Elvis in Las Vegas Page #2

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# I'll make you feel at home In my little beach shack... #

I said, "Colonel, the songs are not that great."

I said, "The songs are weak songs."

He said, "Well, what do we care, George? You get me 1 million,

"you can pick the songs. We don't care."

"But Colonel, what about the big picture down the road?"

"We'll worry about that later."

And when songwriters Lieber and Stoller tried to intercede with better material for Elvis,

they got short shrift.

The Colonel said if you ever dared try to interfere

in the career of Elvis Presley, you'll never work again in Hollywood,

New York or anywhere else in the world.

That was the response.

And it was, I guess,

among other things, shortly after that we just stopped writing for Elvis.

But Hollywood offered some compensation for Elvis and his entourage.

Being with Elvis anywhere where he's making a picture

is really great cos everybody comes around, it's very exciting

and the scenery wasn't too bad either, by that I mean the young ladies out to watch Elvis.

It was my job to go and invite them back to the hotel for a party after shooting that day

if Elvis wanted to have a party.

It was probably the best you could ever get being with Elvis Presley

shooting a movie, you couldn't beat it.

I don't think I before or ever since

ever seen that much...

things around!

When I say things, it's not all women, but cars, money...

It's almost like he could walk on water, it was amazing.

You couldn't do anything wrong.

Elvis was a woman's man.

He always had women around.

But Elvis had that duality

in that perspective too.

He wanted someone at home, like Priscilla,

then he wanted to be on the road and have the flexibility

and the access to women.

That was just who he was.

But Elvis needed more than a little help from friends

to see him through a gruelling routine of all-night parties

and the tedium of fulfilling the Colonel's demands for 29 movies

in just 7 years.

Elvis was an insomniac.

When he was in the army, he had to be up every day.

He had to be physically ready to go.

And this created a problem, I think that's where it started.

It was easier if he had something to go to sleep at night.

But then he had to have something to wake up.

# Here comes Santa Claus Here comes Santa Claus

# Right down Santa Claus Lane... #

His hectic life in Hollywood made it hard for Elvis to settle into family holidays,

however idyllic they appeared,

with adoring wife and newborn child.

To counter Elvis's restlessness,

and need for a new challenge,

Colonel came up with an old-fashioned scheme

for the Christmas of '68.

Colonel Parker said to Elvis one day, "You wanna do a Christmas special.

"The good thing is, we do one, they'll play it every year at Christmas time."

See, Colonel was the business guy.

The 33 year old Elvis had never yet contradicted his manager.

But all that changed when he heard the Colonel planned to televise him

crooning family Christmas songs.

He got support from the show's director to reveal more of himself.

I think at the time I met with Elvis,

regarding his career, he was really frightened

and scared stiff of failing.

I think this whole idea

pushing him into television was real scary to him

because he thought... as he said to me, "I've been away from an audience for years,

"I've just been making all these movies."

# You lookin' for trouble?

# You came to the right place

# You lookin' for trouble?

# Just look right at my face

# I was born standin' up

# And talkin' back... #

This sultry, leather-clad image

was not at all what the Colonel had in mind.

Colonel said, "Binder, it's been called to my attention

"we don't have any Christmas songs in this show."

And I said, "Yeah."

He said, "Well, Elvis wants Christmas songs in the show.

"Isn't that right, Elvis?"

And Elvis was standing next to me and he wouldn't move a muscle.

He was standing, to me, like a child would stand,

being reprimanded by the teacher or his parents.

He sort of mumbled, "That's right, Colonel."

As we're walking down the hall, Elvis jammed me in the ribs and said,

"Screw 'em." We'd go right on with what we had planned, ignoring him, basically.

But he never confronted the Colonel and said what he felt.

The beauty of it was, it was the first time anybody had ever seen the real Elvis Presley.

I kept all that stuff in the programme, all the making fun of himself,

the movies he had made, where he kept quivering his lip.

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

But up to the moment the show aired on network TV,

Elvis was uncertain whether Binder or the Colonel was right.

We watched it air that night.

Nothing was said.

He watched it so intensely,

as if he'd never seen it before.

Leg was shaking, bottled water drinking constantly.

And a smile would go on his face a little bit. The phone would ring.

He felt like, my God, I did it.

This is gonna be a whole new Elvis again.

The show became NBC's highest-rated programme of the year.

I think the '68 special was important to Elvis

because, first of all, it proved to him that again, it wasn't

publicity that made him the superstar that he became.

But it was really because of his talent.

So he believed in himself again.

# Well since my baby left me

# I've found a new place to dwell

# It's down at the end of Lonely Street at

# Heartbreak Hotel

# I've never been so lonely, baby

# I've been so lonely

# I've been so lonely I could die... #

Elvis had triumphed on television

but during the years he had been cocooned by the Colonel in Hollywood,

the music world around him had been turned on its head.

Following the British invasion,

the group sound was in and solo artists were mostly out.

# Roll up for the mystery tour

# Roll up... #

Elvis thought maybe the days of the solo performer were over.

And he said that I was the only one, at that time,

that was doing it, so it was giving him confidence to sing live again.

He came to Vegas in '68 to watch me work.

# Show me a woman that's got a good man... #

Seeing me and hearing me sing live and moving,

with the body movements, which were similar to what Elvis had done

and was still doing.

So he wanted to see it and hear it firsthand, in Vegas.

# Oh, though it's always crowded

# You still can find some room... #

Elvis was ready for the next step - playing to a live audience.

Something he hadn't done for almost eight years.

Arriving in Las Vegas, he was still unsure,

recalling his first big failure there in '56.

He was really concerned if they were still gonna accept him here.

Colonel said, "Elvis, don't worry about it. You'll be accepted.

"I'll put it this way - everyone in this town will know you're playing here."

Colonel announced to America that Elvis would be opening

at the 2,000 seat theatre in the nearly completed International Hotel.

It was the first of a new generation of high-rise hotels

that would transform the landscape and economy of that city.

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