Elvis Presley was just a dumb, good-looking hillbilly who knew how to sing. That’s it. Don’t go deeper. And I mean dumb. His brain didn’t work right. He couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than ten seconds, tops – just enough to sign an autograph or eat a pork sandwich.

Then why has so much been written and said about this man? Because in the music business, brains has nothing to do with success. In fact, professional musicians are among the biggest collection of non-institutionalized pinheads on the planet. (There are a few exceptions – Duke Ellington comes to mind, but the brain behind him was Billy Strayhorn – whom I met once in a New York City coffee shop writing out music charts at 4 a.m.). I mean, I used to feel like Einstein when I walked into a recording studio because I was the only one who wasn’t drooling in a cup.

As for me, I got my education in the streets, which, I admit, is not the best school. I’ve survived because I have the instincts of a wounded ferret – you just crawl under a shed until the Big Man passes by.

Anyway, to take it a step further, the smarter you are, the worse you will do as a popular musician: in reality, popularity is directly proportional to stupidity. Just watch any music awards show: everything is cast at a grade three level. Everyone is inarticulate and jabbering like chimps on raw Benzedrine. Or suffer MTV for a while, especially their so-called ‘interviews’. It’s all high-five ‘attitude’ bullshit. There’s no content. Morons are not interesting, even if they know how to dress – which these people don’t. The women look like shagged-out hookers from a lumber camp, and the men look like rejects from the Clearsil lab.

Okay, point made. Back to poor old Elvis Presley. I first met him on the Milton Berle Show in 1955. Everybody knows the story about Colonel Tom Parker asking me to take over Elvis’ management, and me saying no. Well, it’s true, I regret it, but I don’t seriously regret it because it would have meant a lifetime of changing Presley’s diapers and giving up my career. Enough said.

I didn’t immediately like Elvis; he just wasn’t very intriguing – he only spoke about his fat momma or food or motorcycles – I mean, the man was limited. But I got close to him on account of Milton Berle. I already told you that Berle was a mean bastard: if you weren’t old vaudeville or Hollywood royalty, he would treat you like a chunk of dung. In 1955, I was getting to be a big shot and Elvis was just a lucky truck driver from Tennessee. So I kind of protected Elvis from Berle’s verbal abuse.

Years later at Graceland, Elvis told me that if it wasn’t for my kindness, he would have quit show business right then and there. I wouldn’t call myself a kind person; I just don’t like to see young people getting pushed around. Being naïve and dumb are not crimes, and anyone under twenty-five is naïve and dumb. In fact, it sickens me today when I see these goddam baby boomers, all worried because their children are smoking dope and having pre-marital sex. But that’s exactly what they did in 1965! So why can’t their kids have the same fun?

The whole Hippy thing created the most self-centred, self-indulgent group of spineless crybabies this world has ever seen. Recently I was reading Grace Slick’s autobiography, ‘Somebody to Love?’ and although I count her as a friend, I want to read about her having sex with Jim Morrison about as badly as I want to get a nail through my scrotum. I mean, she’s given this wonderful opportunity to really get at the 1960s thing and instead she gushes on about Morrison’s ‘member’? (Speaking of ‘members’, I knew one of the ‘Plaster Casters’, a group of girls who ran around in the 60s making casts of rock star’s privates, and she showed me her collection - which included Morrison, Hendrix and Johnny Winter – but more on that later).

Presley and I were from different camps, or maybe we were too similar – I don’t know, but we never developed a deep friendship. He had a beautiful voice. Just listen to him on that 1968 ‘Comeback Special’ singing ‘One Night With You’. That’s the epitome of rock music – you can’t top it. No special effects, no rehearsal – just a guy, a guitar and three chords howling at the moon.

When Presley really broke loose, about 1956, I felt kind of cheated because he used a lot of my ideas and style. And then I thought, shit, that’s showbiz, someone steals from someone else and that’s the way it goes. However, my rage did tip me into the one of the most violent alcohol/drug binges ever recorded by major newspaper. This is from the Las Vegas Sun, December 14, 1956:

CARR CLAIMS HE IS ‘CHAINED TO THE PAIN’

Okay, at this point I’m supposed to say, ‘oh what a wild boy I was and much I’ve matured since then’. You want me to say I’ve changed and that I feel ashamed of my behaviour. But I’m not in this world to make you feel safe and happy and relieved that a man’s soul has been saved. I could have just written that, and you’d have believed me, but I don’t lie unless there’s some monetary advantage – so I’m not lying now. What’s so wrong about occasionally going berserk? I’ve never actually killed anyone, at least directly, nor do I support displays of depravity in public. 99.9% of the time I am well groomed and polite – though, I admit, after midnight sometimes I get restless and scared and feel the need for some action – just like you.

Dig this: we all belong to the same cluster of animals, madly clutching this rock ball that’s hurling through deep dark space. So if for a moment, one of us goes apeshit, what does it matter? I mean really?

The careers of even the most successful pop stars last about ten years – maximum. Elvis’ longevity was compromised by his stint in the army. I don’t know what happened to him over there in Germany, whether he dropped the soap in the shower, but he was never the same. He got soft and lost his edge. Time left him behind with his big black pompadour and swivelling hips and Big Boy milkshakes. I can remember watching the Doors perform about 1966 and thinking at that moment there was this guy sitting in a Memphis mansion planning his next stupid Hollywood movie – and the whole notion of pop music suddenly seemed so ridiculous to me that I just laughed and started throwing ashtrays at John Densmore. I felt like crying and killing something.

Okay, in the late 1960s Elvis Presley certainly wasn’t hip. He was just cultural detritus from the big-chrome, tailfin 1950s – a guy who made shitty clambake movies while the cool people we’re tripping on acid and chasing white rabbits. Basically, Presley was too dumb to appreciate that fact. What happened was that he ran out of money. He was down to his last million dollars – which a guy like Elvis could eat up in food within a few months.

Elvis’ manager, Tom Parker (the ‘Colonel’ thing was horseshit) was at a loss as to how to present his ‘boy’. Then he heard about Tom Jones, England’s Elvis, who was raking in big bucks in Las Vegas. They figured that if an Elvis knock-off could do it, then so could the real thing.

So, in 1968, Elvis and Parker went to Vegas and saw Tom. The lights went on in Tom’s head: all he needed was to get Elvis out of leather and stupid movies and into rhinestone jumpsuits. And that’s what he did.

I had helped Tom choreograph and costume his show – in fact, the unbuttoned, ‘Errol Flynn duelling shirt’ was my idea – so Parker came to me and asked for a hand.

Elvis and I got to work. His biggest problem was laziness. Like, he’d sing half a song, then start scratching his crotch, and say something like, “The desert heat makes me sweat baby, makes me sweat real stinky bad,” and he’d wander off for the afternoon. I’d usually find him by the hotel pool, draining down plates of oysters that had been smeared in peanut butter.

It was a miracle that we got his show together. On July 31st, 1969, Elvis, at the age of 34, entered the stage at the just opened International Hotel. I sat in the front row. I kept yelling at him to start wiping his face with the towels and throw them at the audience (my idea again. Mob psychology here: an audience likes to be abused and there’s no better way than tossing dirty laundry at them). But it was weird because I remembered the times when a lot of people had been screaming for me. Now, just a few people recognized me, and they were mostly hotel staff from the old days.

… Ah shit, at the end of the show I walked down the aisle alone, out into the sunlight, lit a smoke, wandered and thought about my life. I had no money, no career, not even a decent girlfriend – and by decent I mean a woman with a full set of teeth. But I did have my voice, a few hundred bucks, and the incredible good luck to bump into Howard Hughes.