Original subtitles

Everything for his future depended on this special.

Elvis was at the low point of his career,

doing movies he didn't wanna do.

He hadn't been onstage in seven years.

You all know what we're here for, right? The Elvis Presley Special.

The '68 Comeback Special would let him know

if there was still an audience for him as a performer.

If Elvis did not give the greatest performance of his career,

it was the end.

When Elvis first came on the scene,

it was a revelation.

The way he looked in the early days, it was as cool as it possibly gets.

But it evolved to a thing in the '60s.

He was doing music that wasn't as great as the music he did in the very beginning.

He was doing movies that nobody believed in.

I'll buy you the biggest steak you ever had.

He was walking a fine line

between, "I'm the real thing,"

or, "I've lost it."

We are now gonna see whether he's really back or not.

We're gonna see really what he's made of.

Just before they come onstage,

Elvis calls the director into the dressing room

and said, "I can't go out there. I can't do it."

And the audience were coming in.

Glenn?

Go?

Okay. Now, y'all know what we're here for, right?

And the director says, "Look, Elvis."

"You've got to go out there." Elvis is in the leather jacket.

And the director says, "I'll tell you what."

"You go out there,

and if you don't like it, I'll pretend the tapes were destroyed."

And he makes him this crazy promise.

And so, Elvis goes out.

He was definitely aware of the stakes, yes.

And here's Elvis Presley!

And he knew that this could be a failure and that would be it.

It could ruin his career. And he was very aware of that.

Uh, welcome to NBC and the Elvis Presley Special.

You can do better. I'm gonna say it all over again.

I wanna really hear something.

Welcome to NBC and the Elvis Presley Special!

And here's Elvis Presley.

Well, I'm gonna have to do it sooner or later,

so I might as well get on with it, baby. Let's go.

Better get on with it again. I missed it that time.

Elvis kind of fumbles the first entry. And they have to start again.

And he's really nervous. He's sweating nerves.

- Okay, we're ready. -My boy, my boy.

They're gonna put me away for a while.

It's just hard to remember when you see him

that once he had been the King.

How long am I gonna be standing here? Are we ready?

It's getting embarrassing standing out here, Steve. I gotta do something.

It's shocking, because he's very nervous.

He's so visibly insecure.

So overwhelmed by the size of the moment.

- Okay, are you ready? - No, but we'll try anyway.

Whoever this person was standing on this stage

was a shell of the rock star who just a decade earlier

terrified all of mainstream America.

We got a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures.

And overnight, it was all gone. It was like a dream.

Say something to your fans.

Do you have any particular message you'd like to pass on to them?

And so, I became

very discouraged.

And here is Elvis Presley!

Just a few weeks ago, a young man from Memphis, Tennessee,

recorded a song on the Sun label.

He's only 19 years old. Elvis Presley, let's give him a nice hand.

I've always liked music.

My mother and dad both loved to sing.

They'd tell me that when I was 3 or 4 years old,

I got away from them in church and walked up in front of the choir

and started beating time.

You have to remember, back in those days, music is very segregated.

Most music that we heard was all Black.

And it was rhythm and blues,

B.B. King, Little Richard.

White people was playing Pat Boone, the McGuire Sisters…

…and we really wasn't interested in that kind of music.

America was deeply scared of Black culture infecting

white children.

And here comes Elvis, who took the music and the moves

that he saw in the juke joints of the Mississippi and Memphis of his youth,

the music he grew up loving, and put that onstage.

This gave us our own music that was not our parents' music.

It was dangerous music, 'cause it was not our society's music,

especially down South.

That was just taboo.

Elvis mostly back then did covers of Black artists.

Elvis was from the Deep South, so he wanted to be around Black people.

I asked him, "How did you come about really loving Black people's music?"

He said he would go around to Black churches

and just stand at the windows and listen to their music.

He was a prime example

of showing what happens

when you put together music coming down from the mountains

and music coming up the Mississippi River,

and where that meets.

And they explode, and that became rock and roll.

Nobody white was singing like that, or wasn't even acting like that onstage.

We thought it was funny because we would say things like,

"Oh, he's just trying to be Black."

But he really wasn't. That was just how he was.

That was the controversy that everybody was having at that time.

'Cause his fans didn't want him to be Black,

and I don't even think they realized that's the kind of singing he was doing.

But we, as Black artists and Black singers,

we could tell the difference between Elvis

and the other white singers that were coming along at that time.

The world was trying to fight us not to do that, to keep separated.

But music is not gonna separate you. Music is going to bring you together.

Elvis was an ambitious artist.

He was also a child who grew up in poverty,

whose greatest fear was being poor again.

His two greatest urges are to make the most of his talent

and to never ever be poor again.

And those things would fight each other his whole life.

Most of Elvis Presley's early music contemporaries

are now merely footnotes in the history of rock and roll.

That's because they didn't have the one thing that Elvis Presley had.

Colonel Tom Parker, the shrewdest manager in the business.

When the Colonel looked at Elvis,

he saw a big, shiny idol that America would worship.

And when Elvis looked in the mirror, he saw B.B. King.

Those two versions of the same person could never coexist,

and the Colonel's Elvis

killed the other Elvis.

Elvis and the Colonel started working together in 1955

when Elvis was out on the road doing tours promoting his Sun singles,

and the Colonel was managing Hank Snow.

And basically, they got on the same package tour together,

and the Colonel was able to see

what Elvis was about, and the audience reaction,

and how talented he really was.

Almost immediately, he starts

to maneuver of how he's going to take over the management of Elvis.

Colonel Parker came up as a carnival barker.

He thought Elvis was merch.

He thought Elvis was a widget he could sell to America.

In Elvis's mind, the Colonel was some kind of genius.

He was a kind of genius of selling.

He was a genius showman, he was a genius carny, really.

And he had absolutely brilliant entertainment ideas.

When Colonel met with Elvis and talked to him about

TV exposure, about film,

that's how the Colonel took over.

Elvis wasn't 21 yet.

I wasn't known at all until Col. Parker started managing me, you see.

And then I got on television, and then I started being known.

Elvis Presley, and here he is.

Colonel is summed up in one sentence.

"Last year, my boy had a million dollars' worth of talent."

"This year, he has a million dollars."

That's Colonel Tom Parker in a nutshell.

He kind of invented the merch we know today.

It was the Colonel's idea to put Elvis's face on everything.

The only kind of merch that really existed up till then was sort of for Mickey Mouse.

He just took it to another level.

No one can deny that this artist, whether they like it or not,

has a tremendous amount of energy and talent.

The name Elvis Presley is becoming a household word one way or the other.

The night Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show,

I knew I was seeing something

that possibly hadn't been seen before,

which was a new type of human being.

A 20th century man.

I was a child, and I was excited by the music.

It struck me deeply even at that young age,

the open sexuality of his appearance,

the way he combed his hair, or the makeup he put…

He wore makeup, you know, in 1956.

And so the first thing I did after I saw Elvis was

got my mother, we got to Mike Diehl's music shop.

And I rented that guitar, came home,

and I just smelled it, touched it, and felt it.

Made some noise on it. I couldn't play it.

There were just all these things that hadn't dawned on you before

that he sort of opened the door for and gave you an allowance to

be who you actually are.

You didn't have to follow the rules.

You could break the rules.

I asked my mom.

I said, "Do you remember when Elvis Presley came on?"

And she comes from this very good Irish Catholic family.

She said, "I thought it was disgusting."

I was really disappointed. I was like, "Mom, it's Elvis."

"Well, I don't like it."

His leg moving like that was not

an affectation.

That was not a cool stage move he came up with.

He couldn't help it.

-Yeah.

The first thing people want to know

is why I can't stand still when I'm singing.

I watch my audience and listen to them.

And I know we're all getting something out of our system.

None of us knows what it is.

The important thing is getting rid of it and nobody's getting hurt.

By the time he's on The Ed Sullivan Show in September of '56,

he's already been on national television ten times and…

And it's really the Milton Berle shows that provide the controversy.

My reasons on rock and roll music and why I preach against it,

I know what it does to you.

And I know the evil… feeling that you feel when you sing it.

I don't like to be called "Elvis the Pelvis,"

but it's one of the most childish expressions

I've ever heard coming from an adult, "Elvis the Pelvis,"

but if they wanna call me that, there's nothing I can do about it,

so I just have to accept it.

Now the chief reason for all the criticism of Elvis Presley

is that he's become a sort of a sex symbol to teenage girls.

They go wild over him.

His confidence, which is the fuel of all of his sexual charisma,

was the thing that scared America.

One secret of Presley's popularity with teenagers

has been his lack of popularity with their parents.

So if parents quit criticizing his singing, I predict

Elvis Presley's star will fall

as rapidly as it rose.

Elvis was…

was very unique because

he wasn't a guy that just hearing his music

gave you the full picture.

You had to see him.

Elvis Presley!

How about my boy? I love him.

Wonderful. Hit it up.

Hollywood was the ultimate destination at that point

if you wanted to be a famous person.

It had worked for Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Dean Martin.

So it was natural for them to look towards

what… when is that going to happen?

It wasn't if it was gonna happen, but when it was gonna happen.

Take your hand off my arm, Mr. Fields.

How come you're so friendly with the lady, boy?

We met in Paris last year. The King of France introduced us.

Elvis was obsessed with doing serious acting.

He idolized James Dean,

and he really wanted to be like Dean and Brando,

and, in fact, King Creole was first offered to James Dean.

And so, that's why he jumped at it.

For my money, Elvis is simply fun to watch.

There were places for him to go in films.

I came to Hollywood and I did four movies.

So everything was happening, really, in a short period of time.

And then,

right when I was going good, I got drafted.

And overnight, it was all gone. It was like a dream.

Pop.

I do solemnly swear…

…true faith and allegiance to the United States of America.

To the United States of America.

Congratulations, you are now in the Army. You are all privates.

His lucrative career as rock and roll king interrupted for a while,

Elvis Presley begins his military service at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas.

Uncle Sam doesn't play favorites, and those celebrated sideburns,

which were his trademark, are sacrificed to military uniformity.

Elvis Presley,

Private Elvis Presley of the United States Army,

is due to embark for Germany today.

He was at the top of his career.

The last thing he wanted to do was go to the Army.

It was a sad thing.

I remember Elvis as he's walking up on the ship

with a duffel bag on his back

and saying goodbye to all the fans as he's going to Germany.

Even though there wasn't a war,

when you think of Germany back in the '50s,

that's like going to…

…the worst place ever.

This is the story of the role played by the United States Army.

Their job? Hold back the tide of Communism in Germany and in free Europe.

It's really a privilege to be in Europe.

It's something that I've looked forward to for some time.

I only regret that… uh…

I can't do some…

some shows and different things while I'm here,

but I will be looking forward when my,

uh, Army hitch is over,

I would like very much to come back on a regular tour of Europe.

Thank you very much, Mr. Presley.

And we wish you a pleasant stay in Germany.

Thank you very much.

-Arrivederci. No, that's Italian.

I met Elvis in Germany.

My father was in the Air Force, and he was stationed over there.

There was a place called the Eagles Club,

and I was sitting at the Eagles Club in the afternoon.

There was a jukebox. Back in the day, we played records.

And I was writing to my friend how much I hated it there,

that I missed them all very much.

And this guy came over to me, introduced himself,

and he said, "Are you writing to your friends?"

And I go, "Yeah, we just got here three weeks ago."

And he said, "Do you like Elvis?"

And I said, "Yeah, who doesn't like Elvis?"

He said, "Would you like to meet him?"

At home, I told my father, "Dad, I met somebody at the Eagles Club,

and he wanted to know if I wanted to meet Elvis."

Well, that didn't go well at all,

'cause my father wasn't really a fan, and neither was my mother.

And I only thought it was a one-time shot,

never ever thinking that I would be asked to go back.

We went over that weekend on a Saturday.

There was a glass on top of the piano,

and as he's singing, he's really rocking it like Jerry Lee Lewis did.

I'm looking at it going, "Oh my God."

"It's gonna splash. It's gonna fall."

And just as it started to fall,

he picked it up and looked over to everybody like it was a trick.

Being in the Army was so not his thing. It was very foreign.

And he's alone, and usually he has people around him.

He has his guys around him, even before he went into the Army.

So he was alone, really, for the first time.

It sounded like to me that he needed someone to talk to,

and Elvis would really pour his heart out to me.

He'd just lost his mother.

It wasn't only like losing a mother.

It was like losing a friend, a companion, someone to talk to.

I could wake her up any hour of the night, if I was worried about something.

She'd get up, try to help me.

Elvis and Gladys's relationship was very close from the very beginning.

They lived in an incredibly poor area of Tupelo.

She was always trying to make their life better.

And also, at the same time,

Vernon ends up getting sent to jail for forging a check.

So for a lot of the time that Elvis was a kid,

it was just he and Gladys, and Gladys worked very hard to

feed him, clothe him, get him into school.

She was his support mechanism for the pressure,

the stress, everything that was going on with the career.

I had compassion and felt horrible for him.

Understanding, you know, being away especially,

losing a mom that he was so close to.

So that's kind of how we connected.

And he was very nervous about whether or not

he would still be in the business or still even sing again.

He was away for quite a while,

and he thought a lot of his fans would forget him.

Someone else would be coming in, someone new.

- Say something to your fans.

Do you have any particular message that you'd like to pass on to them?

Yes, I would. I'd like to say that

in spite of the fact that I'll be out of their eyes for some time,

I hope 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.

Elvis,

he was deeply sensitive and deeply insecure.

Like that little boy who was ashamed of what happened to his dad,

who was ashamed of their poverty,

ashamed of what happened to his mom, was trying to mend things

and make things good and always wanted to please people.

I mean, he was a profound pleaser,

and that made him so charismatic onstage,

but also gave him an Achilles' heel.

And that is that you want love. Mass love.

But the more mass love you get,

the bigger the hole gets, the more you need.

When he was in the Army,

I think that's when it really starts to wear away at him,

not having the love of the audience.

Normally, when an artist was big,

and they went to the Army and was out of the sight of everybody for a couple years,

they never were able to pick their career back up.

Elvis was never out of sight.

The most important thing that the Colonel does

before Elvis goes into the Army,

is he gets him to record a bunch of material.

They have huge hits while Elvis is in Germany.

So if you weren't really paying attention to the national news

and what Elvis was actually physically doing,

you'd think he was still making records.

Before he went to Germany,

he was still

the rebel.

And here he was, a foot soldier,

staying up all night on patrols.

Getting frostbite in the snow.

Colonel wrote him letters,

again and again, explaining what he'd done to promote his records.

Telling him that he'd made a new deal, that there was a movie to come out and do…

Telling him, "I made another deal for another two movies."

I would like to say that when I get out of the Army…

…I'm looking forward to…

to just picking up where I left off when I came into the service.

And I take it from that that you really enjoy what you're doing,

or what you were doing before you went into service.

Oh yes, I do.

In fact, that was the hardest part of the entire military service.

It was being away from it.

Being away from the fans?

Just being away from show business altogether.

That was the hardest part of all.

Kept thinking about the past all the time, contemplating the future.

There was no rock musician

who had an established 20, 30-year career that you could look to.

That person didn't exist.

Everybody's idea of success was Sinatra.

Sinatra had the incredible career.

And those types of entertainers, you know?

That was sort of… That was the peak.

The Frank Sinatra Timex Show, "Welcome Home, Elvis."

There he is!

The thing that stands out to me,

which is a very crafty move,

is he's welcomed home in a big special by Frank Sinatra.

Well, Elvis, that's our little "welcome home" gift.

The two years you lost while in the Army.

And looking back over it, I'm stuck with the realization

that maybe you didn't miss so much after all.

As a matter of fact, all you seemed to have lost is your sideburns.

Now, folks, what would you say if I were gonna sing another song now?

It's a very clear moment

where Elvis is accepted into the club.

Frank is telling the country, "He's a good kid."

"He served his country, went in the Army. He's back now."

But at the same time, Elvis is giving something up.

Because in order to get into the club,

you also have to give up, "This person's dangerous."

"This person's a threat."

"My daughter might run off with this guy."

That's over. It's almost like a negotiated settlement.

Frank Sinatra, they call him the chairman of the board

because he runs show business.

He is perceived as the guy

who can bless certain people,

and, "Look, we're together singing each other's songs."

-Man, that's pretty.

Elvis, some radio stations are cutting off rock and roll.

What's your comment on that,

and what will happen to your career if rock and roll died out?

If rock and roll died completely out, well,

then I'd have to do something else

in the line of music. Maybe…

uh…

opera.

I don't know, really.

Elvis, when he was in the Army,

he was exposed to a lot of European music, and he particularly loved Mario Lanza.

And Mario Lanza was an opera singer.

And I think that's where this cross-fertilization happens.

Elvis changed his musical style and his voice.

The way he spoke changed very much.

Elvis becomes really

serious after the Army with big vocal singing.

He can get almost into that sort of operatic range.

So as soon as he's back from the Army,

the Colonel gets him right into the studio again.

They're recording stuff that is much more adult-leaning.

The thing about Elvis as an artist is he had hits in every genre.

Does he sound like Elvis in every song? Yeah. How do you do that?

It's not like he changed himself.

He makes those genres bend to him, not the other way around.

It's the pure arc light of his talent.

Elvis comes back and he performs a benefit show.

This is a Pearl Harbor charity organization.

Look out, here he comes! Ladies and gentlemen,

it looks as if… it's Elvis Presley!

He gets on that stage, and he is just

charisma personified.

It was the peak of something.

And you would think that this would be the relaunch.

And instead, it was the end of something.

He walks off that stage,

and he wouldn't walk on another stage for seven more years.

You don't think rock and roll is dying then, huh?

In 1956, when I first started out, I was hearing the same thing.

That rock and roll is dead, is dying out.

I'm not saying it won't die out, because it may be dead tomorrow.

I don't know.

I wish I did know.

Elvis kept calling me periodically out of the blue.

He felt safe talking to me and expressing to me his fears.

His likes, his dislikes.

I didn't have any media attention, and this is when I was dating him.

He would tell me about Colonel Parker,

and he really depended on Colonel Parker

to take care of him and get him into movies.

And he was hoping for bigger opportunities

to be able to be in the type of films that he wanted to be in.

More serious, something good that he felt he was connected to.

After the Army, Elvis did a couple of non-singing movies, and nobody went.

Elvis Presley in his most dramatic role,

as the half-breed in Flaming Star.

Torn between two loves, two loyalties, and fighting to save them both.

Flaming Star, dramatic dynamite.

It was a good film.

A very good film, but he didn't sing. He didn't get the girl.

And he died, so you can imagine how that went over with his fans.

They hated it, you know?

White men let her die!

And the Colonel kind of used that to say,

"Let's surround you with a lot of girls,

put you in really cool clothes, you sing a lot of songs,

and keep the plot light and fluffy,

so as many people as possible can buy a ticket."

"You're gonna make a river of money." And they did.

And I think that is the beginning of his corruption.

And that's when he had that five-year contract

that had basically musicals.

That's what people wanted to see him sing.

We're heading back to Hollywood,

to start the picture Thursday at Paramount.

- Thursday at Paramount. - For Hal Wallis.

Two or three of them this year.

You're gonna be that busy?

They put out Blue Hawaii.

The movie's an unbelievable box office hit.

But something else happens

that is very beneficial to Elvis's bank account

and ultimately almost lethal to his creative life,

which is the soundtrack spends 20 weeks at number one.

It's a huge hit, and say what you want to say about Colonel Parker,

but the guy is a brilliant businessman.

And he immediately realized,

"If we put out movies where Elvis sings to young women

who aren't wearing a whole lot of clothes,

and we put out a companion soundtrack,

the things will promote each other."

And so, that was now the formula.

Oh, it's a beach party. Come on.

And they just did it over and over and over again.

And like every drug, the high is a little less every time.

From a business perspective,

which is the only thing the Colonel is interested in,

the movies are terrible,

but the business of Elvis is actually as good as it's ever been.

He became more and more plastic-looking in those movies.

I'm sorry, buddy. I can't be in both places at once.

Elvis's hair in those movies, at a certain point,

it's like a cotton candy that they spray-painted black

and then they varnished it.

They brushed it with some yak butter.

He's not real. He's not a real person anymore.

The backgrounds behind him aren't real.

Nothing's real.

Colonel Parker's plan is working.

He made more than Steve McQueen.

He made more than Gregory Peck.

He made more than Cary Grant.

He was the highest-paid movie star in America.

They would pay astronomically.

But what the Colonel realized was

the more money you could get out of them, the cheaper he could make the films.

And I was doing a lot of pictures close together,

and the pictures got very similar.

I'd read the first four or five pages of it, and I knew

that it was just a different name with 12 new songs in it.

The songs were mediocre in most cases.

They even stopped writing new music.

They'd just sort of regurgitate old songs,

throw a sort of plotline together.

He's putting together these grab-bag records

of songs that no one else wanted

because the requirement to be on an Elvis song

was Colonel Parker got the publishing.

These were all naked money grabs.

They had this one record,

there is Elvis posing with the RCA dog

who is sitting on top of a cash register. It's insane.

The scripts get worse, the songs get worse.

Until, eventually, Elvis Presley is making movies in three weeks

where there's one take of everything

and he's singing "Old MacDonald Has a Farm."

-Oh boy.

-Embarrassing. -Yeah.

- That, to me, is a crime. - Yeah.

-It is a crime. -Yeah.

To put him in that situation and sing that song.

That makes him a laughingstock, and he knew it.

Yeah.

-Yeah. -He knew it.

When did you permanently move in to Graceland?

That was in 1963.

I know he'd be very angry.

I saw him throw so many scripts across the room.

Frustration, anger.

Um…

Lost a little bit on where his career was going.

Because those were not the roles that he wanted.

Uh, Hollywood's image of me was wrong, and I knew it.

And I couldn't do anything about it.

I didn't know what to do. I just felt I was obligated to things that I didn't

fully believe in.

At a certain stage, I had no say-so in it.

I didn't have final approval of the script.

Which means that I couldn't say,

"This is not good for me."

And so, I became

very discouraged.

They couldn't have paid me no amount of money in the world

to make me feel any satisfaction inside.

The first time I heard him say no

was we were here in Bel Air,

and he looks at this script,

and he throws it against the wall.

"I'm not doing another one of these."

Within a few hours,

there was the record company,

there was William Morris,

there was the studio,

and there was Colonel Parker.

And, "If you don't do these contracts,

you won't do anything."

He really had no choice.

Not really.

He had to fulfill the contract.

You could even see it physically.

I cared so much, until I became physically ill.

I would become violently ill.

No matter how big Elvis got, he's still the guy that grew up

in a tar shack.

There's always somebody in your ear saying,

"Know what? You're not far from going back there."

If Elvis cared so much about money, why did he blow it the way he did?

Nobody blew money like Elvis. He was legendary.

This wasn't about money.

The quotient is not money

versus the thing you want to get to.

The quotient is, "You'll be abandoned."

Money is just some form of testament that people care.

It's the abandonment thing that they use against you.

The Colonel had immense ability to tap into Elvis's insecurity

and really infantilize him.

He always felt

that he owed the Colonel his career, and I think it was very hard for him

to say, "I wanna stand alone here."

"I'm making my own decisions."

Elvis's closest collaborator

was somebody who didn't understand him.

That was the tragedy of their relationship.

There was nobody to tell Elvis actually how good he was, you know?

In a deep… In a deep enough way.

I mean, you think about having all of that talent

and being that revolutionary an artist.

And to have a world that doesn't really understand you,

that basically thinks you're kind of a clown.

If you look at Elvis's career through much of the '60s,

you're looking at an artist who's completely isolated

from anything that fed him.

This is a guy who…

was born performing in front of people.

Now he's isolated.

Elvis had been dangerous enough

to recognize danger when he saw it.

He saw the Rolling Stones.

He saw the Beatles.

He knew how they were making America feel

because he had made America feel that way.

One psychiatrist recently said you're nothing but four Elvis Presleys.

It's not true. It's not true.

On every sign, there is hero worship

that recalls the heydays of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.

In '64, there's just this huge tidal wave.

Everything changes. The hair changes, the clothes change.

Overnight, the Beatles make everybody irrelevant,

and then everyone has to catch up.

Oh my gosh, I was listening to the Beatles too.

You know, I was listening to Mick Jagger. I mean, he came on like Elvis did.

He was out jumping all over the place. I'm like, "What the heck?"

The music was changing.

The Beatles came to our house in Bel Air, which was a funny evening.

When they did come in, they were so nervous.

In fact, Elvis sat down on the couch,

John Lennon and Paul McCartney just stared at him.

Never said a word. Just looked at him. They were so nervous.

And Elvis basically was saying, "Well, if you're not gonna talk…"

He turned on the TV.

They were just mesmerized by him.

I remember seeing them,

and we start talking, and John said,

"I didn't have the courage to tell Elvis this,

but would you tell him?"

He said, "You see these sideburns?" and I said, "Yeah."

He said, "I almost got kicked out of high school

because I wanted to look like Elvis."

"And we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for him."

The Beatles were the writers of their songs at the time,

and before the Beatles, in general,

songwriters wrote the songs, singers sang the songs.

That's what took it to the next level,

the fact that the Beatles wrote.

And that's what gave us, the youth at that time, a voice.

Of course, the Beatles worshiped Elvis,

but they weren't necessarily listening to his new records.

He was the original rebel.

He was the original conduit

to make rock and roll hugely popular with youth.

And now, he's relegated to really being a family entertainer.

And I think that really hurt.

I've never written a song. I wish I could.

I wish I was like some of my, uh, rivals,

'cause they're pretty good songwriters. But me, I…

I did good to get out of high school, you know?

Suddenly, all these rock groups coming

that are alluding to things that are much deeper.

Something that's about real life, and that flips the script completely.

There was all of the mass racial tension,

and then there was the economic tension,

and then there was what was going on in Vietnam,

which is impossible to overstate the impact on American culture of that.

The news tonight, despite an official denial,

is of a significant escalation of the war in Vietnam.

For the first time, American jets have dumped tons of high explosives

within the city limits of Haiphong.

No rock and roll performer of the '50s

was trying to get to something deeper.

I think a big thing to me, is people start looking for meaning in music.

Real meaning, something that's deeper than

anything they heard from Chuck Berry,

anything they heard from Elvis.

Suddenly, there's this

poetry.

There's poetry in music. Folk music and then rock music.

The idea of Bob Dylan reciting a type of poetry in his songs,

it was like, "What's that? Where does that come from?"

People that were writing songs really couldn't help but be a reflection

of what was happening in the streets.

Elvis didn't see himself as a political figure.

So it would have been probably weird even from a "brand" point of view,

especially when he's doing big Hollywood movies.

Like, is he gonna start jumping in and doing topical songs?

Elvis stayed on the sidelines while the world was shifting towards

a political, overt stance with great intensity.

Oh, Mr. Presley, on the subject of the service,

what is your opinion of war protesters? And would you today refuse to be drafted?

Honey, I'd just sooner keep my own personal views about that to myself.

'Cause I'm just an entertainer and I… I'd rather not say.

Do you think other entertainers should keep their views to themselves too?

No. I can't even say that.

The only songs Elvis could record at this point

were songs that almost every other serious recording artist in America had passed on.

The greatest voice in America was getting America's worst songs,

and not only did no one stop him,

no one in his camp even seemed to understand

that this was a problem, except for Elvis.

I mean, Elvis might be lots of things, but he's not an idiot.

He can read a graph line like anybody else.

This is dying.

I think he thought,

"If this is ending, I want to end as the Elvis I wanna be."

"Not the Elvis they want me to be."

How Great Thou Art was an incredibly important

milestone in his career

because it showed him that he could do what he wanted to do.

And it necessarily didn't need to be

the biggest commercial success in the world,

but that he could be in control of his own destiny.

It's sort of the first step towards,

"I need to get back to who I am as a person and as an artist."

So, to go back to his gospel roots

and sort of insist that he make that record

wasn't in line with what the Colonel would have wanted him to do,

which was just more pop music.

I think if Elvis at that point in his career

wasn't able to do gospel music,

I don't know what Elvis would have been doing.

So, he had to stand up.

"This is what, really, I want to do."

Elvis, is your first love Western music?

No, sir, it's not.

My first, I would say, would be, uh,

spiritual music.

I know practically every religious song that's ever been written.

When he found out that I was a gospel singer and I had gospel roots,

I think that's what made me and him really gravitate to one another,

because that's how he wanted to sing.

You're born with certain feelings inside of you.

And you can feel them when you go different places.

Like when I visit different churches,

I can feel that spirit that they have at that church.

And Elvis wanted to feel that.

When I saw Elvis

singing "How Great Thou Art"…

it was the first time I'd been to a recording session.

I was sitting right outside the glass window.

I think he was really touched, I mean, by something spiritual.

Like his soul had left his body.

At the end of that session,

he went down to his knees

and he looked up and he had this little…

He looked like a little boy, proud smile on his face.

He knew he had done something great.

He won three Grammys.

And they were all for gospel music. That tells you where his heart is.

If Elvis could have had a choice of the music he would sing,

it would be gospel,

but he wasn't gonna make no money and be no superstar as a gospel singer.

So he had to take the route that was going to, you know,

get him very successful, because, you know,

the Colonel did not want him to sing anymore.

He just wanted him to stay in movies.

That gospel album is the giveaway

as to what was going on in his internal life.

I wouldn't like to stay in the same vein.

I mean, I wouldn't like to be at a standstill, you know what I mean?

I'd like… I'd like to progress.

I'd like to get married. I'd like to have a family.

It's definitely true. It's a normal thing to do.

Who wants to grow old and be alone? You know what I mean?

I was in my dressing room at Graceland,

and he said, "Cilla," and he knocked on my door,

and he had something behind his back.

And then he said to me, you know, "It's time."

And he

took a box out, and it was a wedding ring.

I was in shock.

It's more important to surround yourself with people

who can give you a little happiness, because you only pass through life once.

You don't come back for an encore.

Find that one girl, you know. It's a thing that you can't rush.

I'm thinking to myself, "My dad's not gonna believe this."

I got pregnant the night we got married.

And I'm like nervous, I'm going, "Oh my God, I don't know if I…"

"Am I ready to be a mother?" I was 21.

I started crying one night. I've never told this, but I started crying one night

and he called me "Satnin" and he said, "Satnin, what's the matter with you?"

"What's the matter, baby?" You know? I go…

"I'm scared."

"I don't know if I'm ready for a baby."

And he goes, "You'll be a great mother. You'll be a great mom."

And I go,

"I won't be able to do things with you anymore."

And he goes, "Yes, you will."

I go, "You're not gonna want babies around and kids around."

We got married, we're doing things together,

we're going to Vegas.

And I'm thinking, "All that's gonna stop."

My head is definitely different than where his was going.

And he is looking at being a dad.

Elvis was definitely excited to be a dad.

He was a little nervous, that's for sure.

Didn't know how to hold a child, or didn't think he did.

And so, it turned out great.

Eventually, he makes the last movie for Paramount,

Easy Come, Easy Go. It's a total flop.

The record doesn't even chart and sells just 30,000 copies.

I don't think he recognizes just

how dire things are until one day there's an actual headline

in one of the trades, and it says,

"There's no more appetite for Presley films."

In the Colonel's mindset, when you need to

get people to focus again…

In '56, he put him on God knows how many TV shows.

When he came back from the Army and needed to reestablish…

"I put him on the Frank Sinatra Show."

Now he's got nothing.

He says, "I need to go back to my old trick, get him on TV."

It was all or nothing.

Years went by, I really missed the audience contact.

I really was getting bugged.

I was doing so many movies, and I couldn't really do what I could do.

It all kept going, and I really wanted to come back.

The idea was, "It's time to have him come back into everyone's living room."

It only became

what we know of now as the '68 Comeback Special

as it developed.

He didn't want to be around people.

He just wanted to relax, go to the beach and just think.

He was getting in shape.

He started training.

I think he must have lost 25 pounds.

He was training like this is the heavyweight championship.

I don't think I've ever seen him

that excited before.

Okay, here we go.

That's 512.

At that time, we didn't know whether Elvis was gonna be there or not.

Because a lot of times when you do sessions, you're doing the band,

then you're doing background singing

and you're trying to get that all together with the producers.

And then Elvis popped up and he was there.

That's Take 501.

He sat and talked to us.

"That sounds so good. How you guys doing?"

Then he wanted to know who we were

and what we were doing and what kind of music we love.

He told us that he was nervous about doing it, period.

The whole '68 Special.

He was nervous, 'cause he hadn't done anything like that before.

Shit.

People talk about the special now based on what they remember,

which is raw rock and roll Elvis returns.

The Colonel tried his very best to ruin that.

'Cause the special was full of skits,

and he's fighting, and there's silly little set pieces.

- Goddamn it. - Okay.

Yes, there's all this great music.

There's also lots of

Colonel Tom Parker crap all over it.

Nine-oh-two.

Five-ten.

Goddamn it.

He's very nervous when he's playing music,

and he's very annoyed when he's doing anything other than playing music.

Take 120.

The conflict between Elvis and the Colonel,

or the conflict between the two Elvises, however you want to frame it,

is so clear in his deep pain over messing up the music…

You'll walk into this. I'm sorry.

- I missed it, man. - Keep rolling.

…and his deep annoyance

at being forced into the indignity of more skits.

Five-oh-two.

Uh, where is downstage? Is it that way?

It's downward, it's here.

Can you see this blue mark here?

Maybe something along here.

Fourteen years, and I don't know upstage from downstage, man.

The premise of the special was just a dopey Colonel Parker special.

The producers of the show were handed a Colonel Parker-packaged thing

that was just more of the public Elvis

as people had known him for the last seven years.

During breaks in the action,

the private Elvis would go back and do what the private Elvis always did,

which was play music with his friends.

If we want to, we can do something like…

And when the producers of the show walked in and saw that,

they realized that what Colonel was trying to make him do was trash.

And what Elvis was doing in his actual private life was gold.

It's a bit like "Blue Moon of Kentucky," isn't it?

- What do you say "blue moon"?

Yeah.

Every day after rehearsal, he'd jam. Acoustically.

Whoever happened to be hanging out.

Forget all the production, forget the original concept.

This is what the public is screaming for that never, ever got to see.

You know, I was thinking last night about…

…incorporating this segment

with the medley, somewhere in there.

I've been thinking about the same thing, Elvis.

But we have to have that other excitement to be able to do this, you see.

'Cause now you're relaxing. You've done your bit, you know.

I go to Colonel Parker, I say, "I'm bringing cameras in there."

And he said, "Over my dead body."

After days of hounding him, he finally turned to me out of frustration

and said, "I'll make a deal with you. I'll let you recreate it on stage,

but I won't promise you any of it goes into the show that NBC broadcasts."

When you see him play these old standards,

and blues songs, and gospel songs, and the songs Elvis loved to listen to,

when you saw him playing those onstage,

that was literally them recreating

what was happening organically in his dressing room

when the cameras were off.

And what you remember

is the growling, stalking Elvis returning to the stage to say,

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger,

but I'm Elvis fucking Presley."

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 ten years.

He told us that he was very nervous.

If the people were gonna like him.

We didn't know whether Elvis was gonna come out of his dressing room at all.

Welcome to NBC…

Well, obviously I work in this completely different realm.

But I will tell you that

if you're not afraid, you're in trouble.

If you want it to be good,

you're petrified.

It's a very lonely feeling.

The fear…

of failure

is such a great motivator.

The fear of embarrassment.

We all know what it's like to be in front of people and it doesn't go well.

And it's terrible.

"People are here, young people."

"I don't even know if they like my music. They probably like the Beatles."

"They like Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix."

"No one's gonna care about me."

But there's something about

being up against it that enables you to do it.

I call it anticipatory anxiety.

I can remember

beginning of the Born in the U.S.A. tour, we're in Saint Paul,

and I sat backstage and it was ten minutes before we went on,

and I hear the crowd roaring.

Roaring like crazy.

And I'm going,

"Oh man."

"What have I got myself into?"

You are going onto a stage that you are unfamiliar with.

Uh, you are being produced and directed by people you don't really know.

At some point, you reach the "fuck it" point.

Like, "I got to go out there,

no matter what happens, fuck it."

He reached the "fuck it" point.

You know, that's what's going through his head.

You know. He found it.

And he was just go… And he was going.

He was going where his destiny was leading him.

I was living in Woodstock, New York.

The other guys in The Band, we were all there, and Bob Dylan.

And when we heard about this special coming on TV of Elvis's,

Bob and I said, "Let's check it out."

"Let's see if the old boy's still got it."

I had a little tiny dining room with a big TV.

And my father was in the kitchen, but he could see the television from…

…from his spot on the kitchen table.

And I sat in front of the TV.

That was the rebirthing of Elvis Presley.

I was sitting at the top. I wanted to see everything.

He came onstage, he was like, "Wow."

I never saw him perform.

That was the first time I saw him perform, and I went, "Whoa."

"This is what it's about?"

I don't think I understood how good he was

just seeing him once or twice.

It was a reintroduction not just to who he had been, but to who he could be.

It gave Elvis an edge.

He still had it.

It was developed, it was stronger.

Elvis took Elvis to the next level.

- All right!

One of the things that strikes me right away

is it's the best he's looked in a long time.

He comes out…

and… he's the best-looking guy on the planet.

He comes out and he's wearing that leather suit,

and he's got those cheekbones that are off a Greek statue.

Well, good night.

- Been a long show. - It's been a long show.

For many years now, he hasn't been in front of people

performing music.

There's been all these layers of separation.

Let's see, what do I do now, folks?

All the insecurities that he would have,

he's holding himself up for possible ridicule.

This is supposed to be an informal section of the show where we faint

or do whatever we want to do. Especially me.

Yes, the guy in the crazy outfits, and the hip shaking,

and the big hair, is very shy,

very sensitive person.

We don't have our full band here tonight, but we'd like to…

we'd like to give you an idea of how we… How I started out about 14 years ago.

Uh…

And the sound that we had back then.

And the guy over here on my left is the guy that played guitar for me

when I first started out in 1912. Nineteen…

The show isn't just Elvis's return.

I mean, the show is Elvis literally getting the band back together.

This is Scotty Moore, my guitar player.

That's his band when he was still a country singer.

That's the band when he was on the Louisiana Hayride.

That's the band when he was playing in the Opry.

This is my drummer. He's from Shreveport, Louisiana.

-Met him about ten years ago, DJ Fontana.

You were watching musicians who love each other,

who fell away from each other, who have come back to each other

to capture the magic one more time.

The first thing that we recorded, we had a guitar, a bass,

and another guitar.

And it went like this.

When he's sitting in those chairs

with his guys, and there's an audience right there and they're surrounding him,

and he's in an intimate environment,

you can see the way he can connect with people.

He looked incredible. He sounded incredible.

I felt like, "Oh, my team. My team, they came back and they're…"

You know, "They're winning again." You know?

Here we go, baby.

- Whoo!

That's just a revelation. You know, just a musical revelation.

You saw the incredible high level of his artistry.

The singing, unbelievable,

and you saw him really play the guitar,

and heard him play the guitar for the first time.

He was a really good guitarist.

Are we on television?

Are we on television?

No, we're on a train bound for Tulsa.

- Whoo! - Aw, get on down.

The moment for me in the '68 Comeback Special

is Elvis does, "Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do."

It's kind of a warm-up song, like a blues warm-up.

He's got that badass guitar,

and you can tell that this is what he was born to do.

Yeah, baby!

Yeah!

Everything that got him there is now coming back,

and everything that's interfered with that has melted away.

All of it.

Yeah!

And it must be a very powerful moment for him.

He's coming back to life.

And I think probably realizing

"I'm Elvis fucking Presley."

There's something wrong with my lip, man.

You know. No, wait a minute. There's something wrong with my lip.

- Well… -You remember that, don't you?

I got news for you, baby. I did 29 pictures like that.

Hey, Elvis. The finger.

The little finger.

-That's all I could move in Florida. - That's right.

Yeah, the police filmed a show one time in Florida because

the PTA, the YMCA, or somebody, they thought I was…

-…something. And…

They said, "Man, he's gotta be crazy."

So, they…

The police came out and they filmed the show.

So I couldn't move, I had to stand still.

The only thing I could move was my little finger.

You know, for the whole show.

It's the most real thing anyone had ever seen Elvis Presley do.

It might be the first time

that anyone had ever actually seen

the actual human being Elvis Aaron Presley,

child of Tupelo in Memphis.

So I told him, I said, "Well, look, man, you can do anything you want to do."

"You can do anything you want to do, baby."

I said…

Oh, get it on!

Oh my God.

It's like… He was like a tiger.

He was showing off and doing his thing, and sexy,

and it was like reincarnation.

"I'm married to him?"

"Wow. Where have I been?"

Oh my goodness. He was gorgeous.

His hair was so shiny, and the lights hit it.

He was glowing like…

I don't know what God looks like, but you would say this guy was godlike.

Ah!

Ah, ah!

Keep it going. That's right.

It was electric in there.

It was breathtaking.

-Ah!

I remember a couple of girls, they were going nuts over him.

And they said, "Oh my God, I never knew."

"I never knew he had this much charisma."

"I never knew that he was so sexy."

How you like it so far?

I could hear these comments, and, you know, I go, "Wow."

"Whoa, this is… They're just discovering him."

This is what we were experiencing when he first appeared.

He would sing a song like, "Here's another one of my hits."

"Here's another one of my hits." That was all fine,

but at some point in the special he sings "Trying To Get To You."

"Trying To Get To You."

It was a B-side of one of his records years earlier.

And he sang this thing to the sky.

It was magnificent.

It was phenomenal. Because he was so free.

All these years being tucked away by the Colonel, doing all these movies.

But when they let him loose on that stage, you could figure.

And I went, "Wow, man, you got it going on in that black leather suit."

"Carry on, brother."

And that audience loves it.

And he's getting that thing

that he loves, that was the reason for all of it.

It wasn't the money. Money is nice.

It was 'cause that lights him up. That's lit him up since he was a kid.

He's doing old Elvis right there, obviously having a nostalgia moment.

So he's both being old Elvis and new Elvis at the same time.

You see old Elvis, '68 Elvis, and the Elvis to come.

He was in search of a way to live where he could live with himself.

The '68 Special, for me, is him finding that place.

When people discuss Elvis,

or their disappointment in the arc of his career,

they say, "He didn't go where his destiny was leading him enough."

That night, he went where his destiny was leading him.

And he met it.

Ha!

All right!

The '68 Special is just a master at work.

But that's Elvis every day.

Nobody had the foresight to get more of Elvis every day.

If they had any brains or prescience about them,

they would have done 50 more of those, 'cause we'd be talking about those too.

That's Elvis every fucking day.

He's not just having a good day.

That's that motherfucker every goddamn day.

We sit here and judge how he handled normal life.

The pressures of marriage,

fatherhood, celebrity,

Colonel Tom Parker's bullshit.

But in the midst of this is, like, lightning strikes.

And we're left to sort through the pieces and go,

"God, I wish there was more. Why isn't there more?"

All great show business stories have to have

more than one act.

The real great ones have three acts.

This special gives him a third act.

And we all know where that ends,

but at the beginning, it was pretty great.

The thing I wish for Elvis Presley, it's a weird thing to wish,

but I wish people would have some empathy for him.

We turn celebrities into objects.

This was a person.

A person who was terrified,

but putting it all out there.

I'm joyous when I see that special, because

it's him standing up for himself.

Elvis exists for most people as a tragic figure.

We all know how it ends.

When I watch the '68 Special, I like to imagine that…

That that was it.

He walked off that stage and was happy.

Because what you see that night is the one time

Elvis Presley decided to be who he wanted to be, for himself.

It's the closest he ever came to realizing the dreams

that put him in front of a microphone in the first place.

Elvis is remembered today

as one of the quintessential American talents.

And it is because there were moments

when people saw.

And the greatest of those moments

was that night on that stage in Los Angeles.

Thank you. Good night.