THE KING AND I
Elvis Presley’s former right-hand man Jerry Schilling tells MARION McMULLEN how a chance meeting with a music icon changed the course of his life
ELVIS PRESLEY never realised his dream of playing in the UK come true... but it wasn’t for lack of trying. “He had bought an air plane to tour overseas,” reveals Jerry Schilling, “and he was preparing to go. His manager Colonel Tom Parker really did a great job for Elvis in most respects, but creatively he didn’t realise that Elvis needed to do much more than the same old thing. Creatively Elvis wanted to go overseas.
“It’s little known, but Colonel Parker told him ‘if you go overseas you go without me’ and Elvis just said ‘You’re fired.’”
“Both of them got back together after a couple of months, but Elvis wanted to go to Japan, Germany, the UK ...
“Fans from all over the world would go to see the Vegas concerts and he would see people after the shows and he saw the need to tour and had plans.”
Sadly Elvis passed away in 1977 at the age of 42 before he could put these tour plans into action, but now, his former wife Priscilla and life-long friend Jerry are making his dreams come true with a series of concert specials featuring Elvis’s legendary TCB Band and the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra.
Jerry and Priscilla will also be sharing intimate stories, personal photos and rare home movies for the “once-in-a-lifetime” arena dates celebrating the legendary rock ‘n’ roll star.
Jerry was only a boy when he first met Elvis and they were friends for life – “I still live in the house Elvis bought me in 1974 and I was in Graceland for 10 years,” he smiles.
“Priscilla did some shows in the
UK and Europe a few years ago and I think fans found it really exciting. I experienced it for myself when I was invited to host the shows in Australia. I felt like I was on tour with Elvis. The audience reaction was extraordinary – 10,000 and 12,000 people dancing in the aisles every night. “Now my dear friend Priscilla and I are appearing together and it’s going to be so special.
“I’m quite shy, I’m normally the behind-thescenes guy, and it was a new experience for me. I was a little bit, probably a lot, nervous about it, but with the shows I just felt like Elvis was smiling down at me and it gave me the courage to do it. It’s such an honour and it’s going to be pretty special in the UK.”
Now aged 77, Jerry’s long career has seen him manage the Beach Boys for more than a decade and work with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis as well as Elvis’s daughter Lisa Marie.
He talked frankly about his relationship with Elvis Presley in his book Me And A Guy
John Lennon told me ‘I didn’t have the nerve to tell Elvis, but do you see these sideburns? I almost got kicked out of school because of them because I wanted to look like Elvis.
If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be here.’”
Named Elvis, which he brought out in collaboration with Chuck Crisafulli in 2006, and he has produced several documentaries.
But it all began when Jerry was a 12-year-old in Memphis and invited by Elvis to make up the numbers in an American football game.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” he laughs. “I got to be at the birth of rock and roll.
“Dewey Phillips had just played this song on the local radio called That’s All Right Mama by a guy from Humes High School and then I saw the quarterback in the scrummage was the guy I had been listening to the other night. It was the start of our relationship, our friendship, before he was famous or anyone knew who he was.
“He was a young 19-year-old, but he already has a coolness about him. I’d seen films like East Of Eden and Rebel Without A Cause and he had that sort of look. He was a lovable rebel and I just wanted to be like him. When he said ‘Do you guys want to play next week?’ I tried to act cool, but I was there two hours beforehand the following week.
“The first time I saw him play was in concert in Memphis in 1955 on my 13th birthday. There were 3,000 to 4,000 people there and he was the last act on a country line-up, an extra, and all the young kids in
Memphis were in the audience to see Elvis. He was like a tiger who had just walked out of his cage. He just took the microphone and he took control. It was amazing to see.
“He developed so much as an artist over the years and he loved so many genres of music. I don’t know any other young kid in Memphis who was listening to opera star Mario Lanza in high school, but we found his records in Graceland.”
Elvis has sold an unparalleled one billion records worldwide and it is now 50 years since he took up his famous Las Vegas residency.
Jerry says one of his favourite memories was the day the Beatles dropped in to see Elvis. “I was a huge Beatles fan and we were walking out later and John Lennon said ‘We’re staying at Benedict Canyon if you want to come up.’
“I was really shy back then, but the next day I got on my motorbike and there was this girl in Bel Air who said ‘Can you give me a ride to Sunset?’ She was very pretty so I said ‘sure’ and she said ‘Do you know the Beatles are in town?’ and I said ‘do you wanna meet them?’ and she started laughing.
“I drove there, but the cops were around and waved me away and I thought ‘This is so embarrassing’ but Mal Evans, the tour manager, saw me and said ‘he’s OK’ so I spent the day with the Beatles.
“John Lennon said to me ‘I didn’t have the nerve to tell Elvis, but do you see these sideburns? I almost got kicked out of school because of them because I wanted to look like Elvis. If it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be here.’”
Jerry was training to be a history teacher and football coach when Elvis called him offering him a job. “It was about 2am and he said ‘I need you to come and work for me’. I’d had dreams of something like that years earlier, but I was always happy with us being friends. I said ‘when do you need an answer?’, he said ‘now’ and I thought about it for three seconds and said ‘Can I go home and pack?’
“I left behind my part-time jobs and all my studies,” he remembers with a chuckle, “but I think I made the right decision.”
■ The Elvis In Concert UK Tour launches on November 25. Booking details available from ticketline.co.uk, bookingsdirect.com and ticketmaster.co.uk