outsiders came in.

His world was really quite small.

And only consisted of us, people that he trusted.

You didn't really talk about the movies around Elvis.

We didn't go there. Why get him upset?

And people... the guys were around to bring him up.

Elvis was going to us and saying:

"Damn it, I know there's good music out there. Why am I not getting it?"

You can tell his interest in making records has kind of gone away.

You don't get him in the studio a lot.

He was just struggling with what to do next and where to go...

Trying to figure out his purpose again.

It was very difficult to watch.

By this point, Elvis had grown so disconnected...

From the music that he was recording. He knew that it was inauthentic.

He knew that it was insincere.

And he was looking for some connection to music...

That still made him feel the way...

That music had made him feel when he was younger.

He was interested in this new folk music:

Peter, Paul and Mary, the songs of Bob Dylan.

He didn't love Bob Dylan's voice...

But he was interested in this imagery and this language...

That drew from the Gospel and the Blues.

And here he has Odetta singing.

You hear the song, and you've got the lyrics that match his feelings.

You've got the lyrics that he could see himself singing.

Many of his relationships with the culture of the day were circuitous...

Because he was Elvis, and he was behind a high wall.

Elvis, a lot of times, when everyone had gone to bed...

Or there was no one around, he would go into the music room at Graceland...

Just sit there, totally in solitude, as if even I wasn't around...

And just start playing.

Always, it was Gospel, always it was "Precious Lord."

When he would sing...

It was like a character study, watching him get lost.

And then he'd look over...

To see how I was relating to it. He'd look over and wink at me.

Those were times that I Cherish the most, actually.

He wasn't really trying to impress anyone. He was doing it for himself.

And just getting in touch, getting in touch with his maker.

It was a plea.

He didn't have a burning desire anymore to record songs.

The real interesting element in that...

Is that when he regains his appetite for recording...

And wants to prove a point in 1966, he makes a Gospel record again.

During the middle of the Beatles and the Byrds and the Stones...

Elvis makes a Gospel record when he wants to come back.

Elvis is connecting to new music.

He wants a more modern sound...

A more aggressive rhythm section, a rock 'n' roll mix.

I think Elvis' return to Gospel was...

A part of simply the deep religiousness of the South and his upbringing.

But in the late '60s, people were having a hard time looking past...

The kitsch aspect of some of the things that Elvis did.

To appreciate that music, that stuff couldn't bother you.

What do you think of yourself?

You mean as an entertainer or as an individual...

- Or what? - Both.

I can sum it up fairly easily, I...

As a human being, really...

Who's been very extremely fortunate in so many ways.

I have a lot that I'd like to do, a lot I'd like to accomplish.

I'd like to get married, I 'd like to have a family.

I suppose the most important thing in a person's life is...

Is happiness. I mean, not worldly things because...

I mean, you can have cars, you can have money...

You can have a fabulous home, you can have everything.

But if you're not happy, what have you got?

I was very young and very in love. I wanted to be with him a lot.

The times that we were together, I cherished.

I mean, 1968 was a wild and violent year in American history.

At the beginning of the year, Lisa Marie is born.

And then a couple of months later, Martin Luther King is assassinated.

We were making a movie at MGM...

When we heard on the radio about Martin Luther King.

King was that hope to bring us all together, and Elvis knew that.

Elvis looked down and he said:

"He always told the truth."

There's this contentious presidential election going on.

Bobby Kennedy is assassinated.

There's chaos at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

Things were just in disarray.

It was never the same after that.

By '68, most Elvis fans...

Had more or less given up the ghost. There'd been so many poor movies...

So many throwaway singles.

Elvis starts to think about:

"Okay, so how can I play live again?

There's no infrastructure for me to do that."

A couple of really bright guys who got Elvis...

Talked their way into making a TV special.

Their mission was to remind everybody...

Just who Elvis had been and who he still was.

In a sense, to erase the last seven years of the movie soundtracks.

When the opportunity for the TV special is presented...

He hasn't performed for an audience for years.

He was actually thinking, what would he do...

If everything went wrong?

This was his career. This was his life.

This was the moment of realization, that this is it.

This was gonna be either a complete failure, or it'll change everything.

I remember I waited for weeks for the '68 special...

Because I knew it was coming. I remember exactly...

Where our TV was set up in the dining room, the exact place I was sitting.

It's one of those things imprinted on my memory forever.

But you weren't sure if he had the ability to focus...

And gather it all together one more time to create musical explosiveness.

Welcome to NBC and the Elvis Presley special.

You can do better.

I'm gonna say it over again. I wanna really hear something.

When I went with him to NBC, he was very quiet.

He didn't know how people were gonna feel about him.

He was extremely nervous that night.

It's all new again.

And I'd never seen Elvis perform live before.

I didn't really know what to expect.

We didn't know where it was gonna go, period.

Just before it began, on the first taping...

Elvis called me into the makeup room.

He was sitting there, and he asked everybody in the room to leave...

So he could just be with me one on one.

I said, "what's the problem?"

"The problem is I changed my mind. I don't wanna do this."

May we strike the coiled cable off the platform, please?

We weren't seeing, sitting in the audience, what was going on.

I'd stayed away from the dressing room.

He didn't want anyone around.

I was sitting there going, "oh, my gosh, is he gonna be able to pull this off?"

I said, "what are you talking about?"

And he said, "I don't remember anything I sang in the dressing room.

I don't remember any stories that I told.

My mind is a blank, Steve. Let's just call it off. It's not gonna happen."

I said, "Elvis, I've never asked you to do anything that you don't wanna do."

Mr. Elvis Presley.

"But you've got to go out there."

I don't know how this happened, but I saw him relax.

They want you to sit on the floor.

I had no knowledge or understanding...

About how incredibly talented he really was until that show.

He's having an experience in the moment.

During the years he was doing Hollywood movies...

You never got to see him in the moment.

Yeah, baby.

The interplay with Scotty and DJ...

Who's playing drums on the back of a guitar case.

It felt like we were back home again.

Those are guys who grew up together and they suddenly have a moment...

Of reflection:

The past. The early days.

He was rediscovering the sheer animal joy of making music and realizing...

For the first time in years, just how good he was.

That show was 1000 percent Elvis.

His fingerprint was on the first frame to the last frame.

He was a man on a mission.

That night when it premiered on TV, we were all silent.

We just sat there and watched the show and never said a word.

And then, of course, the telephone calls were coming in, and reviews.

And oh, my gosh, it was such a relief.

It was so great to see him smile again.

After the comeback special...

Elvis didn't have to look too far to find his way back to the source.

It was the old story. You could take the boy out of Memphis...

You really couldn't take Memphis out of the boy, you know.

The roots that you come from are always compelling to return to...

No matter how far away you get.

By that point he only had a couple of movies left.

So when he went back to the studio...

He wanted to do things differently.

Elvis returned home to restart his career as a recording artist...

With local musicians, with a local producer...

In a little humble storefront, north Memphis.

That's where Elvis returned to, essentially, save his career.

Chips Moman, his job was writer and producer.

He had evolved from Stax records...

As a producer associated with soul and with black artists.

But Chips was a transracial figure.

He thought in terms of style, in terms of sound.

And he really did embody Memphis music.

It was the greatest sessions, the greatest.

My gosh, I mean, he came alive again.

He was liberated. It was a beautiful marriage.

He told Elvis, "I have a stack of records here I think are hits...

And you don't have any publishing. What do you wanna do?"

Elvis said, "Chips, I need hit records."

He decides he's gonna sing contemporary material...

Publishing be damned. He's gonna do what he wants.

The songs, every one of them, was a hit.

That's the biggest sales Elvis had had ever.

You would think that would've been the next recording session.

Never recorded with Chips again.

In '69, he got a chance to play live at the international hotel.

Vegas was a huge event for him.

Back in the '50s, he wasn't accepted too much then in Vegas.

Vegas, it's not about teenyboppers. It's aimed at a particular audience.

People interested in a show that's there so that they'll stop in the casino...

On the way in or out and drop some money.

Their burning thing to go to Las Vegas and play long stands, you know...

Doesn't happen until they, virtually, have run aground in the film business.

There isn't a single studio that will throw down...

Any significant money for Elvis in a movie.

So they look around and go, "well, what we gonna do now?

Elvis is going on-stage," you know. Thank God.

"You don't have to say you love me" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water."

I was able to witness him put a band together.

When he goes out to Vegas, he's really making decisions...

That are a little more for Elvis than what came before.

He's wanting to play with a band.

He's wanting to go through a deep catalog...

Big parts of which remind him of his own youth.

I personally went to him and said, "I wanted to know...

If you wanted me to try to duplicate classic songs...

What was done previously?" He said, "absolutely not.

Just do what you do, that's why you're here."

I thought it was good that he'd try different songs he liked the sound of.

Glen d. Was the arranger...

And he'd write arrangements for him, and they would be exciting.

I wanna try something. And since this is the last verse...

I think the vocals were just as important to Elvis.

Okay, the horns are answering it there.

He had to have the sweet inspirations.

They had been working with Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin.

Elvis did whatever he wanted to do. If he was feeling it, we had to feel it too.

We could connect, because we were from Gospel.

We were raised Gospel.

Colonel Parker, he had billboards all over.

There was a vibe. Everybody knew that Elvis was there.

He was a nervous wreck.

It's one thing to have a small, invited audience.

Now he's going on the biggest stage in the world. It's Las Vegas.

This is the nitty-gritty time, as far as being nervous, you know.

Opening night, man.

He was excited and also nervous.

He didn't know exactly how he was gonna be received.

He wanted the best of everything.

There were all these big goals, as far as attendance.

And he had a very competitive nature, so he wanted to be able to be...

As powerful and popular as Sinatra, Tom Jones.

He wanted to take his music to a whole different level.

The first time I ever saw him on-stage...

Was the first time he played in Vegas in '69.

The '68 special was more a controlled environment.

It was for television. But in Vegas...

To actually see him walk out there and own that stage...

It was like, "oh, my gosh, I get it. I get it."

Play it.

I remember looking around.

They're all applauding, so drawn in to him.

I'd never seen anyone control an audience that way.

It was like he rehearsed that show all his life.

It was great, staying up all night, being in Vegas. We never left the hotel.

But psychologically, at a point, it weighs on you.

And you may not even know it.

Thirty days, 61 shows.

First engagement, six months later, the second engagement.

The third engagement.

Playing that much for weeks on time, not seeing daylight.

Locked up in a hotel room, what is there to do?

Talk to the same 15 guys every day.

Bored out of your mind. And it all kind of conspires...

To make Elvis vulnerable in ways that if he had a more rational life...

He would not be vulnerable.

That's when Colonel took over...

Went back into modus operandi: Make as much money as we can out of Elvis.

It worked great in the beginning. It just got to be the same old stuff.

He realized that fans wanna hear the hits.

Kind of painted himself into a corner, so to speak.

Back in those days, there was a dinner show, then a late show.

So all the tables up front, they were serving dinner and drinks.

The only people that could afford the up-front seats...

Were the high rollers, so older cats.

Elvis needed connection with the audience.

And Vegas was a very reserved, rich crowd dressed up for the Elvis show.

It frustrated Elvis that he couldn't quite seem to get the mayhem going.

He felt like, really, what he needed was to get outside of Vegas...

And go out and get connected with people...

Though he hadn't been on tour for over 13 years.

What made you decide to come to Texas?

Well, I think the most important thing is the inspiration...

That I get from a live audience. I was missing that.

Back in the 1970�s, I was working for rolling stone.

They sent me to Boston to review an Elvis concert.

"He stands there in a black jumpsuit, gold spangles and an orange cape.

When he stretches out his hands, the cape forms a half Sun under his arms.

And he looks like the true King of rock 'n' roll.

He parades in front of 15,000 people and waits for the applause to wash over.

And it comes as it always does, and as he knows it will.

Elvis Presley has lived through the greatest superstar trip...

Of any performer, and he survived it in his own kind of way.

Elvis participates in a pure, one-to-one relationship with his audience.

When he steps on the stage, it is he and he alone...

Who is the subject of the manic, ecstatic, irrational adoration.

His brilliance is reflected in his control.

He never moves too far in any one direction...

And never loses his grip.

To me, no matter how frustrating the lapses in his career have been...

He remains an artist.

An American artist...

Who we should be proud to claim as our own."

Thank you.

Elvis in concert covered many genres.

And he came out, he would do songs from the '50s and '60s that he broke with.

But during the show, there was a lot of country standards.

He did things that he liked.

You have any thoughts about the rising interest in country music?

I think it's fantastic.

Country music was always a part of the influence on my music anyway.

It's a combination of...

Country music and Gospel and rhythm and Blues all combined...

Is what it really was.

As a child I was influenced by all that.

But I like the Blues, and I like the Gospel music.

Gospel quartets and all that.

- Hey, good rehearsal, kids. - See you at showtime.

You look at the band he put together for the '703 shows...

There was a Gospel contingent. Those sections of the show were powerful.

Straight out of white and black Gospel tradition.

In the '70s Elvis had moved on to the "American trilogy."

His show was consisting of a cross-cultural picture of America...

And Americana.

He was trying to encompass an image of the country as a whole...

That he could be a vessel that could contain...

The entirety of American experience.

That version of "Dixie" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"...

It's so beautiful. You know, the band he's put together...

Is so over the top, and only Elvis would have that kind of spending power.

And just audacious craziness.

Choirs and orchestras and a great rhythm section.

Maybe another Gospel group on the side.

None of it makes sense until you hear something like that...

And they're all playing a role in that, and it's very moving music.

When you see him do that music in those pieces of film I've seen of him...

That's the pure joy of music in the man.

You know, that's when I see everything stop.

Thank you, thank you.

Boy.

- How was the sound in that building? - Very good, very, very good. Here.

Hold on.

That was his life. He loved to sing and perform.

- It's a hot time in Florida. - Boy, it is.

An artist like Elvis is...

Rather than pretending when on-stage, he's pretending at home, to be normal.

When he goes out on-stage at night is who he actually is.

It's a very difficult dichotomy.

To see him become even bigger than life.

He had so much so soon.

He was snatched from the ordinary life of a young man...

Into a place that no one else had ever been in society or in our culture.

To have that success and to experience it...

They had to hand over significant portions of youth.

That was the trade.

He is unmoored from the earth experience.

We were living two different lives. He was performing and...

He was home very, very little.

It was very difficult to communicate at that time.

Elvis had a horrible fear of not sleeping.

He would spend many nights alone, and he would think.

And that would keep him up. So he started on sleeping pills.

And he thought that he had it under control.

Everything that he ever had was prescribed.

Are you satisfied with the image you've established?

Well, the image is one thing and a human being is another. So...

- How close is the image to the man? - It's hard to live up to an image.

I'll put it that way. Yeah.

Come on, bring the cameras over here. Come on through here.

When the Colonel's done talking, I'll tell you.

I'm sorry. Oh, yeah, I'd like to do something.

There's many places I haven't been. I'd like to go to Europe.

I'd like to go to Japan, all those places.

I've never left the country except in the service.

Elvis, from early on, had expressed interest...

In touring overseas, having no idea that Colonel Parker would not let him.

Because if the Colonel went with him...

He was afraid he was not gonna be let back into America.

Colonel knowing that Elvis wanted to tour overseas...

Colonel not wanting anybody to know that he wasn't a U.S. Citizen.

How could he answer Elvis?

They come up with something that nobody had ever done.

Instead of shutting down the idea of Elvis playing in different countries...

Curtailing it, he uses it to his advantage...

And creates the first-ever live-concert simulcast...

On satellite television, so that people in every country all over the world...

Can see Elvis play a concert.

By the time of the Aloha special, Elvis had been touring nonstop.

His health and weight weren't great...

And now he was confronted with this performance...

That was gonna be seen by a billion people around the world.

It's very hard to comprehend it, because I...

In 15 years, it's hard to comprehend that happening.

Through all the countries all over the world.

It becomes the biggest media moment of his career up to that point.

He knows this. He's trimmed down for it.

He looks amazing.

The band is super tight.

Aloha does represent Elvis music...

The moment that Elvis brought together all of his influences...

To solidify an image of Elvis, a look and a style and a presentation...

That seals in Amber, this is what Elvis is.

Elvis was the first major televisual musical star.

We can see him, but we can't touch him.

Elvis, without intending to...

Created an image of himself he would never live past.

That show was another way in which he was truly disserved by the Colonel.

It's a bit of a metaphor for keeping the blinders on...

Which is what, I think, the Colonel was all about.

My picture of the Colonel really is someone that loved selling merchandise...

That wanted, to the end, walk the aisle selling posters and ballpoint pens.

It doesn't make any sense, really, to keep him from touring other countries...

To keep him from really going the whole way with the music...

Like letting him be an artist.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

I think the troubles between Elvis and the Colonel...

Started getting worse at that point.

There was the bond, but they were two very different people.

Elvis outgrew Colonel Parker as an artist...

But he didn't know how to cut the strings.

By this time, he'd started to turn to prescription drugs to keep himself going.

He was on a relentless wheel of...

Performance to travel, to performance to travel.

And you start to see the stress of that.

All the things he told me he wanted to do: Travel the world, meet new audiences.

None of that happened.

All the light went out of his eyes.

With an addiction to prescription pills, if you are a performer...

What you're after is the anesthetizing part of it.

But that's gonna take you away from your powers as a performer.

And he's gonna go on-stage nonetheless.

He had many afflictions, and he hurt himself in many ways.

But there was a core in there that if you let it, it would shine through...

And sometimes in the most unlikely places.

We basically tried to influence him to do more rock 'n' roll.

"Burning love," that one had some potential.

He never felt comfortable with it because he had a hard time with the lyrics.

He was going through a lot, so he didn't wanna do the song...

And the guys kept expressing that he should do it...

And he was really fighting it.

"Burning love," well, it's one of the greatest records he ever made.

It was a hard song for him to sing and to get into.

About them lyrics.

It was only one and I hit my mouth.

He wanted to let out his feelings in a song that related to how he felt.

It was difficult to be given music for something really uplifting, upbeat...

And that's not matching his tone. That's not matching his feelings.

Elvis was very family-orientated.

He did Cherish family.

But Elvis wanted it all.

It takes two in a relationship.

Having a child, not being able to do the traveling...

I was a mother.

He always used to say, "you can't serve two masters."

After he recorded "separate ways"...

He wanted to go into the control room and listen to that song for hours.

And he would just look up and shake his head...

Because I know he still always loved Priscilla.

Elvis and I, you know, we held hands in court.

There was still a lot of love there.

He was a doting father.

We kept that relationship very close.

I knew he was always there for me and for Lisa as well...

But the breakup of the marriage was painful for both of us.

He was never the same after that.

He just changed. He was very moody.

He wasn't well doing two shows a night...

And he had to take uppers to get going and downers to put him to sleep.

Well, I don't know, but I know one thing.

When I told Elvis to slow down, he wanted more dates.

I booked more dates.

I said, "well, I don't think you should."

And he said, "well, it's what I wanna do."

He was very unhappy, so we started all over.

With some 25 color portraits...

Night by night, it became harder for him to carry on being Elvis.

Drugs and the self-destructiveness were all punishments.

He was in great pain, and yet he gave so much pleasure.

He would go off-stage and collapse...

And the audience would go out buoyed up and joyous, spiritually blessed.

Elvis was always searching for answers.

Why him?

"Well, maybe God had something else planned for me.

Am I supposed to be giving a message?"

Not realizing he was doing what he was supposed to be doing.

The last days of his life was not his best work.

He had a lot of problems.

He had gained weight, which is a cardinal sin in show business.

Isolation, you know, that brings on the drug abuse.

He's lost touch with his father.

His mom's gone.

His wife is gone.

It had to be very lonely. We know that.

There's a point when you have success, and you get really wealthy...

And there is that day where the letter comes...

That none of this is gonna make me happy.

And he knew he had to try to find something, you know...

But I think he gave up.

I think he felt outgunned and gave up.

Those last shows, those last couple of years...

Were not the most memorable, as far as performance.

Sometimes he didn't get through a song.

I think the last year, he was pretty much over it.

I don't even why, you know, he went on-stage.

They're just hard to watch.

Sometimes I think it was better maybe if they'd just cancel the show.

We got the call that Elvis wanted to record in Memphis.

Whenever we got the call, we would be there at his Beck and call...

Whenever they were ready.

In my mind, we're going to, like, Sun Records or some place...

Chips Moman's studio.

We pull into Graceland and I say, "what are we doing here?"

They said, "we're cutting here."

He wouldn't go to the studio.

The studio had to come to him, right in the jungle room there.

It's hard to get him to go into a studio, because he was uncomfortable there.

Didn't wanna go to Nashville, to Stax, to Chips Moman's.

He wanted to stay at home.

We would come over from Nashville, check into a hotel right down the street.

And we'd all be ready there, good to go, and they'd say Elvis is still not up.

He could come down at midnight, or it could be 2:00 in the morning.

You never knew what the night was gonna hold.

Elvis ended up back in the jungle room, recording his last record.

Graceland can be something that gives you a sense of place and of center.

But it can also be a place that you just disappear into.

It seemed to me that Elvis was caught in between...

Doing a little bit of both there.

Seems to be, he's picking songs that somewhat reflect his state of mind...

Like "Hurt," which is one of the... The very last ones.

I think he's... he's feeling very hurt.

He's very down. He's very alone.

He doesn't understand what's happened to music...

And he got left out of that.

He had become a thing.

He was no longer Elvis Presley.

He was Elvis.

Well, when I first came over to the jungle room...

They removed the furniture, they covered the walls in blankets.

There was a semi, a very large tractor-trailer, out behind the house.

It was RCA's complete mobile-recording studio.

They would run all their recording lines into the jungle room.

It looks like you're in Tahiti, like you're in the islands.

But we're all just crammed into this tiny little space.

It was a nightmare for the recording engineers to keep that sound clean...

Without too much bleed with open microphones...

And we did our best to do the recordings as best we could.

It wasn't like we did a lot of rehearsal for the recordings.

It was turn the machine on, and he's gonna sing.

We would all watch each other, doing it on the fly.

I remember one of the first songs that I recorded with him was "Hurt."

We didn't have a clue of how it was gonna go down or how he'd perform it.

All of a sudden, he takes his stance.

Elvis wanted to finish the '68 special on a big note.

Quite frankly, we didn't know how to finish the show.

Every day at 4:00, we would all sit in the piano room of our offices...

Rehearsing with Elvis.

While we were sitting in Steve's office with Elvis...

We had a black-and-white television in the corner.

On that TV...

Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

Elvis picked up a guitar, and he started playing it...

Clocking about a mile a minute.

He saw, "I want you to understand me...

Because this is a moment in time where we all have to understand each other."