Elvis in Las Vegas

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# Bright light city, gonna set my soul

# Gonna set my soul on fire... #

In the years before he opened in Las Vegas,

both Elvis and the city had sunk to a low ebb.

He, stuck in a mire of banal movies.

Vegas, recovering from decades of mob rule.

But all that would change when Elvis arrived in 1969

at the International Hotel.

There was a coolness factor, a hip factor that I think Las Vegas obtained

because of Elvis being here and changing the image of the city.

It was a marriage made in heaven.

Marrying Elvis with Vegas was the master plan of Colonel Tom Parker,

his manager.

Yet their moment of triumph had the seeds of destruction.

Elvis realised he needed the Colonel.

And the Colonel was a very forthright person.

You had two very powerful personalities.

# Viva Las Vegas With your neon flashing

# And your one armed bandits... #

He loved being Elvis Presley, there's no doubt about that.

But he loved it when he was great, he loved himself, loved his music.

Loved everything that he was doing. Who could blame him?

But I think he started to dislike himself,

and lost his desire to be Elvis Presley.

# So if your baby leaves

# And you got a tale to tell

# Just take a walk down Lonely Street to

# Heartbreak Hotel... #

Elvis reinvented would become the most adored

and caricatured performer in the world.

And the story began in Vegas.

# So lonely you could die... #

# I've been travellin' over miles... #

The rocky love affair between Elvis and Vegas began 13 years earlier

when he first arrived in the city, aged 21.

It was 1956 and the Nevada sands around Las Vegas

were an open-air testing ground.

BLAST RUMBLES:

It was a city of only 50,000 people yet it was a daunting prospect

for Elvis and his band.

We were a little afraid of going in there in the first place.

We were new,

a bunch of hillbillies from Tennessee.

What do we know about Vegas?

# The autumn leaves...

# Drift by my window... #

They were 50 and 60 year old people.

They were eating their 100 steaks in the main room.

Drinking their 50 drinks and all that stuff.

They don't want to hear that racket we were making.

So I guess it turned them off.

# Blue suede shoes...

# You can do anything but get off of my blue suede shoes. #

Elvis bombed.

It was his first big setback.

It didn't happen for him in the '50s in Vegas.

They were not ready for rock'n'roll.

Liberace was playing there and Elvis has pictures with Liberace,

cos he was the big one then in Vegas.

Elvis's manager learned plenty from this first false step.

Just one year earlier, he'd helped create the world's first rock'n'roll star

with a mixture of inspiration and guile.

He knew the importance of packaging.

The Colonel was good at reinventing Elvis.

I don't care what people say about him, a lot of people didn't like the old man,

but he was good at what he was doing and he took care of business.

He didn't take any prisoners.

"I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Take it or leave it"

And they had to take it cos he had the power and Elvis.

The Colonel, he was shrewd.

# Meet me tonight in dreamland... #

Parker had learned his trade in the East coast fairgrounds,

among the salesmen, card sharps and tricksters.

The Colonel learned to read people on the carnival.

You have a split second. That's all.

You don't have time

to learn to know a person

when you're a carnie.

He was able to gauge people within a few minutes of being around them.

# You ain't nothin' but a hound dog

# Cryin' all the time... #

The Colonel beamed his formidable marketing skills

at the teenage audience, who would later follow the mature Elvis

to Vegas.

But first, to take his 23 year old rock'n'roll star

into every suburb and city across America.

Colonel turned to the power of Hollywood.

The Colonel played different studios against one another,

with the result that the 31 films Elvis made over the next decade

would be worth many millions.

To both of them.

# He lays down beats like a ton of coal

# He goes by the name of King Creole

# He's gone, gone, gone... #

Elvis's early Hollywood movies broke box office records.

Colonel was wisely approving scripts the cashed in on Elvis's rebellious rock'n'roll image.

# When the king starts to do it it's as good as done

# He holds his guitar like a Tommy gun

# He starts to growl down in his throat

# He bends that string and that's all she wrote

# He's gone, gone, gone... #

At first, the movies were great, they were fun.

Elvis looked forward to them.

# Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone... #

Jailhouse Rock was a really good rock'n'roll movie.

Elvis had an edge to himself, tough guy type situation and picture.

#..the purple gang Let's rock

# Everybody, let's rock

# Everybody in the whole cell block

# Was dancin' to the jailhouse rock... #

At first I didn't realise how good he was.

As we came to spend more time

working with him, we realised that he had tremendous range.

Not just in terms of the octaves but in terms of the emotional quality.

He was a beautiful singer.

# Everybody in the whole cell block

# Was dancin' to the jailhouse rock... #

Elvis's budding film career was put on hold by his call-up

for military service in Germany.

He left Colonel to develop his latest master plan,

to create Elvis the Hollywood pin-up.

Away in Germany,

Elvis absorbed a range of music,

from opera to blues.

And met teenage Priscilla, his bride-to-be.

# Ho-o-old me close, hold me tight

# Make me thrill with delight... #

After he returned from Germany in 1960,

they settled into Graceland and a home in Palm Springs.

# I want you, I need you

# I love you... #

They eventually married in Las Vegas

in a secretly-arranged ceremony at the Aladdin Hotel.

# Every time that you're near

# All my cares disappear... #

Of course, the Colonel invited the world's press to record this intimate event.

# I need you, I want you... #

To remould him as a romantic lead, not just for the tabloids,

but up on the movie screen, Colonel had already signed Elvis

for a string of money-spinning Hollywood roles

that lasted throughout the '60s.

Elvis wanted to make better movies.

But the Colonel kept telling him,

"Elvis, we're getting 1 million up front,

"50% of the picture and star billing.

"We've got an album from the picture.

"We're doing pretty dog-gone good. "

# Moo-moo here, moo-moo there

# Oink-oink here, oink-oink there... #

Elvis wanted to be an actor, do serious movies,

some comedies.

He didn't want to do musicals every time.

But that's what they did. Elvis riding a horse,

or singing to a cow, something like that.

That eventually got to Elvis.

DUCK QUACKS:

You take the rebel

and you make him the boy next door.

Elvis was not the boy next door.

I think Elvis found he had a choice

to creatively walk around with a chip on his shoulder

and be angry all the time or just try to go along with the program as best he could.

# In my beach shack

# Baby, we'll be alone

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