UNEASY LIES THE HEAD
Documentary examines Presley’s death, drug use and despair
Elvis Presley: The Searcher Airs April 19 and 22, HBO
Few deaths in pop history have exerted such a grim fascination as that of Elvis Presley. By the time he died, more than four decades ago in his bathroom at Graceland, he had become a drug-addicted recluse. He was plagued by debts, self doubt and a spiralling addiction to cheeseburgers and prescription drugs, including barbiturates and amphetamines.
When he wasn’t maintaining a frantic tour schedule, he was holed up at home, where family members have since spoken of having to remove food from his mouth when he fell asleep at the dinner table. Images from his final performances, just weeks before his death, show him sweaty and obese. There has been rampant speculation about the cause of Presley’s death in the intervening years, thanks in part to the fact the autopsy report was never made public, although the official line was heart failure.
And now Priscilla Presley, his former child bride who inherited Graceland, even though their marriage broke up in 1973, has dragged the whole sorry story back into the headlines by suggesting his death may have been intentional.
Elvis Presley: The Searcher is a new documentary from HBO that features the memories of Bruce Springsteen, the late Tom Petty and Priscilla. In it, Priscilla says that Elvis “knew what he was doing” on the night he was found dead at the age of 42. “We’re exposing what went on behind the scenes,” she’s said of the film, declaring those who love Elvis “need to see what happened.”
Ginger Alden, who was Elvis’s 21-year-old fiancée when he died and who found Elvis’s body on the bathroom floor, immediately disputed Priscilla’s claims this week on Facebook. “There is no truth to the stories,” she wrote. “I encourage all fans to please know and understand that Elvis Presley would never and did not commit suicide. He was in a good mood, we had just set a wedding date literally hours earlier. He was ready to go back on stage, something he loved with all of his being.”
Priscilla’s suggestion that Elvis may have killed himself comes months after revelations that he had been suffering from depression and had even written suicide notes in the months before his death. One, written to tour manager Joe Esposito, read: “I need a long rest. I’m sick and tired of my life.” Another, to Billy Miller, part of Elvis’s Memphis Mafia friends, included the words: “If it wasn’t for my prayers, I think my life would end. My willpower is almost gone.” Elvis’s stepbrother, Rick Stanley, said he believed the letters to be credible: “To me, it’s clear that suicide was on his mind.”
This is not the first time rumours have surfaced that Elvis was depressed and potentially suicidal.
“Elvis had good reason to be depressed,” believes Ray Connolly, the author of Being Elvis: A Lonely Life. “Drugs had wrecked his body, his career had not gone the way he had intended, and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had been ripping him off for years to pay his gambling debts.”
The caricature of a bloated, addled Elvis that lingers today was formed after his divorce from Priscilla. Drugs had been a part of their marriage: Priscilla recalled whole weeks spent with him in his bedroom where he endured pillinduced sleeps. In her absence and under gruelling touring commitments, his dependency worsened. In 1977 alone his doctor had prescribed 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics.
Furthermore, his musical appeal had dwindled: no longer the snakehipped rock ’n’ roll pioneer, Elvis had slid into easy listening.
Elvis was due to start another tour on the night he died. But this, Alden, Ray Connolly, and Elvis’s daughter Lisa Marie Presley all maintain, brought him hope: “He was talking about how good it was going to be,” Connolly says.
Even the facts surrounding Elvis’s death are murky: although coroners found 14 different drugs in significant quantities in his system, their reports have been examined several times to establish just why he died. The fact that Elvis’s bedroom and bathroom were wiped clean by his aunt and staff before the police arrived didn’t help.
But, Connolly says, “that doesn’t mean he committed suicide. He had liver damage, a massively enlarged heart, corroded veins, an ulcerated larynx and a blocked intestine. He didn’t realize how ill he was. I don’t believe Elvis committed suicide but his behaviour was almost certainly responsible for his early death.”