WEBVTT - Peter Guralnick 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.840 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Weftsetts Podcast. My 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.280 guest today is Peter Garralman, who has a new book, 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:20.119 The Colonel and the King, Tom Parker, Elvis Presley and 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:21.960 the Partnership that Rocked the World. 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:24.720 Peter, why this book? Why? Now? 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:29.360 Well, it's been thirty years. It's been it's almost exactly 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:32.680 thirty years from the time I first got access to 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:35.880 the Colonel's archives in nineteen ninety five. And although I 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.240 had known Colonel at that point for almost ten years, 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:41.280 and I'd had engaged in a considerable amount of correspondence 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:43.479 with him. This and I had done a great deal 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:47.000 of research for my Elvis biography, this opened up an 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:50.880 entirely different picture of the Colonel than I had ever 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:54.920 had before. And really, from that moment I wanted to 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:56.760 do a book that I mean, I just thought, we've 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.480 got to do a collection of Colonel's letters. Well, that 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:03.440 didn't happen, and a lot of things intervened, and here 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:04.640 we are thirty years later. 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:06.840 So what made it happen. 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.120 What made it happen was it was just I stayed 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:15.120 at it. You know, this is the same. This is 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:18.640 a good example of the little engine that could you know, 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:20.800 the tiny engine that could not. I mean, I just 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:22.759 stayed with it. It was something that I wanted to do. 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:25.760 But by the time I finally got around to it 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:28.520 and I started working on it six or seven years 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:33.680 ago by then. Colonel's widow, lo Anne Parker, actually quite 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:37.800 some time before that, and I had known her for 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:39.600 a while. I talked to her about the book I 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.160 was doing, this book of letters that I wanted to do. 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:44.800 She said, can I help, well? Who knows where that where? 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:46.559 A thing like that can lead? But I said, sure, 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:49.840 you know, I figured why not? That led to so 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.920 many revelations beyond the letters themselves, which for me were 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.160 a window into a world that Colonel had never revealed 0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:00.559 in public. He didn't reveal it in interviews, and reveal 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:04.400 it in his letters, which were great playful things in 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:09.520 which no matter what I put out in my letter, 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:11.440 he taught me every time. It was like I was 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:13.400 playing checkers and he was playing. He was a grand 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.919 master at chess. But in the letters themselves he revealed himself. 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:21.040 Then when I started talking to Loeanne, she began to 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.280 tell me all the stories he had told her about 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:28.839 growing up in Holland, and also about his vulnerabilities, his weaknesses, 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:31.799 his sensitivities, things that I just never could have gotten. 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:33.960 So that at that point I realized I can't just 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:36.040 do the book of letters. I've got to do something 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.000 which includes at least a biographical portrait. And I started 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:42.280 doing interviews for that, and you know, books take a 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:44.080 long time, but that's where it began. 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:50.600 Okay, Historically, Colonel Tom Parker has not had a good 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:55.120 image in the public. Ay when you first started with 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:59.560 Colonel Tom Parker, what was your perception of him? And 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:02.679 what is your perception of him now? And what does 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:04.200 the public get wrong or right? 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:07.880 Well, I mean there are a number of things about 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:12.480 Colonel's image. You've got to remember that, at least up 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:16.760 until nineteen seventy, Colonel was considered the most brilliant manager 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:19.520 in the business. All of the things which have attached 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.760 to him since Elvis's death were simply not applied to him. 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.120 And if Brian Epstein wanted to find out about the business, 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:30.160 he went to Colonel Parker. If Brian Epstein beatles manager, 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:34.239 If George Hamilton, who's newly arrived in Hollywood and made 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:36.680 home from the Hill, if he wanted advice about how 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:39.000 to proceed with his career. This is in nineteen sixty 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:42.760 one or so. He sought out Colonel Parker because Colonel 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:47.240 was considered the canniest, the smartest, the funniest, the most animated. 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:50.240 It it's nothing like what the image is of now. 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:53.040 I'm well aware of what the image is of him now, 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.120 But it wasn't the image that I started out with. 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:58.480 When I I mean, in other words, I did not 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.720 have a negative image when I wrote Last Trained of 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:08.960 Mephic and Careless Love back in ninety four ninety nine, 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.200 my two volume biography of Elvis, I had an image, 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:16.560 in a sense of somebody who, as Jack soon Ceo 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:21.719 at Graceland, as Jack Soten said, a lovable rascal. I 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:23.680 thought of him if you look, if you read the 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:28.279 portrait of him in Careless Love, he plays almost a 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:32.200 Falstaffian role, sort of a comic role, a grand master role, 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:36.400 but not a villainous role at all. Now again, I 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:40.599 recognize that through a combination of circumstances, particularly in the 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:44.960 wake of Elvis' death, but really even more so recently, 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.600 he has been cast in a role that he never occupied. 0:04:48.640 --> 0:04:53.400 In this villainous role, but that's not the way I 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:53.920 ever saw. 0:04:55.320 --> 0:05:01.520 Okay, historically people believe that it was a fift fifty partnership. 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:05.320 In your book, you go through a lot of details 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:10.840 that every deal was different in that live was one thing, 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:15.000 recordings were another. But also there was this concept of 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:20.120 special projects. What was really going on here because you 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.640 make the point that he had a rationalization for all 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:27.720 these different numbers, but in reality, was he self dealing? 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:32.480 He was. You know, I would say everybody in the 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:35.040 music business is self dealing up to a certain point, 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:37.320 that's what the music business is based on. But no, 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.640 he wasn't. And in fact, for the first ten years, 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:44.160 the first nine years of his management of Elvis, he 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.680 was operating on a twenty five percent managerial basis, straight 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:51.480 twenty five percent, no special deals, no bonuses, no nothing 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.720 like that. And this is a person who was not 0:05:54.839 --> 0:05:57.760 just the manager. He was also the pr man. He 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:00.840 did all the advertising, he did the promotion of all 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:02.760 the shows, he did the promotion of all the records. 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:05.920 He even designed the record the record covers got nominated 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:09.880 for Grammy. I don't know why, but he did. So. 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:14.680 He was not only a one artist manager, he was 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.400 a one man operation. He had virtually no overhead. He 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.480 paid all of his expenses out of his twenty five percent, 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:26.960 out of his twenty five percent commission as manager, and 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:33.400 he was providing a service and all purpose service. It changed, 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:38.000 as you say, as you've indicated in nineteen sixty seven, 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:40.200 and there were a number of reasons that changed. One 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:42.560 was that Elvis by then had become a lot more 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:46.120 difficult to manage. Elvis was encountering problems of his own. 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:50.159 He had, but his biggest problem and it was one 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:51.960 that stayed with him all his life. And I'm not 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:55.240 saying this is a criticism of just describing what happened. 0:06:55.720 --> 0:07:00.400 He simply spent, not just more than what he made. 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:02.400 And he was making two million dollars a year, which 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.080 is the equivalent of twenty million today. He was making 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:07.560 four million dollars a year, which is the equivalent of 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:12.720 double that. He If he made two million, he spent 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.760 three million. And this is born out in the letters 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:20.680 that Elvis's father, Vernon Presley, the only other person in 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:23.560 the world other than Colonel and Elvis who knew what 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.760 the business in the room was. Vernon was part of everything. 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:30.360 Vernon and Elvis Presley were part of every business conversation 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:35.200 with colonel. But Vernon wrote not letter after letter, only 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:36.760 a few of which I have in the book, But 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:38.720 he wrote letter after letter to colonel, You've got to 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:42.160 help out. We're on the verge of losing graceland. We 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:45.520 can't pay our taxes, we can't pay our IRS bill. 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:48.280 You've got to come up with more money. That began, 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.720 that became more and more of a problem as time 0:07:51.760 --> 0:07:54.720 went on. And so Colonel's explanation, and you can call 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:57.160 it a rationalization, you can call it an explanation, is 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.200 he simply had to take or he felt he was 0:08:00.360 --> 0:08:03.880 entitled to take a greater piece of the pie. And 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.040 with the deal that he made with Elvis in nineteen 0:08:06.080 --> 0:08:11.120 sixty seven, he entered into a limited joint venture agreement. 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.320 Joint venture is like a partnership, as you know, and 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:22.480 that the partnership, the twenty five percent commission remained on 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:29.200 things like movies, on publishing royalties, on just about everything. 0:08:29.880 --> 0:08:34.520 But they split everything that colonel, every bonus payment that 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.600 Colonel got beyond the contracted amount fifty to fifty. Now, 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.680 anybody could understand that the temptation in that kind of 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:47.800 a deal is to have less and less, less and 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:50.720 less money in the actual contract, and more and more 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:55.920 put into bonus situations. And that basically is what happened 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:58.280 to a degree, not completely, but to a degree, over 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:03.120 the next five or six years. Nineteen seventy three, Elvis 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:06.120 and Colonel entered into what I think can fairly be 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:09.480 called a partnership, except as you say, there were several 0:09:09.480 --> 0:09:14.200 things that were exempted. Publishing was exempted, the personal appearances 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:16.760 were on a two thirds one third basis. But it 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:21.040 was entered into so gladly on Elvis's part. It basically 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:25.480 comprised six different contracts, all of which Colonel and his 0:09:25.559 --> 0:09:30.880 assistant Tom Diskott went over in great detail with Elvis 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:36.280 and Vernon at Elvis's Hollywood home, and when everything was signed, 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:40.800 Elvis announced there were many things involved in this agreement. 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:44.520 But when everything was signed, Elvis announced to the guys 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:47.400 around him, and he rarely told them about business. As 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.400 much as they put out the I mean it, as 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:53.199 much as they had ideas about what his business was. 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:55.240 Was they honest, they really didn't know, and I'm not 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:58.360 putting them down, but they didn't. But Elvis announced to 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:00.440 them what a great deal he had made with colonel, 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:03.240 so you can say, well, Elvis was foolish, he hadn't 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:05.720 made such a great deal. On the other hand, I 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:08.960 would say there was nobody else in the world who 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:12.199 could have made the money for Elvis that Colonel Parker did. 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:14.559 There was no manager Moore Kenny, and there was no 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:19.560 one more who was better at both manipulating the record 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:26.600 company in particular and turning a chore into something which 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:30.880 generated so much money it almost met Elvis's expenses. 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:34.280 Let's flip the story over, as I say, if you 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:38.760 read the book, Parker looks pretty good. He is someone 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:44.320 you knew you subsequently interacted with the widow and the letters. 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.959 What are some negative feelings you feel towards Parker. 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:53.360 The simplest negative feeling and the biggest revelation to me 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:55.280 in the book, and the place where I really was 0:10:55.360 --> 0:11:01.120 unhappy to end up with, was that his gambling predilection, 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:04.280 which was something again I think I mentioned to you 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.800 I saw him as this, let's call him a lovable 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:11.200 rascal if in my view, and you can read what 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:13.360 I wrote previously, and I'm not trying to disown it, 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.280 It's just represented my best understanding of the situation. But 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:21.000 my understanding of him over the years was simply that 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:24.680 if he lost a million dollars at the gaming table, 0:11:24.720 --> 0:11:27.160 which he didn't, I think eight hundred thousand may have 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:29.200 been the most. It was the most I could ever document. 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.640 But he did lose that much that he could walk 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.480 away from that and just shrug his shoulders and not 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:38.360 care at all. Now I was write in one respect, 0:11:38.480 --> 0:11:40.400 he didn't care about the money. He didn't care about 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.559 the money anymore than Elvis did. Neither one of them 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:44.760 cared the least bit about money. They weren't interested in 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:49.520 accumulating money. They weren't interested in accumulating in the state 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.800 that meant nothing to them. But from talking to lo Aanne, 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:56.600 and from having her document from her journals and diary, 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:59.480 something I want to say one thing about lo Anne. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.400 No one could have been a more loving wife than 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:06.079 Loe Anne was. She adored Colonel She absolutely adored it. 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.800 And as much as she adored him, she admired him. 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:12.720 Maybe she admired him even more. I mean, to him, 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:15.160 she was the greatest person in the world. And I'm 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:19.440 not knocking that. But and yet when we started, when 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:22.440 I started on the book, and she started helping me 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:25.160 out with it. She was committed to telling the truth, 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:29.120 and she said to me at one point after we've 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:31.120 been tied, and I can only imagine how painful it 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:34.960 was for her to say this. Colonel was a gambling addict, 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:39.359 and she could document that from her journals and her diaries, 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:43.360 and you know, and say, no matter how difficult it 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:45.719 was for her to say this, and say there were 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.920 times when he would spend three days in the strait 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:52.520 in the casino, not come back to the room until 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:55.800 the fourth day, and then just collapse. He was no 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.560 good for anything. And she said, there's no other word 0:12:58.600 --> 0:13:00.840 for Peter, He's a gambling addict. So I ended up 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:03.320 with a picture which I had not at all expected 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:05.920 to end up with, in which you have two people 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:09.320 addicted to two different things. Elvis to his pharmaceuticals has 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:14.600 prescribed medications, Colonel to gambling, and neither one of them 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:17.959 able to address the matter with the other because if 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:20.960 one said, hey, you're doing this, the other would say, hey, 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:24.240 what about you? And they literally they avoided it. For 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:27.360 the most part, Colonel did everything he could for Elvis. 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:29.240 There are many letters in here where he's trying to 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:33.000 keep Elvis off the road, despite all the prevailing opinion. 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:35.600 There are many letters in which he shares his concerns 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:37.760 about Elvis with others. There are many letters in which 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:41.760 he attempts to motivate Elvis to do better and to 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.720 say that, you know, Elvis is the greatest entertainer he's 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.720 ever known, and he Elvis alone can fix these problems. 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:51.439 But nonetheless, neither one of them could confront the other's problems. 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.840 And that was the revelation for me, and it's an 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:59.000 unhappy revelation for me. And it doesn't undercut Colonel's genius. 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:02.280 Is you know, Chuad de Vivra, his great sense of 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:04.880 his embrace of life. I mean, he was just a 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:07.840 true He was one of the most vital people I've 0:14:07.840 --> 0:14:11.880 ever known. And he exemplified that spirit of vitality and 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.199 inventedness and sourcefulness all of his life. But that still 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.000 doesn't take you wanted to know what I saw is 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:21.280 his greatest weakness. Well, his other greatest weakness was a 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:24.920 trauma that he carried with him from childhood. He was 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:29.960 so mistrustful that it took a great deal for him 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:34.000 to give himself to other people, to demonstrate love, to 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:37.640 show his you know, to show his concern. But when 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:39.880 he did, he gave it all out. And that's another 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:42.120 thing in the book which surprised me, because I found 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.600 all these extended families which he formed in the absence 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:56.280 of the family he had left behind in Holland, Okay. 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:03.640 Eldest dies in sevent According to the book, the recording 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:07.320 rights were all sold to RCA before to help Elvis 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:16.080 out financially. Elvis dies in seventy seven. From Elvis, does 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:19.800 the colonel continue to make money after his death or 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:21.280 is it pretty much stopped there? 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:24.360 No, No, he made a great deal of money for 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:29.960 himself and for the estate. He again generated more money 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:32.000 I think than any other manager could have, and it 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:34.240 was an enormous amount of money for the estate. And 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:39.400 he found ingenious ways of getting RCA to pay more 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:43.080 money than they would have otherwise, to advance money. And 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:48.400 he made deals for the showings, basically with Colonel Parker, 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:54.360 just as with you know, most good businessman. Ownership was everything, 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:59.200 and the television specials that Elvis did the estate came 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:02.560 to all And so he made deals after Elvis died 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:06.120 for the reshowings of the very lucrative deals for the 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.280 reshowings of the television specials that Elvis had, so he 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:11.720 made a great deal of money for the estate, and 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:18.200 both Vernon Presley and Priscilla Presley were very at Priscilla 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:20.680 Presley wasn't part of the estate, but she was involved 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:25.680 as the mother of Elvis's heir, Lisa Marie, and they 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:29.680 were very happy with it. But when Vernon died, the 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:31.640 court came in and I think it was the Chancery 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:36.000 Court of Memphis, and they ordered that there'd be an 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:42.120 adlita attorney to take up the interests of the miner 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:46.960 who was now the sole heir of Elvis' estate. This 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.520 was Lisa Marie and she was at this point, I 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:56.200 think twelve years old. And the court ordered that the 0:16:56.320 --> 0:17:00.080 estate sued the colonel. The estate did not want to 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:01.960 so the colonel and it ended up being a money 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.960 drained for everybody, but they were ordered by the court 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.280 to do it. The ad Leadam attorney made a report 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:12.040 which and you asked earlier what the source of Elvis's 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:14.639 bad reputation is, it was primarily, I would say, the 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:21.120 odd Leadam report, which involves involved a considerable misunderstanding by 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:25.200 someone who really did not know much about show business 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:28.600 or the entertainment world of many of the deals Colonel 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:32.760 had made by for simple example, he upbraided Colonel. Well, 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:35.280 first of all, one thing was he saw Colonel is 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:37.880 taking fifty percent of everything, which from the beginning, which 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:41.000 wasn't true. But the main thing that I think he misunderstood, 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:44.600 he just misunderstood the terms of the deals. And for example, 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:51.440 he upbraided Colonel for having maintained for having let Elvis 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:55.120 continue to collect a five percent royalty on his records 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:58.800 at a time when other artists were making a great 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:01.639 deal more. That was not what the contract called for. 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:05.040 The contract was improved every year. The first year, the 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:08.600 first year of the contract RCA in fifty six, eleven 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:11.119 months after the initial signing, it was improved by a 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.320 million dollars. It continued to be improved. The royalties continued 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.760 to be improved. But because of and I don't know 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.600 you want to hear all this, but because of the 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:27.760 most Favored Nations agreements, which everybody knows. You know, every 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:30.440 any manager worth assault is going to get the most 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:34.560 Favored Nations agreement for his artist if the artist is 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:37.360 enough of a start. That means that you know, if 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:40.320 you get one hundred and ten dollars, I get one 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:42.439 hundred and ten dollars even if I signed for ninety. 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:44.959 So the problem was that if Elvis got more than 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.000 five percent, which was a top royalty rate that RCA 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:49.960 was paying, that would mean a lot of other people 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:52.720 would get more than five percent. Well, Elvis got a 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.520 lot more than five percent, but it wasn't written in 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:59.199 the contract. It was part of an unwritten agreement of 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:03.439 the recon agreements which were attached to every contract that 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:06.000 he went on from nineteen fifty six on. 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:10.160 Okay to put a bow on it. Because Elvis dies 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:13.679 in seventy seven, it's a very different circumstance. And today 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:17.960 with streaming, where all the music of the deceased artists 0:19:18.000 --> 0:19:20.480 at a fingertip, they have to produce albums, they get 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.520 all the factories, et cetera. The word at the time 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.840 was that all of these rights had been sold to 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:32.600 RCA and Elvis and Elvis's estate Elvis' is obviously deceased, 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:36.560 did not get another penny from the sale of the records. 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:38.960 Is that true? No? 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:44.520 I mean what was sold Elvis and Vernon's demand in 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:50.080 nineteen seventy three were future royalties on recordings made before 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:55.120 nineteen seventy three, that's royalties. The RCA, the record company 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:57.880 owned the masters, as every record company at the time, 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:03.600 didn continue to get royalties on everything that he recorded. 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:08.720 After nineteen seventy three, Colonel continued to put in bonus points. 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:12.440 I don't know how best to describe it, but for example, 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.359 one of the things that Colonel ensured was that if 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:20.840 pre nineteen seventy three recordings were released, post nineteen seventy 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:24.880 three recordings were included on the same album. Therefore the 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.359 Elvis Elvis estate would get royalties. I mean, it's a 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:32.639 very complicated thing, but he got concessions. Having made one deal, 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:36.480 he got concessions out of URCA, first for Elvis and 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:40.239 then for the estate, so that Elvis would continue to 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:44.280 make and the estate continued to make extraordinary amounts of money. 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:49.439 You know, I don't have all this my fingertips, But 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:56.920 for example, let's say, in order for the Colonel owned 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:01.040 all the photographs, and it was within in RCA's power 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:04.800 to pay a great deal more for photographs to Colonel 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:07.760 and into the estate than they would have otherwise. But 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:13.720 the income stream never stopped, and Elvis in the immediate 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:18.120 aftermath of his death was the Elvis estate was making 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.240 a great deal of money. One of the ways they 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.120 were making the money was it was the Colonel's greatest 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:27.240 concern and I think people who are concerned with intellectual 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:30.760 property today, which is you know, the word on the street, 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:36.680 the word everywhere is IP intellectual property. Colonel was concerned 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:40.080 in the immediate from the day of Elvis's death on 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:44.320 that what he called vultures would come in, swoop in 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:49.359 and basically they would merchandise. They would sell merchandise, making 0:21:49.440 --> 0:21:52.879 money off of Elvis's name and likeness. There was no 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:55.280 law at that time that prevented them from doing that. 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:58.480 There was no lot exactly the prevented them. There was 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:03.560 eventually an Elvis Law which people in Hollywood, stars in 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:06.560 Hollywood were able to take advantage of. It was the 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:10.200 first law was in Tennessee, but that was in the future. 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:12.920 But Colonel set up a Then he made a deal 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:17.359 with a company called Factors Incorporated, which had represented I 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.359 think Faara Facet Majors and made a huge amount of 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:23.840 money off of merchandise in her stuff. And he made 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:25.760 a deal which brought a great deal into the estate. 0:22:26.200 --> 0:22:29.240 Factors actually ended up losing money, because what they guaranteed 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:34.800 was to go after every malefactor who attempted to make 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:40.240 money off of Elvis's name and likeness. And so you know, again, 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:42.520 I'm not saying this is a perfect thing. I don't 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:45.679 know what the perfect thing would have been. But Colonel 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:50.680 took an extremely proactive role. And if you look at 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:53.320 the I don't have this in front of me right now, 0:22:53.359 --> 0:22:55.000 but if you were to look at I have all 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:58.240 the you know, all the information. And if you were 0:22:58.240 --> 0:23:00.600 to look at the income there was general for the 0:23:00.760 --> 0:23:06.080 estate in the three years between Elvis's death and Vernon's death, 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:08.600 the estate made a great deal of money. 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:13.359 If this lead deep if RCA, if a song is 0:23:13.480 --> 0:23:17.119 stream or a songness sould, does the eldest estique get 0:23:17.160 --> 0:23:17.720 any money? 0:23:21.400 --> 0:23:25.359 One of the things Colonel insisted on. And again, anybody 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:29.640 in the music business would understand this. Most people outside 0:23:29.680 --> 0:23:34.119 of music business wouldn't. Where is the money situated in 0:23:34.160 --> 0:23:37.720 the music business. It's in publishing. It's all very well. 0:23:38.280 --> 0:23:41.639 If let's say let's let's say I put out a 0:23:41.640 --> 0:23:44.040 record and I have a hit. That's great. I'll make 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:46.920 a certain amount of money. Maybe I make five percent royalty, 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:49.280 maybe at this point, I'll make twelve percent. I don't 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:51.840 know what I'll make. But when the record is done, 0:23:51.920 --> 0:23:55.680 it's done. However you may go on. You may cover 0:23:55.720 --> 0:23:59.000 that record. There may be a polka band that covers it. 0:23:59.000 --> 0:24:01.080 It may be come back as he hit twenty five 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:03.800 years from now. The person who owns the publisher is 0:24:03.840 --> 0:24:06.840 the person who makes the money. The thing that Colonel 0:24:06.920 --> 0:24:11.680 set up from the beginning was a partnership with for Elvis, 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:14.560 with Hill and Range, which is one of the pioneer 0:24:14.640 --> 0:24:19.399 and BMI, which was the you know, the rebel rights group. 0:24:19.520 --> 0:24:24.120 I mean they set up against ASCAP back in I'm 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:26.240 trying to think when I think, probably in the early forties, 0:24:26.280 --> 0:24:29.360 but they didn't come really come into their own. BMI 0:24:29.440 --> 0:24:31.760 and Hill and Range is one of the leading publishers 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:37.560 until the late forties, and they essentially represented those groups 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:40.639 which had not BMI represented those groups which hadn't been 0:24:40.640 --> 0:24:46.560 represented before, which was primarily hillbilly and black music. Elvis 0:24:46.640 --> 0:24:51.080 had a partnership with Hill and Range, so that virtually 0:24:51.160 --> 0:24:53.760 every song that he recorded, at least for the ten years, 0:24:53.760 --> 0:24:58.000 the songs that formed the basis for the Elvis Library, 0:24:58.040 --> 0:25:02.359 the Elvis Archive. He was a fifty to fifty partner 0:25:02.400 --> 0:25:05.560 with Hill and Range in the publishing, so he continues 0:25:05.640 --> 0:25:09.440 to make to this day. Elvis, by the way, would 0:25:09.440 --> 0:25:12.800 not participate in the more common practice of putting his 0:25:12.880 --> 0:25:15.959 name on a song. He did that with three songs 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:17.760 at the beginning. One of them was Don't Be Cruel, 0:25:17.760 --> 0:25:19.560 one was Love Me Tender, and he said, I've never 0:25:19.560 --> 0:25:21.199 written a song. I don't want to do this, and 0:25:21.240 --> 0:25:23.080 he dropped out. Hill and Range wanted him to do 0:25:23.119 --> 0:25:26.280 it because it was a clearer it was a clearer 0:25:26.640 --> 0:25:29.960 right of property. I think I read an argument about it, 0:25:29.960 --> 0:25:33.440 and I can't recapitulate it. But Elvis wouldn't do it anyway. 0:25:33.760 --> 0:25:36.240 But he did have the publishing, and he had the 0:25:36.280 --> 0:25:38.879 publishing it because Colonel. There are several letters in the 0:25:38.880 --> 0:25:43.400 book in which Colonel tells him, you know you've got 0:25:43.400 --> 0:25:46.040 lots of friends. Your friends may come to you and 0:25:46.040 --> 0:25:49.080 they'll say, Elvis, I have the most wonderful song for you. 0:25:49.119 --> 0:25:52.040 It's going to make you more money, but I'm going 0:25:52.040 --> 0:25:54.000 to keep the publishing. And Colonel said, those are not 0:25:54.160 --> 0:25:54.720 your friends. 0:25:55.280 --> 0:25:55.560 You know. 0:25:55.680 --> 0:25:58.040 If they are your friends, they'll want to see you 0:25:58.200 --> 0:26:02.280 make money too. And it is that by owning the 0:26:02.320 --> 0:26:05.560 by calling the publishing on all of his songs. As 0:26:05.600 --> 0:26:07.680 Colonel wrote to me, he says, you will have income 0:26:07.720 --> 0:26:11.119 coming to you long after you have ceased performing. And 0:26:11.160 --> 0:26:13.160 to a degree that's true. To another degree it may 0:26:13.200 --> 0:26:17.280 not be true because the problem I think with Elvis 0:26:17.280 --> 0:26:22.320 owning the publishing and not having the co writing is 0:26:22.359 --> 0:26:25.040 that once Elvis recorded a song on the hits anyway, 0:26:25.119 --> 0:26:28.200 he put such a stamp on the song that I'm 0:26:28.200 --> 0:26:30.800 not sure how many covers a lot of those songs got. 0:26:31.200 --> 0:26:32.960 I mean, they continue to be recorded, but I don't 0:26:32.960 --> 0:26:35.080 know how many hits. I don't know how many people 0:26:35.160 --> 0:26:38.560 have re recorded Jailhouse Rock and had a hit with it, 0:26:39.000 --> 0:26:40.760 or don't be cruel or that kind of thing. 0:26:41.200 --> 0:26:46.320 Okay, So definitively, at this point in time, the estate 0:26:46.440 --> 0:26:48.600 still gets publishing income. 0:26:50.160 --> 0:26:52.960 As far as I knows, unless they change the deal. 0:26:53.040 --> 0:26:55.600 But yes, okay to the destory. 0:26:55.640 --> 0:26:59.120 And although it is a smaller amount than publishing income, 0:26:59.200 --> 0:27:03.000 does the estate still get recording royalties? 0:27:05.280 --> 0:27:10.040 No, they get recording recording royalties. They tried to reverse 0:27:10.080 --> 0:27:15.520 the deal in more recent times, but the deal was 0:27:15.560 --> 0:27:19.960 pretty much irreversible. They get recording. They get royalties from 0:27:19.960 --> 0:27:25.000 the records that were cut after nineteen from nineteen seventy 0:27:25.040 --> 0:27:27.600 three on, and that's a considerable number of records, and 0:27:27.640 --> 0:27:30.439 they continue to be repackaged, so they do get those, 0:27:30.920 --> 0:27:34.360 and they will also get and I mean if albums 0:27:34.400 --> 0:27:39.000 still sell, and that's a big if they would continue 0:27:39.080 --> 0:27:44.359 to get income from albums which include not only songs 0:27:44.400 --> 0:27:48.000 recorded before seventy three, but signs recorded after nineteen seventy three, 0:27:48.040 --> 0:27:53.640 which was something that Colonel insisted on during his tenure. 0:27:54.720 --> 0:27:58.800 Okay, back to the kernel. Elvis was the first big 0:27:58.920 --> 0:28:03.240 rock star, organic rock star prior to the Beatles. Conventional 0:28:03.280 --> 0:28:06.760 wisdom at this point in time is Brian Epstein was 0:28:06.840 --> 0:28:10.879 great in promoting the Beatles, not so great financially. Brian 0:28:10.920 --> 0:28:14.600 Epstein dies in the late sixties. A lot of things 0:28:14.760 --> 0:28:19.080 change in the music business in the seventies. First and foremost, 0:28:19.160 --> 0:28:22.720 the record companies end up being owned by larger conglomerates, etc. 0:28:23.520 --> 0:28:27.560 But you get this era of supermanagers. You know, there're 0:28:27.560 --> 0:28:30.520 a lot from Jerry Weintraub who worked with Elvis, to 0:28:30.680 --> 0:28:37.440 David Geffen to Irving as Off, etc. Was the Colonel 0:28:37.640 --> 0:28:39.960 just as good as them. It was a different era, 0:28:40.680 --> 0:28:45.960 or was he superseded by a later generation of managers, a. 0:28:45.880 --> 0:28:48.520 Lot of exempt Jerry Wintrop, I don't, I mean Jay, 0:28:48.760 --> 0:28:54.280 but leaving that outside, I think he was just as good. 0:28:54.320 --> 0:28:57.400 I mean he The biggest thing was, as he said, 0:28:57.520 --> 0:29:00.760 he says, I'm not a polo lounge manager. I don't 0:29:00.840 --> 0:29:03.600 just sit back and collect my money. I don't have 0:29:03.640 --> 0:29:08.840 a stable of artists, each of whom pay me my money, 0:29:08.880 --> 0:29:12.040 and none of whom I fully support. I am out 0:29:12.040 --> 0:29:15.040 there with my artist, and I am out there one 0:29:15.120 --> 0:29:17.800 hundred percent. And I'm not just out I'm out there 0:29:17.800 --> 0:29:21.400 on tour with them. I'm involved in every aspect of 0:29:21.440 --> 0:29:24.120 their business, of his business. I mean, you're talking about one, 0:29:24.200 --> 0:29:27.440 one artist manager of so this is it's a very 0:29:27.480 --> 0:29:30.960 different kind of situation. You would You wouldn't have this 0:29:31.080 --> 0:29:36.400 degree of dedication, devotion or just pure I would call 0:29:36.520 --> 0:29:39.280 love and admiration for the artist. You you don't see 0:29:39.320 --> 0:29:42.640 that kind of thing to that extent. The other thing 0:29:42.760 --> 0:29:47.240 is that Elvis's and Colonel's business was entirely separate. When 0:29:47.560 --> 0:29:52.040 Elvis's money came to Elvis directly, there was no pass through, 0:29:52.080 --> 0:29:55.160 there wasn't anything. I mean, Colonel got his twenty five 0:29:55.200 --> 0:29:57.920 percent in one check, Elvis got his seventy five percent 0:29:57.960 --> 0:30:01.200 in another check. Whether it was from RCA or you know, 0:30:01.240 --> 0:30:04.000 the promoter or anybody else, but the biggest thing, and 0:30:04.040 --> 0:30:06.920 I honestly think that this is a huge difference, and 0:30:06.960 --> 0:30:09.920 it's what was revolutionary. Well, Colonel did I I can't 0:30:10.560 --> 0:30:12.720 you know the name. I know all the names that 0:30:12.760 --> 0:30:15.800 you mentioned, but the only name that I would say 0:30:16.280 --> 0:30:19.240 was comparable to colonel and I know a lot of 0:30:19.280 --> 0:30:21.920 people would dismiss this would be Alan Klein. And the 0:30:21.920 --> 0:30:25.240 biggest difference between Colonel and Allen and Alan Klein. I'll 0:30:25.280 --> 0:30:28.600 say I knew Alan Klein very well. I would say, 0:30:29.200 --> 0:30:32.080 against what most people would want me to say, he 0:30:32.120 --> 0:30:35.160 was a very good friend, but perhaps the most difficult 0:30:35.200 --> 0:30:39.280 friend you could ever have. But Alan Klein essentially did 0:30:39.640 --> 0:30:42.120 attempted to do the same thing. I mean, if you 0:30:42.120 --> 0:30:45.200 were to look at the situation that the Rolling Stones 0:30:45.280 --> 0:30:49.120 were in through Andrew Andrew lou Goldham's management when Alan 0:30:49.200 --> 0:30:51.840 Klein took over. I know that Mick Jagger hates him. 0:30:51.840 --> 0:30:54.680 I know Jack Keith Richards likes I don't want to 0:30:54.680 --> 0:30:57.080 make it personal, and I know that Keith and that 0:30:58.360 --> 0:31:00.160 this is not the way MC Jagger sees it. Keyth 0:31:00.360 --> 0:31:03.560 Richards was always close to Alan. But the point is 0:31:03.760 --> 0:31:07.880 what Alan did in terms of allowing them to be 0:31:07.920 --> 0:31:09.680 in charge of their business well at the same time 0:31:09.720 --> 0:31:13.280 taking control of all the publishing, which will be a 0:31:13.280 --> 0:31:17.040 source of conflict to this day. But that was what 0:31:17.240 --> 0:31:22.040 Colonel did for Alan. By the way, the huge, biggest difference, 0:31:22.040 --> 0:31:25.000 a huge difference between Alan Klein and Colonel Parker was 0:31:25.000 --> 0:31:27.680 that Alan didn't have a sense of humor. Colonel had 0:31:27.720 --> 0:31:30.240 a great sense of humor. It was what kept him going. 0:31:30.720 --> 0:31:33.320 But the thing that with Colonel, and I think that 0:31:33.640 --> 0:31:35.760 has to be taken into account, and the thing that 0:31:35.800 --> 0:31:38.800 sets him apart from virtually every other manager you can name. 0:31:39.720 --> 0:31:43.480 He loved his artist. He signed his artist, the greatest, 0:31:44.240 --> 0:31:48.880 the greatest entertainer, the greatest singer, the greatest visionary that 0:31:49.000 --> 0:31:52.440 he had ever known. He believed in him one hundred percent, 0:31:52.600 --> 0:31:54.840 and he did everything from the very beginning. And this 0:31:54.920 --> 0:31:57.400 is I mean, I call one of the early chapters 0:31:57.800 --> 0:31:59.920 about his association with Elvis, and there's a lot of 0:32:00.120 --> 0:32:04.440 story before Elvis and Colonel's career with Eddie Arnold mirrors 0:32:04.600 --> 0:32:08.080 what he did with Elvis almost exactly and made out 0:32:08.200 --> 0:32:11.240 Eddie Arnold into a superstar such as country music did 0:32:11.440 --> 0:32:15.720 never saw again until Garth Brooks. But with Elvis, I 0:32:15.800 --> 0:32:19.480 call the chapter defending Elvis, and he defended Elvis at 0:32:19.520 --> 0:32:22.840 every turn, and most of all, he defended his artist 0:32:23.080 --> 0:32:26.200 artistic choices. And no matter who came at him, whether 0:32:26.760 --> 0:32:30.040 RCA came at him, whether William Barris said, look, the 0:32:30.080 --> 0:32:33.640 way he's appearing on television is terrible, whether the movies 0:32:34.040 --> 0:32:38.320 or television or anybody else asked him to change his 0:32:38.480 --> 0:32:41.680 artist approach or change his approach to promoting his arts, 0:32:41.760 --> 0:32:44.520 he says, you know, my artist knows what he's doing. 0:32:44.920 --> 0:32:47.680 He knows his business. I stand behind him one hundred percent. 0:32:47.920 --> 0:32:50.240 And that's something I don't think he's ever gotten credit for. 0:32:50.320 --> 0:32:53.040 And yet I think it's incontrovertible if you look at 0:32:53.080 --> 0:32:56.680 the effects. 0:33:01.400 --> 0:33:06.760 Okay, you have all these letters, and some of them 0:33:06.800 --> 0:33:10.760 are very lengthy. Needless to say, we don't live in 0:33:10.800 --> 0:33:15.280 the same era now, we live in a text email world. 0:33:16.120 --> 0:33:21.480 But certainly when Elvis is the star, there is the telephone. 0:33:22.160 --> 0:33:25.400 Do you find that he would write letters when other 0:33:25.520 --> 0:33:29.280 people did not, or it was just a different era 0:33:29.360 --> 0:33:30.680 and everybody wrote letters. 0:33:32.160 --> 0:33:33.600 I think it was a different era, you know. And 0:33:33.680 --> 0:33:36.320 you mentioned the differences. Short attention span might be the 0:33:36.320 --> 0:33:40.360 biggest difference of all. I mean, try writing an email 0:33:40.440 --> 0:33:43.440 that people can will actually read. I mean, I'm told 0:33:43.480 --> 0:33:46.400 by by kiss you've got to keep your email, show 0:33:46.520 --> 0:33:50.200 one one topic to the email. But I'm not convinced 0:33:50.200 --> 0:33:53.479 that even that will work. But no, I mean looking, 0:33:53.680 --> 0:33:56.560 I mean looking at the correspondence. And I went through 0:33:56.640 --> 0:34:00.719 thousands and thousands of letters, and they weren't just those letters. 0:34:01.040 --> 0:34:04.720 Everybody wrote letters. The thing that was most entertaining was 0:34:04.760 --> 0:34:09.759 that everybody that Colonel liked, all of Colonel's pals in 0:34:09.800 --> 0:34:12.360 a sense, tried to top each other even in the 0:34:12.400 --> 0:34:16.880 midst of doing business with jokes with you know, just 0:34:17.040 --> 0:34:21.520 it was a kind of a generation. It was a 0:34:21.600 --> 0:34:25.120 generation that prized kid in as much as anything else, 0:34:25.480 --> 0:34:28.120 and you get each of them that in the way. 0:34:28.239 --> 0:34:30.239 Was one of the things that was so wonderful was 0:34:30.280 --> 0:34:32.919 to see the extent to which they engaged with each other, 0:34:34.160 --> 0:34:36.960 and engage with each other even in business on a 0:34:37.040 --> 0:34:40.400 kind of amicable basis, but definitely on a basis to 0:34:40.400 --> 0:34:43.080 try to get the best deal possible in the Colonel's case, 0:34:43.120 --> 0:34:43.360 for his. 0:34:43.480 --> 0:34:48.919 Artists, when one reads the letters. To use the vernacular, 0:34:50.080 --> 0:34:53.480 the Colonel's kissing a lot of butt. You're so great, 0:34:53.640 --> 0:34:56.360 You're so great. I may not be aware of what's 0:34:56.440 --> 0:35:01.920 going on, Okay, was his style in general. 0:35:03.200 --> 0:35:05.239 I wouldn't call it kissing, but I think that he 0:35:05.400 --> 0:35:08.680 is having a He's having a laugh at their expensiveness. 0:35:08.840 --> 0:35:12.000 He's recognizes that nobody is going to take them seriously 0:35:12.040 --> 0:35:15.040 when he says that, I mean, this is a very 0:35:15.160 --> 0:35:18.640 very canny person. He's dealing with people, he's dealing with 0:35:18.680 --> 0:35:20.919 Ivy Lee. I mean, one of one of the things. 0:35:20.960 --> 0:35:24.799 This is a class revolution on both his part and Elvis's. 0:35:25.000 --> 0:35:28.440 When they came to Hollywood, everybody looked at them and 0:35:28.480 --> 0:35:30.640 they said, oh, look at those roofs, look at those 0:35:30.680 --> 0:35:37.520 country bumpkins. And he and Elvis proved, you know, all 0:35:37.600 --> 0:35:41.279 these sophisticated people may have gone to Cornell, might have 0:35:41.280 --> 0:35:43.200 gone to Kolgi, might have gone to Harvard, might have 0:35:43.239 --> 0:35:47.319 gone to well wherever, And they proved them wrong. And 0:35:47.719 --> 0:35:51.839 within within two or three months. And I think one 0:35:51.880 --> 0:35:55.360 of the great jokes that Elvis and Colonel shared was 0:35:56.280 --> 0:35:59.520 to look at each other to recognize that Elvis had 0:35:59.520 --> 0:36:04.520 overcome the doubters with his talent. Colonel had overcome, you know, 0:36:04.600 --> 0:36:10.160 the doubters with his call it his brilliance, his sophistication 0:36:11.239 --> 0:36:17.160 while playing the part of the country roup. And they 0:36:17.160 --> 0:36:18.960 could look He and Elvis could look at each other 0:36:18.960 --> 0:36:20.799 because they shared a sense of humor and they shared 0:36:20.840 --> 0:36:24.440 an appreciation, I think for the way the world was 0:36:24.600 --> 0:36:27.480 and for the way the world looked down upon people 0:36:27.560 --> 0:36:31.000 of a lower class, I mean, of a lower economic class, 0:36:31.120 --> 0:36:33.080 And they could look at each other and say, who's 0:36:33.120 --> 0:36:37.600 the room now. But I know, I think that there 0:36:37.719 --> 0:36:43.879 is an engagement in the letters occasionally, and they were 0:36:43.920 --> 0:36:47.480 also there are so many letters in which Colonel just 0:36:47.920 --> 0:36:52.479 upbraids when he is not writing to a friend and says, 0:36:52.480 --> 0:36:54.359 how could you do this? How could you release the 0:36:54.400 --> 0:36:58.680 movie follow That Dream as just another Elvis movie Following 0:36:58.680 --> 0:37:00.319 a Dream? Actually, I think is one of them better 0:37:00.360 --> 0:37:02.880 movies that Elvis made after I'm not a big advocate 0:37:02.920 --> 0:37:06.400 of the movies, but but it was intended as a 0:37:06.400 --> 0:37:09.400 different kind of comedy, almost an Andy Griffith kind of comedy. 0:37:09.880 --> 0:37:14.480 And when it was released, Colonel wrote to the record, 0:37:14.600 --> 0:37:20.960 to the movie company and studio and said, you know 0:37:21.080 --> 0:37:24.000 you've released this out this record this. You've released this 0:37:24.160 --> 0:37:27.720 movie which has its own unique tone in which Elvis 0:37:27.760 --> 0:37:31.000 gives a good comic performance, and he released it as 0:37:31.040 --> 0:37:33.000 if it were just another Elvis movie and people are 0:37:33.040 --> 0:37:35.040 going to flock to it because it's another Elvis movie. 0:37:35.080 --> 0:37:37.600 That's not the way this business works. You have to 0:37:37.640 --> 0:37:40.920 sell what you're presented, and you had an opportunity here, 0:37:41.000 --> 0:37:43.759 or you maybe you still have an opportunity here to 0:37:43.840 --> 0:37:46.640 sell the product which you are putting out, but you're 0:37:46.640 --> 0:37:50.239 not doing your job. So I would say he was 0:37:50.280 --> 0:37:55.080 pretty frank where he was really frank and where he 0:37:55.200 --> 0:37:58.400 was direct and where he was in his dealings with RCA. 0:37:59.000 --> 0:38:04.880 And very soon after the Grand High Pubas at RCA, 0:38:05.400 --> 0:38:10.840 Bill Bullock and Steve Sholes and well variety people expressed 0:38:10.840 --> 0:38:14.880 their disapproval and displeasure with the direction that Elvis was 0:38:14.920 --> 0:38:17.160 taking and Colonel was taking and promoting him. In early 0:38:17.200 --> 0:38:22.000 fifty six, very soon after that, Elvis's success and Colonel's 0:38:22.040 --> 0:38:27.000 belief in Elvis completely disproved what the people at RCA were, 0:38:27.400 --> 0:38:30.680 what the executives RCA were calling for, And he became 0:38:30.760 --> 0:38:33.600 great friends with someone like Bill Bullock and they exchanged 0:38:33.640 --> 0:38:41.960 all kinds of all kinds of joky letters, but also 0:38:42.080 --> 0:38:45.840 letters in which they were negotiating for high stakes. And 0:38:45.880 --> 0:38:48.759 when Bill Bullock comes to Colonel, for example, I think 0:38:48.800 --> 0:38:52.040 around nineteen sixty and says, I've had a great idea, 0:38:52.480 --> 0:38:55.920 we should record Elvis with a symphony orchestra. Colonel just says, look, 0:38:57.360 --> 0:38:59.839 that's a terrific idea, but it does a disservice both 0:39:00.080 --> 0:39:02.680 symphony orchestra into Elvis, and that's a terrible idea, and 0:39:02.680 --> 0:39:03.960 I don't think you should do it. I mean, he 0:39:04.280 --> 0:39:08.680 wasn't hesitant about expressing his views, but always expressing his 0:39:08.800 --> 0:39:13.719 views after first after first consulting with Elvis and determining 0:39:13.719 --> 0:39:15.120 that these were Elvis's views. 0:39:16.160 --> 0:39:21.319 Okay, Also talking about conventional wisdom, which is debunked in 0:39:21.400 --> 0:39:27.040 your book, A conventional wisdom is that Colonel was not 0:39:27.120 --> 0:39:29.920 a citizen in the United States, and therefore he didn't 0:39:29.960 --> 0:39:34.000 want Elvis playing outside the country. You debunked that. But 0:39:34.320 --> 0:39:39.600 parallel to that in the book is ultimately the family 0:39:40.360 --> 0:39:44.040 in the Netherlands find out who he is and that 0:39:44.160 --> 0:39:48.880 he's had success. He keeps them at arm's length. 0:39:50.280 --> 0:39:50.760 He does. 0:39:50.880 --> 0:39:53.719 Do you believe how much was keeping arm's length because 0:39:53.760 --> 0:39:57.239 he was fear of being exposed. How much was he 0:39:57.320 --> 0:39:59.840 wanted nothing to do with these people? How much is 0:39:59.880 --> 0:40:01.799 he he hated the family? How much he feel you know, 0:40:01.960 --> 0:40:04.680 what was really going on there? Why was she really 0:40:04.840 --> 0:40:06.200 keeping the family at arms with? 0:40:07.080 --> 0:40:08.719 All? Right, I'm going to say yes to all of 0:40:08.760 --> 0:40:13.399 the above, because honestly, you've touched on I mean when 0:40:13.440 --> 0:40:15.800 you say I've debunked, I hope I haven't debunked. I 0:40:15.880 --> 0:40:20.560 hope I've introduced issues that can continue to be discussed 0:40:20.560 --> 0:40:22.759 and debated and in which people can make up their 0:40:22.760 --> 0:40:25.759 own minds by both the facts that I'm presenting and 0:40:25.800 --> 0:40:30.520 sometimes the theories that I'm presenting. But this was a 0:40:30.640 --> 0:40:32.880 very different world, and I want to be in terms 0:40:32.880 --> 0:40:35.680 of citizenship. I want to put forward a few things, 0:40:35.880 --> 0:40:39.200 but I want to start out by saying something terrible 0:40:39.360 --> 0:40:43.759 must have happened to Andreas Cornelius one Kirk, the young 0:40:43.840 --> 0:40:47.319 Colonel Drees was how he was known when he was 0:40:47.400 --> 0:40:49.600 and I don't know what it was, And Colonel never 0:40:49.640 --> 0:40:52.240 spoke of what it was. He spoke of his father 0:40:52.400 --> 0:40:55.799 to his widow. He was a bad, bad man. He 0:40:55.880 --> 0:40:59.719 said this several times. He loved his mother dearly. What 0:40:59.760 --> 0:41:02.560 happened and what should have caused such a sense of 0:41:02.640 --> 0:41:06.680 total dislocation and alienation. I don't know, and Colonel would 0:41:06.719 --> 0:41:08.719 never address it, and I think that had to play 0:41:08.760 --> 0:41:13.919 in to the sense. It was he adored his mother, 0:41:14.080 --> 0:41:18.800 his sisters seemed to adore him, so I can't really 0:41:18.840 --> 0:41:21.960 say what happened. But to get back to the citizenship question, 0:41:23.160 --> 0:41:25.600 Colonel served in the Army for more than three years 0:41:25.640 --> 0:41:29.680 the US Army as Tom Parker, a Dutch national. I mean, 0:41:29.680 --> 0:41:32.160 the name was made up, but he did not masquerade 0:41:32.560 --> 0:41:33.360 as an American. 0:41:33.440 --> 0:41:33.680 He was. 0:41:33.880 --> 0:41:36.280 He went in as he's listed as a Dutch national. 0:41:37.640 --> 0:41:41.839 He married an American citizen, either one of which would 0:41:41.840 --> 0:41:46.440 have gotten him American citizenship had he applied. Now, I 0:41:47.120 --> 0:41:49.799 think not everybody agrees with me that life is full 0:41:49.800 --> 0:41:52.880 of mysteries and that those mysteries cannot all be plumped. 0:41:53.320 --> 0:41:56.840 I can't, for the life of me, understand why he 0:41:56.920 --> 0:41:59.960 didn't simply become become an American citizen. There was even 0:42:00.520 --> 0:42:04.000 at one point around nineteen forty or forty one, amnesty 0:42:04.080 --> 0:42:07.160 was offered to everybody who would now be called an 0:42:07.160 --> 0:42:11.680 illegal or whatever, who could become American citizens. He didn't, 0:42:12.560 --> 0:42:15.600 And when I spoke to LeeAnne about it. She could 0:42:15.680 --> 0:42:19.720 offer no explanation either other than Colonel didn't ask for favors. 0:42:19.719 --> 0:42:21.880 I mean, he was friendly, he was great friends with 0:42:21.960 --> 0:42:24.920 Lyndon Johnson. He could have asked Lindon Johnson to intercede. 0:42:25.080 --> 0:42:28.600 I do understand why he wouldn't do that, because, as 0:42:28.840 --> 0:42:31.759 you know, Colonel was the kind of person who might 0:42:31.800 --> 0:42:36.960 say Colonel Parker Grant's favors. He doesn't ask favors. But 0:42:37.160 --> 0:42:40.399 there's no good explanation for it. But to go back 0:42:40.440 --> 0:42:45.280 again to the citizenship thing, the artist Will M d'cooney 0:42:46.160 --> 0:42:49.360 came to America in nineteen twenty six, same year as Colonel, 0:42:49.880 --> 0:42:53.680 as a stowaway, same as Colonel from Rotterdale. Same as Colonel. 0:42:54.480 --> 0:42:57.399 He did not get his citizenship until nineteen sixty two. 0:42:58.760 --> 0:43:01.720 He went to Venice in nineteen he was worried about 0:43:02.000 --> 0:43:05.080 but he was worried about what this could mean. But 0:43:05.120 --> 0:43:08.719 in nineteen fifty seven, as I understand it from reading 0:43:08.760 --> 0:43:12.200 his biography, he went to Venice for celebration of his work. 0:43:12.600 --> 0:43:16.680 Obviously he had a passport. You know, not everybody had 0:43:16.719 --> 0:43:20.640 a birth certificate in those days. Prince, oh God, Prince 0:43:20.719 --> 0:43:25.560 Mike Romanov a prominent Hollywood restaurateur who claimed, you know, 0:43:25.920 --> 0:43:29.239 everything he claimed was false, but he claimed my other 0:43:29.280 --> 0:43:30.920 things to be an air. I think he was a Lithuanian, 0:43:30.960 --> 0:43:33.560 but Lithuanian Jew, but he claimed to be heir to 0:43:33.560 --> 0:43:37.520 the Russian throne. He entered this country before either Bill 0:43:37.520 --> 0:43:40.360 helmdacone nor a colonel. He got his citizenship in the 0:43:40.440 --> 0:43:44.080 last years of the Eisenhower administration. It didn't I got 0:43:44.160 --> 0:43:46.320 thrown out of this country several times, but he always 0:43:46.320 --> 0:43:49.760 came back. It didn't affect his life in any way. 0:43:50.280 --> 0:43:53.120 Colonel was planning a world tour for Elvis up until 0:43:53.200 --> 0:43:57.520 nineteen sixty. You mentioned his brother coming over here in 0:43:57.640 --> 0:44:01.560 sixty one. In some way way, I agree with you 0:44:01.920 --> 0:44:05.160 that that was a traumatic record realization in his part. 0:44:05.239 --> 0:44:06.840 There's a letter in the book which is the most 0:44:06.880 --> 0:44:11.120 extraordinarily almost when I say schizophrenic, I don't mean it's 0:44:11.200 --> 0:44:15.080 mental illness. But it's the most extraordinarily divided letter I've 0:44:15.120 --> 0:44:19.160 ever seen, in which Colonel writes back to his brother's son, 0:44:19.480 --> 0:44:22.759 his nephew, whom he didn't know, but writes back and 0:44:22.840 --> 0:44:24.759 starts out in the third person as if he was 0:44:24.800 --> 0:44:32.279 some obscure, obscure worker for this man, Colonel Parker, whom 0:44:32.280 --> 0:44:34.520 he rarely saw. And by the end of the book, 0:44:34.560 --> 0:44:36.680 it's almost by the end of the letter, which is 0:44:36.680 --> 0:44:38.719 not that long a letter, it's a confessional and the 0:44:38.719 --> 0:44:42.960 first person, somehow or that that really spooked to him 0:44:42.960 --> 0:44:44.880 his brother coming over. There was no more talk of 0:44:44.880 --> 0:44:51.040 a world tour after that. But what's weird if you 0:44:51.080 --> 0:44:52.840 want to think about the differences in the world, and 0:44:52.920 --> 0:44:56.160 we talked about reduced attention span, There's all kinds of 0:44:56.160 --> 0:45:00.160 things we could talk about that are different the globe, well, 0:45:00.480 --> 0:45:05.720 you know, network whatever. But everybody in Holland from nineteen 0:45:05.760 --> 0:45:09.960 sixty one on knew that Colonel Parker was Andreas van Kirk. 0:45:10.600 --> 0:45:13.600 Nobody in this country. Nobody, I mean, I'm not saying 0:45:13.880 --> 0:45:15.920 one or two knew. The only person in this country 0:45:15.920 --> 0:45:19.280 who knew that Colonel was Dutch was Elvis Presley, because 0:45:19.320 --> 0:45:24.080 Colonel introduced him to his brother. I find that virtually inexplicable, 0:45:24.080 --> 0:45:26.440 So I'm not going to try to explain it. But 0:45:26.560 --> 0:45:29.760 in the end, at the time when it was most 0:45:30.840 --> 0:45:34.680 likely that Elvis would tour, in the seventies, when he 0:45:34.719 --> 0:45:40.040 had begun making personal appearances again, and when the opportunity 0:45:40.520 --> 0:45:43.160 seemed to the opportunity did come up, there were offers. 0:45:44.520 --> 0:45:48.000 There were two things about this. One was when I 0:45:48.040 --> 0:45:51.000 spoke to Brazilla Press when I was writing The Last 0:45:51.000 --> 0:45:54.560 Trained to Memphis and Caroless Love. She said, you know, 0:45:54.800 --> 0:46:00.480 Elvis was great for working up enthusiasm when he was 0:46:00.520 --> 0:46:03.000 talking with the guys, the guys who worked for and 0:46:03.040 --> 0:46:05.000 they were they all wanted to go to Europe. This 0:46:05.040 --> 0:46:07.799 is in the sixties, and they were so excited about it, 0:46:08.000 --> 0:46:09.839 and Elvis would be in there saying, man, that would 0:46:09.840 --> 0:46:12.000 be the greatest thing we could ever do. Let's go 0:46:12.040 --> 0:46:14.440 to Europe. And she said he would get back behind 0:46:14.480 --> 0:46:16.200 closed doors. He said, I'm not going to Europe, but 0:46:16.400 --> 0:46:17.880 I've been to Germany. Why don't I want to go 0:46:17.920 --> 0:46:19.759 back to Europe? She said he had no win. Now, 0:46:19.840 --> 0:46:23.120 maybe that's not just as Priscilla said, they didn't know 0:46:23.120 --> 0:46:24.800 what he said behind the closed does with me. I 0:46:24.840 --> 0:46:27.000 didn't know what he said behind closed doors with them. 0:46:27.080 --> 0:46:30.560 So maybe maybe that's not true, but that certainly appeared 0:46:30.560 --> 0:46:33.000 to be the case as far as touring either Europe 0:46:33.080 --> 0:46:36.680 or Japan in the in the seventies, and that was 0:46:36.719 --> 0:46:39.480 born out by Tom Hewlett. You mentioned Jerry Weintraub. The 0:46:39.520 --> 0:46:44.000 person who worked with with with Elvis was not Jerry Wintrub. 0:46:44.000 --> 0:46:46.640 Who was Tom Hewlett, with whom Jerry Wintrub was partners 0:46:46.640 --> 0:46:49.200 And he was a person who had pioneered in rock 0:46:49.440 --> 0:46:52.719 in cross country rock tours with Jimmy Hendrix, with the 0:46:52.719 --> 0:46:55.960 Creedence clear Water, with Everybody in the sixties, with concerts 0:46:55.960 --> 0:46:59.760 West and he knew everything and he was the closest 0:46:59.760 --> 0:47:04.600 per to Colonel. In the latter years he worked as 0:47:04.719 --> 0:47:07.040 much as a partner. I mean, colonel had no partners. 0:47:08.120 --> 0:47:11.160 Every people worked for him. Tom Hulett was a virtual 0:47:11.239 --> 0:47:13.240 partner with him and they did the toys together. 0:47:21.280 --> 0:47:28.000 Okay, everywhere the Colonel goes, he makes these friends and 0:47:28.040 --> 0:47:33.840 he maintains the relationships. You're someone who actually knew the colonel. 0:47:33.880 --> 0:47:36.040 Too many people write books about people they never met. 0:47:36.440 --> 0:47:40.319 You knew the guy. Is this just his personality? He 0:47:40.360 --> 0:47:43.120 meets you, your best friend, he never forgets I realized 0:47:43.200 --> 0:47:45.759 kept you personally at arm's length at first, but it 0:47:45.800 --> 0:47:49.040 was a different situation. But he's in the army in Hawaii, 0:47:49.080 --> 0:47:52.680 he meets his family, maintains the relationship for decades. 0:47:54.080 --> 0:47:56.600 You know, no, that's I don't want to pretend. I mean, 0:47:56.760 --> 0:47:59.360 you stated it correctly. I'm not pretending to an intimate 0:47:59.440 --> 0:48:02.080 relationship with Colonel. I would have liked to have had one. 0:48:02.360 --> 0:48:05.879 I've been friendly with lots of people. I could say, well, eventually, 0:48:06.120 --> 0:48:10.560 after many years, Sam Phillips and I became true friends. 0:48:10.600 --> 0:48:14.319 I mean not just you know, but I would never 0:48:14.360 --> 0:48:16.799 boast about something that wasn't true. And with Colonel I 0:48:16.920 --> 0:48:18.719 loved the relationship I had, but it was not a 0:48:18.960 --> 0:48:23.040 you know, intimate. But I would say, you can look 0:48:23.080 --> 0:48:25.880 at Colonel's life and again this runs all through the book. 0:48:26.320 --> 0:48:29.080 There was something missing in his life. He had left 0:48:29.120 --> 0:48:31.839 his family behind. We don't know why he had left 0:48:31.840 --> 0:48:34.000 his family behind. I mean, we don't know why he 0:48:34.080 --> 0:48:37.680 never went back to it. You know, he stayed in 0:48:37.719 --> 0:48:40.120 touch with his mother until thirty two or I think 0:48:40.200 --> 0:48:42.960 thirty nineteen, thirty two or thirty three, and then he 0:48:43.000 --> 0:48:45.760 was no longer in touch, although he always spoke fondly 0:48:45.800 --> 0:48:50.440 and lovingly. But I would say he created these families, 0:48:50.480 --> 0:48:56.080 these extended families which were too substitute for the family 0:48:56.120 --> 0:48:59.319 he didn't have. And the Cuferrats in Hawaii, he met them, 0:48:59.360 --> 0:49:01.680 they took him in when he was in the army 0:49:01.719 --> 0:49:06.200 and in Hawaii station. In Hawaii, he met a man 0:49:06.400 --> 0:49:10.400 walking a Russian wolf. Found he colonel loved animals. He 0:49:10.440 --> 0:49:13.520 was drawn to the animal he spoke to. I can't 0:49:13.520 --> 0:49:19.400 remember what. Carl Koufrath, Papa Koufrath took him home. He 0:49:19.440 --> 0:49:23.520 became great friends with the youngest son in the family, 0:49:23.600 --> 0:49:30.720 and also with one of the guys who was married 0:49:30.719 --> 0:49:33.000 to one of the daughters. Very close friends and with 0:49:33.040 --> 0:49:37.080 the whole family. He's transferred to the mainland. He's transferred 0:49:37.400 --> 0:49:41.040 to Fort Barancas. I think in nineteen thirty two he 0:49:41.120 --> 0:49:46.280 leaves Hawaii. The Kufirats, who saw him virtually every weekend 0:49:46.320 --> 0:49:48.879 spent he spent almost all of his weekend with him. 0:49:48.920 --> 0:49:52.520 He couldn't have been closer. And they all say, we 0:49:52.560 --> 0:49:54.560 don't know what's going to happen to our friend Tom, 0:49:54.680 --> 0:49:57.280 the smartest, one of the smartest young man we've ever met. 0:49:57.560 --> 0:50:00.160 But he's going to do something wonderful. They didn't here 0:50:00.200 --> 0:50:03.880 from him again until nineteen fifty seven. He didn't have 0:50:03.920 --> 0:50:07.239 the wherewithal to be in touch. He brings Elvis to 0:50:07.320 --> 0:50:11.200 Hawaii in nineteen fifty seven on a bet with one 0:50:11.200 --> 0:50:15.759 of his protegees, a promoter from Detroit who had taken 0:50:15.840 --> 0:50:19.080 up residents in Australia, brought rock and Roll to Australia. 0:50:19.239 --> 0:50:22.440 He's a very interesting guy and another member of this 0:50:22.560 --> 0:50:26.040 extended family of Colonels. The members of Alvin Colonel's extended 0:50:26.040 --> 0:50:29.799 families didn't necessarily know each other, but anyway, he supposedly 0:50:29.880 --> 0:50:34.600 he takes Elvis to Hawaii on a bet. It takes 0:50:34.640 --> 0:50:36.560 him to Hawaiian a bet because he can't bring him 0:50:36.600 --> 0:50:40.840 to Australia because there wasn't time to fly there. But 0:50:40.880 --> 0:50:43.840 the real reason they went to Hawaii, I'm convinced, is 0:50:43.880 --> 0:50:46.640 to make contact with the Cuparrats. And the first call 0:50:46.719 --> 0:50:49.080 he makes when he gets there is to the Kupfarrass 0:50:49.440 --> 0:50:52.719 Old number. He finds out that Papa Cufarrat has died. 0:50:53.040 --> 0:50:55.160 He goes the next day and places a lay on 0:50:55.200 --> 0:50:57.400 his grave. Got a picture of that in the book. 0:50:57.680 --> 0:51:00.480 And he remains in contact with the family until he dies, 0:51:00.880 --> 0:51:04.799 and they were and they remain friends. I mean, it's 0:51:04.800 --> 0:51:07.919 a very close relationship and one that means a great 0:51:07.920 --> 0:51:08.560 deal to him. 0:51:10.040 --> 0:51:14.759 Okay. In the book, there ends up being a tension 0:51:15.440 --> 0:51:20.399 between the Colonel and the so called Memphis Mafia. Can 0:51:20.440 --> 0:51:21.920 you tell my listeners about that. 0:51:24.320 --> 0:51:28.279 Well, this is a direct correlation between Colonel's reputation and 0:51:28.360 --> 0:51:31.520 that tension, and there's a real reason for the tension. 0:51:31.600 --> 0:51:35.720 And I don't want to call the so called Memphis 0:51:35.800 --> 0:51:38.200 Mafi and I try to avoid the term. I mean, 0:51:38.600 --> 0:51:43.920 but they are the people who the men who worked 0:51:43.920 --> 0:51:47.040 for Elvis, his closest associates in France. They were all 0:51:47.080 --> 0:51:50.680 on the payroll. They're all quite different. Many of them 0:51:50.719 --> 0:51:52.880 were very creative. Someone like Red West, who was a 0:51:52.920 --> 0:51:58.080 tough guy, was a wonderful songwriter and a very good actor. 0:51:59.440 --> 0:52:03.640 Jerry Show is entirely different from others in the group. 0:52:03.880 --> 0:52:06.439 I mean, they're all quite different. But the one thing 0:52:06.680 --> 0:52:15.080 that and Joe Esposito, Jerry Shelling and Joe Esposito, Alan 0:52:15.440 --> 0:52:21.840 Fordyce nephew of Justice fortis they all were ultimately became 0:52:22.120 --> 0:52:25.200 great I don't want to say friends of Colonel's, but 0:52:25.239 --> 0:52:28.560 they came to admire Colonel a great deal. But Colonel 0:52:28.600 --> 0:52:31.280 from the very beginning, from the time that Elvis, especially 0:52:31.320 --> 0:52:34.680 from the time that Elvis came back from Germany, saw 0:52:35.680 --> 0:52:38.359 these guys around Elvis much as they loved Elvis, much 0:52:38.360 --> 0:52:41.680 as they were devoted to him, has not fulfilling any function, 0:52:42.120 --> 0:52:44.120 as not carrying out their jobs. And he wrote a 0:52:44.160 --> 0:52:47.200 number of very sharp tons letters to Elvis and to 0:52:47.280 --> 0:52:51.680 them saying, you know it's your business, Elvis, what you 0:52:51.800 --> 0:52:55.439 I wouldn't have these people working for me because they're 0:52:55.480 --> 0:52:57.440 not doing their jobs. And if they are going to 0:52:57.480 --> 0:52:59.799 continue working for you, if I were you, it's up 0:52:59.800 --> 0:53:02.480 to you. But if I were you, I would have 0:53:02.560 --> 0:53:05.080 them work for their money because they would then be 0:53:05.600 --> 0:53:08.480 they would think better of themselves if they did. Vernon 0:53:08.560 --> 0:53:13.120 Pressley had a less shaded view of them. He just 0:53:13.200 --> 0:53:16.520 viewed them really as people who were not worth hanging around. 0:53:16.640 --> 0:53:19.680 He really did view them as leeches. So you had 0:53:20.000 --> 0:53:22.640 these guys who worked for Elvius who were genuinely dedicated 0:53:22.680 --> 0:53:25.279 to Elvis in most cases in different ways. I mean, 0:53:25.280 --> 0:53:28.120 George Klein was different from Lamar Fike would really be 0:53:28.160 --> 0:53:30.719 doing a disservice to them to act as if they 0:53:30.719 --> 0:53:33.799 all had the same motivations. But Vernon just would just 0:53:33.840 --> 0:53:35.759 would just as soon have thrown them all out on 0:53:35.800 --> 0:53:37.960 their ear. And he wrote letters also. I got one 0:53:38.040 --> 0:53:39.839 letter in the in the book, but he wrote out 0:53:39.880 --> 0:53:44.680 of letters, so it would It's totally understandable that they 0:53:44.719 --> 0:53:48.240 should have had a certain resentment up to a point anyway, 0:53:48.280 --> 0:53:53.400 and sometimes that point was exceeded of Colonel Parker and 0:53:53.480 --> 0:53:57.239 of Vernon, who didn't think well of them. And in 0:53:57.280 --> 0:54:00.000 the end, one of the reasons that I think Colonel's 0:54:00.080 --> 0:54:04.200 reputation has suffered is that so many of these guys, 0:54:04.719 --> 0:54:08.520 and maybe with the best of motives, have written about Colonel, 0:54:09.000 --> 0:54:13.120 and sometimes their portrait of Colonel is not a negative, 0:54:13.560 --> 0:54:17.160 but their portrait of the business dealings which they truly 0:54:17.239 --> 0:54:21.640 knew nothing about and yet could make observations as any 0:54:21.640 --> 0:54:23.800 of us can. If we're standing outside the room, we 0:54:23.880 --> 0:54:26.799 can all guess what's going on inside the room. But 0:54:26.880 --> 0:54:31.799 that is what has come to characterize Colonel's has come 0:54:31.840 --> 0:54:35.120 to characterize Colonel to a fire greater extent than one 0:54:35.640 --> 0:54:38.080 might have wished, and to a fire greater extent than 0:54:38.160 --> 0:54:42.160 is merited by any of their involvement in the actual business. 0:54:43.440 --> 0:54:47.319 The Colonel breaks through in the carnival circus world then 0:54:47.400 --> 0:54:51.120 gets into music. Did he care about music at all 0:54:51.239 --> 0:54:52.480 or he just liked the action? 0:54:54.080 --> 0:54:56.000 No, I think he loved music. I mean I think 0:54:56.400 --> 0:54:59.799 in different ways. Instance, his first musical contact was roy 0:54:59.840 --> 0:55:03.400 A and I think struck What struck him there was 0:55:03.440 --> 0:55:05.640 the authenticity of the music. I don't think he knew 0:55:05.840 --> 0:55:12.000 this is way back in nineteen thirty six or so. 0:55:13.200 --> 0:55:15.319 I may have the date run, but thirty six thirty seven, 0:55:15.400 --> 0:55:18.399 somewhere in there, roy Acuff was the King of the Hillbillies, 0:55:18.800 --> 0:55:23.239 and roy Acuff asked Colonel to be his manager, to 0:55:23.280 --> 0:55:25.319 move to Nashville and be his manager, which shows the 0:55:25.320 --> 0:55:28.560 extent to which Colonel made an impression on him. But 0:55:28.600 --> 0:55:31.720 I think I don't think Colonel was drawn as much 0:55:32.400 --> 0:55:35.120 to his music as to the authenticity of the music 0:55:35.160 --> 0:55:39.120 and the way it reached its audience. What he was 0:55:39.200 --> 0:55:44.719 drawn to was I think when he started managing Eddie 0:55:44.800 --> 0:55:50.680 Arnold in nineteen forty four, and in the brief time 0:55:50.719 --> 0:55:54.440 before then that he knew Eddie Arnold, I think what 0:55:54.560 --> 0:55:58.000 he saw in Eddie Arnold was a different kind of music. 0:55:59.120 --> 0:56:01.400 I want to back up one second. Colonel was not 0:56:01.600 --> 0:56:04.319 on musical I mean, one of the things I have 0:56:04.440 --> 0:56:07.040 in the book is what the story that Loanne told 0:56:07.080 --> 0:56:09.960 me that he told her about his career as a 0:56:10.000 --> 0:56:14.680 prepubescent opera singer. And this is the reason, because the 0:56:14.760 --> 0:56:19.040 reason is that Colonel's mother, who was a whose whole 0:56:19.120 --> 0:56:25.600 family were water peddlers. They traversed Holland selling all kinds 0:56:25.640 --> 0:56:28.440 of things. Well, colonel's mother's one of Colonel's mother's sisters 0:56:28.480 --> 0:56:31.200 was an opera singer who lived abroad, but she would 0:56:31.200 --> 0:56:34.640 come back to Holland and Colonel and his mother and 0:56:34.640 --> 0:56:36.319 maybe other members of the family would go to see 0:56:36.360 --> 0:56:40.040 the operas. Colonel learned all the arias and as a 0:56:40.320 --> 0:56:43.560 very young kid eight nine, ten would go out on 0:56:43.560 --> 0:56:46.080 this lake where all the rich people lived outside of 0:56:46.080 --> 0:56:48.799 Breda and seeing the arias, and they would come out 0:56:48.800 --> 0:56:50.480 on as he told the table, they'd come out on 0:56:50.520 --> 0:56:54.680 their porches and bravo, bravo, and maybe they would flaming, 0:56:56.160 --> 0:56:58.480 you know, two coins at him. And he loved operating 0:56:58.560 --> 0:57:00.759 the end of his life. But with ed Arnold, I 0:57:00.840 --> 0:57:04.640 think he found an artist quite similar to Elvis, who 0:57:04.800 --> 0:57:09.000 reached people with what was then called heart music, reached 0:57:09.000 --> 0:57:11.839 them with a kind of music that truly touched them. 0:57:12.160 --> 0:57:14.960 And I think Colonel was drawn to that music and 0:57:15.000 --> 0:57:17.840 saw it. It wasn't It's not like you know, everybody 0:57:17.880 --> 0:57:21.880 would want Elvis's manager should be a rock and roll fan. Well, 0:57:21.920 --> 0:57:25.320 not even Elvis. Elvis was an everything music fan. He 0:57:25.880 --> 0:57:29.600 loved every kind of music. Colonel definitely, it wasn't like 0:57:29.640 --> 0:57:34.680 he was a rock and roll you know, impassioned rock 0:57:34.720 --> 0:57:38.200 and roll fan. But first with Ddy Arnold, with Elvis, 0:57:38.600 --> 0:57:42.320 he saw artists who had a vision that carried them 0:57:42.320 --> 0:57:45.640 beyond the common heard, and also with a vision that 0:57:45.800 --> 0:57:48.560 enabled them even if they couldn't articulate it, and I 0:57:48.600 --> 0:57:51.200 don't think Elvis could at the beginning. But even if 0:57:51.200 --> 0:57:54.479 they couldn't articulate, was going to carry them and allow 0:57:54.600 --> 0:57:58.200 them to grow almost day by day. In Elvis's case, 0:57:58.240 --> 0:58:00.360 from the time Colonel first met him, when he was funny, 0:58:01.400 --> 0:58:06.200 just grow and develop and create something that had never 0:58:06.240 --> 0:58:09.080 been created before. That's what I think he was drawn to. 0:58:09.200 --> 0:58:12.000 He was drawn to the wonderful world of show business, 0:58:12.480 --> 0:58:16.600 and he to him, Elvis was the pinnacle of the 0:58:16.600 --> 0:58:18.480 wonderful world of show business. 0:58:19.320 --> 0:58:23.960 Okay, this, of course is a theoretical question, but you 0:58:24.080 --> 0:58:26.640 set it up in the book that Elvis is on 0:58:27.000 --> 0:58:31.360 sun but he's on low rent tours. He's not always 0:58:31.800 --> 0:58:35.440 performing in a way that's endearing himself to the local 0:58:35.520 --> 0:58:39.720 authorities in the audience. What would have happened to Elvis 0:58:39.760 --> 0:58:41.800 if he never met Colonel Tom Parker. 0:58:44.160 --> 0:58:47.200 Well, the story of Elvis is the story of the 0:58:47.240 --> 0:58:50.439 confluence of three of the most extraordinary people I ever. 0:58:50.720 --> 0:58:53.360 I didn't know Elvias sciety, I don't want, but three 0:58:53.400 --> 0:58:56.120 of the most extraordinary people I've ever encountered or known about. 0:58:56.520 --> 0:59:00.400 The idea that Elvis should first be taken up by 0:59:00.480 --> 0:59:03.920 Sam Phillips, and the Sam Phillips, who was a person 0:59:03.960 --> 0:59:08.440 of the most extraordinary vision, should have let's reverse it 0:59:08.440 --> 0:59:10.360 should have been taken up by Elvis sort of seen 0:59:10.400 --> 0:59:15.000 in Elvis someone a talent that he had never envisioned before. 0:59:15.240 --> 0:59:18.280 And then for Colonel Parker, a person of a completely 0:59:18.320 --> 0:59:22.120 different type of personality and vision, but with an equal 0:59:22.600 --> 0:59:25.440 There were no true people in the world who believed 0:59:25.440 --> 0:59:29.280 in Elvis more than Sam Phillips and the Colonel Parker, 0:59:29.560 --> 0:59:31.800 however little they may have had in common, and however 0:59:31.840 --> 0:59:34.800 little they may have liked each other. But I don't 0:59:34.800 --> 0:59:37.560 know what would have happened. I mean, Sam Phillips as 0:59:37.560 --> 0:59:41.080 little as he liked Colonel until Colonel until they actually 0:59:41.240 --> 0:59:44.720 finally sat down at Colonel's eightieth birthday, which was just 0:59:45.320 --> 0:59:48.480 an amazing private event. I mean, not the birthday party. 0:59:48.520 --> 0:59:52.080 But the dialogue which I just happened to, I was 0:59:52.080 --> 0:59:55.240 trying to leave, and I happened to over here or 0:59:55.360 --> 1:00:01.000 listen to. But but Sam Phillips always and all the 1:00:01.040 --> 1:00:04.600 time that I knew that nobody could have carried Elvis 1:00:05.400 --> 1:00:09.040 to the heights that Elvis wanted to achieve. Elvis did 1:00:09.040 --> 1:00:11.160 not want it. He wanted to be a movie star. 1:00:11.240 --> 1:00:13.560 He wanted to be a movie star like James Dean 1:00:13.600 --> 1:00:15.880 and Marilon Brendo. He wanted the world to know him, 1:00:16.040 --> 1:00:20.400 which is similar to the ambition of another person that 1:00:20.440 --> 1:00:23.520 I wrote about extensively, Sam Cook. He wanted to be 1:00:23.680 --> 1:00:27.680 accepted and loved by everyone. Sam Phillips, first of all, 1:00:28.280 --> 1:00:30.960 would have gone bankrupt if he hadn't sold Elvis' contract. 1:00:31.080 --> 1:00:33.440 Second of all, was not equipped, as he himself said, 1:00:34.840 --> 1:00:38.000 to promote Elvis. And even if he happened and equipped 1:00:38.000 --> 1:00:40.480 to hisself, that wasn't what he wanted to do. And 1:00:40.560 --> 1:00:43.840 he saw in Colonel Parker someone who, as I say 1:00:43.880 --> 1:00:46.840 at the beginning, he loathed. He saw one of the 1:00:46.840 --> 1:00:49.080 few people in the world who could have taken Elvis 1:00:49.080 --> 1:00:52.960 to the heights to which Elvis aspired, not the artistic heights, 1:00:53.400 --> 1:00:56.040 Colonel had nothing to do with Elvis's music, nothing to 1:00:56.040 --> 1:00:59.640 do with his artistry, and I think Sam Phillips was 1:00:59.680 --> 1:01:05.120 well of that. But you know, again, Sam Phillips did 1:01:05.120 --> 1:01:07.240 not believe in coincidence. I don't know what I believe in. 1:01:07.680 --> 1:01:10.080 Colonel believes in the wonderful world of show business. I'm 1:01:10.120 --> 1:01:13.160 not prepared to state my beliefs, but I've got to 1:01:13.240 --> 1:01:16.280 say it's an amazing thing that the three of them 1:01:16.320 --> 1:01:19.200 should have interacted in that way, and that it should 1:01:19.200 --> 1:01:23.640 have resulted in such extraordinary achievements by all three of them. 1:01:24.480 --> 1:01:29.440 Okay, to get the contract to RCAA. Actually it's the 1:01:29.520 --> 1:01:33.240 Colonel who makes the deal, and it seems like an 1:01:33.280 --> 1:01:37.560 incredibly small amount of money that RCAA balks at and 1:01:37.640 --> 1:01:42.560 ultimately pays. What happened to Seam financially after that? Did 1:01:42.600 --> 1:01:45.640 he blow the money or did he manage to live 1:01:45.680 --> 1:01:47.560 on that money for the rest of his life? 1:01:49.000 --> 1:01:54.160 Neither one. I mean, Sam had enormous ambitions of his own. Again, 1:01:54.320 --> 1:01:57.360 I've never met anyone who's more of a musical visionary 1:01:57.680 --> 1:02:01.400 than Sam Phillips. He did not want to be a 1:02:01.480 --> 1:02:04.320 one artist label. Well, he couldn't have been. He was 1:02:04.440 --> 1:02:06.760 literally on the verge of losing his company because his 1:02:06.800 --> 1:02:09.400 brother Judd owned something like fifty percent, was about to 1:02:09.440 --> 1:02:12.040 turn it over to the bank. He was out of money. 1:02:12.080 --> 1:02:14.880 He was out of luck. With the thirty five thousand 1:02:14.920 --> 1:02:20.400 dollars that RCA paid for Elvis's contract, Sam was finally 1:02:20.440 --> 1:02:23.960 able to get his label, Son, this tiny little label. 1:02:24.000 --> 1:02:25.760 He was like Colonel. He was a one man operation. 1:02:25.920 --> 1:02:30.280 I mean, the two of them, it's an amazing parallel story. 1:02:30.400 --> 1:02:34.960 Is as unlike each other as they were. But Sam 1:02:35.040 --> 1:02:38.720 was finally able to get his label, tiny little label. 1:02:38.760 --> 1:02:44.840 Son was one man operation on point and with the 1:02:45.240 --> 1:02:47.200 first record that he made, the first record that he 1:02:47.320 --> 1:02:51.560 released after selling Elvis' contract was Kyle Bracon's Blue Sweede Shoes, 1:02:51.600 --> 1:02:55.280 which was a bigger hit at least from the start 1:02:55.440 --> 1:02:59.439 in Elvis's first record for Urica Heartbreak Hotel and which 1:02:59.480 --> 1:03:01.880 went to the up with the country R and B 1:03:02.000 --> 1:03:05.600 and pop charts. That was the beginning and from that 1:03:05.720 --> 1:03:10.480 point on, Sam had the money to operate his to 1:03:10.600 --> 1:03:13.920 operate his label. He had. I think Johnny Cash was 1:03:13.960 --> 1:03:19.360 then next person to come in, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, 1:03:20.000 --> 1:03:24.040 h Kyle Prikins was the first person. Johnny Cash and 1:03:24.080 --> 1:03:28.920 the others Charlie Rich and he operated one of the 1:03:28.920 --> 1:03:33.880 most extraordinary labels, one of the most extraordinary musical presentations 1:03:33.880 --> 1:03:37.520 that the world has ever seen. And before Elvis, he 1:03:37.560 --> 1:03:41.640 had done the same thing with blues and rhythm and blues. So, 1:03:41.680 --> 1:03:45.200 I mean, there's an amazing story there too, But that's 1:03:45.200 --> 1:03:46.200 not our story today. 1:03:47.240 --> 1:03:53.800 Okay. Vernon is writing letters and constantly telling the colonel 1:03:54.040 --> 1:04:00.360 that Elvis is spending more than he's making. The press 1:04:00.360 --> 1:04:03.880 are portrayed a Hillbillies. It's one thing to be the 1:04:03.920 --> 1:04:06.320 conveyor of the message, Hey, we're in the red. We're 1:04:06.360 --> 1:04:09.400 in the red. Was Vernon Street smart to me, have 1:04:09.400 --> 1:04:12.200 any level of sophistication or was he just flipping out 1:04:12.240 --> 1:04:14.600 that Elvis was spending more than he was earning. 1:04:16.480 --> 1:04:20.240 Well, you're really you're understating the case. Elvis was making 1:04:20.320 --> 1:04:23.080 millions of dollars and he was spending millions of dollars more. 1:04:23.600 --> 1:04:26.240 And Vernon was very similar, I think to his son. 1:04:27.160 --> 1:04:30.280 He actually had a singing voice, very much like his sons, 1:04:30.280 --> 1:04:32.000 and he I think he had a dry sense of humor. 1:04:32.200 --> 1:04:34.680 He didn't have the talent that Elvis had, But no, 1:04:34.920 --> 1:04:38.560 I wouldn't I wouldn't call them hillbillies. They were people 1:04:38.680 --> 1:04:43.320 of limited education, like so many of the people I've 1:04:43.360 --> 1:04:45.840 written about, like virtually all of the people I've written about, 1:04:46.280 --> 1:04:50.600 but with you know, with extraordinary innate intelligence. I mean, 1:04:51.560 --> 1:04:54.840 the thing with Vernon was he loved his son. He 1:04:55.000 --> 1:04:58.160 did everything he could to protect his son. One of 1:04:58.200 --> 1:05:00.880 the most heartbreaking scenes that I've ever or encountered, or 1:05:00.920 --> 1:05:04.680 ever had to write was Vernon's reaction on Elvis's death 1:05:04.760 --> 1:05:09.480 in nineteen seventy seven. But nobody, absolutely nobody, I mean 1:05:09.760 --> 1:05:13.680 I could start up, but nobody could control Elvis's spend it. 1:05:14.240 --> 1:05:18.920 And everybody knows the story about Elvis going to Washington 1:05:18.920 --> 1:05:23.479 to get his BMDD batch, you know, his narcotics batch, 1:05:24.360 --> 1:05:28.200 but not everybody knows what started that. And what started 1:05:28.240 --> 1:05:32.360 it was Vernon and Priscilla trying to tell Elvis that 1:05:32.400 --> 1:05:34.080 he had this is in nineteen seventy that he had 1:05:34.120 --> 1:05:36.680 to limit his spending. Elvis stormed out of the house. 1:05:36.720 --> 1:05:39.320 Because nobody told Elvis that he had to limit his spending, 1:05:39.800 --> 1:05:41.760 he stormed out his house. He flew first to La 1:05:42.440 --> 1:05:44.720 got the idea. I think maybe he flew on the 1:05:44.760 --> 1:05:46.919 same plane with George Murphy I'm not sure about that. 1:05:47.360 --> 1:05:51.400 But turned around, came back, had a girlfriend to see, 1:05:51.480 --> 1:05:54.000 Joyce Bovn in Washington, d C. Someone he was very 1:05:54.000 --> 1:05:56.560 close to. But he also was going to get that badge. 1:05:56.600 --> 1:05:59.040 But it all started with someone telling him that he 1:05:59.080 --> 1:06:02.040 had to control the spend and nobody threw out Elvis's 1:06:02.080 --> 1:06:05.160 life was able to do that. But it's not because 1:06:06.160 --> 1:06:08.880 Elvis was definitely not a hillbilly and neither one. I mean, 1:06:09.040 --> 1:06:11.600 I just wouldn't talk. I mean, that's not it was 1:06:11.640 --> 1:06:15.680 not limitations of common sense, it wasn't limitations of vision. 1:06:16.240 --> 1:06:22.040 But Elvis's Elvis was a very generous person towards others, 1:06:22.680 --> 1:06:25.320 and he was very generous towards himself. And he just 1:06:25.880 --> 1:06:30.640 and he had zero interest in saving money making money. 1:06:30.880 --> 1:06:33.080 Look at how he had at the beginning of his career. 1:06:33.840 --> 1:06:37.400 Colonel set up a savings account for Elvis in the 1:06:37.440 --> 1:06:40.560 bank in Madison where he lived, and the president of 1:06:40.600 --> 1:06:43.360 the bank of the vice president wrote Elvis about what 1:06:43.440 --> 1:06:45.400 a lucky young man he was to have such a 1:06:45.440 --> 1:06:49.920 wonderful manager, Colonel. Colonel deposited twelve hundred dollars of what 1:06:49.960 --> 1:06:51.840 appears to have been his own money. Although I wouldn't 1:06:51.840 --> 1:06:54.680 bet on that. But that's that's that's what that's what 1:06:54.720 --> 1:07:00.600 it said Elvis. Colonel also wrote letters to Vernon Elvis 1:07:00.600 --> 1:07:02.760 we're talking about back at the beginning in fifty six, 1:07:03.240 --> 1:07:08.280 about saving money, conserving money, conserving their assets. Recognizing that 1:07:08.360 --> 1:07:10.880 as much money as Elvis made, the government was going 1:07:10.920 --> 1:07:14.000 to demand a huge share of it, they should buy 1:07:14.440 --> 1:07:18.120 savings bunds. He set it up for Elvis, maybe for 1:07:18.240 --> 1:07:22.280 RCA to purchase savings bunds for Elvis. In any case, 1:07:23.000 --> 1:07:24.840 there was this money in the bank, the twelve hundred 1:07:24.840 --> 1:07:26.600 dollars the Colonel set up in Madison, there were the 1:07:26.640 --> 1:07:31.720 savings buns. Within weeks, maybe months, Elvis had cashed it 1:07:31.760 --> 1:07:33.760 all in. There was no savings account, there were no 1:07:34.000 --> 1:07:37.120 you know, there were no there were no savings bonds. 1:07:37.120 --> 1:07:39.360 That was all gone. And this was at the very beginning. 1:07:39.440 --> 1:07:42.720 And again it's not because Elvis was stupid. It's not 1:07:42.800 --> 1:07:45.240 because it's that's Elvis did what he wanted to do, 1:07:45.360 --> 1:07:48.760 and he had the ultimate belief that whatever he did, 1:07:49.560 --> 1:07:53.000 his talent was going to be able to save the day. 1:07:53.280 --> 1:07:56.360 And Colonel had the ultimate belief that whatever he did, 1:07:57.200 --> 1:08:01.600 his brains, his intelligence, resourcefulness, would be able to save 1:08:01.680 --> 1:08:03.000 the day. And they were both right. 1:08:10.800 --> 1:08:14.880 Okay when you met earlier. But which is made repeatedly 1:08:14.920 --> 1:08:20.800 in the book is that the Colonel left absolutely everything 1:08:21.040 --> 1:08:27.519 creative musically to Elvis. Subsequent to the Elvis generation, we 1:08:27.600 --> 1:08:29.599 have the Beatles and the people who come after them, 1:08:29.600 --> 1:08:32.599 who write all their own songs and seem to be 1:08:32.840 --> 1:08:36.840 very in control of their musical careers. That is not 1:08:37.040 --> 1:08:41.000 the image of the Elvis. So what was really going on? 1:08:41.520 --> 1:08:44.439 You know, the Colonel was hands off, and he would 1:08:44.439 --> 1:08:48.080 defend Elvis, but it was Elvis really good at picking material, 1:08:48.160 --> 1:08:49.840 getting the songs right, et cetera. 1:08:51.080 --> 1:08:53.760 He was great at it was fantastic. I mean, he 1:08:54.040 --> 1:08:58.080 was an autodidact who probably knew more about music and 1:08:58.200 --> 1:09:01.640 more about different kinds of music than any PhD in 1:09:01.720 --> 1:09:04.960 ethno musicology you could run into. I mean, you have 1:09:05.000 --> 1:09:10.120 only to look at the hound Dog Don't be Cruel 1:09:10.160 --> 1:09:15.000 session on July second, I think nineteen fifty six, where 1:09:15.040 --> 1:09:17.439 Elvis for the first time becomes his own producer and 1:09:17.520 --> 1:09:20.639 for the rest of his life, with one exception, will 1:09:20.640 --> 1:09:24.400 be his own producer. And you look at him. He 1:09:24.520 --> 1:09:27.479 still had Steve Sholz, the RCA executive as the an 1:09:27.600 --> 1:09:30.639 R man. What Steve Sholz was reduced to. And I'm 1:09:30.640 --> 1:09:32.800 not knocking Steve Shulz. I mean Steve Sholz had been 1:09:32.840 --> 1:09:34.800 a great an R man for Eddie Arnold and for 1:09:34.840 --> 1:09:38.240 Hank Snow and was a friend of Colonel's prior to this. 1:09:38.920 --> 1:09:42.120 But Steve Sholz was reduced from this point on to 1:09:42.320 --> 1:09:45.400 essentially being a timekeeper, announcing the takes, keeping the records 1:09:45.400 --> 1:09:48.599 of what was going on. But what Elvis did, for example, 1:09:48.640 --> 1:09:50.679 with hound Dog, which was a song initially he didn't 1:09:50.720 --> 1:09:54.920 want to record it was the showstopper on his live show, 1:09:54.920 --> 1:09:59.040 and he wasn't convinced they could get that same energy 1:09:59.160 --> 1:10:02.720 or just explosive in the studio. And one of the 1:10:02.720 --> 1:10:05.560 people who encouraged him to do it was Colonel and 1:10:05.640 --> 1:10:08.360 other I mean not to tell him you should do this, 1:10:08.479 --> 1:10:11.000 but to encourage him to believe that it was something possible. 1:10:11.439 --> 1:10:15.280 Scotty Moore was another. But Elvis went to and I'm 1:10:15.320 --> 1:10:18.120 not going to remember thirty two takes thirty five takes 1:10:18.160 --> 1:10:22.479 way past the point that Steve Schulz was ready to 1:10:22.520 --> 1:10:25.080 call it a day. Early on, Steve Schulz was ready 1:10:25.080 --> 1:10:26.360 to call it a day because he didn't say, then 1:10:26.439 --> 1:10:28.759 get it. Let's say after the eighth take or something. 1:10:29.240 --> 1:10:32.160 But on the twenty eighth take, Steve Shows is saying Okay, 1:10:32.160 --> 1:10:33.840 we've got it, and Elvis saying, no, we're going to 1:10:33.880 --> 1:10:35.960 do more. Then he goes on to a court. Don't 1:10:35.960 --> 1:10:39.599 be cruel. This is one of the great greatest sessions 1:10:39.640 --> 1:10:43.439 just in terms of the share, success and output of it. 1:10:43.800 --> 1:10:47.080 But this was true of all of Elvis's sessions. The 1:10:47.160 --> 1:10:53.680 sense of perfectionism, the sense of everybody I'm speaking now 1:10:53.680 --> 1:10:57.519 against myself as a kid, I mean myself as a kid, 1:10:57.520 --> 1:10:59.840 would just be horrified by what I'm about to say. 1:11:00.280 --> 1:11:03.000 But the recordings that Elvis made after he got out 1:11:03.040 --> 1:11:05.599 of the army, starting with the Elvis' Back Sessions, which 1:11:05.640 --> 1:11:08.360 is just such a great album, but the recordings he 1:11:08.439 --> 1:11:11.720 made in sixty sixty one, sixty two, sixty three are 1:11:11.760 --> 1:11:14.240 some of the most extraordinary recordings he ever made. And 1:11:14.240 --> 1:11:17.840 they're all the product of his vision of himself as 1:11:17.840 --> 1:11:21.080 something entirely different from what the world sees. And it 1:11:21.600 --> 1:11:24.000 includes Sure, it includes some great rock I mean Little 1:11:24.080 --> 1:11:26.840 Sister or all kinds of you know, songs that rock, 1:11:27.280 --> 1:11:29.639 but it includes some of the most beautiful ballads you'll 1:11:29.680 --> 1:11:33.120 ever hear, because Elvis saw himself as that too. And also, 1:11:33.760 --> 1:11:36.200 and maybe this is another parallel with Colonel. He was 1:11:36.280 --> 1:11:39.760 drawn to Italian Aria or something like Italian area, and 1:11:39.800 --> 1:11:43.320 so he's recording, you know, it's now or never songs 1:11:43.360 --> 1:11:46.720 like that because they were his ambition. So yeah, I 1:11:46.760 --> 1:11:50.120 mean Elvis was the thing that if you want to 1:11:50.120 --> 1:11:53.479 compare him with the Beatles, say or Bob Dylan for 1:11:53.520 --> 1:11:56.080 that matter, I mean what they brought to it was 1:11:56.120 --> 1:11:58.880 they wrote all their own songs. Elvis wrote one song 1:11:58.960 --> 1:12:02.840 in his life about about his mother, It's a Beautiful Sign. 1:12:02.880 --> 1:12:04.760 But and he may have only contributed the title, but 1:12:04.800 --> 1:12:07.840 he took credit for that. But but but but as 1:12:07.840 --> 1:12:10.639 far as the business hand of it, the Beatles were 1:12:11.000 --> 1:12:14.879 and like the Rolling Stones, we're in a complete fountain. 1:12:15.400 --> 1:12:17.840 What do we what do you call it? They were 1:12:17.880 --> 1:12:22.479 completely lost in terms of the business, Brian Epstein, as 1:12:22.520 --> 1:12:24.960 you said, you know, it was not somebody who was 1:12:25.000 --> 1:12:29.240 in command of the business. And Elvis, through Colonel, was 1:12:29.360 --> 1:12:32.240 far far more in control of his business and of 1:12:32.280 --> 1:12:36.759 his ability to force the record company to do whatever 1:12:36.800 --> 1:12:42.200 he wanted, whatever he wanted to do then than any 1:12:42.240 --> 1:12:43.759 than any artists for many years. 1:12:44.720 --> 1:12:47.760 Okay, it becomes clearer that Elvis is going in the 1:12:47.800 --> 1:12:52.160 wrong direction with drugs, food, et cetera. But a tour 1:12:52.360 --> 1:12:59.120 is booked and the Colonel is in the northeast promoting 1:12:59.160 --> 1:13:04.000 that advance to the dates and Elvis dies. If one 1:13:04.120 --> 1:13:09.599 reads the book and the letters, it appears relatively cold 1:13:10.080 --> 1:13:12.479 that I'm talking about. On one hand, you have the 1:13:12.520 --> 1:13:15.760 colonel saying, I'm the manager, this is my job. We 1:13:15.840 --> 1:13:18.599 put one foot in front of another. On another level, 1:13:18.680 --> 1:13:24.160 it's very dispassionate. So I have two questions. What were 1:13:25.240 --> 1:13:29.080 Colonel Tom Parker's real emotions at that point? And did 1:13:29.120 --> 1:13:31.519 he really foresee this was going to happen or was 1:13:31.560 --> 1:13:32.160 he shocked? 1:13:36.000 --> 1:13:38.080 I got so many yes and no answers. You know, 1:13:38.200 --> 1:13:41.440 so this will be another one. But no, he was devastated. 1:13:41.479 --> 1:13:44.679 He was absolutely devastated. And the picture that I've drawn, 1:13:44.920 --> 1:13:47.400 and I hope it comes across, but I try to 1:13:47.680 --> 1:13:51.320 state things not in extreme ways, not in over the 1:13:51.320 --> 1:13:56.120 top ways, but you know, in flat description he was 1:13:56.320 --> 1:14:01.439 in shock when he was in Portland and got the 1:14:01.479 --> 1:14:05.800 news from Joe Esposito and then from Vernon, and the 1:14:05.920 --> 1:14:09.519 shot carried through. I would say for I don't think 1:14:09.520 --> 1:14:11.559 he was ever the same, ever the same after that. 1:14:12.000 --> 1:14:16.360 I mean, Elvis was the person that he apart from 1:14:17.479 --> 1:14:21.519 his wife, I don't know who, you know, Elvis was 1:14:21.560 --> 1:14:24.360 the person that he loved the most. Elvis was you 1:14:24.400 --> 1:14:25.880 could say he was like a son, he was like 1:14:25.920 --> 1:14:29.439 a brother. It doesn't matter he was, he was. He 1:14:29.479 --> 1:14:33.640 was absolutely from the time he first met Elvis, immediately 1:14:33.680 --> 1:14:37.439 it was it was like he was just totally captured 1:14:37.520 --> 1:14:40.320 by Elvis as well as a person. He was Elvis 1:14:40.439 --> 1:14:42.920 was a kid, but as a person, as an as 1:14:42.920 --> 1:14:45.599 an artist. But once the new he got the news, 1:14:46.800 --> 1:14:51.400 he was behaved almost as an automaton. And he held 1:14:51.400 --> 1:14:54.920 a meeting of all the people who were in Portland. 1:14:55.280 --> 1:15:00.639 He said, we must uh. Nobody wanted to be this dinner. 1:15:00.680 --> 1:15:02.400 They had this dinner that he called. But he said, 1:15:02.439 --> 1:15:05.080 we have to carry on. We're still working for Elvis. 1:15:05.120 --> 1:15:08.080 We are you know, we can't shed a tear. We 1:15:08.200 --> 1:15:11.599 have to carry out the business because we're still carrying 1:15:11.600 --> 1:15:13.360 out the business for Elvis. We want him to be 1:15:13.360 --> 1:15:15.559 proud of us. But it carried through, I mean to 1:15:15.600 --> 1:15:20.639 the point where as they flew to Memphis and Colonel's wife, 1:15:20.720 --> 1:15:24.000 Leanne was horrified by this. Everybody who's crying, and Colonel says, 1:15:24.160 --> 1:15:27.080 stop your tears. We're representing Elvis. And when they got 1:15:27.120 --> 1:15:30.800 to Memphis, he told them, we will dress as we 1:15:30.920 --> 1:15:34.160 dressed when we were working for Elvis. Nobody will wear 1:15:34.439 --> 1:15:37.240 a suit and type because we never He never saw 1:15:37.320 --> 1:15:39.160 us like this, and we're going to do now. This 1:15:39.240 --> 1:15:42.640 can be vastly misunderstood and you and it's easy to 1:15:42.680 --> 1:15:44.920 take a negative view of it. But I don't think 1:15:45.240 --> 1:15:50.520 he went Colonel went from from Memphis too directly to Tampa. 1:15:51.000 --> 1:15:51.120 Uh. 1:15:51.680 --> 1:15:55.000 He hold up with another one of these families that 1:15:55.080 --> 1:15:57.799 you mentioned, the Renaldy family who had the Reality printing. 1:15:58.280 --> 1:16:02.000 The father the it's the grandfather by now, who started 1:16:02.040 --> 1:16:04.240 in Aldi printing, had been the first person to sort 1:16:04.280 --> 1:16:07.320 of take give him advice in business. He gave him 1:16:07.400 --> 1:16:09.280 when he could. He had no business of that. When 1:16:09.280 --> 1:16:11.920 he met them in thirty five thirty six. He gave 1:16:11.960 --> 1:16:15.080 them all the business, all the Elvis business forever after. 1:16:15.439 --> 1:16:19.200 But he holed up with them. He could speak with 1:16:19.280 --> 1:16:21.800 virtually no one, and he did everything he could to 1:16:21.840 --> 1:16:26.040 protect Elvis in the sense that he set up the 1:16:26.120 --> 1:16:32.719 deal with Factors Factors, Inc. I think that he felt 1:16:32.800 --> 1:16:36.400 would protect Elvis's name and image and the ability to merchandise, 1:16:36.439 --> 1:16:38.880 which would be the only thing or the principal thing 1:16:39.160 --> 1:16:42.040 that would bring income to Lisa Marie. So no, I 1:16:42.400 --> 1:16:45.960 think that he was He was absolutely devastating, but he 1:16:46.000 --> 1:16:47.599 did not behave like other people. 1:16:49.479 --> 1:16:55.599 Okay, you came up when Elvis was the star. Did 1:16:55.600 --> 1:16:59.120 you always have a fascination and want to write about Elvis? 1:16:59.640 --> 1:17:02.000 Or it's like, well I wrote about this person, I go, well, 1:17:03.040 --> 1:17:03.840 next we have eld this. 1:17:05.960 --> 1:17:10.599 No, No, not at all, neither one. It's just no. 1:17:10.920 --> 1:17:13.880 I what you know, as I always wanted to be 1:17:13.920 --> 1:17:16.800 a writer. I mean that has been my motivation from 1:17:16.800 --> 1:17:20.160 the beginning. I've written ten novels. I've got a collection 1:17:20.200 --> 1:17:23.200 of short stories coming out next a year from now, 1:17:23.880 --> 1:17:26.559 which is that's what I started out with when I 1:17:26.600 --> 1:17:28.439 was twenty. The first book I published when I was 1:17:28.479 --> 1:17:30.559 twenty was a collection of short stories, and I published 1:17:30.560 --> 1:17:34.120 the second when I was twenty three. Fell I fell 1:17:34.120 --> 1:17:37.040 into the blues when I was fifteen or sixteen. I 1:17:37.080 --> 1:17:40.080 had never heard anything like this. I can't describe what 1:17:40.200 --> 1:17:42.920 it was that captivated me, but it just totally, it 1:17:43.080 --> 1:17:46.280 just totally turned me around. And aside from baseball. That 1:17:46.400 --> 1:17:49.080 was the only thing that I was, you know, that 1:17:49.160 --> 1:17:53.080 I was drawn to, and it was just what happened though, 1:17:53.120 --> 1:17:55.000 and when I had the opportunity. This is when I'm 1:17:55.040 --> 1:17:58.280 fifteen or sixteen. A few years later, the underground press 1:17:58.320 --> 1:18:02.160 started up. I knew this kid who started a magazine 1:18:02.200 --> 1:18:05.920 called Crawdaddy, which preceded Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone started up 1:18:05.960 --> 1:18:11.240 after that, the Boston Phoenix and Boston after Dark. They 1:18:11.240 --> 1:18:14.240 were essentially the same thing. And I knew some people 1:18:14.400 --> 1:18:18.200 in different ways, and I got an opportunity. A couple 1:18:18.240 --> 1:18:19.600 of people said to me, well, how would you like 1:18:19.680 --> 1:18:21.120 to write about it? Maybe they might have said, how 1:18:21.120 --> 1:18:23.479 would you like to write about Cream? I said no, 1:18:23.520 --> 1:18:25.800 but I'd like to write about Skip James. I'd like 1:18:25.880 --> 1:18:28.040 to write about Muddy Waters. I'd like to write about 1:18:28.080 --> 1:18:31.880 Lightning Hopkins. I'd like to write about Howland Wolf. There 1:18:31.920 --> 1:18:34.240 was no money in it, there was no This was 1:18:34.280 --> 1:18:37.400 not a career. This was nothing other than pure love. 1:18:38.000 --> 1:18:40.559 And it was the opportunity to put those names down 1:18:40.640 --> 1:18:43.519 in print. You just didn't see those names in print 1:18:43.520 --> 1:18:46.200 at that time. And to put those names down on paper, 1:18:46.520 --> 1:18:49.759 see them in print, and tell people about this music. 1:18:49.800 --> 1:18:53.000 I thought it was so great. It was absolutely thrilling 1:18:53.040 --> 1:18:56.439 to me now to get back to Elvis when he 1:18:56.520 --> 1:18:59.960 was in the Army in nineteen sixty because Colonel had 1:19:00.160 --> 1:19:03.800 limited the number of things, the number of songs that 1:19:03.840 --> 1:19:06.280 could be kept in not the catalog, but I mean, 1:19:06.280 --> 1:19:09.120 there was no overage and Konnel was not going to 1:19:09.160 --> 1:19:12.880 have ourcas issue record after record. They and they put 1:19:12.920 --> 1:19:16.360 out an album called A Date with Elvis in nineteen 1:19:16.439 --> 1:19:18.360 six I think in fifteen nine or sixty, maybe it 1:19:18.400 --> 1:19:21.439 was fifty nine. This is after I had discovered the blues. 1:19:22.320 --> 1:19:25.880 On that record, On that album Date with Elvis, there 1:19:25.880 --> 1:19:28.120 were a number of the Sun sides. I'd never heard 1:19:28.520 --> 1:19:32.120 the blues sides, Mystery Train, that's all right, maybe good 1:19:32.200 --> 1:19:35.639 Rocket tonight. I had heard the originals of all these 1:19:36.520 --> 1:19:40.280 at that time I hear Elvis's versions, I said, oh 1:19:40.320 --> 1:19:43.080 my god, he's a blues singer. He's a great blue singer. 1:19:43.400 --> 1:19:45.160 Not a great blue singer who was going to take 1:19:45.280 --> 1:19:49.559 the place for me of little Junior Parker who originated 1:19:49.600 --> 1:19:52.920 a Mystery Train, or after Crudup originated. It wasn't that 1:19:52.920 --> 1:19:54.599 Elvis was taking their place. He was taking the place, 1:19:55.040 --> 1:19:58.160 taking a place beside them. For me, that's what motivated 1:19:58.200 --> 1:19:59.880 me to write about Elvis, and it was the first 1:20:00.160 --> 1:20:03.960 I wrote about Elvis in nineteen sixty seven was when 1:20:04.360 --> 1:20:08.080 he put out three essentially blues singles in a row, 1:20:08.760 --> 1:20:12.479 and I wrote the thing, he's coming back, He's coming 1:20:12.520 --> 1:20:16.040 back to his first love. You know, he's rediscovering his 1:20:16.120 --> 1:20:17.800 love of the blues, his roots music, and that's what 1:20:17.840 --> 1:20:20.960 I wrote with I then reviewed the sixty eight specials 1:20:21.080 --> 1:20:23.960 sort of along the same lines. I was very myopic. 1:20:24.520 --> 1:20:26.920 I told you that my younger self would really reject 1:20:26.920 --> 1:20:29.800 some of the things I'm saying today. You know, for 1:20:29.920 --> 1:20:35.439 me at that early stage, you know, I would think 1:20:35.520 --> 1:20:38.719 every time Elvis sigen as On that wasn't a blues 1:20:38.880 --> 1:20:42.000 I would think, always selling out. I didn't recognize the 1:20:42.040 --> 1:20:45.800 full scope of his ambition or his talents. But what 1:20:45.880 --> 1:20:48.240 drew me to Elvis was the blues. And then Elvis 1:20:48.400 --> 1:20:49.719 educated me to a lot more. 1:20:50.640 --> 1:20:52.400 Okay, so you grow up where. 1:20:53.720 --> 1:20:55.520 Grew up in Brookline, Mass. 1:20:55.760 --> 1:20:58.200 Brookline, Mass. What did your appearance do for a living? 1:21:00.160 --> 1:21:03.200 There was an oral and Maxillo facial surgeon. 1:21:04.400 --> 1:21:07.120 Okay, so how many kids in the family? 1:21:08.560 --> 1:21:09.479 My family three? 1:21:10.000 --> 1:21:12.120 Okay, what happened to your two siblings. What did their 1:21:12.120 --> 1:21:13.040 lives turn out to be? 1:21:14.920 --> 1:21:16.960 They turned out to be great people, you know they 1:21:17.360 --> 1:21:20.360 I mean my family. I wrote quite a bit about 1:21:20.360 --> 1:21:22.880 my family in my last book, Looking to Get Lost. 1:21:22.920 --> 1:21:26.920 It's as close I had my father, my two grandfathers, 1:21:27.479 --> 1:21:30.240 something about other members of the family in a book 1:21:30.240 --> 1:21:34.400 that was primarily a book of profiles of Johnny cash 1:21:34.479 --> 1:21:37.759 Merle Haggard, Howland Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, it also includes 1:21:37.800 --> 1:21:41.519 profiles of people in my family. And all of them, 1:21:42.080 --> 1:21:44.880 you know, just each of them went his or her 1:21:44.960 --> 1:21:47.040 own way. My mother went back to school, got her 1:21:47.160 --> 1:21:50.000 master's and social work, went to work and Grove Hall 1:21:50.080 --> 1:21:53.000 in Roxbury and found them as satisfying, you know, work 1:21:53.040 --> 1:21:59.600 of her life in that. My father just you have 1:21:59.640 --> 1:22:02.840 to read about it, but he was just a very 1:22:02.960 --> 1:22:06.479 very admirable person. And my brother and sister. My brother 1:22:07.600 --> 1:22:18.439 became an out an outside an outside solo jazz saxophonist, 1:22:18.920 --> 1:22:22.200 traveled around quite a bit, now runs a performance space 1:22:23.280 --> 1:22:27.200 in Albuquerque which has been an incredible service to the community. 1:22:27.280 --> 1:22:30.920 My sister was a teacher and a counselor who you know, 1:22:31.439 --> 1:22:36.040 was equally notable. So I mean, I mean, none of 1:22:36.120 --> 1:22:37.559 us are perfect. But they were all great. 1:22:37.880 --> 1:22:41.639 They are. Okay, there's a couple of things. I'll get there. 1:22:41.680 --> 1:22:44.240 So you go to Boston University. 1:22:44.479 --> 1:22:45.960 I went to, I went, I went to I went 1:22:45.960 --> 1:22:46.920 to Columbia first. 1:22:48.600 --> 1:22:51.639 Then maybe I'm wrong. You went to Columbia undergrad. 1:22:51.880 --> 1:22:52.719 I hated Columbia. 1:22:52.840 --> 1:22:55.160 You went to Columbia undergrad and then you went to 1:22:55.240 --> 1:22:56.880 be You for graduate school. 1:22:57.240 --> 1:22:59.320 No, no, you, you weren't wrong. I went to Columbia 1:22:59.320 --> 1:23:01.080 for a year and a half, hated it, dropped out 1:23:01.120 --> 1:23:04.040 for two years. Then I went to Boston University. Okay, 1:23:04.120 --> 1:23:04.920 I'm sure you're right. 1:23:06.600 --> 1:23:10.240 What did you hate about Columbia and what did you 1:23:10.280 --> 1:23:12.320 do for those two years? This was an era when 1:23:12.360 --> 1:23:14.400 people didn't take time off from college. 1:23:16.720 --> 1:23:19.800 I felt that it was Columbia was a very closed off, 1:23:20.200 --> 1:23:28.160 prejudiced kind of self granddas, you know, I'm talking about 1:23:28.160 --> 1:23:30.960 the students there, and also the whole thing about you're 1:23:31.000 --> 1:23:33.400 going to learn enough so you can go to the 1:23:33.439 --> 1:23:37.080 cocktail of life and you can talk about any subject 1:23:37.160 --> 1:23:39.759 on a superficial level. This was a great books program. 1:23:40.479 --> 1:23:43.800 So I but you know, I was you know, I 1:23:43.840 --> 1:23:46.600 tell I tell my granddaughters, I say, you know, I 1:23:46.640 --> 1:23:48.200 was just a little asshole. I mean, yeah, I so 1:23:48.360 --> 1:23:51.639 don't take me seriously. I but I but I believed 1:23:51.680 --> 1:23:58.400 myself so but I I it was a very the 1:23:58.479 --> 1:24:02.639 community that I saw there was a very I felt, 1:24:02.640 --> 1:24:07.240 a very self serving self whatever you call proud. 1:24:07.000 --> 1:24:09.480 Of itself, self satisfy. 1:24:10.400 --> 1:24:14.439 Yeah, self satisfied community. I mean. And I had some 1:24:14.479 --> 1:24:16.640 friends there, but it just wasn't where I wanted to be. 1:24:17.000 --> 1:24:18.800 But I'd say that says more about me than it 1:24:18.840 --> 1:24:21.000 does about any than it does about the school. 1:24:22.080 --> 1:24:23.760 So what did you do for those two years? And 1:24:23.800 --> 1:24:25.200 then how did you decide to go to be you? 1:24:27.640 --> 1:24:30.920 I went to bu because it was convenient and because 1:24:30.920 --> 1:24:35.960 I finally I realized the advantage there would be to 1:24:36.000 --> 1:24:39.000 get in a degree staying out of the draft. You know, 1:24:39.080 --> 1:24:42.160 there were there were many aspects to it. But for 1:24:42.200 --> 1:24:45.040 the two years I worked for the Paperback Booksmith, mainly 1:24:45.160 --> 1:24:48.000 bookstore which was modeled on the Eighth Street Bookstore in 1:24:48.000 --> 1:24:50.160 New York, run by a guy named Marshall Smith who 1:24:50.160 --> 1:24:54.280 had been something like a stockbroker and then had a 1:24:54.360 --> 1:24:56.519 vision of paperbacks were the wave of the future and 1:24:56.600 --> 1:25:00.160 started a chain of stores in the Boston near He 1:25:00.200 --> 1:25:02.280 called the Paperback booksmith, and I worked most of them, 1:25:02.320 --> 1:25:06.320 and eventually I ended up driving as a kind of 1:25:06.360 --> 1:25:09.760 delivery driving the delivery trucked around to the various and 1:25:09.800 --> 1:25:11.439 I loved it. It was just great. And I love the 1:25:11.439 --> 1:25:14.640 people who worked there. And everybody was a dropout in 1:25:14.680 --> 1:25:17.880 one way or another, and everybody had a dream, and everybody, 1:25:18.160 --> 1:25:21.880 you know, had imagination, and they were not self satisfied. 1:25:22.960 --> 1:25:25.120 And how'd you get out of the draft? 1:25:27.640 --> 1:25:30.559 Well, I never I actually never got classified. I went 1:25:30.640 --> 1:25:34.439 back to school. I was two s I was married, 1:25:35.560 --> 1:25:37.840 so that was the second thing. And then just as 1:25:37.880 --> 1:25:43.320 they were started drafting married people, Alexander got pregnant, and 1:25:43.400 --> 1:25:45.840 so then I was a father. So all in all, 1:25:45.920 --> 1:25:48.400 I was just lucky. I don't know what I would 1:25:48.479 --> 1:25:52.320 my grandfather. My grandfather taught English at the Boston Latin School. 1:25:53.320 --> 1:25:57.320 He was prepared, I mean spoke seriously. I don't know 1:25:57.360 --> 1:26:00.280 if whatever would have happened. He was going to buy 1:26:00.439 --> 1:26:02.639 land in Canada and we could all go up there. 1:26:03.120 --> 1:26:07.479 So he was very approving of me. I mean, he 1:26:07.560 --> 1:26:10.479 was just he was a great grandfather, and both grandfathers 1:26:10.560 --> 1:26:13.800 were but he and he but what was best of all, 1:26:14.680 --> 1:26:17.200 even the only thing he disapproved of was my arm. 1:26:17.600 --> 1:26:19.960 He was a great athlete himself. He was a three 1:26:20.000 --> 1:26:24.760 sport athlete in college and a terrific baseball player. And 1:26:26.120 --> 1:26:29.040 you know, he thought I was a good hitter. I 1:26:29.120 --> 1:26:31.599 was a good fielder, you know, but I just didn't 1:26:31.640 --> 1:26:33.920 have much of an arm. I played the outfield, he said. 1:26:34.000 --> 1:26:35.439 I said to him. I said, well, I've got a 1:26:35.479 --> 1:26:37.200 quick release. He says, yeah, you got to work on 1:26:37.240 --> 1:26:39.280 the iron though. Other than that, though, he approved of 1:26:39.280 --> 1:26:42.439 everything I did, and he was talking about buying land 1:26:42.479 --> 1:26:44.200 in Canada so we could all go up there if 1:26:44.240 --> 1:26:45.800 I got drafted. But it never came to that. 1:26:53.640 --> 1:26:58.920 Of the three kids, where are you in the hierarchy. 1:26:58.080 --> 1:26:59.800 You should be able to guess you're the. 1:26:59.760 --> 1:27:04.320 Old obviously, right, Well I could tell that, but whatever, Okay, 1:27:04.640 --> 1:27:06.839 so you go back to college. Where in this story 1:27:06.880 --> 1:27:07.920 do you want to be a writer. 1:27:10.360 --> 1:27:15.240 From the time I was probably you know, eight or 1:27:15.280 --> 1:27:17.120 ten years old, I always wanted to be a writer. 1:27:17.200 --> 1:27:18.960 I wanted to be a writer and a baseball player. 1:27:19.040 --> 1:27:23.120 Those were my two ambitions. And I wrote and I'll 1:27:23.120 --> 1:27:27.720 tell you that when I was fifteen, that you know, 1:27:28.560 --> 1:27:31.080 seminal year. Maybe I don't know if that happened at 1:27:31.120 --> 1:27:33.280 exactly the same time I discovered The Blues. But I 1:27:33.320 --> 1:27:38.080 also read the interview with Ernest Hemingway in the Paris 1:27:38.120 --> 1:27:42.760 Review where he talked about his I think George Plumpton nos. 1:27:43.000 --> 1:27:46.000 Was it Terry Southern? No. George Plumpton conducted the interview 1:27:46.439 --> 1:27:51.640 and Hemingway spoke about his writing habits, and the thing was, 1:27:51.720 --> 1:27:54.320 no matter what you do the night before, and no 1:27:54.360 --> 1:27:55.880 matter what you plan to do with the rest of 1:27:55.920 --> 1:27:59.120 your day, you write every day, and you try to 1:27:59.120 --> 1:28:01.840 write a certain number of and not a specific number, 1:28:01.880 --> 1:28:06.639 but you and you don't stop until you you're If 1:28:06.680 --> 1:28:09.000 you're not satisfied with what you produced, at least you're 1:28:09.000 --> 1:28:11.880 satisfied you put in the effort. And I started that 1:28:11.960 --> 1:28:14.519 when I was fifteen, and I continued to this day. 1:28:14.760 --> 1:28:16.400 I mean to a degree. I mean, my life, life 1:28:16.400 --> 1:28:19.160 has gotten more complicated, but it's in essence, it's the 1:28:19.160 --> 1:28:22.400 same thing. And so all the time that I was 1:28:22.560 --> 1:28:25.280 in school, all the time that I was working at 1:28:25.280 --> 1:28:29.760 the book smith, you know, if work started at if 1:28:29.960 --> 1:28:32.799 classes started at eight o'clock, if work started at nine o'clock, 1:28:33.560 --> 1:28:35.400 I'd get up at five and I would write for 1:28:35.400 --> 1:28:37.200 an hour and a half before I went to work 1:28:37.200 --> 1:28:39.920 before and you know, it wasn't that I was. What 1:28:40.000 --> 1:28:42.400 I was writing was so great, And in many cases 1:28:42.400 --> 1:28:45.240 it was really painful because I would say, Okay, if 1:28:45.240 --> 1:28:46.720 he mary Way can do it. I'm not saying I've 1:28:46.720 --> 1:28:48.360 got the talent of him anyway, but at least I 1:28:48.360 --> 1:28:50.320 can put in the effort. And I would, so I 1:28:50.320 --> 1:28:54.720 would just force myself to I remember being at Columbia, 1:28:55.120 --> 1:29:00.639 just force myself to write five hundred words, some seven 1:29:00.680 --> 1:29:03.719 hundred words, and it just words that I might hate. 1:29:04.160 --> 1:29:06.799 Sometimes it was good. Then I'd go out to Tom's, 1:29:06.840 --> 1:29:09.040 which is the place where they filmed so much of Seinfelder. 1:29:09.080 --> 1:29:12.240 If they didn't film it, they they recreated it. And 1:29:13.400 --> 1:29:15.719 I would have French tows at times and go to class. 1:29:16.040 --> 1:29:18.479 But I mean, to me, it didn't matter if I 1:29:18.520 --> 1:29:21.040 came in at two in the morning, I was going 1:29:21.080 --> 1:29:25.439 to get up to write. And you know this sounds 1:29:25.800 --> 1:29:30.720 talk about self satisfied. You know this sounds like, oh man, 1:29:30.800 --> 1:29:32.479 I was so great. I mean, I'm not saying that 1:29:32.520 --> 1:29:35.439 I just but but I was determined to be a writer. 1:29:35.520 --> 1:29:39.559 And that's why, you know, when this guy in Cambridge, 1:29:39.600 --> 1:29:43.760 Larry Stark, decided that Cambridge in the sixties was just 1:29:43.840 --> 1:29:46.120 like Paris in the twenties, and said, I'm going to 1:29:46.160 --> 1:29:48.719 start my own press, and you called it the Larry 1:29:48.840 --> 1:29:51.960 Stark Press. Not surprisingly, the first book he published was 1:29:51.960 --> 1:29:53.680 a book of my short stories, and I think it 1:29:53.720 --> 1:29:55.719 was if it didn't come out the day I turned twenty, 1:29:55.760 --> 1:29:58.120 It came out just ye. It was supposed to come 1:29:58.200 --> 1:30:00.240 up before that, but came on when I it was 1:30:00.680 --> 1:30:03.840 just twenty, and you know it was cool. 1:30:04.240 --> 1:30:10.719 Okay, So you wanted to write fiction. Okay, you're writing 1:30:10.800 --> 1:30:15.000 these reviews and stories about blues musicians because you have 1:30:15.040 --> 1:30:21.000 a passion. You get out of school, what is the 1:30:21.080 --> 1:30:23.960 direction you take and how do you pay the bills? 1:30:25.400 --> 1:30:27.960 Everything I did was for the writing, to support the writing. 1:30:28.760 --> 1:30:34.240 You know that sounds like a an idealistic or maybe 1:30:34.240 --> 1:30:36.360 it sounds like a really selfish thing. I mean, you 1:30:36.360 --> 1:30:39.080 have to support your family, and you have to and 1:30:39.439 --> 1:30:41.400 the secondary thing is you had to support the writing. 1:30:41.479 --> 1:30:44.200 So everything I did as it happened. I fell into 1:30:44.200 --> 1:30:48.719 a job teaching classics at Boston University for seven years 1:30:48.800 --> 1:30:51.280 because it was a great guy named Charlie buy who 1:30:51.400 --> 1:30:54.440 ran the classics department, which is probably the most creative 1:30:54.479 --> 1:31:00.320 department at Boston University, and a woman who was to 1:31:00.360 --> 1:31:03.559 teach first year of Greek pregnant, I don't remember. She 1:31:03.560 --> 1:31:05.200 didn't show up, and he asked me if I would 1:31:05.200 --> 1:31:07.280 do it, and then I talked of for the next 1:31:07.280 --> 1:31:09.960 seven years, or I talked for the next seven years, 1:31:09.960 --> 1:31:12.400 a couple of years full time, but all of it 1:31:12.479 --> 1:31:16.320 was designed to support the writing, support the family, and 1:31:16.360 --> 1:31:26.640 support the writing. And he almost he almost. At the 1:31:26.680 --> 1:31:32.080 same time, my grandfather, who taught English Boston Latin School 1:31:32.080 --> 1:31:35.519 and to whom I was so close, ran a summer 1:31:35.560 --> 1:31:39.840 camp on Lake Winnipesaki, and he was kind of guy. 1:31:39.880 --> 1:31:42.360 He was like Colonel Parker. He didn't ask anybody's help. 1:31:42.439 --> 1:31:44.400 He did everything himself. And he was still running the 1:31:44.400 --> 1:31:49.479 camp himself, about two hundred and fifty campers in nineteen 1:31:49.600 --> 1:31:55.720 seventy when he was seventy eight years old, and it's 1:31:55.760 --> 1:31:59.040 still very vigorous, and still took his cuts once in 1:31:59.040 --> 1:32:01.640 a while to play. The council would throw to him. 1:32:01.720 --> 1:32:03.200 Was just be scared to death that he was going 1:32:03.240 --> 1:32:05.960 to hit him. But he would call. He would call 1:32:06.040 --> 1:32:08.919 his fields, you know, he would still call his fields 1:32:09.080 --> 1:32:10.800 right fields, centerfield where he was. 1:32:10.800 --> 1:32:11.200 Going to hit. 1:32:11.880 --> 1:32:15.120 But in seventy he asked me in the middle of 1:32:15.160 --> 1:32:17.160 camp if I would help him out the next year. 1:32:18.160 --> 1:32:19.800 This was not what I wanted to do. It's not 1:32:19.880 --> 1:32:22.520 what I intended to do. It was not in my thoughts. 1:32:22.960 --> 1:32:25.519 But I would never turn him down, and so I 1:32:25.560 --> 1:32:29.680 said yes. Within I think within a few days, he 1:32:29.800 --> 1:32:32.559 had what appeared to be a stroke. It turned out 1:32:32.560 --> 1:32:35.599 to be a brain tumor. But he and I ended 1:32:35.680 --> 1:32:38.920 up finishing out the year at camp having no idea. 1:32:39.040 --> 1:32:43.760 Nobody knew how camp ran. I learned quickly and I 1:32:43.840 --> 1:32:46.639 was like working a forty eight hour day. And then 1:32:46.680 --> 1:32:49.639 I kept camp going over the winter because it looked 1:32:49.640 --> 1:32:52.240 like he was going to get better, he was improving 1:32:52.240 --> 1:32:54.479 from what appeared to be the stroke. And then he 1:32:54.840 --> 1:32:58.160 didn't get better, he got worse. And I carried on 1:32:58.640 --> 1:33:00.479 and I ran the camp the twenty two years, and 1:33:00.520 --> 1:33:04.840 again it was a wonderful thing, an incredibly rewarding experience, 1:33:06.200 --> 1:33:09.880 but also something that was very very it was it 1:33:10.000 --> 1:33:12.640 was no selling. It was all word of mouth. I mean, 1:33:12.680 --> 1:33:14.800 I wasn't going to go out and you know, go 1:33:14.880 --> 1:33:16.120 out and sell the camp. 1:33:16.200 --> 1:33:16.439 I was. 1:33:16.800 --> 1:33:20.280 I was going to write and but the camp sustained itself. 1:33:21.120 --> 1:33:24.200 It remained a wonderful experience. It was a very rewarding experience. 1:33:24.200 --> 1:33:25.760 It was probably the best thing in the world I 1:33:25.800 --> 1:33:28.200 could ever have done in terms of writing, because it 1:33:28.200 --> 1:33:31.720 took me out of myself. It took me out of 1:33:31.760 --> 1:33:33.800 my If I had an ivory it wasn't so much 1:33:33.800 --> 1:33:36.200 an ivory tower. It's my own head, you know. And 1:33:36.240 --> 1:33:38.120 I had to deal with all these different people, all 1:33:38.160 --> 1:33:41.040 these different problems, all these different you know, and it 1:33:41.080 --> 1:33:43.160 was so it was great. And I ran it for 1:33:43.160 --> 1:33:47.240 twenty two years, and you know, so it was it was. 1:33:47.680 --> 1:33:49.040 It was a terrific experience. 1:33:49.520 --> 1:33:51.000 So what happened after twenty two. 1:33:50.920 --> 1:33:56.240 Years we sort of reached the end of the line. 1:33:56.280 --> 1:33:58.320 I mean, the last few years I think were the 1:33:58.320 --> 1:34:00.760 best years of camp. But I've felt like I was 1:34:00.800 --> 1:34:04.320 just repeating myself that I didn't want to do that 1:34:04.439 --> 1:34:08.120 I didn't. I mean, I think that's unfair both to yourself. 1:34:08.200 --> 1:34:10.080 It's unfair of the job, it's unfair of the people 1:34:10.080 --> 1:34:12.559 who are dependent on you. And I reached a point 1:34:12.560 --> 1:34:15.880 where I and also I was working on the Elvis biography, 1:34:16.439 --> 1:34:22.200 the writing was becoming more and more demanding, involving you know, it, 1:34:23.479 --> 1:34:29.280 and so I tried to find someone to take it over. 1:34:29.360 --> 1:34:32.280 I mean I tried and and and didn't and so 1:34:33.120 --> 1:34:35.840 we so we ended up I ended up closing camp. 1:34:35.840 --> 1:34:38.719 And two years later we were able to sell it. 1:34:38.760 --> 1:34:40.680 Is it still a camp or just you sold as 1:34:40.680 --> 1:34:41.519 a piece of property. 1:34:42.640 --> 1:34:44.320 I didn't sell it as a piece of property. I 1:34:44.479 --> 1:34:47.200 sold it to a nature conservancy thing that said they 1:34:47.200 --> 1:34:49.960 would never let it be sold as a piece of property, 1:34:49.960 --> 1:34:55.120 and then sold it as a piece of property. Okay, 1:34:55.400 --> 1:34:57.479 you know, you do you do the best you can. 1:34:58.160 --> 1:35:01.400 And as Sam Phillips said and Colonel said, you never 1:35:01.439 --> 1:35:03.240 looked back, because what's the point. You did the best 1:35:03.280 --> 1:35:05.680 you could. You looked into every aspect and you know, 1:35:06.479 --> 1:35:07.200 and that was it. 1:35:07.640 --> 1:35:11.080 Okay, subsequent to your twenty two years of camp? Did 1:35:11.120 --> 1:35:13.519 you ever have a so called day job after that? 1:35:15.000 --> 1:35:20.280 Well, you know, my life has been a series of 1:35:20.840 --> 1:35:25.519 somewhat of a series of fortuitous events. And in two 1:35:25.640 --> 1:35:30.280 thousand and five I was offered a one year appointment 1:35:31.120 --> 1:35:36.200 at Vanderbilt teaching teaching creative writing at Vanderbilt as a 1:35:37.760 --> 1:35:41.320 I can't think what the title was, and so I 1:35:41.320 --> 1:35:43.240 thought this would be interesting, this to be great. I 1:35:43.280 --> 1:35:44.960 would never do it for more than one semester. We 1:35:45.000 --> 1:35:47.920 camp took about three months of the year, maybe four 1:35:47.920 --> 1:35:49.960 months of the year, but that left me free to 1:35:49.960 --> 1:35:53.760 write eight months of the year. And with Vanderbilt think 1:35:53.760 --> 1:35:58.320 it was a one semester thing. And so I did it. 1:35:59.120 --> 1:36:03.080 And I wound up staying there teaching one semester a 1:36:03.120 --> 1:36:06.920 year until twenty sixteen. So I got twelve years out 1:36:06.920 --> 1:36:09.400 of it out of a one year appointment. Was pretty good. 1:36:10.600 --> 1:36:15.840 And that was also very rewarding. And you know, and 1:36:16.120 --> 1:36:18.360 for the most part, during the time that I was teaching, 1:36:19.160 --> 1:36:22.920 it was very difficult to write, but I recognized that 1:36:23.040 --> 1:36:27.679 I was being given the opportunity to support the writing 1:36:28.760 --> 1:36:32.880 through my commitment to this teaching for a period of 1:36:32.920 --> 1:36:35.200 time that was three and a half months, and the 1:36:35.240 --> 1:36:37.920 rest of the year I had free So that worked 1:36:37.920 --> 1:36:39.720 out great. It wouldn't have worked out great if I 1:36:39.760 --> 1:36:43.080 hadn't found it, but you know, so rewarding, and I 1:36:43.080 --> 1:36:46.160 hadn't enjoyed the teaching and enjoy it. I'd say I 1:36:46.280 --> 1:36:51.400 enjoyed the kids I taught, both undergraduates and MFAs. I'm 1:36:51.439 --> 1:36:54.920 not sure that I enjoyed the faculty aspect. I didn't 1:36:54.960 --> 1:36:57.360 have any faculty aspect. I wasn't interested in it, but 1:36:57.840 --> 1:37:00.200 that would not have been something I would have enjoyed. 1:37:00.040 --> 1:37:03.640 It as a lifelong writer, someone wanted to be a 1:37:03.680 --> 1:37:06.800 writer as a young age. How do you feel that 1:37:06.960 --> 1:37:09.920 you're mostly known for your non fiction as opposed to 1:37:09.960 --> 1:37:10.439 your fiction. 1:37:13.360 --> 1:37:16.240 That's a question I ask myself all the time. But 1:37:16.439 --> 1:37:19.760 you know, I've never been asked that on Zoom. I 1:37:19.840 --> 1:37:26.519 know we're not on Zoom. We're whatever we're on. But I, 1:37:26.600 --> 1:37:31.080 you know, I sometimes I think that, you know, maybe 1:37:31.080 --> 1:37:33.640 it just turned out that I was better at the 1:37:33.680 --> 1:37:36.320 non fiction and the fiction. But say, I've never stopped 1:37:36.320 --> 1:37:39.960 writing the fiction. I'm working on a novel that I 1:37:40.080 --> 1:37:46.040 broke off at one point while I was writing the 1:37:46.080 --> 1:37:49.960 Elvis biography because it became so all consuming. The biographies 1:37:50.000 --> 1:37:54.760 are just a matter of total immersion. But I've worked 1:37:54.760 --> 1:37:57.040 on it off and on since then, and I'm working 1:37:57.040 --> 1:37:59.160 on that again now. I've worked on these short stories 1:37:59.160 --> 1:38:02.200 which are coming up next year. If the world doesn't 1:38:02.200 --> 1:38:06.080 come to an end, you know, or I don't come 1:38:06.080 --> 1:38:09.360 to an end, but some work. I've been working on 1:38:09.400 --> 1:38:11.200 these short stories over the year, so I never gave 1:38:11.280 --> 1:38:13.640 up the fiction, but it has occurred to me that 1:38:14.160 --> 1:38:17.439 maybe I was just better. But the other thing, and 1:38:17.479 --> 1:38:21.120 this was really the great revelation to me, was when 1:38:21.120 --> 1:38:24.160 I was working on the Elvis, it suddenly occurred to me, 1:38:24.920 --> 1:38:28.400 this really is a novel. This is a novel on 1:38:28.479 --> 1:38:31.760 a grand scale. I mean, it's not that everything is 1:38:33.320 --> 1:38:36.320 nothing is made up, everything is factual, everything is based 1:38:36.360 --> 1:38:40.360 on research. But it's developing. It's a great story with 1:38:40.520 --> 1:38:46.000 great characters on a landscape that maybe I couldn't imagine 1:38:46.320 --> 1:38:51.519 in terms of fiction. I probably couldn't. And so that 1:38:51.680 --> 1:38:55.360 was all of this was satisfied. Writting about Solomon Burke, 1:38:55.439 --> 1:38:58.519 watting about Dick Curlis, writing about Muddy Waters, all of 1:38:58.560 --> 1:39:03.600 those were satisfying, particularly when I started working writing Profiles, 1:39:03.640 --> 1:39:07.040 which was my first couple of books from books of Profiles, 1:39:07.560 --> 1:39:09.880 and they were like short stories in a sense, but 1:39:09.920 --> 1:39:13.640 not in quite the way that the Elvis biography and 1:39:13.680 --> 1:39:16.559 then the Sam Cook and the Sam Phillips were. These 1:39:17.479 --> 1:39:21.360 they were they were like novels to me, and to me, 1:39:21.479 --> 1:39:24.719 the whole thing it was all about telling the story, 1:39:25.000 --> 1:39:30.080 developing the characters, and always making sure that you moved 1:39:30.120 --> 1:39:36.880 forward and that you didn't introduce either anecdotes or you 1:39:36.920 --> 1:39:40.360 didn't repeat the same thing over and over again. You 1:39:40.479 --> 1:39:43.200 tried to have a sense of development of the How 1:39:43.240 --> 1:39:46.639 did the characters, each character, whether it was Dewey Phillips 1:39:46.760 --> 1:39:48.880 or it was you know, Sam Phillips, or it was 1:39:51.320 --> 1:39:54.920 Sam Cook or J. W. Alexander, how did they develop 1:39:55.040 --> 1:39:56.760 over the course of the time of writing about them, 1:39:56.800 --> 1:39:59.439 and how does the story proceed. So in a way, 1:39:59.479 --> 1:40:02.000 it became very much like writing novels. So I don't know. 1:40:02.479 --> 1:40:04.080 I mean, that's not a very good answer. That's the 1:40:04.120 --> 1:40:04.679 best I've. 1:40:04.560 --> 1:40:09.360 Got, Okay, In terms of other than assemblage of previously 1:40:09.360 --> 1:40:14.439 written pieces. Prior to the Elvis books, you did one 1:40:14.479 --> 1:40:19.320 on Robert Johnson, and what else was a book from 1:40:19.360 --> 1:40:22.799 scratch prior to Elvis. 1:40:23.000 --> 1:40:25.080 Well, the first book Feel Like Going Home. Those were 1:40:25.080 --> 1:40:29.080 not previously published pieces. The most recent book, Looking to 1:40:29.080 --> 1:40:31.880 Get Lost, although it's a collection of profiles, two thirds 1:40:31.880 --> 1:40:35.400 of it is new to you know in its form, 1:40:36.680 --> 1:40:41.759 Lost Highway probably comes closest to being previously published pieces. 1:40:41.760 --> 1:40:44.800 But given that every single piece I've written has come 1:40:44.840 --> 1:40:48.040 out of my personal commitment, I've never written anything on assignment, 1:40:48.400 --> 1:40:49.840 which is not a good way to make a living. 1:40:50.120 --> 1:40:54.360 I should say if we have any you know, kids 1:40:54.400 --> 1:40:57.400 listening out there, any writing students don't do what I did, 1:40:57.800 --> 1:41:01.000 but because you know, it's probably smart to take the 1:41:01.040 --> 1:41:03.040 assignments you've give them, But I didn't. I never did. 1:41:03.439 --> 1:41:06.479 Every single story I've ever done has come out of 1:41:06.479 --> 1:41:09.719 personal commitment, So even Lost Highway, which in some ways 1:41:09.760 --> 1:41:12.519 is as personal as any of the books, although I 1:41:12.560 --> 1:41:14.639 think in that case each of the stories had been 1:41:14.880 --> 1:41:21.960 published elsewhere. It's written as a book with interpolated passages 1:41:22.479 --> 1:41:28.000 and with you know, with the profiles rewritten to fit 1:41:28.040 --> 1:41:31.679 a format and not to include and chosen. I guess 1:41:31.680 --> 1:41:35.000 that's the thing most of all, chosen to represent a 1:41:37.160 --> 1:41:41.160 progression within this book, rather than this be random pieces. 1:41:41.680 --> 1:41:45.320 So I none of them were collections per se. 1:41:45.880 --> 1:41:49.719 Okay, And you had these ideas you started writing before 1:41:49.760 --> 1:41:52.479 you had a publishing deal on these books. 1:41:54.160 --> 1:41:58.679 No, the well, yeah, I mean I feel like going 1:41:58.720 --> 1:42:04.080 Home came about. This is a sad story, Is that? Okay? 1:42:04.120 --> 1:42:07.120 With you? 1:42:08.040 --> 1:42:09.920 I can see you've got a tissue there, so you 1:42:09.920 --> 1:42:14.720 know you're ready for No. I knew this editor who 1:42:14.760 --> 1:42:17.559 was sort of the enfantiable of publishing at the time, 1:42:18.040 --> 1:42:20.439 and he had turned down two or three of my novels, 1:42:21.040 --> 1:42:24.360 and he told me the next novel you write, which 1:42:24.360 --> 1:42:27.599 I think was called improvised people. He says, I'm positive 1:42:27.640 --> 1:42:30.479 I'll publishing. He was, he was doing pretty well in publishing, 1:42:30.520 --> 1:42:33.120 and he was the good guy and everything. So I 1:42:33.200 --> 1:42:36.519 sent it to him, and you know, he couldn't. He 1:42:37.200 --> 1:42:39.680 rejected it. He just and maybe he was right. You know, 1:42:39.720 --> 1:42:41.840 I'm not going to argue with him, but I think 1:42:41.840 --> 1:42:44.000 he felt badly about it because he had promised me 1:42:44.040 --> 1:42:46.240 that he was going to take the next one. So 1:42:46.439 --> 1:42:48.400 and this is this is a whether this is a 1:42:48.439 --> 1:42:51.400 sad story or cynical story. Somebody had come to him, 1:42:52.479 --> 1:42:55.240 let's call it an agent with the idea of doing 1:42:55.240 --> 1:42:58.920 a history of the Blues. Now I know editors never 1:42:59.000 --> 1:43:01.680 do this, publishers never do this. Agents never do this. 1:43:02.160 --> 1:43:03.759 But he came to me and he said, look, somebody 1:43:03.760 --> 1:43:05.200 wants to write a history of the Blues. Why don't 1:43:05.240 --> 1:43:08.040 you write a history of the Blues? And I said, 1:43:08.080 --> 1:43:09.679 I don't want to write a history of the books. 1:43:10.320 --> 1:43:13.519 And then I proposed I did the book that I wrote, 1:43:13.560 --> 1:43:16.800 Feel Like Going Home, which was a progression of profiles 1:43:16.920 --> 1:43:20.120 telling a story that I wanted to tell. So that 1:43:20.760 --> 1:43:22.840 was how I got How I got that, and I 1:43:22.880 --> 1:43:26.920 brought the Last Highway I put together. I wrote it, 1:43:29.200 --> 1:43:32.240 and I brought it to David Godean, who's the head 1:43:32.240 --> 1:43:36.479 of Godean in seventy nine started publishing house, and who 1:43:36.479 --> 1:43:39.320 are going to publish. David Godean is no longer at Godean, 1:43:39.360 --> 1:43:41.760 but Godan is going to publish the Short Stories, my 1:43:41.840 --> 1:43:43.679 collection Short Stories next fall. 1:43:45.040 --> 1:43:49.200 Just to be clear, Lost Highway, you wrote it before 1:43:49.240 --> 1:43:51.639 you made the publishing deal, or you made a deal 1:43:51.640 --> 1:43:52.400 and then wrote it. 1:43:54.960 --> 1:43:59.519 I had feel like going home, I wrote after I 1:43:59.560 --> 1:44:04.680 made the publishing deal, but it basically was you know. 1:44:04.760 --> 1:44:07.479 For instance, I did a story on Muddy Waters, first 1:44:07.520 --> 1:44:09.080 time I ever got on an airplane. I never thought 1:44:09.080 --> 1:44:10.880 I'd get in an airplane in my life, only for 1:44:10.960 --> 1:44:13.439 Muddy Waters, you know, to write that story. So I 1:44:13.479 --> 1:44:18.479 was very excited. But the Last Highway I had in 1:44:18.520 --> 1:44:22.360 my mind to do a book that sort of covered 1:44:22.400 --> 1:44:27.439 the range of American music, country or roots music, the 1:44:27.520 --> 1:44:34.120 music that I loved. And so I was writing stories 1:44:34.160 --> 1:44:39.320 for various periodicals, stories which I initiated. In many cases 1:44:39.760 --> 1:44:43.559 I had to figure out ingenious ways of financing them 1:44:43.600 --> 1:44:48.519 because nobody was going to pay me to go to 1:44:48.560 --> 1:44:51.599 Memphis to write a story on Rufus Thomas or Charlie Feathers, 1:44:51.680 --> 1:44:57.519 let's say. And so I put together on my own, 1:44:57.600 --> 1:45:04.559 I put together a sequence, a kind of itinerary in 1:45:04.640 --> 1:45:07.240 which one publication might put up a certain amount of 1:45:07.280 --> 1:45:08.800 money another and another. But it was all to do 1:45:08.840 --> 1:45:10.760 the work that I wanted to do. And it was 1:45:10.800 --> 1:45:14.080 all with this aim of what else wanted to do 1:45:14.080 --> 1:45:16.519 in Las Vegas, bring all the various strands of his 1:45:16.640 --> 1:45:19.880 music together and present them in one thing. And that's 1:45:19.880 --> 1:45:22.320 what I wanted to do with Last Highway. So having 1:45:22.360 --> 1:45:24.720 written these stories, all of which, as I say, were 1:45:24.760 --> 1:45:27.759 self initiated, whether it was Charlie rich Or as Charlie 1:45:27.800 --> 1:45:32.479 Feathers or howld Wolf or it was, and I put 1:45:32.479 --> 1:45:36.320 them together to otis span Big Joe Turner. And so 1:45:36.400 --> 1:45:41.280 I put them together, rewrote them, wrote them so that 1:45:41.360 --> 1:45:44.040 they would they could be presented both in a sequence 1:45:44.080 --> 1:45:46.880 and in a way that sort of made them into 1:45:46.920 --> 1:45:49.800 what I thought of as a book. And that's what 1:45:49.840 --> 1:45:53.080 I brought to God in So it's somewhere in between 1:45:53.120 --> 1:45:53.959 what you said. 1:46:01.720 --> 1:46:07.240 The Robert Johnson book. There was the double CD set 1:46:07.560 --> 1:46:09.760 around the turn of the decade from the eighties to 1:46:09.840 --> 1:46:13.719 the nineties. Your Robert Johnson book comes out in eighty nine. 1:46:14.200 --> 1:46:18.360 Certainly people are aware of Robert Johnson, certainly all the 1:46:18.400 --> 1:46:24.400 English blues musicians. I'm not sophisticated enough to know. Was 1:46:24.439 --> 1:46:27.160 it your book that really broke it wide open? Were 1:46:27.200 --> 1:46:31.280 you really pushing the envelope further? Was there something before? 1:46:31.400 --> 1:46:32.800 What was the experience there? 1:46:35.760 --> 1:46:37.960 I would never claim that kind of credit. I mean 1:46:38.000 --> 1:46:40.400 I was fortunate in the sense the book came out, 1:46:40.400 --> 1:46:42.639 as you said, in eighty nine, the box set came 1:46:42.680 --> 1:46:45.720 out in ninety. The book achieved a certain amount of 1:46:45.760 --> 1:46:52.760 success and reached a niche audience, as we say. But 1:46:52.880 --> 1:46:58.960 then when the box set came out, although Columbia, I 1:46:58.960 --> 1:47:01.400 mean nobody was aware, the publisher was not aware of 1:47:01.400 --> 1:47:02.800 the box set. In the box that may not have 1:47:02.800 --> 1:47:04.599 been aware of the book, but they got placed together 1:47:04.640 --> 1:47:08.479 in tower. But you know, I wouldn't call it a 1:47:08.520 --> 1:47:12.200 great popular success, but I think it reached a lot 1:47:12.240 --> 1:47:15.400 of people. And the point about the book was that 1:47:16.760 --> 1:47:18.280 one of the things I write about in the book, 1:47:18.280 --> 1:47:22.519 which is more like a biographical essay, a personal biographical essay, 1:47:23.600 --> 1:47:26.759 is that there were all these people around the world. 1:47:26.800 --> 1:47:29.120 I mean, who discovered Robert Johnson at the same time, 1:47:29.160 --> 1:47:32.200 But they weren't that many, so that Mick Jagger or 1:47:32.320 --> 1:47:36.400 Keith Richards or Eric Clapton and I were all discovering 1:47:36.439 --> 1:47:39.000 the music and equally moved by it and equally passionate 1:47:39.000 --> 1:47:42.759 about it, let's say, in nineteen sixty one, all discovered 1:47:42.800 --> 1:47:44.880 at the same time, and yet Robert Johnson did not 1:47:45.320 --> 1:47:49.439 certainly become a household name in any way. And much 1:47:49.600 --> 1:47:51.759 like the early writing that I had done about Howland 1:47:51.800 --> 1:47:55.479 Wolfer Muddy Waters, the opportunity to write about Robert Johnson 1:47:56.400 --> 1:47:58.920 was a thrill for me. But what it came out 1:47:58.960 --> 1:48:03.719 of was entirely out of going to Texas, going to Houston, 1:48:03.760 --> 1:48:06.000 going to Otaga Street. That's one of the things I 1:48:06.040 --> 1:48:09.960 can remember a few things still to talk to interview 1:48:10.120 --> 1:48:14.120 Mack McCormick, who had done all this incredible research about 1:48:14.160 --> 1:48:18.240 Robert Johnson. This was back in Oh God, I'm gonna 1:48:20.200 --> 1:48:24.920 I'm thinking it was. Could it have been seventy two. 1:48:25.880 --> 1:48:31.559 I'm not getting the right date on this. I just can't. No, 1:48:31.800 --> 1:48:34.200 it's seventy six, I'm sorry, right, it was around Jimmy 1:48:34.200 --> 1:48:37.840 Carter's inauguration. But so I went there because he was 1:48:37.880 --> 1:48:43.000 in a dispute with Columbia about who owned the photographs 1:48:43.040 --> 1:48:44.960 of Robert Johnson. Columbia was going to put out that 1:48:45.400 --> 1:48:48.400 Blox cent it would have been a series of three 1:48:48.520 --> 1:48:53.200 LPs at the time, and Mack McCormick was disputing their 1:48:53.280 --> 1:48:56.440 right to use the photographs. And in the end the 1:48:56.840 --> 1:48:59.880 Block Center the collection got held up for fourteen years. 1:49:00.240 --> 1:49:03.479 But so I interview mac McCormick, who had written a 1:49:03.520 --> 1:49:06.599 book called Biography of Phantom. He'd finished it at that time. 1:49:07.680 --> 1:49:10.519 It didn't come out until two years ago, I guess. 1:49:11.080 --> 1:49:15.240 But and he was very generous in the time he 1:49:15.280 --> 1:49:17.200 spent with me, and he told me a great deal, 1:49:17.240 --> 1:49:19.519 and he shared some of his research. And I wrote 1:49:19.520 --> 1:49:21.840 an article in Rolling Stone about this great work Mike 1:49:21.960 --> 1:49:24.519 McCormick had done and how his book, Biography of a 1:49:24.520 --> 1:49:27.439 Phantom would be coming out any day. Well, it didn't 1:49:27.439 --> 1:49:29.840 come out, and it didn't come out, and I think 1:49:29.880 --> 1:49:36.439 after five or six years I wrote to him and 1:49:36.439 --> 1:49:39.840 I said, would you mind if I wrote about Robert 1:49:39.920 --> 1:49:42.960 Johnson using some of them beyond the Rolling Stone article, 1:49:43.040 --> 1:49:45.760 using some of the material that you spoke to me 1:49:45.800 --> 1:49:48.960 about crediting you for your research, and he said, no, no, 1:49:49.000 --> 1:49:51.280 I wouldn't mind at all, go right ahead. I mean 1:49:51.320 --> 1:49:54.200 his book, like I say, he had a lot of 1:49:57.000 --> 1:50:02.160 problems with completion. I think he was a really great guy, 1:50:02.240 --> 1:50:06.320 but parts of them maybe weren't that great or whatever. 1:50:06.400 --> 1:50:11.040 He had problems and he didn't and so so I wrote, 1:50:11.960 --> 1:50:14.080 I wrote this essay and it came out and Living 1:50:14.160 --> 1:50:18.120 Blues I think in eighty two, which again talking about 1:50:18.160 --> 1:50:21.240 making money. There's no money in that. It was it 1:50:21.360 --> 1:50:24.200 was a great opportunity to get the word out about 1:50:24.280 --> 1:50:27.639 something I was passionate about. And then a guy named 1:50:27.680 --> 1:50:30.240 Toby Byron came along and had the idea of packaging 1:50:30.280 --> 1:50:35.240 it and you know, as the book that stood alone, 1:50:35.320 --> 1:50:37.960 and and I did it with Susan myershes designed all 1:50:38.000 --> 1:50:41.360 my books, and it came out in eighty nine. 1:50:41.840 --> 1:50:47.040 So how did the Elvis Journey begin? Which which which 1:50:47.080 --> 1:50:49.479 party were you end up writing the first book of 1:50:49.520 --> 1:50:52.200 the trilogy? How did that come to be? 1:50:55.040 --> 1:50:58.240 It was, well, I'll tell you exactly how. I mean, 1:50:58.400 --> 1:51:05.120 I had retained I'd written about Elvis considerably over the years, 1:51:05.720 --> 1:51:09.360 but always from the outside. I mean, I wrote the 1:51:09.479 --> 1:51:12.280 chapter on Elvis and the Rolling Stone Illustrated History, which 1:51:12.720 --> 1:51:15.400 is the same as the chapter on Elvis in Last Highway. 1:51:15.520 --> 1:51:18.240 It's the longest chapter in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History. 1:51:18.720 --> 1:51:21.439 And that had been after I had reviewed from Elvis 1:51:21.439 --> 1:51:26.439 in Memphis, which was such a revolutionary album in Rolling Stone, 1:51:26.439 --> 1:51:28.719 and I had written about him in The Phoenix and whatever. 1:51:29.560 --> 1:51:41.840 So at a certain point a filmmaker, to a pair 1:51:41.920 --> 1:51:45.600 of filmmakers came to me about writing the script for 1:51:47.320 --> 1:51:51.320 a documentary called Elvis fifty six, which is going to 1:51:51.320 --> 1:51:56.599 be based on al Werthheimer's just incredible photographs. And they 1:51:56.600 --> 1:52:00.000 have formed a partnership or made a deal without work 1:52:00.080 --> 1:52:03.360 time whom I met at that time and saw six 1:52:03.400 --> 1:52:07.840 thousand whatever you come up negative six thousand contacts, you know, 1:52:08.160 --> 1:52:12.360 contact sheats with six represented six thousand negatives, something like that. 1:52:13.320 --> 1:52:15.360 But in the course of writing the script, and I 1:52:15.400 --> 1:52:20.520 dropped out of this after a while because our visions, 1:52:21.560 --> 1:52:26.320 our visions clashed. But I mean I wrote a couple 1:52:26.720 --> 1:52:28.880 I wrote a draft of the script, or maybe a 1:52:28.920 --> 1:52:31.519 couple of drafts. But in the course of doing it, 1:52:31.600 --> 1:52:33.960 I got access. And you remember this is in the 1:52:34.040 --> 1:52:36.679 days before the internet. You remember those days before the internet, 1:52:37.320 --> 1:52:42.240 yea and so, and I got access to all the 1:52:42.240 --> 1:52:47.760 interviews that Elvis had done prior in fifty five fifty six, 1:52:47.840 --> 1:52:52.040 actually a coupled from sixteen sixty two, but mainly, I 1:52:52.040 --> 1:52:54.800 think mainly fifty five fifty six. And I listened to them. 1:52:54.800 --> 1:52:58.040 I'd never heard them before. They weren't available, and I said, 1:52:58.080 --> 1:53:01.519 oh my god, he can speak for himself. And that 1:53:01.680 --> 1:53:04.680 was when I sort of had his vision, which was reinforced. 1:53:05.080 --> 1:53:08.639 I was driving around Memphis with a friend of mine 1:53:08.720 --> 1:53:11.320 named Rose Clayton while I was writing Sweet Soul Music, 1:53:12.479 --> 1:53:16.640 which was another book that was from inception to I 1:53:16.640 --> 1:53:20.680 mean it just it was self generated entirely. But I 1:53:20.840 --> 1:53:23.000 was driving around Memphis with Rose Clayton, who was a 1:53:23.080 --> 1:53:27.920 native of South Memphis, and we drove by the drug 1:53:27.960 --> 1:53:32.599 store where Elvis's cousin Jean had worked. It was all 1:53:32.640 --> 1:53:36.680 boarded up, and she described how Elvis would come in 1:53:36.760 --> 1:53:39.280 to wait for Jean and sit at the counter and 1:53:39.400 --> 1:53:41.640 his face was sort of all pimply, and he was 1:53:41.720 --> 1:53:46.200 just all he was beautiful, but pimply, but he and 1:53:46.240 --> 1:53:51.919 he was just you know, he would tap his fingers 1:53:51.960 --> 1:53:56.080 on the countertop and stuff. And she said, Rose said, 1:53:56.479 --> 1:53:59.960 poor baby, and that was really that was the thing 1:54:00.160 --> 1:54:03.599 that crystallized everything for me. It was just like Elvis 1:54:03.640 --> 1:54:06.400 poor maybe. And it was right after that that I 1:54:06.439 --> 1:54:10.200 wrote a proposal for the Elvis, which I didn't think 1:54:10.240 --> 1:54:14.880 anybody would take because nobody took Elvis seriously. And it 1:54:14.920 --> 1:54:16.200 turned out I was wrong, and I'm glad. 1:54:16.200 --> 1:54:25.040 I was. Okay, you've written books previously, you write about Elvis, 1:54:25.520 --> 1:54:29.600 it becomes a phenomenon, it makes your name. What was 1:54:29.640 --> 1:54:30.400 it like for you? 1:54:33.840 --> 1:54:35.880 I don't know. I don't think you know. It was 1:54:35.920 --> 1:54:38.320 an opportunity. I mean, the point is the next book 1:54:38.360 --> 1:54:41.320 I wrote was Sam Cook, and I didn't have an 1:54:41.360 --> 1:54:42.920 agent at that point. I don't have an agent. I've 1:54:42.920 --> 1:54:45.560 been agenting myself for twenty five years now, but I 1:54:45.600 --> 1:54:50.400 was looking for an agent at that time, and so 1:54:50.640 --> 1:54:54.400 I I wanted to do this book on Sam Cook 1:54:54.440 --> 1:54:56.920 because I had interviewed Sam Cook's business partner J. W. 1:54:57.120 --> 1:54:59.320 Alexander and eighty two and from that moment I knew 1:54:59.360 --> 1:55:01.680 I wanted to do book on Sam Cook. So I 1:55:01.720 --> 1:55:04.400 go around and I met a lot of agents I 1:55:04.400 --> 1:55:09.000 think it was seventeen or eighteen, and they all said 1:55:09.040 --> 1:55:11.040 they wanted to work with me. I mean I didn't 1:55:11.040 --> 1:55:13.800 test the proposition, so maybe they didn't, but they said 1:55:13.840 --> 1:55:17.000 they did. And many of them said, hey, listen, I 1:55:17.000 --> 1:55:20.120 can get you a seven figure advance if you do 1:55:20.200 --> 1:55:24.160 a book on the Rolling Stones, on Bob Dylan, on whatever, 1:55:24.320 --> 1:55:26.840 Eric Clapton, and I said no, no, I'm doing a book 1:55:26.880 --> 1:55:30.280 on Sam Cook. And they all made a face and 1:55:30.400 --> 1:55:34.600 walked away, until finally I ran into someone, David Gurnett, 1:55:35.000 --> 1:55:36.640 who said, what a great idea to do a book 1:55:36.640 --> 1:55:39.040 on Sam Cook. Well, the book on Sam Cook I 1:55:39.080 --> 1:55:41.600 got a third of the advance that I've gotten for Elvis, 1:55:41.640 --> 1:55:44.280 as opposed to the seven figure advance that these guys. 1:55:44.760 --> 1:55:47.480 So that's not what I'm in it for. I mean, 1:55:47.480 --> 1:55:50.400 it means as much to me to write about Dick Curlis, 1:55:50.400 --> 1:55:54.760 who's the centerpiece of Looking to Get Lost, my last book, 1:55:55.160 --> 1:55:59.080 as it does to write about Elvis. Not to denigrate 1:55:59.160 --> 1:56:03.880 Elvis in any way, but just because it's Stony Edwards. 1:56:04.480 --> 1:56:08.000 You know, these are people that I care about. Charlie Rich, 1:56:08.040 --> 1:56:10.680 I mean, what did I I met Charlie and Margaret 1:56:10.720 --> 1:56:14.680 an Rich at the Vapors in nineteen seventy out by 1:56:14.720 --> 1:56:16.800 the airport, where they had a tea dance that went on. 1:56:17.160 --> 1:56:19.240 They had three acts and they all did about five 1:56:19.320 --> 1:56:22.560 or six sets, and I talked to Charlie and his 1:56:22.600 --> 1:56:27.040 wife Margaret in between sets, and I've never I just 1:56:27.080 --> 1:56:29.120 fell in love with him. I've never liked anybody more. 1:56:29.160 --> 1:56:34.920 And the music was great and it was something. And 1:56:34.960 --> 1:56:37.840 I wrote about him and feel like going home, and 1:56:37.920 --> 1:56:39.920 I thought he'll never talk to me again, because he 1:56:39.960 --> 1:56:43.480 had spoken about the guilt that he felt over being 1:56:43.800 --> 1:56:50.160 from a fundamentalist background and also being an alcoholic. And 1:56:50.200 --> 1:56:54.560 he was also a what do you call it, somebody 1:56:54.800 --> 1:56:59.520 who hates crowds. It's a great it's a Latin word. Anyway, 1:57:00.040 --> 1:57:02.160 didn't like to be out among people, which is a 1:57:02.160 --> 1:57:05.080 difficult situation for entertainer. But I write about him like 1:57:05.120 --> 1:57:07.520 this because it was honest. And I wrote about how 1:57:07.600 --> 1:57:09.840 much I loved his music and how much admired him. 1:57:09.840 --> 1:57:11.400 But I thought I'll never see him again. I liked 1:57:11.440 --> 1:57:14.600 him so much. Then he ordered thirty I got a 1:57:14.600 --> 1:57:18.520 call from the secretary at the publisher who said, well, 1:57:18.600 --> 1:57:21.360 Charlie Riches called and ordered thirty books. And afterwards he 1:57:21.400 --> 1:57:23.440 said to me, he said, well, it was painful, but 1:57:23.480 --> 1:57:25.360 it was honest, and that's what's important. And I was 1:57:26.040 --> 1:57:29.400 very close to him till till the end of his life. 1:57:29.800 --> 1:57:32.720 But these are the things that matter. It doesn't matter 1:57:32.720 --> 1:57:33.560 what people think of you. 1:57:34.760 --> 1:57:39.200 So who deserves a book? Who doesn't have one? 1:57:39.960 --> 1:57:43.840 So many people, so many people. I mean I always 1:57:43.880 --> 1:57:49.800 said that after I'd finished Sam Cooke Sam Phillips biography 1:57:49.880 --> 1:57:54.080 in twenty fifteen, and that began with first meeting Sam 1:57:54.200 --> 1:57:57.320 seventy nine. But after I finished that, I said, I'm 1:57:57.320 --> 1:58:00.680 never going to do another biography because it just it 1:58:00.800 --> 1:58:03.240 takes too much out of you. I mean, I've done it, 1:58:03.280 --> 1:58:06.240 I've been doing it. This is twenty fifteen. I'd started 1:58:06.280 --> 1:58:10.560 the Elvis in eighty eight, so this is now in 1:58:10.600 --> 1:58:13.320 twenty seven years. You know, I figured I've done my time, 1:58:13.760 --> 1:58:16.960 I said, but I will. The only thing that would 1:58:17.000 --> 1:58:19.120 change that. There were two things that would change it. 1:58:19.560 --> 1:58:21.240 One was I would have loved to have done a 1:58:21.280 --> 1:58:23.440 book with Solomon Burke, and he would have loved to 1:58:23.600 --> 1:58:26.160 have done a book with me. But you know, he 1:58:26.280 --> 1:58:28.760 wasn't the kind of guy. If he said I'll fly 1:58:28.840 --> 1:58:30.440 you out to la well, that would be the first 1:58:30.440 --> 1:58:35.480 stumbling book. Never accept an airline ticket from Solomon, because 1:58:35.520 --> 1:58:38.760 you just don't know where that airline ticket has come from. 1:58:39.040 --> 1:58:43.040 But more than that, you don't wait wait, what does 1:58:43.080 --> 1:58:45.120 that mean? You don't know where the airline ticket has 1:58:45.160 --> 1:58:45.720 come from? 1:58:46.280 --> 1:58:48.160 Actually, it doesn't mean. What it means is how much 1:58:48.280 --> 1:58:49.320 the cost if it's free? 1:58:49.520 --> 1:58:51.400 Oh okay, just want to make sure. But I don't 1:58:51.400 --> 1:58:53.919 know whether you were speaking of his financial situation. 1:58:54.040 --> 1:58:56.800 Okay, No, no, no, no, not at all. No, It's 1:58:56.840 --> 1:58:59.800 just Solomon was a man. He was a great fabulous 1:58:59.840 --> 1:59:03.400 to a great dreamer. But I never felt that I 1:59:03.400 --> 1:59:05.880 could count on the fact that if I would fly, 1:59:06.000 --> 1:59:07.720 if I was going to fly out to LA, would 1:59:07.880 --> 1:59:10.600 I would fly out under my own I mean, on 1:59:10.640 --> 1:59:13.520 my own money. But but I couldn't be certain that 1:59:13.560 --> 1:59:15.400 you would be in LA. So it's just as much 1:59:15.400 --> 1:59:17.200 as we talked about it, and we talked about it 1:59:17.240 --> 1:59:20.000 a lot. But the other thing was, I said, the 1:59:20.040 --> 1:59:22.280 only thing that would cause me to write another biography 1:59:22.880 --> 1:59:25.560 would be if Merle Haggart called, and if he said, 1:59:25.560 --> 1:59:28.320 you know, Pete, i've been reading some of the stuff 1:59:28.320 --> 1:59:31.800 you've written, and it's not too bad. You know, I 1:59:31.800 --> 1:59:34.440 think maybe we could do something together. And I know 1:59:34.600 --> 1:59:38.080 that I knew that this would have been not a 1:59:38.080 --> 1:59:41.160 disaster would have been very, very difficult to do, and 1:59:41.240 --> 1:59:44.120 yet I would have felt compelled to do it. So 1:59:44.120 --> 1:59:45.840 that's the kind of person that I mean. There's so 1:59:45.880 --> 1:59:50.400 many people that that that you know, deserve a real 1:59:50.480 --> 1:59:56.920 biography or just telling that story, just you know, giving it. 1:59:57.360 --> 1:59:59.960 It's not so much that it has to be defined 2:00:00.040 --> 2:00:04.840 into something. I mean, you know, biography is a biography, 2:00:04.880 --> 2:00:06.480 but it could just it could be a book, it 2:00:06.480 --> 2:00:08.960 could be a voice. It couldn't. Solomon's book would have 2:00:08.960 --> 2:00:11.200 been in his voice and it would have been incredible, 2:00:11.760 --> 2:00:15.320 but I couldn't get him to commit to it enough 2:00:15.480 --> 2:00:17.600 to make me believe that it was going to happen. 2:00:19.480 --> 2:00:22.280 Can you name a couple of music biographies that you 2:00:22.440 --> 2:00:25.920 feel strongly positive about that you didn't write, If there 2:00:25.920 --> 2:00:26.560 are any. 2:00:27.800 --> 2:00:31.120 I tell you I don't read much nonfiction, so it's 2:00:31.880 --> 2:00:38.080 I don't. I just read a wonderful book by Paul Birch, 2:00:38.120 --> 2:00:41.240 a musician named Paul Birch, called Ridy and Rising, which 2:00:41.320 --> 2:00:45.440 is a fictional biography of Jimmy Rodgers, and it's it's 2:00:45.520 --> 2:00:51.000 really uh uh in rapturing or it's just it's just 2:00:51.360 --> 2:00:53.760 a wonderful book. I know there are books I'm not 2:00:53.880 --> 2:00:57.160 thinking very We've been talking a long time, and I 2:00:57.160 --> 2:00:59.120 don't want to do an injustice to books. 2:00:59.480 --> 2:01:02.320 Well, let me shift the gears here. We only had 2:01:02.360 --> 2:01:05.640 a couple of minutes left. But since you're a reader 2:01:05.680 --> 2:01:10.280 of fiction, what are two of your favorite fiction books? 2:01:13.600 --> 2:01:17.160 Were two of my favorite writers? My favorite writer of 2:01:17.200 --> 2:01:21.080 alved I guess Chekhov would be up near the top, 2:01:21.120 --> 2:01:25.680 But of contemporary writers, Aliceman Rowe was for years and 2:01:25.800 --> 2:01:31.000 years my absolute favorite. And I would tell all the 2:01:31.040 --> 2:01:34.520 classes of the writing classes at Vanderbilt that she would 2:01:34.520 --> 2:01:37.880 never win a Nobel Prize, first because she was a woman, 2:01:37.880 --> 2:01:41.120 and second because she was a Canadian. But of course 2:01:41.160 --> 2:01:45.480 I was wrong. I have not gone back to her, 2:01:45.760 --> 2:01:50.360 to reading her since all these you know, the writing 2:01:50.400 --> 2:01:53.120 about her has come out, and that's not a fair thing. 2:01:53.160 --> 2:01:55.280 None of us are perfect, none of us. But it's 2:01:55.320 --> 2:01:59.600 just it's such an awful story, and it's my own failing. 2:01:59.600 --> 2:02:02.760 Perhaps I haven't gone, but she Another writer that I've 2:02:03.440 --> 2:02:09.800 read my enormously is Grace Paley, and she's somebody whom 2:02:09.840 --> 2:02:14.120 I knew very slightly, very slightly, but the voice that 2:02:14.200 --> 2:02:19.000 she achieves and the surprises that come from that voice 2:02:20.000 --> 2:02:22.960 and she wrote a fair amount of nonfiction towards the 2:02:23.000 --> 2:02:27.880 end of her life, and also very politically socially committed writing. 2:02:28.400 --> 2:02:32.040 And those were as good as but the little diservances 2:02:32.080 --> 2:02:34.360 a man enormous changes at the last minute. It's just 2:02:34.560 --> 2:02:38.360 fantastic books. There are so many. I really feel terrible 2:02:38.400 --> 2:02:40.000 and I'm not thinking of all these great books. 2:02:40.080 --> 2:02:42.120 No, no, no, no, that's good. There's a lot of great stuff. 2:02:42.240 --> 2:02:47.400 Let's wrap it up here. Elvis, Okay, Elvis dies in 2:02:47.520 --> 2:02:52.160 seventy seven. Certainly, for at least the first decade, all 2:02:52.200 --> 2:02:56.400 the tabloids are He's still alive, He's you know, somewhere whatever. 2:02:56.880 --> 2:03:00.560 They have the eldest character in Honeymoon in Vegas. Still 2:03:00.560 --> 2:03:08.120 have Elvis impersonators in Vegas. However, the audience that remembers 2:03:08.200 --> 2:03:12.440 the heyday of Elvis is dying off. And my understanding 2:03:12.800 --> 2:03:17.600 is that actually Elvis business is off. Memorabilia prices have dropped. 2:03:18.120 --> 2:03:23.280 What is the future of Elvis in Tom Parker in 2:03:23.320 --> 2:03:26.520 the national consciousness, will be a moment in time or 2:03:26.600 --> 2:03:27.240 is it forever? 2:03:29.440 --> 2:03:31.880 I don't know about merchandising. You'd have to talk to 2:03:31.960 --> 2:03:35.360 Colonel about that. That just doesn't enter into my into 2:03:35.400 --> 2:03:41.720 my consciousness. But you know, I would say that Elvis, 2:03:42.320 --> 2:03:47.080 Colonel Parker, Sam Phillips, Sam Cook there there, they're they're 2:03:47.120 --> 2:03:50.200 in eternity. I mean, they're as long as people care 2:03:50.320 --> 2:03:54.640 about music and or aren't. It doesn't you know, it's 2:03:54.680 --> 2:03:58.680 like talking about writers. I mean they you can go 2:03:58.800 --> 2:04:03.840 in or out of fashion. That really is not Robert 2:04:03.880 --> 2:04:09.280 Johnson took he died in thirty eight. He became an 2:04:09.280 --> 2:04:12.280 international icon in ninety. Look at John Donne, it took 2:04:12.320 --> 2:04:14.760 him three hundred years. Look at her in Melville. It 2:04:14.880 --> 2:04:18.160 just doesn't matter what the state of acceptance of somebody 2:04:18.280 --> 2:04:22.800 is at any given moment. I think that the impact 2:04:22.920 --> 2:04:28.080 of Elvis's voice, let's just talk about Elvis, is the 2:04:28.160 --> 2:04:33.560 same today in his best work as it was when 2:04:33.600 --> 2:04:36.240 he first arrived on the scene in nineteen fifty four, 2:04:36.360 --> 2:04:39.800 nineteen fifty five. It just there's no way to describe 2:04:39.840 --> 2:04:43.480 it exactly. Somebody like Jake Hess, the great lead singer 2:04:43.480 --> 2:04:47.280 for The Statesman, one of Elvis's idols, whom Elvis News 2:04:47.320 --> 2:04:48.920 from the time he was a little kid said about, 2:04:49.000 --> 2:04:53.120 and he's a much technically, he's a virtuosic singer, and 2:04:53.160 --> 2:04:56.320 he's a better singer in many ways than Elvis. But 2:04:56.360 --> 2:04:59.320 he said Elvis had something. It just reached people in 2:04:59.360 --> 2:05:02.080 a way that you simply can't define. And I would 2:05:02.120 --> 2:05:05.600 say that's what you know, Elvis fans today are going 2:05:05.680 --> 2:05:10.720 to have very different tastes. I mean, individuals always are 2:05:10.720 --> 2:05:12.400 going to have different tastes. If I tell you that 2:05:12.440 --> 2:05:14.880 one of my favorite songs is I need Somebody to 2:05:14.960 --> 2:05:17.120 lean on that, it's a sign that just kills me. 2:05:17.160 --> 2:05:19.360 Every time we're trying to get to you. That might 2:05:19.400 --> 2:05:21.480 not be what you know. Maybe somebody else is going 2:05:21.520 --> 2:05:23.680 to tell you it's burning love. But there is that 2:05:24.040 --> 2:05:30.200 direct impact, emotional conveyance that existed in Elvis's voice from 2:05:30.200 --> 2:05:33.360 the start, long before he developed his voice. I mean 2:05:33.480 --> 2:05:36.760 just from the start, and say, I think Sam Cook 2:05:36.960 --> 2:05:38.600 there are very few people who have that. I mean 2:05:38.640 --> 2:05:41.800 Sam Cook had it, whereas somebody like Johnny Taylor, who 2:05:41.840 --> 2:05:44.840 sounded just like Sam Cook didn't. And I think that's 2:05:44.880 --> 2:05:47.520 what continues to make the impact. And I just think 2:05:47.640 --> 2:05:51.240 art exists, you know, whether it's music or writing or 2:05:52.240 --> 2:05:56.040 theater or film, it exists in a realm outside of 2:05:56.080 --> 2:05:59.880 time if it's good enough, and the sales just don't 2:05:59.880 --> 2:06:03.360 anything to do whether it's continuing relevance. 2:06:04.400 --> 2:06:08.120 We've been talking to Peter Geroalnick his new book about 2:06:08.240 --> 2:06:14.000 Colonel Tom Parker. I have to say, generally speaking, to 2:06:14.040 --> 2:06:16.360 be a little bit extreme, but not much. I have 2:06:16.440 --> 2:06:19.960 no interest in Elvis because if you're a person of 2:06:20.000 --> 2:06:23.800 the Beatles of my age Boomer, Elvis was the enemy. 2:06:23.840 --> 2:06:29.200 Elvis was already you know in Hollywood, the Beatles come along, etc. 2:06:30.280 --> 2:06:33.320 Then of course we do get suspicious minds in the ghetto, 2:06:33.480 --> 2:06:36.480 which are good Top forty tracks. Then we have Elvis 2:06:36.480 --> 2:06:41.680 in Vegas. So ay, I went to Memphis, which is 2:06:41.720 --> 2:06:45.520 so different from Nashville, and I went to Graceland blew 2:06:45.600 --> 2:06:49.080 my mind. And without making a whole speech about that, 2:06:49.680 --> 2:06:52.960 I got your book, and I have to say two things. 2:06:53.560 --> 2:06:57.800 I am trying to read this very well reviewed biography 2:06:57.840 --> 2:07:03.120 of Robert Crumb. The information is there, but it's not 2:07:03.280 --> 2:07:08.120 an easy book to read. You are a good writer 2:07:08.440 --> 2:07:13.240 because the book is easy to read on the subject 2:07:13.280 --> 2:07:16.120 and it calls out you want to read it more 2:07:16.600 --> 2:07:19.760 certainly for those of us interested in music business. Just 2:07:19.800 --> 2:07:24.320 the managerial style of Colonel Tom Parker was amazing. And 2:07:24.360 --> 2:07:28.800 I had not read the first two books, and needless 2:07:28.800 --> 2:07:31.800 to say they're on my list because you go so 2:07:32.120 --> 2:07:35.520 deep and you make these characters come alive. In in addition, 2:07:35.560 --> 2:07:38.720 as a student of the game, you know you're peeling 2:07:38.760 --> 2:07:43.800 back the layers, revealing truth that were previously unknown because 2:07:43.800 --> 2:07:46.600 you've done this level of research. So this is not 2:07:46.680 --> 2:07:50.760 blowing smoke. I mean really, I was stunned, how interested 2:07:51.280 --> 2:07:55.520 and how fascinating the book was. I really have to 2:07:55.560 --> 2:07:57.880 give you credit, and I want to thank you Peter 2:07:58.000 --> 2:08:01.800 for taking this time to speak with my audi. Well. 2:08:01.840 --> 2:08:05.400 Thanks, I've really enjoyed it, and we certainly ranged Firefield 2:08:05.560 --> 2:08:09.480 to areas that I have rarely spoken about in an interview, 2:08:09.600 --> 2:08:13.080 although in real life I may have. But it's been fun. 2:08:13.120 --> 2:08:13.960 It's really been fun. 2:08:14.160 --> 2:08:15.880 Well, you know, you want to know where somebody is 2:08:15.920 --> 2:08:20.400 coming from informs what they do. Any event, till next time. 2:08:20.720 --> 2:08:22.240 This is Bob left Sex