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