Autumn Leaves and Dry Heaves: Chapter 8

Elvis Presley was the most hyper guy I've ever met. Although he spoke with this kind of lazy, Tennessee mumble, if you looked at his body, it was always shaking and vibrating. Part of the problem was pills - I mean, he wolfed handfuls of amphetamines (a habit he told me that started during his stint in the army).

Anyway, I never held any special reverence for Presley: he was just another greasehead who was bopping around in the mid-1950s. I actually had a chance to manage him, but I passed it up because initially I just didn't like the guy. It's not that I felt competition from Elvis, it's just that he was very boring to be around. He didn't know anything outside of his tiny, little world. He either spoke about his mother, food, or gospel music - which is a pretty limited repertoire.

After our initial meeting on Milton Berle's show, I didn't hear much of him until he got back from the Army, about 1960. He felt a special connection to me because we were both southern boys, and he used to telephone, always late at night, and invite me to Graceland, his home in Memphis. I'd always make up some excuse because I just couldn't see myself driving his go-carts or sitting around a living room, listening to 'Peace In The Valley' or throwing firecrackers at each other (one of his a favorite pastimes).

Look, I don't mean to be hard on poor old dead Elvis - it's just I'm being honest: this is the way it happened. There are only five things that you ever need to know about Elvis Presley: (1) He was a beautiful singer, (2) He was a handsome man, (3) He had the mentality of a sixteen year old, (4) He ate massive quantities of really shitty food, (5) He did a lot of prescription drugs.

It was my misfortune to be at Graceland when he died. I say misfortune because death really irritates me, it doesn't scare me, I just find it unbelievably irritating. I mean, you gather up all this experience, you make all these friends, you visit all these place, and then Bang, you're fucking wormfood. Just like that. It's stupid. If there is a God he should be fired for incompetence. He doesn't know how to put on a show. You don't pull the talent off the stage when the audience is in full swing.

Anyway, by the time he took a face plant into his bathroom carpeting, Elvis was spent, kayoed, gone. Just a fat, squat pathetic guy with stupid-looking sideburns that were dyed blacker than ink. He once told me that he got tired of being Elvis Presley, but that he had nowhere else to go. Of course he did, but at the core, Elvis was just a sloppy, bawling kid. He should have kicked out the money-sucking bouffant skags he called girlfriends, and the jabbering pack of inbreds he called 'the guys', and just gone to Portugal and lived on the beach and ate grapes. There is always a way out baby, you just have to look.

By the way, Elvis' dad, Vernon, invited me to attend the funeral at Graceland, and I was all set to show up until I learned that Ann-Margaret was coming, and I thought when she saw me that she might do something desperate, if not violent. You see, I dated her a few times, back around 1966, after my marriage to Diana Ross exploded, and things broke off very badly, so to speak. We had unfinished business. Put it this way, she's the only woman who has ever broken one of my bones, specifically, a rib.

Okay, by the time I got to Memphis, in June 1979, Elvis had been dead for two years.

Anyway, before I get this story to Graceland, I want to tell you about how and why I ended up in Memphis.

My mother, for reasons she never explained, decided to live and raise me in Nashville. I don't know why. We never spoke much. In fact, she couldn't speak much, at least coherently. You see, like most women, she didn't know how to drink. A woman's body can take internal punishment, like having babies, whereas a guy can take external stuff, like getting kneecapped in the balls or drinking a half-gallon on JD on top of a fried chicken. For a man, if it comes from the outside, you can handle it.

My mother, Queenie Gretch, had been a beautiful woman, but at age twenty-five she hit the bottle and never stopped guzzling until she collapsed one evening in 1967 while attending a clambake at the Kennedy place in Massachusetts. She was a friend, so to speak, of Ted Kennedy - a man I partied with more than once, including that infamous night on Chappaquidick island - but that seems like a hundred years ago. Take it as a lesson: if you can't handle booze, don't drive a freakin' car. Teddy liked his rum - which is okay straight, but too many people cut it with crap like cola. Never do that - it's a lie to your brain. The only mixers you should use are vermouth (a spirited wine), soda or tonic - for anything.

Alright, Memphis.

Like any animal that's becomes full of despair, a human being tries to crawl back to its home. Maybe that's why I went to Memphis, Tennessee. I needed time to repair myself - and I knew that would involve a great amount of drinking, so I wanted to be surrounded by a familiar environment. (By the way, later on I'll elaborate more on drinking: suffice it to say that drinking in itself can be therapeutic - you just have to pace it. And you should never drink to forget, but to remember).

So I blew into Memphis and on the first night almost got the shit kicked out of me.

You see, I had wandered down Mulberry Street and crashed at some motel, got a bucket of chipped ice, cracked open some Southern Comfort, and got busy. So the next morning comes and I heard this incredible banging on the door of my room. I looked out the window and saw about ten huge cops who appeared to be really pissed off. I finally opened the door before they booted it off its hinges.

It turned out that the kid at the motel check-in desk had given me the wrong key, so I was in the wrong room. "You silly son of bitch!" said one of the cops, "You ain't got no respect, huh?" And he smacked me hard on the head. "Ain't going to be no heaven for you!"

It turned out that the motel I was staying at was the Lorraine Motel, and the room I was staying in was the same room occupied by Dr. Martin Luther King on the evening he shot, back in April, 1968. In fact, he had been killed right outside my door on the balcony.

It seems the room had never been touched since the night of the assassination, and these cops thought I was a crazed, racist bastard who was purposely storming around the place, guzzling booze and puking on the rug.

Finally, the motel manager sorted it all out. Man, what a way to wake up.

I had some money saved, so I sort of wandered around Memphis for a few months, just visiting bars, hanging out on Beale Street, and carousing with guys like Booker T. Jones and Steve Cropper. I got into a fight one night with a Hell's Angel, and really punched the shit out of him. I was in an ugly mood to begin with, shotgunning Bud Tallboys in some blues bar, and this big fat mother got the idea that I was hitting on his girlfriend, his 'old lady', which was true. So unannounced, he smashed me across the head with a beer schooner and I ripped the flesh off his cheek with my special 'fighting ring' (a gift from Vic Damone). The blood got in his eyes and I started to wail on his huge gut. The cops came but the bartender - a very dear friend - got me out the back door.

One morning, I got a call from a lawyer representing the Elvis Presley estate. He asked for permission to use my 'image' and 'voice' for a documentary film. I said sure, as long as the thing was going to be honest and not some sugarcoated shit about Elvis as some 1950s neon god. They said my image and voice appeared on Elvis's home movies and videos, and their real purpose was to show "Elvis at home". I suppose they should have paid me something, but I've always hated asking for money. You see, money ruins everything, always has, always will. I don't know why.

I'd been in Memphis for about six months when late one night I woke up in the back of someone's pickup truck that was zigg-zagging at high speed down a country road. I dragged myself up and looked through the small rear window of the cab. Inside I saw three people, one man, two women, all naked, and they were drinking and laughing. I lowered myself back down and gazed up at the stars. It was a warm Tennessee night. Who knew where I was really going, in life I mean. How strange were things going to get before God himself said, 'alright, enough, would somebody just get the poor bastard a tuxedo and an audience?'

I don't recall what happened that night, but I woke up the next afternoon alone in a cotton field, without pubic hair and my hands covered in motor oil. I hope that I had fun.

Everything important event in my life has happened while it's raining. And it was raining the night I stumbled down Lamar Avenue, heading toward Graceland.

I knew where I was going - I'd been to Elvis' place many times - but I didn't know why. I didn't need a reason. Maybe I had nowhere else to go.

I got to the gate and the guard, who I recognized as one of Elvis' many inbred relatives - Fester, Gossamer, Delbart - whatever, didn't recognize me.

"It's Dusty Carr," I said. "Come to pay my respects."

The old bastard didn't even leave his little booth. He just fanned his hand, as in 'go away you freakin' creep'.

Screw it. I walked back down the street, ducked into a bush, and climbed the brick fence, tearing the shit out of my knees on the way down.

Graceland wasn't yet open to the stinking public, so there wasn't much in the way of security. A pal of mine had told me that they had planted Elvis near the pool - a pool that I had swam in many times.

So I stagger across the grounds and finally get to the grave. I was drunk, tired, depressed and angry. With the rain falling in my eyes, with blood from my knees somehow now covering my face, I knelt down and just looked at the grave. A few miserable flowers were bent low and bobbing with the rain that just kept hammering down on everything.

So many untalented pricks have reached the pinnacle of show business success and lived to be ninety, and here was this guy who died at forty-two. It made no sense. He could sing the ass off Pavoratti. He was the real deal. He just loved music. I've never believed in a god you can just pray to and ask favours from, but I did just that. "Is there anyway," I demanded from the dark heavens, "to give life to that chunk of flesh in the box down there? Any way at all? You can take my life because holy shit, it's going nowhere. Take me and give us back our King right now! The people want their King!"

Nothing happened. Just the rain. Then I looked up and saw that old crazy security guard with a garden hoe raised up high. The rain on his face made it look like he was drooling. "You don't fuck with Elvis," he croaked, and he brought that hoe down on my head. Lights out.

I was charged with trespassing and public drunkenness. I'll spare you the details of the trial, but the judge felt sorry for me because I was a Vietnam veteran (something I don't like to talk or write about) and the fact that he liked my music.

A few days later I was walking down Beale Street, and I bumped into a guy named Chas Walker, an Englishman and old friend I that hadn't seen since the early 60s. He asked me if I was looking for work and told me about this oldies package that he was putting together for a European tour.

I told Chas to forget it - I didn't do oldies stuff. The stuff with the Monkees had killed that forever. He thought about this for a while and said he had an idea. He knew that my music was popular in France; they loved me there, in fact, they studied my career in some kind of university course. So why didn't I do a few nights in Paris? He would pay for the flights, the hotel, and the food. He thought he could at least break even.

"Sure," I said, "you find me a drummer, a guitarist and a piano player, give me two days to rehearse, and I'm on."

So it was that two weeks later I stepped onto a jet bound for the City of Lights. What was supposed to be a brief gig stretched into months of soul-searching depravity. But obviously I lived to tell about it - barely.

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