The Colonel (50 page)

Though Parker was constantly renegotiating Elvis’s contract with RCA—the latest deal was for the budget Camden label, yet even then he finagled improved royalties—his first
foray into new money came in July 1971, when he took Presley into Del Webb’s Sahara Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada.

The engagement, where orchestra leader Joe Guercio debuted Richard Strauss’s
Also Sprach Zarathustra
as the singer’s introduction on stage, was a raging success. Parker had
figured out a way to put eight people at a table that normally seated four, which allowed Elvis to break the showroom’s attendance record. One month before, the Hilton hotel chain had taken
over the International in a 50 percent partnership with Kerkorian and Shoofey, renaming it the Las Vegas Hilton. The Colonel would soon use Elvis’s Tahoe numbers, plus the fact that he had
negotiated a fee of $300,000 for two weeks, to cut a new deal with Henri Lewin, the Las Vegas Hilton’s new executive vice president of hotel and casino operations, and Barron Hilton
himself.

Lewin, a German Jew whose family fled the Nazis, already seemed to
be in Parker’s corner, throwing him a surprise sixty-second birthday party that June. Their first
meeting came five hours after Hilton took over the hotel, the Colonel flying in from Palm Springs. Lewin had been nervous: Parker had a clause in his contract that stipulated that if the hotel were
sold, he and Elvis were free to go elsewhere.

“The Colonel said, ‘I did business with Kerkorian, I liked him, and I have no reason not to trust that you will be as good or better,’ ” Lewin remembered years later.
And, as a measure of honor, the Colonel accepted the same contract. “Elvis was always paid more than we paid anybody else . . . and he was still the cheapest. We made more money paying him
more than paying somebody else less. You shake hands with the Colonel, you can forget worry.”

But as Parker loved Las Vegas, and he and Elvis were becoming synonymous with the town, Presley was growing tired of the seven-days-a-week, two-shows-a-night grind, so demanding both physically
and mentally. At first, remembers Jerry Schilling, “it was great. But going in about the third year, there was no challenge . . . it was the same songs, and the same audience, and we stayed
up all night, and slept all day. We didn’t see sunlight for a couple months. What was once exciting and fun became dark and angry.”

“Elvis was mad,” says Lamar Fike. “He didn’t want to do it anymore. He said, ‘I want out of this place. I don’t want to come back.’ As a consequence,
this seething cauldron of hate built up in Las Vegas.”

A month after Tahoe, in August 1971, Elvis opened his summer festival at the Las Vegas Hilton to poor reviews.
The Hollywood Reporter
found Elvis “drawn, tired, and noticeably
heavier,” and the show “occasionally monotonous, often silly, and haphazardly coordinated.” Still the fans came, to the point that Parker added an additional show per day to
accommodate the overflow crowds. But the strain was too much—on the sixth day, Elvis cut a show short, complained of the flu, and consulted an ear, nose, and throat specialist, Dr. Sidney
Boyer, who, like Thomas “Flash” Newman, would remain in his stable of Vegas physicians.

By the last night, he felt strong enough to close the show wearing a heavy rhinestone-and-jewel-encrusted cape, thrusting his arms in a dramatic stance that would become a hallmark of his
performances. But the press preferred to report on Elvis’s illness and daily doctors’ visits.

“He didn’t have breathing room,” says Alex Shoofey. “It was a continuous thing. I even said to the Colonel one time, ‘Give him a breather, Colonel, gosh! He needs a
little rest.’ He said, ‘Oh, he’s young, don’t
worry. He loves every moment of it.’ I think he could have let up a little, given him a little
more time off.”

“Nobody goes to Vegas and plays four weeks anymore—they do five days, tops,” explains Lamar Fike. “And Elvis had such a high-energy show that when he would do an honest
hour and fifteen minutes twice a night, he was so tired he was cross-eyed. That’s why he took that stuff, to keep him going. And because he was bored. Bored to tears.”

According to Henri Lewin, Parker spoke to Vernon about his son’s condition. “I was there when Colonel Parker pleaded with Vernon Presley, and then they both pleaded with Elvis to
understand the importance of taking care of his personal life.”

But Parker continued to weigh his options. With his gambling debts mounting, and Presley becoming more unpredictable, the Colonel apparently, in the fall of 1971, considered selling
Elvis’s contract to Gordon Mills, the flamboyant manager of Tom Jones. Items to that effect appeared in the American and British press, and an exchange of correspondence between Mills and the
Colonel’s office concerning a denial of discussions suggests that such talks had, in fact, happened. Later, John Moran, Jones’s publicist, confirmed it to Marty Lacker.

The newspapers were more concerned, however, about rumors that Elvis and Priscilla were estranged. As Presley began another tour that November—Elvis replacing the Imperials with J. D.
Sumner and the Stamps Quartet, and Parker substituting comedian Jackie Kahane for the alcoholic Sammy Shore—the singer became less guarded about his dalliances with other women. Within
months, his marriage would be in tatters.

For quite a while, Presley had been getting reports that Priscilla was dating her karate instructor, Mike Stone. The maid at the Presleys’ new house in California told Red West that Stone
spent too much time there, and three-year-old Lisa Marie blew the whistle on the pair when she mentioned they’d “wrestled” in a sleeping bag on a camping trip. Then Sonny West
caught them in the shower together and told Elvis.

The showdown came during Presley’s engagement at the Hilton in February 1972, when Priscilla owned up to the affair, railed against their surreal, life-in-a-bubble existence, and asked for
a divorce. Elvis, humiliated and enraged, forced her to have sex in an episode that, according to Priscilla, bordered on rape. Later, he would ask her to reconsider breaking the marriage, but as
Priscilla eventually made him understand, it had ended long ago, largely from his own indifference.

Throughout such turmoil, the Colonel had more practical matters on
his mind. As Elvis performed in the Hilton showroom, Parker sat in his fourth-floor suite of six rooms
and offices and mused about something that the new RCA president Rocco Laginestra had casually mentioned—an innovative technology that allowed for live satellite broadcast around the world.
Elvis had again been making noises about wanting to go to Europe to perform, citing the number of letters he got from foreign fans.

“I’m working on it,” Parker grumbled. But before long, when the Colonel was offered $500,000 for six concerts in London, he’d repeat that the venues weren’t large
enough overseas—an unlikely explanation, considering Wembley and a myriad of soccer stadiums, though he insisted Elvis himself balked at playing outdoor arenas. Sometimes the Colonel would
reiterate that security would be a problem, since European fans were wilder in their adoration, or say simply that the money wasn’t right. “[Elvis] wanted to take all of his troupe with
him and his own orchestra,” Parker offered years later. “When we checked out the possibilities where he could play, he could sell out and [still] lose money.”

But, of course, they were never going to Europe, and not just because Parker had no passport. The Colonel was worried about Elvis’s stamina; Dr. Nichopoulos had to accompany him on all the
tours now. And Parker wasn’t sure what kinds of drugs Elvis was taking, lately hearing rumors of cocaine use. If Elvis got sick, or customs found some illegal substance, the Colonel
wouldn’t be able to keep it out of the papers. The risk was simply too great.

Yet if Parker understood it correctly, with the new satellite, Elvis could “tour” the globe in one concert, without ever leaving the States. Such a coup—the first entertainment
special broadcast live around the world—would help keep the boy on top and in the news, and maybe lift him from his funk. The Colonel tore a piece of the old International stationery in half
and started making a to-do list (“Clearances needed on songs”). In bold handwriting, with numbers still reminiscent of the European style, he jotted down the costs (backup musicians,
rehearsal room) and posed some questions: “RCA makes contracts with talent or do we?”

Laginestra loved the idea of an Elvis satellite tour, especially as Parker had already planned to stage it from Hawaii, the site of so many successful Presley ventures. But Laginestra
didn’t like dealing with the Colonel personally, and so he handed him off to others in the company, particularly Mel Ilberman, the head of U.S. Operations, who admired Parker (“He was a
big friend of mine. . . . He was always honest with me”) and tried to keep him happy.

As part of that goodwill endeavor, the label agreed to set up a concert promotion company. That was something the Colonel had been after for years, and a coup RCA’s
Joe Galante calls “a brilliant move, because he had now taken the company’s resources and focused them solely on his act.” Though the agreement included Management III, Parker, in
effect, controlled everything, with the help of RCA’s George Parkhill and Pat Kelleher of the label’s promotion department. Their first tour under the new umbrella would begin in
April.

The frugal Dutchman pinched every penny—paying a promoter in Tennessee only $1,000 to handle ticket sales—and would continue to do so throughout Elvis’s touring years. When
keyboardist Tony Brown joined the band two years later, he was surprised to find that the musicians had to buy tickets for their guests, and that the Elvis show had no catering backstage of any
kind, in comparison with lesser stars who provided full meals and liquor.

“We finally demanded that we get some soft drinks, and eventually, they started putting a trash can in our dressing room with Cokes and Pepsis and 7UPs, but that was it. Occasionally, the
Colonel would get on the bus and walk down the aisle and give everybody a ten-dollar bill for dinner. Of course, once he left, there was all kinds of snickering and sarcastic
remarks—‘Where you havin’ dinner?’—that kind of stuff.” Anyone who was late for the bus was fined a dollar a minute.

By now, the Colonel could clearly see that touring was a bigger source of revenue than even Elvis’s movies. On February 4, 1972, a week after he signed the joint venture with RCA, he
presented a new contract to Elvis. Parker was changing his basic management fee, he explained. After expenses, which included agency commissions, the profits from the tours would now be split two
thirds for Elvis and one third for Parker.

“There were a lot of things that maybe the Colonel didn’t collect on like he should have,” defends Lamar Fike. But only the Colonel really understood what constituted
“expenses” and what was “net.”

“People talk about the fifty percent and other outrageous splits, but there were times when the Colonel took it all,” says Joe Shane. “He was hiding the fact that he was going
through Elvis’s money. To see him negotiate deals for concerts was just unbelievable. A promoter would say, ‘I want to do ten dates in the Midwest,’ and the Colonel would say,
‘Okay, I’ll take a million dollars up front and half of it in cash before you sell the first ticket.’ And he’d get it. He always wanted the cash. The truth was, he needed
it.”

L
ATE
in March 1972, the Colonel told the Las Vegas Hilton that Elvis would soon begin making his second
MGM documentary concert film (
Elvis On Tour
) and would therefore be unavailable for the rest of the year. In truth, the movie would be completed in less than two months, and Parker’s
announcement was little more than a ploy to revise Presley’s Vegas contract.

To up the ante, he hinted—by denying rumors to the effect—that in a year or so he might move Elvis to Kirk Kerkorian’s MGM Grand Hotel, then under construction. The Hilton
caved: in April, the hotel agreed to pay Elvis $130,000 a week for the next two engagements and $150,000 a week for the following three. Parker, as a consultant to the hotel chain, would also be
paid $50,000 a year for the next three years.

For Elvis’s summer tour, commencing in June, the Colonel engaged the Clanton Ross Advertising Agency of Tampa. The Ross was Bob Ross, - Marie’s forty-seven-year old son, who suffered
from the early stages of multiple sclerosis. A year before, Ross and his wife had divorced, and Bob was now dating Sandra Polk, a spirited Tampa native seventeen years his junior who often flew to
Las Vegas with her cousin to attend - Elvis’s shows. Though Parker’s relationship with Ross had always been tentative, the Colonel helped him receive top medical care through friends in
Houston. He also continued to throw him business. Bob’s agency designed some of Elvis’s album covers, posters, and billboards, and before long, Parker would give him lucrative
advertising accounts for other big stars whose managers the Colonel befriended.

The advertising for the summer ’72 tour held particular sway, as Elvis would play three shows at Madison Square Garden beginning June 9. Parker had deliberately kept his client out of
Manhattan, other than for television appearances in the ’50s, fearing he might not fill a large arena
in such a cosmopolitan area. Now, however, much had changed.
Ticket sales for the New York engagement were so brisk that Parker added a fourth appearance, making Elvis the first performer to sell out four consecutive shows at the Garden, with grosses at
$730,000.

Elvis had always been anxious about New York, remembering the stinging remarks of a cynical media that had dismissed him so cruelly at the start of his career. But the counterculture rebel of
the ’50s was now an establishment darling of the ’70s, just as Parker had planned. At a press conference between rehearsals, a confident, relaxed Elvis, dressed in a flashy, high-collar
blue jacket, bounded out to a bank of microphones and, with quick, good-natured humor, deflected questions as easily as swatting softballs over a fence. When a woman asked about his image as a shy,
humble country boy, Elvis smiled. “Ah, I don’t know what makes ’em say that,” he said with a slight stutter, and then stood and pulled back his jacket to reveal the gaudy
gold belt given to him by the International. Elvis won a laugh for his trouble, and Parker, standing by in a - rube’s straw hat, scanned the reporters’ faces and knew the coverage would
be good.