Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to this spin off episode
Speaker 1: of zeit Geist spin off Wish. We're calling the iconograph.
Speaker 1: Instead of looking at the Zeitgeist through current events on
Speaker 1: Monday mornings, we're looking at the zeitgeist through the powerful
Speaker 1: pop cultural hork cruxes that are our icons. We use
Speaker 1: these historical figures and famous characters to create meaning, to
Speaker 1: build identity, to make our teens faint with sheer abject horniness,
Speaker 1: to test the human body's capacity to withstand taking enough
Speaker 1: pills to fill a large ballpit, to create a more
Speaker 1: definitive way to object to something on TV, because why
Speaker 1: change the channel when you can shoot the TV, as
Speaker 1: our icon today did on multiple occasions our first episode
Speaker 1: of the New Year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought, wow, okay, you shot the TV all
Speaker 2: the time. That was just a thing this motherfucker did.
Speaker 2: He didn't have a job, He didn't really. He also
Speaker 2: recorded some of his later tracks in the jungle room
Speaker 2: in his TV room, and you can like hear it
Speaker 2: sounds like shit.
Speaker 1: Oh no, we're talking Elvis Baby. Elvis Presley a pop
Speaker 1: culture icon who became an almost religious figure in the
Speaker 1: US after being the first person to invent the idea
Speaker 1: that a white person could have charisma and kind of
Speaker 1: go like Burger with their voice, and everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: he fucking shit, where'd he get that idea? Not from
Speaker 1: white people? We'll talk about it. No, I'm thrilled to
Speaker 1: be joined as always by my co host, mister Miles Grab.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm just.
Speaker 3: Kind of reeling from the last thing you said. Don't
Speaker 3: tell me that Elvis Presley wasn't getting all of his
Speaker 3: inspiration from the white Christian Jesus just came up, came.
Speaker 1: Up with that whole cloth. This guy came up with
Speaker 1: these songs in our third seat. Miles Hilaire be a
Speaker 1: stand up comedian, actor, and musician. You can listen to
Speaker 1: his podcast, Colbrew Gotila Anywhere. He's got an album that
Speaker 1: received a seven point four on Pitchfork Hell, which is
Speaker 1: better than two of three Elvis albums on that Pitchfork
Speaker 1: has reviewed two of the three. Pitchfork has reviewed three
Speaker 1: Elvis albums, two of them sub Crofton. He's got a
Speaker 1: new one called I'm Your Man, available on band Camp.
Speaker 1: The poetry window is open because it's Chris motherfucking Craft.
Speaker 4: My question is if I have a record higher rank
Speaker 4: than Elvis where is.
Speaker 1: My jungle room. I have one room. I have an
Speaker 1: everything room. Yeah, I have all of the different ecosystems,
Speaker 1: the desert room, and then cold medicine right right, mountains
Speaker 1: of tissue. Yeah yeah, I don't even have it. I
Speaker 1: don't even have a TV to shoot a projector. I
Speaker 1: guess I could shoot my I could shoot my phone. Yeah, don't, don't.
Speaker 1: Don't do that. Don't do that. That would be one
Speaker 1: of the things I wouldn't recommend from el Basically everything else.
Speaker 1: He was pretty smart, pretty pretty on point. Let's get
Speaker 1: into it. What was your first experience with Elvis Miles.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with you. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, like ambiently, it's like a thing that you
Speaker 3: I can't give a good answer.
Speaker 1: It's like ambient all around you.
Speaker 3: The one time I do remember vividly, my first real
Speaker 3: vivid Elvis memory was when he died. I remember we
Speaker 3: put our cat in like a boarding thing because we
Speaker 3: went out of town, and then my cat died at
Speaker 3: that boarding thing on the anniversary of Elvis' is like death.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's not good.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah yeah, So what was this? He died in
Speaker 3: seventy seven, so this is ninety seven.
Speaker 1: This is the twentieth anniversary anniversary of Elvis. Twentieth anniversary.
Speaker 3: My cat is in a boarding thing because we went
Speaker 3: out of town and then the fucking cat. My cat
Speaker 3: was like nineteen at the time, so it was kind
Speaker 3: of like, bro, if you leave me, I'm gonna die.
Speaker 3: And so I forever will always just think of Elvis
Speaker 3: and my wonderful cat, Casey being dead. And then my
Speaker 3: dad always he did a lot of like he was
Speaker 3: experimenting with a lot of art pieces, like painting Elvis
Speaker 3: black and stuff like do it using early photoshop to
Speaker 3: make black Elvis as like a commentary on you know, the.
Speaker 1: Cultural Wait, I can't. I've done this research and I
Speaker 1: can't imagine what that would be a commentary. So those
Speaker 1: are mine. Yeah, I think my first was like old
Speaker 1: fat Elvis as a signifier of like tag Like I
Speaker 1: remember the first thing I saw with Elvis, I think
Speaker 1: was a commemorative plate commercial when I was a kid
Speaker 1: of like be you know, them selling old shitty looking
Speaker 1: like gold plated plates with like they'd be like multiple
Speaker 1: Elvis that you had the young Elvis and then old
Speaker 1: kind of chunky Elvis. And I remember hearing the phrase
Speaker 1: fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong, and just it
Speaker 1: was like sort of at a distance, like observing the
Speaker 1: phenomenon of Elvis fandom more than it was like any
Speaker 1: direct experience with Elvis. But Chris, you are a musician,
Speaker 1: a troubadour, an Elvis in your own right. What was
Speaker 1: your O? Man?
Speaker 4: I got a story for you. So nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 4: I'm eight, you know, and I am watching watching the
Speaker 4: whole world go crazy that Elvis has passed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and up until.
Speaker 4: Then, my parents probably thought I was maybe kind of normal,
Speaker 4: like maybe they didn't know that I needed a lot
Speaker 4: of attention or maybe not. Maybe they didn't maybe they
Speaker 4: didn't know I needed this much attention. But I decided that.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh my god, like I'm taking this.
Speaker 4: Elvis has always meant so much to me.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I wanted a piece of the action. So
Speaker 1: I was like, I always loved Elvis since I was eight.
Speaker 1: So my family was like, no, you have it, you
Speaker 1: talk about it? How could you guy?
Speaker 4: I was like, no, no, one song. The worst thing
Speaker 4: has ever happened to me? Yeah, Chrim talking about and
Speaker 4: I was relent. I did not give up. I was like,
Speaker 4: I've always loved him. This is the hardest thing for me.
Speaker 4: And and then I was like, ohso everybody's got to
Speaker 4: get me Elvis albums as fast as possible.
Speaker 1: To back this up.
Speaker 4: You guys know I'm crazy, but not everybody else has
Speaker 4: to know. So let's get some Elvis albums in this
Speaker 4: house on the double.
Speaker 3: Right, why am I wearing all black? Because I'm still
Speaker 3: in mourning over Elvis Presle.
Speaker 4: So I fucking all my friends gave me Elvis albums
Speaker 4: for my birthday and then I became a huge Elvis
Speaker 4: fan in reverse.
Speaker 1: And I did a lot of people are with like
Speaker 1: you you notice the artists like streams of artists once
Speaker 1: they die, like explode. I feel like there's something in
Speaker 1: us that is just like, yeah, well we'll wait until
Speaker 1: they're they're gone and then we'll truly like appreciate that.
Speaker 4: But now you can do that, you can just I mean,
Speaker 4: as an adult, it's not as easy to find out
Speaker 4: if someone really you know what I mean. Someone could
Speaker 4: say like, oh, I've always loved the band, television or whatever,
Speaker 4: and you have to take their word for it.
Speaker 1: I mean you can't really.
Speaker 4: But my as an eight year old with no car
Speaker 4: and you know, no internet or anything, and you damn well,
Speaker 4: I you know, I wasn't. I didn't have any big
Speaker 4: relationship with Elvis, but I didn't care because I was
Speaker 4: not going to miss this opportunity to get in on
Speaker 4: the action.
Speaker 1: So that was my first.
Speaker 4: And it reminds me of like that same period when
Speaker 4: I was at some girl's house, you know, visiting just
Speaker 4: you know whatever, just going.
Speaker 1: Visiting with a frang out. Yeah, like a hang out
Speaker 1: with this third sitting or something, and like like.
Speaker 4: She had horses and like my mom came to pick
Speaker 4: me up, and the lady, her mother said, like when
Speaker 4: when my mom pulled up, she was like, oh I
Speaker 4: didn't know Chris Road. Oh I didn't know Chris rides, okay,
Speaker 4: because my mom was like doesn't Yeah, like I said,
Speaker 4: I had a horse. Your mom belew you up like that.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh my mom was.
Speaker 1: She was ruthless. She was like in the car, like,
Speaker 1: what the hell's the matter with you? You don't know
Speaker 1: doesn't have a horse. And he also doesn't like Elvis.
Speaker 1: I know he probably told you that too. He's still
Speaker 1: got he still got the tags on his Elvis shirt.
Speaker 4: There's nothing that makes me sadder than when I'm riding
Speaker 4: at night and I think of Elvis.
Speaker 1: In the moonlight lantern. This just crushes me. Another early thing,
Speaker 1: and this was like real big in the nineties. It
Speaker 1: was Elvis impersonators, which I do think in retrospect, like
Speaker 1: I think in one hundred years, if I like looked
Speaker 1: at everything that has happened in pop culture with fresh eyes,
Speaker 1: that would be something I'd be like, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: Why are like? Why are there? Why is there a
Speaker 1: cottage industry coming up on fifty years after his death?
Speaker 1: Why is there a cottage industry full of people who
Speaker 1: like dress up like him and pretend to be him
Speaker 1: and treat it as like a borderline religious calling. Okay,
Speaker 1: my brain had just accepted that because I it was
Speaker 1: like one of the first pop culture references, you know.
Speaker 1: It was just like a thing that people would be like.
Speaker 1: There's an episode the first time I ever saw Quentin Tarantino,
Speaker 1: by the way, I didn't realize it at the time,
Speaker 1: a Golden Girls episode where Sophia's wedding there's like a
Speaker 1: mix up in the invites, and Sofia's wedding is like
Speaker 1: inundated with Elvis impersonators and he's one of the eldest impersonators,
Speaker 1: but it's just a wee like I think. I just
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that's something people do with famous people,
Speaker 1: and then doing the research for this, I was like, no,
Speaker 1: they don't don't do that. They do that for Elvis
Speaker 1: and Santa, and that's true.
Speaker 3: I feel like the people that otherwise they're like Michael jacks,
Speaker 3: Marilyn Monroe, Mike Jackson and him are like so linked
Speaker 3: in so many weird ways.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there were impersonators when he was alive, but
Speaker 1: much like a Chris Croft, and it really their affinity
Speaker 1: really exploded once he passed away and everyone was just like,
Speaker 1: this is my ship now, this is my whole shit.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's kind of like sort of like how
Speaker 3: you if you want to be like an annoying kid
Speaker 3: in the nineties and you had like an ace Ventura impression,
Speaker 3: like you said, to be able to do like a
Speaker 3: Jim Carrey thing for like Elvis, like and you get
Speaker 3: your lip or a wig and you're like, like you
Speaker 3: very much JOm wan Elvis impersonator and you had a
Speaker 3: fucking gig.
Speaker 1: Elvis almost seems like because it is a voice that
Speaker 1: he did. We're going to talk about like how he
Speaker 1: was discovered and like became Elvis and he was doing
Speaker 1: a bit. He was like doing a voice when he
Speaker 1: like he he had two straight days of the head
Speaker 1: of Sun Records being like this fucking sucks. I thought
Speaker 1: this guy wouldn be good. And then he started sucking
Speaker 1: around and doing a voice and they were like that,
Speaker 1: and it was like it was exactly like the scene
Speaker 1: and like walk the line where U or or the
Speaker 1: the Bones are their money scene from I think you
Speaker 1: should leave where like the guys on the guitar just
Speaker 1: like immediately like come in behind him. As he's like starts.
Speaker 1: He goes from like being his normal self to being
Speaker 1: like and like he thinks he's doing a bit, and
Speaker 1: they're like that, keep doing that, that's great. Up. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. I did not know that. I know
Speaker 1: a lot about Elvis. I thought you're his biggest fan,
Speaker 1: Chris oh Man. I did not no, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: He was like pressed over his dad expert over here,
Speaker 1: doesn't even know. I got more.
Speaker 4: Interested in just like his like line, you know, and
Speaker 4: the guys his entourage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to hear more about the Memphis Mafia.
Speaker 4: But ye know that he was like that he stumbled
Speaker 4: into some character in front of what's his name, Old
Speaker 4: Sam Phillips.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sam Phillips. It was it was almost like the
Speaker 1: Lauren You know how Lorne Michaels has that theory of
Speaker 1: like the realpses of Lorne Michaels in nineteen fifty five
Speaker 1: or whatever. I don't know if you did this on purpose,
Speaker 1: but I mean he probably did because he like had
Speaker 1: them trying to record for like two days. Phillips. Sam
Speaker 1: Phillis is the head of Sun Records, explicitly was like,
Speaker 1: I'm making all these records with black artists. What if
Speaker 1: I had a white artist to do that instead? And
Speaker 1: like that was explicitly what he was doing when he
Speaker 1: went after Elvis. He was like, could you do some
Speaker 1: of these records that are very popular when black artists
Speaker 1: do them? But what if he was white? If you
Speaker 1: make it? But anyway, he was like so hot. That
Speaker 1: was another thing like I hadn't fully appreciated, Like I
Speaker 1: watched for the first time, like some of the early recordings,
Speaker 1: his first appearances on television, and it is really striking.
Speaker 1: First of all, like every like he's introduced by these
Speaker 1: talk show hosts who are like these fifty year old
Speaker 1: like grotesques who are like, gone, next we have Elvis,
Speaker 1: and like they're just like frozen and like not able
Speaker 1: to like do anything with her. And then Elvis comes
Speaker 1: out and it's just like he's both very like charismatic
Speaker 1: and able to dance and move like he's backed by
Speaker 1: white backup singers who are like doing like little side
Speaker 1: to side things, like you know, dancing like shit. And
Speaker 1: then he is actually, you know, he just looks fucking awesome,
Speaker 1: but he the other thing you're struck by is he's
Speaker 1: so fucking hot. It's crazy how hot he is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he showed up on TV. He's probably the
Speaker 1: hottest man ever shown on television. And that by itself
Speaker 1: was like, I guess see it up to that point,
Speaker 1: like who was bringing it?
Speaker 3: Like like in terms of the white guys on TV's
Speaker 3: that was it.
Speaker 1: Damn Oh. They were supposed to look more like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like Edward g. Robinson or.
Speaker 4: See every exactly, like everybody was supposed to look like
Speaker 4: a union boss or something back then Nowhere Cutie, because
Speaker 4: the rock stars of the early twentieth century were union
Speaker 4: unionizers and stuff and like listen to me go I said,
Speaker 4: I just had a big zip of coffee. So anyway,
Speaker 4: but yeah, so like you know, like that was the aesthetic,
Speaker 4: like you know, like the hottest even well even fucking yeah,
Speaker 4: hottest dock worker or whatever. And now now Elvis is
Speaker 4: like yeah, like and his parents aren't that hot. Like
Speaker 4: he was just like a freak of fucking nature. Even
Speaker 4: if he was, like what if he had a regular job.
Speaker 4: Imagine if he was, like he couldn't. There's no way
Speaker 4: he could be as hot as Elvis and just work
Speaker 4: at a store because someone would come and say, we
Speaker 4: got to teach you to dance or something.
Speaker 1: Because he's even such money.
Speaker 3: I'm looking at a baby picture of him, and he's
Speaker 3: he's got so much as a little baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has insane or Ryan Gossly looked like a
Speaker 1: warted Yes, truly, he truly does. But I will say,
Speaker 1: just the thing getting back to him doing it as
Speaker 1: a bit and like this voice of like the whooo
Speaker 1: and like just the whole Elvis vibe. Like I think
Speaker 1: that it's almost like we talked on our Halloween episode
Speaker 1: with Jack Wagner about like this idea of like like
Speaker 1: I don't believe in ghosts necessarily, but like there's like
Speaker 1: this energy that can just like get released into the
Speaker 1: collective unconscious and like suddenly like that thing takes over.
Speaker 1: I feel like Elvis, like the character of Elvis is
Speaker 1: kind of like that. Like people, it's almost like a
Speaker 1: mental illness that you can't shake. Like Kurt Russell played
Speaker 1: Elvis when he was young in a movie and then
Speaker 1: like couldn't shake it and like forced it into this
Speaker 1: disastrous movie called three Thousand Miles of Grace. Lamb Austin
Speaker 1: Butler did his press tour like you know, after wrapping
Speaker 1: the Elvis movie and like just did the whole thing
Speaker 1: in an Elvis accent. Like it feels like Nick Cage
Speaker 1: had it. Like everybody Erkele when he gets super Intelligence,
Speaker 1: one of our past icons, Erkele in Family Matters when
Speaker 1: he gets super intelligence. They're like, this is Einstein Erkele,
Speaker 1: but he is doing an Elvis in President Andy cos
Speaker 1: Andy Kaufman did it while Elvis elbing. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: hard and it's like fun and it's just this like
Speaker 1: character that is just I don't know, infectious and people
Speaker 1: just can't not do it. Yeah. Meanwhile, I was out
Speaker 1: here acting like the mask and shit. Yeah, well I
Speaker 1: think Jim Carrey is similar, but he wasn't like incredibly hot,
Speaker 1: and he didn't die like at the perfect moment for
Speaker 1: it too, Like.
Speaker 3: He gave like an easy thing for people to tap
Speaker 3: into and be like, you're.
Speaker 1: Doing the thing right. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like a meme back then. I mean,
Speaker 4: like impersonating Elvis. This is pre internet, so it was
Speaker 4: like kind of like saying, where's the Beefer or like saying, like,
Speaker 4: I don't know what kids say today, you know, brats
Speaker 4: or whatever. It was like, Oh, here comes Elvis or whatever,
Speaker 4: you know, Like, oh, what's going on?
Speaker 1: It's boring. Somebody say brat summer. They haven't invented that.
Speaker 4: How about we Somebody goes, hey, you're Elvis, I'm Elvis,
Speaker 4: goes we're a good day.
Speaker 1: Superducer Victor says that in Fallout New Vegas, people like
Speaker 1: it's a post apocalyptic Vegas and everyone assumes Elvis was
Speaker 1: a god and would dress up like him, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's far from the truth of the situation.
Speaker 1: Like there's this whole controversy in the Lower East Side
Speaker 1: where a chalk bust of Elvis got stolen and everyone
Speaker 1: treated it like it was the theft of the Crown Jewels.
Speaker 1: Like it really is, like when was that recent? That
Speaker 1: was like a few years back. Yeah, it ended up
Speaker 1: being like the person who had bought it years before,
Speaker 1: and it ended up being like this whole controversy of
Speaker 1: like gentrification and stuff like that. But it just does
Speaker 1: feel like if you don't know who Elvis is and
Speaker 1: you just came down and like looked at the culture fresh,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, oh, this is like a powerful religious
Speaker 1: figure that everybody is not admitting is a powerful religious figure.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a quick bray, we'll be right
Speaker 1: path and we're back. Let's get into his biography. Born
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five, I think an important part of
Speaker 1: who he is and his appeal by the time he
Speaker 1: came around to me is he was like this like
Speaker 1: tacky joke is that they were very poor, Like he
Speaker 1: they lived in a two room shack that was built
Speaker 1: by his dad. He'd taken out a loan for one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty dollars to buy the materials for the
Speaker 1: house and it was like repossessed three years later. And
Speaker 1: I feel like there's some element where he resonated hard
Speaker 1: with sort of low culture like that. That's like part
Speaker 1: of his appeal was that, you know, pop culture just rigorously,
Speaker 1: inconsistently ign or is people who aren't rich. And then
Speaker 1: having this person who was poor and also like his
Speaker 1: taste was kind of like packy, you know, and like
Speaker 1: not that like high culture bullshit right that people are
Speaker 1: used to seeing like really helped him resonate in a
Speaker 1: way that he wouldn't have otherwise. Was he open about
Speaker 1: being poor? I really don't know. I think he was
Speaker 1: a big part. Yeah, that was a big part of
Speaker 1: his story originally, was like at first, like he's this
Speaker 1: like rags to riches guy who like came from the
Speaker 1: middle of the South. I'm like made good.
Speaker 4: Right, and he wasn't pretentious, he was he went straight
Speaker 4: to things yeah, like I'm gonna get a push button phone,
Speaker 4: like you know what I mean, like ahead of everybody,
Speaker 4: and that's gonna be my you know, like I'm not
Speaker 4: I want the fucking new blender with the extra button
Speaker 4: on it. All these sort of things that were not, yeah,
Speaker 4: not classy, but I think other people could relate other
Speaker 4: people who didn't have that stuff. Like me growing up
Speaker 4: without a refrigerator that has the ice come out of
Speaker 4: the front, right, you know, you're like.
Speaker 1: That's holy shit. Like we had cars.
Speaker 4: He used cars when I grew up, and we didn't
Speaker 4: have a third break light well into when cars started
Speaker 4: having a third break light, you know, and I was like,
Speaker 4: if I get rich, I was like sixteen, you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have a third break light, you know, and
Speaker 4: that would sound insane.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wear a seat belt.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's cute and it's kind of fun, you know,
Speaker 4: like I want all the new stuff.
Speaker 1: And he was like like the way saying not pretentious,
Speaker 1: Like he would have Elvis impersonators like come up on
Speaker 1: stage with him, like he thought they were cool. You know.
Speaker 1: He was just like down for whatever he was. He
Speaker 1: didn't really give a fuck about that stuff. Other things
Speaker 1: from his early childhood that were important. According to biographers,
Speaker 1: he had a twin brother who was still born. And
Speaker 1: it's it's weird, they're they're like he was like powered
Speaker 1: by his twin Like he had like dreams throughout his
Speaker 1: life about his twin brother. It was like this mystical
Speaker 1: connection where it doesn't really make sense. They were probably
Speaker 1: wise to like edit this out of the biopic, but
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter how goofy the central personal myth
Speaker 1: is to us, Like he fucking believed that he was
Speaker 1: like powered by the ghost of the dead baby that
Speaker 1: was in his mom's womb with him, Like he really like.
Speaker 3: Did he say, like you would articulate that idea like
Speaker 3: a yeah, wow, like that's giving him an edge or
Speaker 3: he's like I draw upon the power of my brother,
Speaker 3: my twin brother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And his mom was like, you survived for a reason,
Speaker 1: and you're like doing this for Jesse. He had a
Speaker 1: really weird relationship with his mom. They baby talked to
Speaker 1: each other, like up through adulthood. He had like pet names.
Speaker 1: They had pet names. Yeah, he loved her feet. He
Speaker 1: called her feet something she hit it.
Speaker 4: He had like a name for her feet, like little
Speaker 4: real some like that, Like there's this little Rudy two d's.
Speaker 1: Like early on the research he was talking about like
Speaker 1: how at school like everybody called him a mama's boy
Speaker 1: and that I was like, that's kind of a weirdly
Speaker 1: specific thing to stand in the way of like this
Speaker 1: preternaturally like hot guys stillborn baby in his backpack and
Speaker 1: but I regret to report the school bullies were exactly right.
Speaker 1: That was weird. Like in love with his mother, yes,
Speaker 1: and she like wouldn't let him go anywhere without him.
Speaker 1: And then like people think that it had a lot
Speaker 1: to do, like she died pretty young, and it was
Speaker 1: like once he got famous and she couldn't be around
Speaker 1: him all the time, it like really fucked her up.
Speaker 1: And she was like I knew he was going to
Speaker 1: be famous, but I didn't know it would involve him
Speaker 1: leaving the house all the damn time. Wow. One detail
Speaker 1: from the early So he got his first guitar in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six cost twelve ninety five. He had wanted
Speaker 1: a bicycle, but his parents couldn't afford it. But twelve
Speaker 1: ninety five at that time was two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: dollars today. How fucking expensive where bicycles back then? I
Speaker 1: guess like cost what a car did. Anyways, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons we have Eldess is because.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if they got him a bike, he could have
Speaker 5: been You would have jumped that fucking river or whatever
Speaker 5: that one YouTube video Chris you showed us.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, he would have been the hottest, like
Speaker 1: whatever bike racer or whatever. One thing that I think
Speaker 1: always gets cut out of the origin stories of these
Speaker 1: you know icons, is like all the other people and
Speaker 1: all the contributing factors, and we're going to get into
Speaker 1: like the obvious like musical inspirations in quotes. A lot
Speaker 1: of his early songs were covers of black artists that
Speaker 1: had like already charted with this, but like weren't on
Speaker 1: the pop charts. But it was also like a time
Speaker 1: like he started practicing guitar with this guy who lived
Speaker 1: on his street, and like him and two other guys
Speaker 1: were like practicing with this guitar teacher, and one of
Speaker 1: those other guys ended up becoming like a major rockabilly pioneer,
Speaker 1: or like two of them. So like there's this teacher
Speaker 1: who's just like creating people who are in like the
Speaker 1: Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Who was the other one? So
Speaker 1: the teacher's name was Lee Denson, and then there was
Speaker 1: Johnny and Dorsey Burnett, I guess, but also at the
Speaker 1: same he came out of Memphis at the exact same
Speaker 1: time as Johnny Cash. So there's just like something happening
Speaker 1: in the area with like influences, and you know that
Speaker 1: isn't the hotspot for music at the time necessarily, but
Speaker 1: you know, things were. We prefer the great Man theory
Speaker 1: of things, but they are. You know, two of these
Speaker 1: iconic musicians are coming out of the same town right
Speaker 1: at the same time. Johnny Cash also had a like
Speaker 1: mystical connection to a brother who died when he was younger,
Speaker 1: which is you might have seen in his bi pick
Speaker 1: walk the line. All right, let's get to the Sun Records,
Speaker 1: the thing I was talking about earlier, because I do
Speaker 1: think that's one of the most interesting parts of the story.
Speaker 1: So the owner of Sun Records and Sun Studio is
Speaker 1: this guy Sam Phillips, and he scouted blues acts from
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Delta and is credited with recording arguably the
Speaker 1: first rock and roll songs, Rocket eighty eight by Ike
Speaker 1: Turners Kings of Rhythm, and that was two years earlier
Speaker 1: than it was really good. Still is also at the
Speaker 1: time Rock around the Clock was charting. So as this
Speaker 1: is happening, like there are rock songs like song invented this.
Speaker 1: It was like for white Elvis was the first. It
Speaker 1: was like so strange for people at the time that
Speaker 1: a white person would be making this music that after
Speaker 1: the song I'm about to like talk about the creation
Speaker 1: of the first radio station that played it. Like the
Speaker 1: people who were calling and wouldn't believe he was white
Speaker 1: until he told them what high school he went to,
Speaker 1: and then they were like, oh, well that is South yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so but yeah, Sam Phillips was actively looking for a
Speaker 1: white artist to sing sped up blues and R and
Speaker 1: B songs in the you know, same mode as like
Speaker 1: Rocket eighty eight. Elvis steps into his recording studio, there's
Speaker 1: like a lot of like there's a story that he
Speaker 1: went in too, like record a couple songs for his mom,
Speaker 1: but a thing that gets cut out a lot is like, like,
Speaker 1: like I said, they are not succeeding for a long time.
Speaker 1: It's I think a day and a half of like
Speaker 1: recording and everybody being like this is shit. And then
Speaker 1: he calls into Memphis musicians Scottie Moore, Bill Black and
Speaker 1: on July fourth, So after a day of fucking around
Speaker 1: and not finding anything, Elvis started quote goofing around and
Speaker 1: broke into a fast rendition of Arthur Big Boy crowd
Speaker 1: up song That's all right, Mama, And again they just
Speaker 1: like fall right in and they're like doom doom, doom doom,
Speaker 1: and he's just goofing and.
Speaker 4: A couple of things real quick. I bet you in
Speaker 4: that first day and a half when he was failing,
Speaker 4: he still had sex with everybody in that building.
Speaker 1: And they were getting mad and they were like, listen,
Speaker 1: this guy.
Speaker 4: If he doesn't do something, we got to get him
Speaker 4: out of here because he's having sex with everybody, and
Speaker 4: then and then my wife three times. He's fucked everything
Speaker 4: he's about. He fucked elevator operator and he never fucks
Speaker 4: anybody that elevator operator. And the other thing was, I
Speaker 4: wonder if they brewed some coffee halfway through that second day.
Speaker 4: I bet you hadn't discovered speed at this point, So
Speaker 4: I wait, what do you call this drink? Here?
Speaker 1: Health? I feel health? No weed ray, no tea, Elvis coffeel.
Speaker 1: He said that that moment in the Sunseus was the
Speaker 1: first time he'd ever sung in that style, fast, growling,
Speaker 1: cocky uh and basically invented the character as a bit.
Speaker 1: And I just I think that we found this like
Speaker 1: when Jelil White talks about creating Arkle, he was like,
Speaker 1: I just went out of body. Frank Oz he was
Speaker 1: like the thing that like crystallized Miss Piggy for him
Speaker 1: was just this thing that like he wasn't even thinking of,
Speaker 1: but he like did a karate chop on Kermit and
Speaker 1: then it it's like you have to our instincts are
Speaker 1: like so our conscious instincts are like so wrong that
Speaker 1: like you need something to like get them out of
Speaker 1: the way to you know, we're like scared of being
Speaker 1: humiliated and you need to either be tired. You need
Speaker 1: to like be like, ah, what if I did something
Speaker 1: this stupid? Right, that's pretty silly, and the people are like,
Speaker 1: that's actually you just you're Elvis Jack. He was talking
Speaker 1: about Rkle or is that in this document you're reading?
Speaker 1: Or is this for you? Is the other Elvis just
Speaker 1: was the second icon that we covered on this series,
Speaker 1: categorized Merkle, and the same for.
Speaker 3: When Chris is confused by the tangents the episode is taking.
Speaker 1: Okay, Chris, you're gonna have to go back and listen
Speaker 1: to the episode. I'm gonna listen to it right after this.
Speaker 1: But he said, uh, I never sang that way in
Speaker 1: my life until I made that first record. I remember
Speaker 1: that song because I heard Arthur sing it, and I
Speaker 1: thought I would like to try it. That was it.
Speaker 1: M yeah, wow, must be nice, Must be nice. So
Speaker 1: I figured I'd give that a try, and people really
Speaker 1: liked it, almost even more.
Speaker 3: It's crazy, And I don't know, this is during segregation
Speaker 3: and they just used me as a conduit to get
Speaker 3: white culture to accept black music.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean they already had add an industry, I
Speaker 4: think of white artists, you know, like I don't know
Speaker 4: if Pat Boone was already going then yeah.
Speaker 1: Pat Boone would take songs performed by black artists that
Speaker 1: were popular and he would just like wipe them up,
Speaker 1: like he would just like remove all feeling and just
Speaker 1: boil it so there's no flavor, just boiled ass chicken breast.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that's what people that. That was the
Speaker 1: formula up to that point.
Speaker 4: So I wonder if Sam Phillips was just like no
Speaker 4: one's ever tried this with like Little Richard or you know,
Speaker 4: something like Pat Boone mostly did like the top hits
Speaker 4: that were more like less you know, like a wild
Speaker 4: than a lot of the big R and B hits
Speaker 4: like they did. Maybe it was just he was like, oh,
Speaker 4: why don't we do the R and b the wild
Speaker 4: fucking dirty R and B shit the same way that
Speaker 4: we're doing the.
Speaker 1: Generally in American culture.
Speaker 3: There's always a way where white American culture finds a
Speaker 3: way to co op black culture and subsume it, right,
Speaker 3: and then yeah, it turns into this other thing where
Speaker 3: it's like and then this is rock.
Speaker 1: And roll, and it was like it's rock and roll now, okay,
Speaker 1: but it's.
Speaker 3: I mean, the one thing I do know is like
Speaker 3: a lot of they're like, there are black artists who
Speaker 3: spoke highly of Elvis because they do see him as like, well,
Speaker 3: he was open to me and he opened the door
Speaker 3: for me. And then you have other people who are
Speaker 3: straight up like, I mean, this is just some guy
Speaker 3: doing our music.
Speaker 1: And because of Ray Charles, Yeah, because of that Ray
Speaker 1: Charles interview with Bob Costas.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, that's that's when I
Speaker 3: think he was just straight up like, oh no, he's stealing.
Speaker 4: He won't even say he's talented, like we gotta admit
Speaker 4: his talented, and Ray Charles is like, I don't have
Speaker 4: to really admit that.
Speaker 3: I don't know, he's he's straight up like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: know so.
Speaker 4: Many people who are black or more talented than that guy.
Speaker 3: Right, you know that's and I think that's kind of
Speaker 3: like the underpinnings of all of that too. It's like
Speaker 3: sort of like, oh, he was able to take this
Speaker 3: genre and because of his the presentation of it, took
Speaker 3: it somewhere else. I think that's why, in a way
Speaker 3: for me, his music as isn't as icon as his presence. Yes,
Speaker 3: if I think that's what I think.
Speaker 1: That's like the thing that is left is definitely his
Speaker 1: image and iconography more than his music. Although like going
Speaker 1: back like he has he has a good voice and
Speaker 1: like some of the songs are cool to listen to
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he he actually had an interest in this.
Speaker 4: That's maybe the only thing. I mean. I would say
Speaker 4: that Elvis was sort of an unwitting Elvis was like
Speaker 4: seriously like a sheltered weirdo who did love black music
Speaker 4: and apparently snuck into clubs around Memphis to learn, so
Speaker 4: he did have I mean, I think it was more
Speaker 4: like he got sort of pimped into this by black people.
Speaker 1: I mean not, you know, I don't think I think
Speaker 1: his I think he loved from what.
Speaker 4: I understand and reading about he had in my culture,
Speaker 4: he did not intend to capitalize on it in some
Speaker 4: way that was he was not cynical the people around you.
Speaker 1: And segregated like uh clubs to like listen to black music.
Speaker 1: He was a huge fan. One of the most outspoken
Speaker 1: people talking about the import and of like black artists
Speaker 1: influencing his music was Elvis like he would always give credit.
Speaker 1: But one of the big things that I feel like
Speaker 1: gets left out of people who are like Elvis apologists
Speaker 1: is like a lot of these artists did not make money.
Speaker 1: You know, they were in like really shitty record contracts
Speaker 1: with people who you know, Elvis would like make millions
Speaker 1: and millions of dollars off of their songs. They would
Speaker 1: you know, not have any access to the royalties. And
Speaker 1: like there's a world where he's not just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really owe them a lot, but also is like
Speaker 1: and I'm going to use my influence to make sure
Speaker 1: that they get paid. But he was just, you know,
Speaker 1: not interested in that. I'm gonna shoot some TVs. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go over here and shoot some TVs. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Elvis was like he was, Yeah, he was a goofy guy.
Speaker 1: He really has like some like child like some of
Speaker 1: the same like child in an adult body type shit
Speaker 1: that Michael Jackson had. He's spoken interviews that way.
Speaker 4: I think that's another thing that endeared him to people,
Speaker 4: as he was not pretentious in interviews as either. He
Speaker 4: was very kind of childlike.
Speaker 5: Yeah, excuse yeah, which doesn't excuse I mean, but but
Speaker 5: I think if there's anything like for me after I
Speaker 5: was like, I love Elvis Presley and then had to
Speaker 5: start filling in the blanks like he seemed like he
Speaker 5: seemed like he had a sense of humor.
Speaker 1: I guess that's all I would say.
Speaker 4: It seemed to me as a kid, like, oh, this
Speaker 4: guy seems like kind of nice or something. But he definitely,
Speaker 4: you know, he definitely was a guy who hoarded resources.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah. He had about nine hundred golf carts.
Speaker 1: Incredible golf cart collection.
Speaker 4: So rich people do, is they just hoarde golf gut
Speaker 4: one weird specifically golf carts.
Speaker 1: I mean, we really do. We do have a recurring
Speaker 1: segment on these Icon episodes Epstein List or Not on
Speaker 1: That which in which we asked the question would this person,
Speaker 1: had they been at the peak of their fame during
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein's reign, been on on the Epstein list, and
Speaker 1: the answer is a definitive Yeah, oh yeah, it's Aepstein.
Speaker 1: It's a Epstein. On this one. I knew that he
Speaker 1: met Priscilla Boulie. I don't know how you pronounced her
Speaker 1: maiden name by a lot of owls and then be
Speaker 1: in and out. But when she was fourteen years old,
Speaker 1: when he was in the army, and he was twenty
Speaker 1: four and I didn't realize that at the time of
Speaker 1: his death at forty two years old. Spoiler alerts, his
Speaker 1: fiance was twenty just al the one after persona one
Speaker 1: after Priscilla Jesus was at her oldest during their relationship,
Speaker 1: twenty years old when he was in his forties. But
Speaker 1: his sexual energy was kind of a weird transition. But
Speaker 1: I do just want to So he makes these records.
Speaker 1: They take off, are selling more than anything ever up
Speaker 1: to that point in history, just incredible chart topping. And
Speaker 1: he starts going on TV and there becomes this massive
Speaker 1: controversy about how horny he's making everybody. So he makes
Speaker 1: his first appearance on the Milton Burrel Show and he's like,
Speaker 1: the people have revised it to be that a thing
Speaker 1: where like they had to shoot him from the waist
Speaker 1: up because if you showed his dick, like everybody's heads
Speaker 1: would explode. That's not exactly true. Like when you go
Speaker 1: back and watch the clips, like they're they're definitely like
Speaker 1: cutting away at key moments, but there are parts, I
Speaker 1: mean they just like don't know what to do with him.
Speaker 1: Like one of his first appearances is like on an
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier performing to a bunch of sailors, and every
Speaker 1: time he like does a dance move that you can
Speaker 1: hear the sailors being like, oh, like scoffing at him. Oh,
Speaker 1: I thought you meant like having orgasms. I mean they
Speaker 1: might have been covering their orgasms by like giving dry
Speaker 1: coughs and like stuff they used to do. But people
Speaker 1: once he starts appearing on TV, as mentioned, she's like
Speaker 1: the hottest person who's ever been on TV, and people
Speaker 1: just like fucking flip their shit. His first appearance on
Speaker 1: The Ed Sullivan Show is one of the most watched
Speaker 1: events in the history of television. I think eighty two
Speaker 1: percent of all televisions were tuned in watching it. Like
Speaker 1: in that moment, it's the moon landing. That and the
Speaker 1: Beatles are like the three thing the three most like
Speaker 1: when they came to America. Yeah, the three most watched
Speaker 1: like moments in the history of television. Obviously modo culture. Man,
Speaker 1: nothing beats monoculture. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, also it was like, you know, it was a
Speaker 4: bad moment for those of us who aren't the hottest
Speaker 4: people in the fucking world, because you know, like like
Speaker 4: Ed Sullivan, Man, look at that guy. You think they
Speaker 4: ever going to hire a host. It looks like that
Speaker 4: after Elmos, No, they realized, wait a minute, get we
Speaker 4: need to get hot people to do every job. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he's just it is.
Speaker 1: It is wild to watch again, Like, go back and
Speaker 1: watch his first Ed Sullivan appearance. Ed Sullivan had been
Speaker 1: in a car accident, and like there's this other actor
Speaker 1: on who's like hosting the show, and he's just like
Speaker 1: somebody would just never ever be on television in our
Speaker 1: modern era, right, and then Elvis just like saunters out
Speaker 1: and starts fucking you through the television screen and everyone
Speaker 1: looking at a clip of it. Who is this dude
Speaker 1: that's the guy introducing him? Basically, yes, yeah, the guy
Speaker 1: introducing him. He's like these things behind me. Oh no.
Speaker 1: Ed Sullivant had been in a car accident, and he's like,
Speaker 1: these things are called gold Records, and we're going to
Speaker 1: Hollywood to see And then and then Elvis comes out.
Speaker 3: The juxtaposition of that host who there's probably fifty given
Speaker 3: the era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like a less hot Alfred Hitchcock. He looks
Speaker 1: like mister potato head. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And then you have old palmyde with a drinking come out,
Speaker 3: like rides his dick out onto stage.
Speaker 4: And then right just and at that moment, they were like,
Speaker 4: after they saw the ratings, they were like, we're not
Speaker 4: given any more like furnace operators hosting jobs right on TV, Like, well,
Speaker 4: you're gonna have everybody on TV be hot, because why
Speaker 4: not give us even if the music's bad. It's better
Speaker 4: to have a hot person playing bad music than an
Speaker 4: ugly person playing good music. I really feel like that
Speaker 4: was the beginning, and you can trace it directly to
Speaker 4: Gavin Rossdale and now.
Speaker 1: Do a lipa. But I do just want to talk
Speaker 1: about like how much like The New York Times TV
Speaker 1: critic wrote, mister Presley's one specialty is nick accented movement
Speaker 1: of the body that heretofore had been primarily identified with
Speaker 1: the repertoire of the Blonde Bombshells or the burlesque runway.
Speaker 1: The gyration never had anything to do with the world
Speaker 1: of popular music and still doesn't, mark my words.
Speaker 4: Right boy, this guy on the TV, now that's not
Speaker 4: the popular opinion.
Speaker 1: A juvenile court judge presented Elvis with an unsighed Warrens
Speaker 1: for his arrest on charges of impairing the morals of miners.
Speaker 1: Man talked about a hater and specifically said that Elvis
Speaker 1: could wiggle side to side, but no back and forth motions. Oh,
Speaker 1: no pumping, No, no pumping, just wiggling. Yeah, don't be
Speaker 1: pumping now. That's because every.
Speaker 4: Person who didn't have to dance knew they were out
Speaker 4: of business at that moment too. Every dude who had
Speaker 4: just gotten away with being ugly and wearing some pressed
Speaker 4: slacks and getting laid was out of business. Now you
Speaker 4: need new skill, and that's why they were like, we
Speaker 4: have to outlaw people wiggling immediately.
Speaker 3: That's too much swag man wile. The host that day
Speaker 3: was British actor Charles Lott.
Speaker 1: Charles Lotton, that's right, ship that was that furnace operator. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: God damn that four n four.
Speaker 3: It's a man to have to be juxtapost It's jarring, truly,
Speaker 3: like especially in the context of what you're talking about,
Speaker 3: because it really does feel like the bar was raised
Speaker 3: for being like if you you must be this hot
Speaker 3: to appear in public, right, like hoot and holler at you.
Speaker 1: I remember though, like looking back at serial commercials in
Speaker 1: the seventies, like back my time at Cracked and noticing
Speaker 1: like it's been a subtle like they they did not
Speaker 1: learn that lesson all at once. There's a Raisin brand
Speaker 1: commercial where like a group of actors played Raisins and
Speaker 1: it was just like a bunch of like guys who
Speaker 1: would only be on TV to play butchers, you know,
Speaker 1: like it today they would only be on to in
Speaker 1: like a weight loss commercial that would be their only
Speaker 1: but they were just there because they were part of
Speaker 1: an acting troop. Like it did take them a while
Speaker 1: and into into that world steps Elvis Presley, so Ed
Speaker 1: Sullivan refuse to have a mom for a long time.
Speaker 1: He watched his performance on The Milton Burl Show and
Speaker 1: was specifically started like watching his dick and I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna this is from the Wikipedia page watching clips of
Speaker 1: the Allen and Burroll Show. Sullivan had opined that Presley
Speaker 1: quote got some kind of device hanging down below the
Speaker 1: crotch of his pants, so when he moves his legs
Speaker 1: back and forth, you can see the outline of his cock.
Speaker 1: I think it's a coke bottle. We just can't have
Speaker 1: this on a Sunday night. This is a family show.
Speaker 1: As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled
Speaker 1: with camera shots. Oh my, yes, some kind of a
Speaker 1: device is so funny.
Speaker 4: You had a device, like a device that like showed
Speaker 4: off his dick like a device in addition to like
Speaker 4: somehow he had a device down there.
Speaker 1: So unfamiliar with like gyrating and just like dancing with
Speaker 1: a flavorless shit. Du he got some kind of When
Speaker 1: I wiggle, you can't see my dick. So he must
Speaker 1: have some sort of coke bottle propping it up.
Speaker 4: With some kind of his cock a coke bottle, or
Speaker 4: have a bunch of pulleys attached to his ass.
Speaker 3: Hold my, I just love that our gade technology, like
Speaker 3: get a pully system.
Speaker 4: No, I think maybe he just has a decent sized
Speaker 4: dick adad and he's wiggling and he's like good dancing, not.
Speaker 1: That can't be what I'm looking at.
Speaker 4: It has to a device that looks like a damn
Speaker 4: file cabinet tangling down there.
Speaker 1: I'll say, somebody refuses to date anyone who's not a teenager.
Speaker 1: Probably didn't have a huge dick. But I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I didn't get into and he didn't find any research
Speaker 1: one way or the other.
Speaker 4: Well, maybe it was a coke bottle, then you could
Speaker 4: be Jack says it was. Jack's like, you know what,
Speaker 4: I think you.
Speaker 1: Have seen some weird coke bottle that sold, is right,
Speaker 1: It was some kind of contraption, I think, So all right,
Speaker 1: let's take it quick. Ray, We'll be right back, and
Speaker 1: we're back, all right. I didn't realize it at twenty
Speaker 1: two years old. So he's sold all those records. Is
Speaker 1: when he buys Graceland and from then on. This is
Speaker 1: always an interesting moment. I feel like it's usually a
Speaker 1: bad thing for the long term sanity of an artist
Speaker 1: when they get their own like Disneyland that they live
Speaker 1: inside of and it's like only them and people who
Speaker 1: are hired to buy them.
Speaker 4: Take it from me, I was, you know, I lived
Speaker 4: at col Brew Acres for many years, and yeah, it
Speaker 4: was it was, it got out of hand, he went
Speaker 4: a little crazy.
Speaker 1: I just what One of the things that's on display
Speaker 1: at Graceland is a TV that he shot out, And
Speaker 1: I just want to read a story from PBS about that.
Speaker 1: The story goes that as he watched singer Robert Goolay
Speaker 1: performing on television one night, he shot out the screen
Speaker 1: of his twenty five inch RCATV. There's nothing Elvis ha
Speaker 1: against Robert Gulay. They were friends, Kevin Kern, a spokesman
Speaker 1: for Presley's home and museum Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, told
Speaker 1: the Associated Press. But Elvis just shot out things on
Speaker 1: a random basis, just shot out things on a Do
Speaker 1: we have any other things that have been shot by Elvis?
Speaker 1: Just because? What? Did he always just have a gun
Speaker 1: on him? He really liked guns.
Speaker 3: But I mean like to shoot it in your home,
Speaker 3: like you have to quite literally have that thang on you.
Speaker 1: While you're watching TV. Right. I think he kept that
Speaker 1: him all the time.
Speaker 6: He developed a lot of problems. Miles, oh Man, this
Speaker 6: was a lot. So I'm learning a lot about it. Look,
Speaker 6: I've always viewed Elvis at a distance. I knew that
Speaker 6: he was taking black music.
Speaker 3: I knew that he like met Priscilla Press, who was fourteen.
Speaker 1: Other than that, I'm like, and I think he shot
Speaker 1: some shit. Yeah, well, my god shot a lot of things.
Speaker 4: I only know because there was this book about the
Speaker 4: Memphis Mafia that I read or skimmed or whatever. But
Speaker 4: then I got deep into Memphis Mafia stuff, which is
Speaker 4: his entourage, and they just told like his life became
Speaker 4: completely pathetic. I mean, he just had he just had
Speaker 4: no he had no job. He couldn't go tour Europe
Speaker 4: because Colonel Tom Parker was afraid he was going to
Speaker 4: get deported because Colonel Tom Parker didn't have citizenship, so
Speaker 4: he'd never wanted Elvis. So Elvis never toured outside of America. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and Elvis was sad he had nothing to do. So
Speaker 4: he was just in Memphis taking karate classes and he
Speaker 4: was on all these massive bill doses and and it
Speaker 4: all became very It's very funny and interesting to see
Speaker 4: a man do karate on pills and stuff, but yeah.
Speaker 1: It's kind of great ate. Yeah, but yeah, he was.
Speaker 4: He became like he was heavily armed in his bedroom
Speaker 4: on pills, watching two TVs at once.
Speaker 1: He had like a couple of TVs. You know, he
Speaker 1: would have Liken TVs going at once because President did that,
Speaker 1: and so he can ring a bell and get a
Speaker 1: peanut butter sandwich, you know what I mean. But I
Speaker 1: just love it, just shot out saying on a random basis,
Speaker 1: is such a great line diminishing what is objectively terrifying
Speaker 1: the psychotic behavior. Yeah, but there was just a king man.
Speaker 3: That's just funny because I only learned that reference from
Speaker 3: the Simpsons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a lot of what I know
Speaker 1: from the Simpsons. The controller, I know that that's what
Speaker 1: he had instead of a remote control back then. You
Speaker 1: just shot the TV to not even like be mad
Speaker 1: at Robert Goulay, just shoot the TV because he don't
Speaker 1: like his performance. He probably thought it was an intruder
Speaker 1: coming in the window. The window he just shot Robert Gulay,
Speaker 1: that wasn't the window. Around this time, he gets drafted
Speaker 1: into the army. Colonel Tom Parker steps in and says,
Speaker 1: like he's not allowed to perform while he's over there,
Speaker 1: because I think he just didn't want to like have
Speaker 1: a bunch of free Elvis records floating around out there.
Speaker 1: But Colonel Tom Parker's a crazy, like interesting figure that
Speaker 1: he was able to like the you think the Army
Speaker 1: didn't want to use like Elvis performances you know during
Speaker 1: the Cold War. Oh sure, but like just like drove
Speaker 1: a jeep while he was over there. That's when he
Speaker 1: discovers amphetamines. That's one of the crazy details of his
Speaker 1: relationship with Priscilla is like he immediately like she comes
Speaker 1: to live with him in Memphis and he's like just
Speaker 1: giving her all the pills that he takes. At one point,
Speaker 1: she sleeps for like two days straight. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: that's nothing good. It is why like the movie, uh,
Speaker 1: the Sophia Coppola movie Priscilla just kind of they portray
Speaker 1: it as like her having strict parents but like that
Speaker 1: she was sixteen and they let her live in Memphis
Speaker 1: with Elvis while they lived Like what the fuck was
Speaker 1: her mom doing that was so important in Germany that
Speaker 1: she wouldn't come live there? But anyway, time, man, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess so, but slept two days on his tranquilizers.
Speaker 1: She ends up having an affair with a Karate Instrucles Wallace. Yes, Mike,
Speaker 1: Mike Stone, I think is the guy who maybe maybe
Speaker 1: multiple karate. I know she had an affair with Bill
Speaker 1: Superfoot Wallace, I know it. But it's funny because his
Speaker 1: like weird, childlike obsession with karate comes in like boomerangs,
Speaker 1: and she like to get his attention, starts learning karate.
Speaker 1: Like at one point when she's pregnant, he like is like,
Speaker 1: I think we need to separate baby, having having some
Speaker 1: second thoughts because he just like didn't like pregnant women.
Speaker 1: He also like wouldn't have sex with her after she
Speaker 1: had their child because he quote had never been able
Speaker 1: to make love to a woman who had a child.
Speaker 1: So good. Huh uh, that's just wild.
Speaker 3: The motherfuckers were saying shit like that, yeah, putting that
Speaker 3: wax ye like.
Speaker 1: Nodding their heads when he said it too, And he
Speaker 1: came right about that man, right king, right king, very
Speaker 1: similar to there's a lot of similar Trump did that thing.
Speaker 1: He tweeted a picture of him side by side with
Speaker 1: Elvis and was like, huh, what do you think? And
Speaker 1: I do. There's like a lot First of all, Elvis,
Speaker 1: like late Elvis looks like a human being designed by
Speaker 1: Trump's interior decorating sensibility. But there's a lot of times
Speaker 1: during this that I thought about Trump, like and just
Speaker 1: being cocooned in a weird place that is just full
Speaker 1: of yes men. It's just an echo chamber of all
Speaker 1: of your ideas and people saying how smart they are,
Speaker 1: and just the idea that like the crazy shit that
Speaker 1: Elvis got up to, like that's who's running the fucking
Speaker 1: country at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so okay, tell me about the martial arts shit,
Speaker 3: because I'm always fascinated when I see this guy like
Speaker 3: wearing his fucking.
Speaker 1: Aviators in like a full gee. It was a fad,
Speaker 1: then it was a fad. He got real into it.
Speaker 1: He told everyone he was a seventh degree black belt.
Speaker 1: The way he became a seventh degree black belt was
Speaker 1: that he was into numerology as all like famous crazy
Speaker 1: people get to at a certain point, and was like,
Speaker 1: seventh perfect number. Man, I got to be a seventh
Speaker 1: degree black belt, and his sense was like I'm only
Speaker 1: a sixth and he's like make it happen, man, And
Speaker 1: so they like created some weird system where he got
Speaker 1: to be an eighth degree black belt so that Elvis
Speaker 1: could get bumped up to being a seventh degree black belt.
Speaker 1: He wore cowboy boots. To the dojo for self defense drills.
Speaker 1: He insisted on using real firearms, not prop guns like
Speaker 1: loaded firearms. Yeah no, right, yeah, okay. In June nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, a few months before his death, he was
Speaker 1: in Madison, Wisconsin for a concert, and he ordered his
Speaker 1: limo to stop because he saw at a gas station
Speaker 1: two teenage had pinned the attendant to the ground and
Speaker 1: we're punching and kicking him. This is according to him.
Speaker 1: Elvis hopped out of the limousine and started kicking and
Speaker 1: punching the air like it was a karate demonstration, and
Speaker 1: then like struck a badass pose and was like, I'll
Speaker 1: take you on. And the teens were just like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: it's Elvis, and they just started laughing and shook his
Speaker 1: hand and he was like, is everything settled now? And
Speaker 1: they were like, yeah, man, we're good. What the fuck Elvis? Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's like, that's right. They saw my karate child. But
Speaker 1: he yeah, he was just the strangest. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was a child. He was obsessed factor. He says,
Speaker 1: imagine witnessing this from the attendance as kicked, Elvis comes
Speaker 1: out like I could have sworn I just got rescued
Speaker 1: by Elvis Presley. Right, A lot of his late career
Speaker 1: shit like seems like a hallucination to me. The Elvis impersonators,
Speaker 1: like all all of the karate stuff, all of his
Speaker 1: performances just feel like weird, like fever dreams. This is
Speaker 1: another karate story. Alice Cooper was invited to Elvis's Las
Speaker 1: Vegas penthouse. He showed up with lizaman Elli and Linda
Speaker 1: Lovelas and Elvis immediately handed him a loaded revolver and
Speaker 1: told him to put it to his head and then
Speaker 1: he did a flying karate kick, knocked the gun out
Speaker 1: of Cooper's hand, tripped Cooper, pinned him to the ground
Speaker 1: by his neck. So that's how you stop a man
Speaker 1: with a gun. Oh my god, dude.
Speaker 4: Right, And if you look at the old miles, if
Speaker 4: you are interested, and I can point you to a
Speaker 4: little site that I'm aware of, you Tube.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, brother.
Speaker 4: On YouTube, you can see the footage of Elvis doing
Speaker 4: his karate moves and like sick of fants, like you know,
Speaker 4: he touches them on the nose and they do four
Speaker 4: flips and fall through the you know, go through the wall.
Speaker 4: You can see his karate because he was. They were like,
Speaker 4: we got to give this guy an degree black belt.
Speaker 1: So he's on les what the fuld on? By the way,
Speaker 1: that man right there, that man with the beard is
Speaker 1: my friend's dad. Who's your fame with the beard is
Speaker 1: my friend's dad. Who is that guy? Brandis Hulcomb. He
Speaker 1: used to be in my band. That's his dad.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: And he was a karate He was like a he.
Speaker 4: Was also he was a karate instructor for Elvis. He
Speaker 4: was also Clint East's bodyguard.
Speaker 3: Look at the back of Elvis' geed that's orientalists and
Speaker 3: orientalist font.
Speaker 1: Wow, dude, this is he really remember his dad's name.
Speaker 4: His dad's name was Hulcom is his last name, but
Speaker 4: I can't remember his first name anyway, shout out brandis
Speaker 4: but true.
Speaker 1: It does look like a child doing a karate demons
Speaker 1: right because they had Oh my god, this is not
Speaker 1: this is his bullshit. Man.
Speaker 3: Fuck bro, Elvis is taking both my motherfucking cultures Black
Speaker 3: and Japanese, where you ain't no fucking karate man, you fuck.
Speaker 4: That was also two am. He used to go wait am, Yes,
Speaker 4: he would get everybody had to go on his schedule,
Speaker 4: so he often would be like, we're going to the dojo,
Speaker 4: and they'd be like, everybody's asleep, and he would make
Speaker 4: them all get up and then do his like little
Speaker 4: moves and they all have to like they got you know,
Speaker 4: sent through the you know, they'd all have to go
Speaker 4: flying when he just like, you know, it was all
Speaker 4: I just think I have a corrupt, like.
Speaker 1: Funny the Steven Sagall thing where he's doing a karate
Speaker 1: demonstration of the people are like jumping out of the
Speaker 1: way and acting like he just like flipped them over. Oh,
Speaker 1: Brandis's dad, that's Brandi's dad. I had it wrong. That's
Speaker 1: Brandis's dad right there. That's that's it. Black guy's doing real.
Speaker 1: It's the same guy. These are different videos. This is
Speaker 1: I think this is only when Elvis was a third
Speaker 1: degree black belt. Holy ship, dude, it is wild though.
Speaker 1: That Priscilla then is like, do you do you want
Speaker 1: me to do karate? I could do karate, And then
Speaker 1: that he's just like so pathetic. He really becomes like
Speaker 1: such a pathetic character.
Speaker 3: It's funny because this is actually so much more fascinating
Speaker 3: than like the Heyday. It's sort of like this weird
Speaker 3: spiraling of like heak fame and having sycophants around and
Speaker 3: unlimited resources and like just creating like a similarchrum of
Speaker 3: like this thing where you're like a karate master and baller.
Speaker 4: Wow, wow, forty watt club in Memphis? Is it the
Speaker 4: forty watt the high tone? Sorry, the high Tone in
Speaker 4: Memphis which moved locations, but I did perform there once
Speaker 4: was the location of that dojo.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, the high tone move, but that was
Speaker 1: that dojo. It was in like a strip mall right. Right,
Speaker 1: you say what you want about amphetamines, their proponents and
Speaker 1: people who don't think they're great, But like you really
Speaker 1: can just see like a dividing line of his careers, right.
Speaker 1: He has this like Stratospheric Rise, goes away to the
Speaker 1: army for two years, comes back and everything's just starts
Speaker 1: doing like all those movies that like people think suck
Speaker 1: shit and like has doesn't really he has some good
Speaker 1: later stuff, for sure, some of the recordings, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it is just you're like, oh, he recorded
Speaker 1: this like on his back in a lounge chair. But
Speaker 1: famous things about the Elvis Sandwich, people say the only
Speaker 1: thing in life he got any enjoyment out of was eating.
Speaker 1: In his twenties, he could eat eight cheeseburgers, two BLTs,
Speaker 1: and three milkshakes in a single sitting. And then his
Speaker 1: favorite sandwich was fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and
Speaker 1: sometimes there would be bacon thrown in. And then at
Speaker 1: one point while they were performing in Colorado, they went
Speaker 1: to this restaurant where they were introduced to the Fool's
Speaker 1: Gold Loaf, which is an entire loaf of Italian bread
Speaker 1: hollowed out and stuffed full of jars of peanut butter
Speaker 1: and jelly, plus a pound of bacon. And he would
Speaker 1: be able to take one of those down by himself.
Speaker 1: And one time they just like flew there. They were
Speaker 1: like bored and were like, let's fly, let's fly out there.
Speaker 1: They were always bored. Yeah, this is the most shit ever.
Speaker 1: Holy shit. You guys know about the Nixon photo where
Speaker 1: he's showed up to the White House with a revolver
Speaker 1: and was basically like, I want to be your drugs
Speaker 1: are he was on drugs?
Speaker 4: And yeah, made flying out of one. It was made
Speaker 4: an honorary dea agent while he was on you.
Speaker 1: And you get to bring a gun into the White House.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's Elvis bro. Priscilla plains that Elvis
Speaker 1: wasn't really applying to become a nark. He wanted a
Speaker 1: badge from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs,
Speaker 1: which is the predecessor of the ATF, so that he
Speaker 1: could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying
Speaker 1: any drugs he wished. The way he went about it
Speaker 1: not great. He was like, I'm gonna I'll fucking spy
Speaker 1: on I don't give a fuck. I'll spy on the Beatles,
Speaker 1: I'll spy on the Black Panthers. Dude, just just get
Speaker 1: me in there.
Speaker 3: And you're back to being in your shipthead Era was okay,
Speaker 3: I just like that's just so funny. It's so transparent, Like, Bro,
Speaker 3: I need to get this badge so I can keep
Speaker 3: a gun on me in drugs and then you pull
Speaker 3: up sweating to the white Wait, drugs are man?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Like the most famous version of the picture
Speaker 1: is black and white. But he was like that outfit
Speaker 1: was purple is bright, purple cape.
Speaker 4: Part of this was written off by Elvis, like people
Speaker 4: wrote people were like Elvis because he was not educated.
Speaker 4: He thought truly that he was not on drugs because
Speaker 4: they were prescribing our prescription. He truly the whole time
Speaker 4: he was doing those drugs, drump, they were not drugs,
Speaker 4: even though he was like doing karate at two o'clock
Speaker 4: in the morning.
Speaker 1: Another Trump parallel, Yeah, yeah, and like shooting TVs. He
Speaker 1: was still like, you can't be the drugs because these
Speaker 1: are legal drugs. I'm on right, So that picture also
Speaker 1: he like still looks all right, you know, like he's
Speaker 1: not full swollen Elvis. That so that meeting happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. By nineteen seventy seven the Jimmy Carter administration,
Speaker 1: Carter said that Elvis called the White House a lot
Speaker 1: during the last years of his life. He only spoke
Speaker 1: to him once and described Presley as totally stoned and
Speaker 1: almost incoherent. But he just call the White House.
Speaker 4: So think about that. Nineteen seventy he was like thirty
Speaker 4: eight years old, right something, No, less, he was thirty five.
Speaker 1: He was thirty five. Yeah, it looks like he looks
Speaker 1: like he's fifty five. Yeah, he looked horrible. All right,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about his death. You know, he got into
Speaker 1: amphetamines in the Army, then opioids in the sixties. Found
Speaker 1: this guy, doctor Nick, who gets a lot of, you know,
Speaker 1: the attention for having prescribed him with insane amounts of drugs.
Speaker 1: He traveled with three suitcases full of drugs for himself
Speaker 1: and his entourage. Doctor Nick described the drug regimen that
Speaker 1: Elvis followed a week before a concert, which included six
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty pills twenty cubic centimeters of central nervous
Speaker 1: system depressants, stimulants, and painkillers. Twice during nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: this is four years before he died, He overdosed on barbituates,
Speaker 1: spent three days in a coma in his hotel suite.
Speaker 1: At one point wow, and you know, just like standard
Speaker 1: famous people shit, but like the people around him were
Speaker 1: both like, fuck, we don't want this to come out,
Speaker 1: but also like you push back on him at all
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, then you're fired, and they're like, ah,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. Man.
Speaker 4: During that overdose, Colonel Tom Parker just had them fucking
Speaker 4: dunking his head in ice water and saying he had
Speaker 4: to be on stage by Tuesday or whatever. It was
Speaker 4: like they, especially Colonel Tom Parker, did not give a
Speaker 4: shit whether he was well.
Speaker 1: He just just one of them.
Speaker 4: Colonel Tom Parker did not like music. He did not
Speaker 4: like what Elvis did. He said he had no idea
Speaker 4: whether it was good or bad. He just knew from
Speaker 4: the reaction when he first met him that he had
Speaker 4: to get involved, right, which looked at the audience. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he actually said, I have no idea whether what he
Speaker 4: does is good or bad. I just saw the potential
Speaker 4: for a draw.
Speaker 1: I just blew me away. His career does like go
Speaker 1: wildly off the rails once you know, he gets back
Speaker 1: from the army and is on drugs and like Colonel
Speaker 1: Tom Parker, by the way, not a colonel in any
Speaker 1: sense of the way. He just like was given a
Speaker 1: the Southern States will give you that that moniker, and
Speaker 1: he was just like, I kind of like that. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna sign my name is that.
Speaker 3: But also that doctor Nick from the Simpsons is named
Speaker 3: after shit.
Speaker 1: I never thought of that.
Speaker 3: Just looked that up because there's my god, that Elvis
Speaker 3: shooting the TV like it was at no good and
Speaker 3: now doctor Nick.
Speaker 1: I was like doctor Nick.
Speaker 3: Simpsons Elvis are like, yeah, it's funny evening, Yep, it's
Speaker 3: after George nic Nicopolis doctor Nick.
Speaker 1: So he eventually doctor Nick, after Elvis died, was put
Speaker 1: on trial. Prosecutors showed that doctor Nick had prescribed Elvis
Speaker 1: more than nineteen thousand doses of narcotics, sedatives, and stimulants
Speaker 1: in the two years two and a half years before
Speaker 1: he died in nineteen seventy seven, and also worth noting
Speaker 1: he wasn't his only supplier. Like the day before he died,
Speaker 1: he went to the dentist with a toothache, but so
Speaker 1: his last twenty four hours alive because Chrisy mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: that like you would do karate demonstrations at two in
Speaker 1: the morning, I just want to read a couple of
Speaker 1: other things. Doctor Nick drops off just like a hockey
Speaker 1: bag full of drugs. He goes to the dentist to
Speaker 1: get more drugs. From the dentist. At four am, he
Speaker 1: called his cousin and his cousin's wife come play racquetball
Speaker 1: with him. Yeah, they played racquetball from four am to
Speaker 1: like five am. At seven am, he and his twenty
Speaker 1: year old fiance go to bed. At nine thirty he
Speaker 1: gets up to go to the bathroom, and then at
Speaker 1: two pm she finally wakes up and finds him face
Speaker 1: down in the shag carpet in his bathroom, which is
Speaker 1: fucking gross that there's a carpet, shag carpet in his
Speaker 1: bathroom that's not near the toilet, is it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't have carpet in your bathroom.
Speaker 3: Shag carpet, shag carpet, no less, just roughly towel for her.
Speaker 1: I think one of the first things I knew about
Speaker 1: him was like that he died on the toilet, right right,
Speaker 1: So that is true. The theory went that he just
Speaker 1: died of a heart attack. Then once people found out
Speaker 1: how many drugs he was on, they were like, he
Speaker 1: did a drug overdose. There's also a theory that like
Speaker 1: the dentist had given him codeine I think, and he
Speaker 1: was like allergic to that, so that might have happened.
Speaker 1: But I think the medical consensus at this point is
Speaker 1: that he died of a heart attack due to basically
Speaker 1: have you ever seen one of those commercials for like
Speaker 1: the drugs they give people on opioids to be able
Speaker 1: to shit, Like, It'll show it'll show somebody like looking
Speaker 1: at like a soft serve machine.
Speaker 4: With envy cause constipation.
Speaker 1: Wait, there's a there's a commercial for this, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a commercial. I just remember being like, why are there
Speaker 1: suddenly all these commercials for like constipation? It was like
Speaker 1: during the opioid crisis, and it was it's because opioids
Speaker 1: caused massive constipation, and so he had been abusing opioids
Speaker 1: for years and years and years and years. So the
Speaker 1: assumption is he had like just savage constipation and he
Speaker 1: was on the toilet straining so hard that it put
Speaker 1: pressure on his heart and a were to and trigger
Speaker 1: the heart attack that killed him. So he did, which
Speaker 1: is I think back to what I originally had heard.
Speaker 1: The first version was the like he's strained too hard
Speaker 1: while he's taking a ship. That is, you know, it
Speaker 1: was related to years and years of drug abuse, but
Speaker 1: that he was so constipated that he died. We need folks, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you need fiber not to be on. Don't
Speaker 1: push too hard. I pushed it fucking pools of opioids
Speaker 1: for years and years and years. You'll end up in
Speaker 1: the shack. Don't want to end up in the shack.
Speaker 1: Don't push too hard. No, no, and then just in death.
Speaker 1: I think this is another thing that is true of
Speaker 1: other celebrities, but like nobody as much as Elvis is
Speaker 1: just that like they're not allowed to stay dead. Like
Speaker 1: everybody was immediately like, no, he's not dead. There became
Speaker 1: like a cottage industry of people coming up with conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories about him basically still being alive. There was a
Speaker 1: woman who like created a recording career for this guy
Speaker 1: O'Ryan kind of looked like Elvis, and then like he
Speaker 1: released an album on the same day that she released
Speaker 1: a you know, conspiracy conspiracy theory book about like Elvis
Speaker 1: still being alive, and people kind of point out that again,
Speaker 1: this is another way that like Elvis is connected to
Speaker 1: MAGA in like the whole QAnon thing where they just
Speaker 1: like wouldn't let where they would be like JFK Junior
Speaker 1: is coming back, and like they were kind of obsessed
Speaker 1: with that. It does all like seem to be linked
Speaker 1: in a weird way, right right.
Speaker 3: I love how people are like, I don't know, dude,
Speaker 3: I just saw him seeing Unchained Melody and he seemed
Speaker 3: pretty good.
Speaker 1: Because that's like.
Speaker 3: The one thing that's like the one Elvis performance I
Speaker 3: have looked at because I remember even my dad was
Speaker 3: like that was some wild shit. Like the last Elvis
Speaker 3: performance of Unchained Melody where he's.
Speaker 1: Just drenched in sweat singing Unshaan Melody and.
Speaker 3: Like kind of Swan song in a way where you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: like you're it feels I don't know, in this weird
Speaker 3: way when I saw it, even not really knowing anything
Speaker 3: about him, like oh, this feels like someone's final performance, right,
Speaker 3: like in this weird way where it's like it seemed tragic,
Speaker 3: but also like he was giving it everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he looked like psychotic and that I mean he was.
Speaker 4: He was singing so hard. I mean, I think Elvis
Speaker 4: was like, you know, he was doing his best in
Speaker 4: some horrible you know, he's things had gone completely off
Speaker 4: the rails, but he considered like his performance to be
Speaker 4: his thing, like he was still trying to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, da all he would like still perform as he
Speaker 1: was like dying. Yeah, he felt like.
Speaker 4: He was trying to give people their money's worth. He
Speaker 4: didn't have anything else, you know. I mean it was
Speaker 4: like that was the only thing left for him, Like
Speaker 4: that was like a traceable thing for him, probably of
Speaker 4: his self worth. I mean he's like, why is this happening?
Speaker 4: It's like the only thing I used to it's connected
Speaker 4: to singing. I guess, so that last performance he's just
Speaker 4: going off, like in a way where it's like you're
Speaker 4: not supposed to even be getting that much meaning. Even
Speaker 4: a good singer doesn't go off, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Like he was just like trying to get as much
Speaker 4: meaning out of unschained melody too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, tried too much. Close to the son, he
Speaker 1: so sad. Yeah, he looked so sad and desperate.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm just reading a quote from like in
Speaker 3: a documentary of Priscilla, Presley said that quote.
Speaker 1: Those last shows were not the most memorable as far
Speaker 1: as performance. Sometimes you didn't get through a song. I
Speaker 1: think the last year he was pretty much over. I
Speaker 1: don't even know why he went on stage. They're just
Speaker 1: hard to watch sometimes. I think it was maybe this
Speaker 1: song have You Ever Been to Spain? Which is actually.
Speaker 4: A Hoyd Axton song, but Hoyd actual wrote Joy to
Speaker 4: the World that Jeremiah was a Bullfrog song for Three
Speaker 4: Dog Night. He wrote a bunch of hits for Three
Speaker 4: Dog Night and three Dog Knight had a hit with
Speaker 4: had Never Been to Spain? But Elvis's version of I've
Speaker 4: Never Been to Spain, which is on like all the
Speaker 4: streaming services shows that. You know, he had a great
Speaker 4: band and stuff and and and and and there were
Speaker 4: moments where I think he had some artistic value.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I mean that the Suspicious Minds song
Speaker 1: is fucking good, and that's from like after It's from
Speaker 1: like kind of the later part of his was just
Speaker 1: like so a nova baby, I recommend. Yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: good stuff from later in the career. He had a
Speaker 1: really great voice, but he was also just like, you know,
Speaker 1: didn't really have anyone overall like taking care of like
Speaker 1: the vision for his career at that point, other than
Speaker 1: Colonel Tom Parker, who was, yeah, Colonel Tom Parker.
Speaker 4: Man. He was like I was looking at these interviews
Speaker 4: on YouTube of his entourage talking about Colonel Tom Parker,
Speaker 4: and they're very sad because the entourage, as much as
Speaker 4: they knew he was gonna die sort of, they all
Speaker 4: loved him.
Speaker 1: I mean, they lived twenty four hours a day with him.
Speaker 4: They got up out of bed when he wanted to
Speaker 4: do karate, They rode around in his stupid golf cart.
Speaker 4: I mean, of course they were all like just basically
Speaker 4: sex criminals around for the that's why they were there.
Speaker 4: That's why they were there. But they were so sad
Speaker 4: when he went away for a bunch of reasons, including
Speaker 4: no more sex for them. But they said Colonel Tom Parker,
Speaker 4: they just talk about how what a nightmare person he
Speaker 4: was all around. And one of the things that they say,
Speaker 4: that's so fucking funny, which I know isn't Elvis, But
Speaker 4: I just when I was thinking about this show and
Speaker 4: you guys asked me to do the show, I was like,
Speaker 4: I gotta tell his stories. It's so fucking funny. Carl
Speaker 4: Tom Parker was addicted to gambling. Addicted, he gambled. All
Speaker 4: he did was he basically just put Elvis on stage.
Speaker 4: As soon as he got the money, he would just
Speaker 4: go directly to the gaming table. So that's why he
Speaker 4: liked him performing in Las Vegas too, where he didn't
Speaker 4: like him a tour because he wanted to be in
Speaker 4: Las Vegas. Colonel Tom Parker lived to gamble, and so
Speaker 4: one of the Entourage guys was like the thing with
Speaker 4: Tom Parker is I just got to tell you guys,
Speaker 4: And I don't know if I've ever told anybody this,
Speaker 4: but I don't think he understood how to even gamble.
Speaker 4: He's like, I would go downstairs. So he's like, I
Speaker 4: went down I went downstairs at two in the morning.
Speaker 4: He's got he's at the Wheel of Fortune. He's like, which,
Speaker 4: first of all is the worst odds in the whole casino.
Speaker 4: And that was Colonel Tom Parker's favorite game. But he
Speaker 4: had a bet on every number and then he would win.
Speaker 1: And we lost every other bet.
Speaker 4: And he was like, I don't think he even understood
Speaker 4: how to amble, and it was all he did.
Speaker 1: Oh, so he would just spread it out across every poss.
Speaker 4: Entire stand that you didn't win if you have money
Speaker 4: on every number.
Speaker 1: So he goes to the thing he's a roulette table,
Speaker 1: red and black.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was just incredible because he's like, you know,
Speaker 4: he kind of told every story about Colonel Tom Parker
Speaker 4: and then he was just like, oh, and I forgot
Speaker 4: one thing.
Speaker 1: A guy lived to gamble and he didn't even know how. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just thought that was incredible.
Speaker 4: I mean, there was no limit to how much that
Speaker 4: they hated Tom Parker because he gambled away all his money.
Speaker 1: And he also, you know, he didn't give a shit
Speaker 1: if Elvis was alive or dead.
Speaker 4: Really, he wanted him alive for money, but he didn't
Speaker 4: care about personally about Elvis at all.
Speaker 1: I will say I said that he wasn't in the military.
Speaker 1: He did have a short stint in the military. Colonel
Speaker 1: Tom Parker briefly went a wall and was thrown into
Speaker 1: prison and spent time on Walter Reed Medical Center under
Speaker 1: psychiatric care for being a quote psychopath. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was from Norway.
Speaker 4: He allegedly killed the person in his home town and
Speaker 4: like fled to America.
Speaker 1: And that's why they're Dutch. Yeah, one of those where'd
Speaker 1: I say it was from Norway? We can't have this
Speaker 1: episode be so American? Was he from Norland? Listen? That's
Speaker 1: I take responsibility for that. I'm the American. I feel
Speaker 1: like that that is a thing you see with like
Speaker 1: genuinely talented people then like have one certifiable psycho around
Speaker 1: them to like cut through the business side of things,
Speaker 1: but then you know, they end up fucking fucking up
Speaker 1: entire careers.
Speaker 4: And last thing one mile from me, one mile from
Speaker 4: me right now up Gallatin Road in Nashville, Tennessee, is
Speaker 4: a car wash that sits on the site of Colonel
Speaker 4: Tom Parker's house, which was this like very middle class
Speaker 4: looking house right on this like major thoroughfare in East Nashville,
Speaker 4: in Madison, Tennessee, actually, but just right up.
Speaker 1: Up the road.
Speaker 4: And uh, anyway, he ran he created the Elvis Empire
Speaker 4: out of a finished basement below that house with a
Speaker 4: phone him a rolodex, and he ran the merch out
Speaker 4: of a shed in the backyard. And that building's gone now,
Speaker 4: got torn down like ten years ago, and some guy
Speaker 4: tore out the whole basement like to try and build
Speaker 4: a museum out of it, like out of the paneling.
Speaker 1: But I haven't heard word on that. But I'll get
Speaker 1: back to you guys. Yeah, yeah, check back in the reporting.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding either.
Speaker 4: Some guy like bought the basement. He's like, you guys
Speaker 4: are tearing down Colonel Tom Parker's house. That basement is historic.
Speaker 4: That's where he made all the phone calls, right and
Speaker 4: took all the But then I haven't heard where he's
Speaker 4: put the basement. I think it's probably just in a pile.
Speaker 4: You know, everybody makes plans.
Speaker 1: It's at his psychopath alter that he's created. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his wife's like, what the fuck is this pile of shit?
Speaker 1: That's Colonel Tom Parker's basement paneling. This is what this
Speaker 1: is goodwood paneling.
Speaker 4: Babe, I'm getting a divorce. Get the fuck out of
Speaker 4: my house. Take your whatever that is with you.
Speaker 1: Oh great, Like I got all the material I need
Speaker 1: to build a new house. No matter, I'll just build them.
Speaker 1: I'll live in this museum. Also, just going back to
Speaker 1: the last episode that we recorded together, one of the
Speaker 1: most famous Elvis is Still Alive rumors was that he
Speaker 1: appeared in the background of Home Alone. There's a guy
Speaker 1: in the background when she's like got fighting to get
Speaker 1: on a plane. There's a guy in a turtleneck who
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a older Elvis, And everyone was like, see, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got to still be alive. It's that in orson
Speaker 1: wells Ish. I don't know who that is, but yeah, okay, they.
Speaker 4: Did that with Jim Morrison. To remember, Jim Morrison was
Speaker 4: supposed to have gone to Africa.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wait, wait, there's pictures of Jim Morrison. Like
Speaker 1: they found some guy like it's Jim Morrison.
Speaker 4: They just said he faked his death and he was
Speaker 4: living in Africa, like, and they were saying that was
Speaker 4: like a whole there was just a big industry, and
Speaker 4: then they'd sell paperback books off of it. So I
Speaker 4: went to this place called McKay's in Nashville to look
Speaker 4: for Christmas presents, and they have all those old paperbacks
Speaker 4: and one of them was the Elvis Tapes.
Speaker 1: And it was this.
Speaker 4: Paperback book that you could buy at the supermarket that
Speaker 4: was like, we have a tape that Elvis. It was
Speaker 4: a book that transcribed the tape. That's what you could sell,
Speaker 4: a transcription of an audio tape.
Speaker 1: It was allegedly of Elvis. You could sell that as
Speaker 1: a book.
Speaker 4: And that's why I'm broke, because you can't do shit
Speaker 4: like that anymore, I know. And I want to buy
Speaker 4: that book, the Elvis Tapes for somebody, but I realized
Speaker 4: nobody wants that.
Speaker 1: Was it like supposed to be a recording of Elvis
Speaker 1: after his death. Yeah, there was a transcription of it.
Speaker 1: You couldn't use. You like to see some of the
Speaker 1: early like post truth shit in the Elvis thing, like
Speaker 1: Herado Rivera did a twenty twenty called the Elvis cover Up,
Speaker 1: but it was just about the like cover up of
Speaker 1: all the prescription drugs that he was abusing. But the
Speaker 1: people who were still making money off the Elvis lifts
Speaker 1: industry started claiming that that show was about evidence that
Speaker 1: his death was faked and covered up, and it's just
Speaker 1: like this infuriating like Herado Rivera will like have them
Speaker 1: on a show later and was like, what the fucking
Speaker 1: talk Like, it's clearly not about that, but they just
Speaker 1: kept sending on like Oprah and Larry King and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sh it used to be cute before it was
Speaker 4: about stolen elections, right well, I miss those cute conspiracy
Speaker 4: theory theories.
Speaker 1: God, I miss them, don't we That's that's been Elvis guys.
Speaker 1: Anything anything to add I don't know. I mean, I dude,
Speaker 1: I just found Thank you, Chris.
Speaker 3: I found a fucking fifty minute video of Elvis doing
Speaker 3: karate in nineteen seventy four, and I am going to
Speaker 3: watch the full Welcome this because it's.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, my apologies to your wife. That's a great
Speaker 1: thing to have on. Just like in the background, it's freaking.
Speaker 4: Me out, dude, Like, if you want a nineteen seventies divorce,
Speaker 4: I can help you. The screaming and the scream is
Speaker 4: what we call a kiyok It's a way of generating
Speaker 4: more power.
Speaker 1: Just hearing these voices tell me about Elvis.
Speaker 4: Elvis standing there in a stupor while this guy fake
Speaker 4: punches him, and Elvis like, Elvis, yeah, artist thing, Yeah
Speaker 4: totally probably was hard from all the ship that was
Speaker 4: in there. Eventually, God, Elvis is so lucky at that
Speaker 4: gas station that those guys were impressed, because if he
Speaker 4: actually had to fight, he would have had a rude awakening.
Speaker 1: Could you imagine like that would have been so amazing
Speaker 1: if he ever got into a fight.
Speaker 4: Yes, And then he goes home and he's like, have
Speaker 4: you guys been fucking lying to me?
Speaker 1: I tried all that ship and no one went flying.
Speaker 1: Everyone just stood there. I said, Katti, chop the gas pumping.
Speaker 1: I pushed me in the stomach and it actually hurt,
Speaker 1: fucking hurt.
Speaker 4: I was like, this guy's got fucking brass knuckles on her.
Speaker 4: I was karate chopping the fence, try and break off
Speaker 4: a piece to attack them with, and I broke.
Speaker 1: My fucking hand right away.
Speaker 4: How do I break the fences at the at Graceland
Speaker 4: so easily?
Speaker 1: Well, they're made of crackers. King Well, Chris Croft is
Speaker 1: such a pleasure having you as always. Where can people
Speaker 1: find you follow you all that can.
Speaker 4: I'm going to get things restarted on Holbrew got me
Speaker 4: like I really have had I'm sorry you guys. I've
Speaker 4: had a had a rough fall, I really have, and
Speaker 4: I just got overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: So I just took a break. I had to. I
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it.
Speaker 4: So so we've had a couple of months off, but
Speaker 4: we'll be back and you can in the meantime, you
Speaker 4: can you can read my Advice King column at Nashville
Speaker 4: Scene dot com.
Speaker 1: Or you can just follow my Instagram or whatever. You know.
Speaker 1: It's follow my Instagram. That's where I put most of
Speaker 1: my stuff. Tennessee's very own. Thank you, Thank you, Miles.
Speaker 1: We can people find you Haley's Eitgeist. Ain't a footing
Speaker 1: those the other check those out. All right? That is
Speaker 1: gonna do it. I will be back after this with
Speaker 1: some final thoughts and my no no, no, no no
Speaker 1: book dump, and I will talk to you all in
Speaker 1: a minute. All right. That was my conversation with Miles
Speaker 1: and Chris Crofton about Elvis Presley. Thanks to Dave Ruse
Speaker 1: for the research on this one. And here's some stuff
Speaker 1: I missed. This is my no no, no no note book,
Speaker 1: don't We mentioned Priscilla's affair with her karate instructor, Mike Stone,
Speaker 1: which I should be clear by the way, Elvis was
Speaker 1: constantly having affairs during their relationship, affairs that were written
Speaker 1: about in the papers, and she was just stuck back
Speaker 1: at Graceland just like reading about all these famous women
Speaker 1: he was fucking, essentially, so she took karate because she
Speaker 1: saw I was impressive to this like manchild, and eventually
Speaker 1: found herself impressed by her instructor, who could presumably actually
Speaker 1: do karate again. Go back and look at some of
Speaker 1: the videos of Elvis as karate displays, and you might
Speaker 1: see a contrast with that concept. But there's a story
Speaker 1: from around this time that I really wish I hadn't
Speaker 1: forgotten to tell Miles and Chris about when Elvis was
Speaker 1: on stage out of his mind, lost in the has sauce,
Speaker 1: and some fans rushed the stage and he became convinced
Speaker 1: that those fans were contracted hitmen sent by Mike Stone.
Speaker 1: Elvis was up for like three days straight just in
Speaker 1: a rage, to the point that one of his entourage,
Speaker 1: one of the Memphis Mafia, eventually looked into putting out
Speaker 1: a hit on Mike Stone and like came to him
Speaker 1: and was like, all right, I found the guy. But
Speaker 1: by the time he got to that stage, Elvis had
Speaker 1: like kind of calmed down and said, maybe it's a
Speaker 1: little heavy. Let us hit for a while, which that
Speaker 1: part kind of reminded me of the person the Graceland
Speaker 1: Museum curator saying he shot out things on a random basis,
Speaker 1: Like he wasn't like it turns out I was wrong
Speaker 1: about those fans who rushed the stage being ninja assassins.
Speaker 1: He was just like, I don't know if it's exactly
Speaker 1: my vibe to strike back against those ninja assassins who
Speaker 1: came after me. So just amazing, amazing testament to just
Speaker 1: this weird psychological experiment of being the most famous person
Speaker 1: on earth and never interacting with anybody who wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: part of your entourage for like years and years and years.
Speaker 1: On the Nixon encounter, there's this joke by Jack Handy
Speaker 1: that I think a good gift for the President would
Speaker 1: be a chocolate revolver, and since he's so busy, you'd
Speaker 1: probably have to run up real quick and hand it
Speaker 1: to him. And that's essentially what Elvis did, but with
Speaker 1: a real gun, and he got away with it while
Speaker 1: wearing a big purple cape. The Ray Charles interview that
Speaker 1: Chris brought up is great worth watching Ray Charles and
Speaker 1: Bob Costas talking about Elvis. Ray Charles points out that
Speaker 1: you know, black artists had been doing the dancing and
Speaker 1: the type of music Elvis had been doing for years.
Speaker 1: And I will say Elvis came by the influences. Honestly.
Speaker 1: He grew up so poor that he grew up around
Speaker 1: black families. He went to integrated churches. But I think
Speaker 1: that double standard also applies to the sexual charisma we
Speaker 1: spent spent a lot of time talking about especially applies
Speaker 1: to the sexual charisma. Even I don't know that Ray
Speaker 1: Charles was in the best position to appreciate just how
Speaker 1: hot Elvis was being blind, but in the interview he
Speaker 1: points out. Ray Charles points out that he was like
Speaker 1: Elvis made people swoon, and so did Nat King Cole,
Speaker 1: and they kicked him out of Alabama for making women swoon.
Speaker 1: And I think that was an important part of like
Speaker 1: Elvis being able to get away with what he got
Speaker 1: away with. I was watching a performance by Little Richard
Speaker 1: that I think was before Elvis broke, where little rich
Speaker 1: like playing the piano and dancing. There's a bunch of
Speaker 1: goofy white teenagers dancing like absolute shit behind him. But
Speaker 1: little Richard at one point puts his leg up on
Speaker 1: his piano and is like playing the piano, well, just
Speaker 1: like showing off his stroke game. And I feel like
Speaker 1: white people must have seen that, seen a black artist
Speaker 1: displaying unrestrained sexuality, and just been like, all right, well
Speaker 1: we'll let a white one do it, you know, Like
Speaker 1: I don't think it was a plan, but it was
Speaker 1: just the dynamic that Elvis by default took advantage of.
Speaker 1: Like he was dangerous, but he was a safer version
Speaker 1: of dangerous for a white supremacist. Leave it to beaver
Speaker 1: ass country, safer as long as you weren't a girl
Speaker 1: in ninth grade, I guess. And then just with all
Speaker 1: the echoes of Trump in this episode, it did make
Speaker 1: me kind of wish that though white working class version
Speaker 1: of masculinity had incorporated more of the early Elvis, because like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you compare that to their current god,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, where you know, the stereotypical Trump Trump supporter
Speaker 1: is this sort of depressing, depressed in cell type person.
Speaker 1: Not all Trump supporters, but you know, that's kind of
Speaker 1: what the general vibe is there. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: surreal to see this off ramp where they could have
Speaker 1: gotten over themselves and just like learned to dance with
Speaker 1: some goddamn honey in their hips, to quote Miles. Anyways,
Speaker 1: interesting episode, that's going to be it. We're off next week,
Speaker 1: but the following Monday, we are going from Elvis, someone
Speaker 1: who by the way, was blonde and dyed his hair
Speaker 1: jet black, to someone who was a brunette and turned
Speaker 1: themselves into the Quintus Central Blonde. We're looking at the
Speaker 1: amazing life the mysterious death of Marilyn Mama, and we
Speaker 1: will talk to y'all in a couple of weeks. Bye.