Chapter 2

Professionally speaking, I think some historical perspective is required in order to demonstrate the extent of my youthful courage. Okay, let's go back to 1950.

By the way, I regard the entire 1950s as the most schizophrenic period in American history. On one side you had all the ex-GIs, guys with brush cuts who still did Army exercises and wore thin black ties and worked at IBM. Their wives wore too much lipstick and tried to act demur and were all closet alcoholics and popped diet pills. The whole thing was a powder keg that finally exploded around 1966. Ah, but that is a later chapter.

Alright, 1950. You know what was on the Hit Parade? Listen - 'My Foolish Heart', 'Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy', 'If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked A Cake', 'A Bushel and a Peck'. You wouldn't find more crap in a plugged outhouse. I hated that stuff and I still do. I can't stand songs that joke around, that try to be funny. You see, a beautiful melody is the closest you or I are ever going to get to a religious experience, so you better take it seriously. So when some peckerhead gets up there singing about a 'purple people eater' I really want to vomit down his throat. What kind of dung beetles listen to this shit? Please, give me their addresses so that I can torch their homes.

Sorry for the diversion. So there I was, sixteen years old, sitting in a Memphis recording studio, and Silly Sally Records wants to make me a star. And they start to drag out all of these horrible songs, saying, "Hey Dusty, this'd be great!" And they weren't great at all: they didn't make any sense to me.

You see, my head was full of all two kinds of music: first, the wonderful blues that I'd been hearing - guys like Bill Big Broonzy and Blind Lemon Jefferson - white people called it 'race music'. My other love was country music (it was called 'cowboy music' back then) - that's what I was raised on in Tennessee. So I thought that it would sound great - at least to me - if I could combine the two, like a cocktail. A mongrel is always stronger than a purebred.

But I had a problem - everyone said it was a horrible idea. They said it was like trying to mix oil and water. But I pushed and clawed and eventually they said okay, we'll treat it as a novelty record, and we're not paying you any money and we have to record the album in two days - so that's what happened.

People keep saying that I invented rock and roll. Unfortunately it's true. I say unfortunately because what you know today as rock and roll has absolutely nothing to do with me, and if it does, it's like this wonderful child you've raised that suddenly gets a spike in its head and wants a sex change. Because that's what rock has become. Think for a second of Little Richard, or Elvis, or Eddie Cochran, or Jerry Lee Lewis - then jump ahead - to what? Rock doesn't exist today. Bruce Springsteen was my last hope, but then he started to think that he was Bob Dylan, and it was all over. But again I digress, but only slightly.

I guess the thing that really bugs me is that I could have started the rock movement even sooner. You see, my album, 'Let's Have A Really Good Time', could have been released in 1950 instead of 1953. But - and this is very typical of my career - they lost the tape! All twelve songs. True story. Some bonehead engineer actually lost the finished, mixed tape. We looked everywhere for that goddam thing.

To keep the money coming in I would sing at all of these fleabag bars and resorts. And the people usually hated me because I was performing this new hybrid of music. They'd shout out, 'Hey, how about some Hank Williams'. So I'd yell back stuff like, 'Isn't it sad when cousins marry?' or similar put-downs. And it hardened me up. I became more resolved to do what I wanted to do - and screw the rest of them. Needless to say, I played a lot of one-night stands.

(By the way, I met Hank Williams in 1952. He was skinny, drunk, mean and talented, and compared to these so-called 'new' country artists, he was - and is - truly a divine force. But nobody gives a hot shit anymore about 'the music'; they have been suckered into 'the package'. Do you really think that a man as ugly as Abe Lincoln could get elected today? Impossible).

Then, for once, I got a break and someone finally they found the tape. This nimrod secretary had been using it as a doorstop; she said to me, "I found it on a chair, listened to it, and thought it was just garbled noise." You see, that's the kind of crap I had to endure.

'Let's Have A Really Good Time' was released in February, 1953. It caused a minor sensation. A lot of people were listening to it, talking about it, writing about it. I went on television, the Milton Berle Show, and it power-boosted the whole thing. The hit single 'You Are My Angel', stayed in the billboard top ten for something like three months. But remember, the term 'rock and roll' hadn't been invented yet. (Come to think of it, the term 'teenager' was never heard).

The best thing about my fame is that it came to me when I was young and single. For a young, well-adjusted man, there is nothing in this world better than having a large group of women eager to have sex with him - aside from actually having sex. I suppose this applies to men of any age. I used to stay at the Waldorf-Asortia in New York City, and almost every day a gaggle of broads used to huddle by the entrance, praying for a glimpse of me. Do I miss it? Of course I do. Only a moron - some guy that's trying to appear wise and peaceful - would say the opposite.

Okay, Milton Berle.

In 1948, Berle got a job hosting the 'Texaco Star Theatre' on NBC. He was just supposed to be an occasional host, but he was so good at it, that they kept him on as the main attraction. Everybody was watching Milton Berle. To get a shot on his show meant that you had a pretty good chance at achieving some kind of fleeting stardom. I had an aunt who was a freelance talent scout for NBC, and she persuaded them to at least take a listen to my stuff. Naturally they all thought it stunk. (I could write a thick book on the stupidity of television executives, but I'm sure you all know about that scene only too well).

However, my fame was undeniable. So Berle's people called me up and said, why not sing your song, your hit, 'You Are My Angel'.

Well I did sing it. The TV audience loved me. Berle was a smart man, and with me he saw a chance in attracting a younger audience. So he invited me back a few times. The problem was that he wanted me to keep singing the same song. So I'd slow down 'Angel', I'd speed it up; I'd sing it with just a piano, then with an orchestra. Finally, by about the fifth appearance, I'd had had enough, and I started to sing stuff like 'Blue Moon', just to demonstrate my unique vocal stylings. Berle didn't like that and he began to get really irate. He was a screamer, and I used to dread him walking into my dressing room before a show and just yelling like a bastard for ten minutes, saying stuff like, "Oh, big Dusty man wants to do other songs now, does he? Oh, such a talented big boy." A real prick. Plus, they wanted me to dress up in all of these 'youthful' clothes, like shorts and college sweaters - and I just hated it. I've always felt most at home in a tuxedo, but Berle used to say that I was only 'pretending' to be a grown-up.

Anyway, that's about when the drugs started. You see, what these so-called 'substance abuse experts' never really understand about drugs is this: although you may initially take drugs to feel cool or happy or energetic or whatever, you continue taking them just to feel 'normal'. I don't know what overcame me, but I do know that I was in a lot of pain - real mental anguish. And I still say that there is nothing wrong in taking drugs to kill pain. I mean, that's pharmaceuticals, a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States. So that's what I did. I wanted to feel normal again, and not like some kind of goofy boy wonder with a stacked pompadour, dressed in a red football sweater and pressed slacks.

Around this time another cut from my album, called 'Thinkin' 'Bout Somethin' Stupid' was getting a lot of airplay. Like, I was a bona fide star, so why couldn't these vaudeville wash-ups like Berle recognize this fact and at least give me my own section of the show? But no, they just wanted the 'teen' Dusty, the cute, eager-faced Dusty. And baby, that wasn't me - and it never was.

Also, I was beginning to hear 'rock and roll' coming over 'black' radio stations. Actually, it wasn't really rock and roll; it was blues sped up. But then I heard 'white' stations, mostly in the south, cranking out the style that I had pioneered, and this really upset me. I knew that somehow, I had to lay claim to my invention, and that wasn't going to happen as a 'guest teen singer' on the Milton Berle show.

So I got deeper into drugs - which seemed like a good idea at the time: it just felt right. The inevitable night came when I went on Berle's stage (and remember, it was all live TV), drunk and drugged, and had a little accident involving an extended belch.

Well, it was bad news. Overnight I became a leper. Berle went berserk and had to be hospitalized for stress. Screw him, the goddam dinosaur. The radio stations smashed up my albums and the concert promoters took me off tours. All because of one belch. You see, this is my big problem with America: why do we want our idols to be plastic? You go over to France or England, and they don't give ratshit if your hair is messy or you chip a tooth. But over here, if you show one little dimension of your personality that doesn't fit their preconceptions, then they really despise you, they feel cheated or something: for me, that's when a person begins to get interesting.

After the Berle burp incident, I had a pretty rough time. All of these people who claimed to be my friends just vanished like smoke in a windstorm. I was too scary to attract the teen crowd, and too young to interest the Sinatra fans. A real oddball. I can remember sleeping on the beach at Coney Island, waking up and watching the seagulls sail across the sunny blue sky, and wondering if I'd ever have that kind of freedom - just to fly wherever the clouds would push me.

It took a few weeks to stop feeling sorry for myself. I decided that I would follow my heart and my talent - and that meant singing. But there didn't seem to be any place for me in the America of 1954. But then something happened that made rock and roll - my struggling invention - suddenly acceptable and exciting to a worldwide audience. And that something was named Elvis Presley.