Elvis: The Rebirth of the King

This programme contains very strong language

On 31st July, 1969,

a nervous Elvis Presley stepped out onto the stage

of the International Hotel in Las Vegas

after an eight-year absence from live performance.

The show was a triumph, a culmination of a long, hard

journey for Elvis to show the world who he really was as an artist.

Not only the greatest performer on Earth, but the most emotional

interpreter of the American song book that ever existed.

But the triumph was brief,

and the end was not pretty.

This is a song that I just recorded.

It's an old song called Unchained Melody.

I have to play the piano, so it'll take just a second.

The grind of over 600 Vegas shows in eight years

eventually killed the King.

For many, this cartoon image of Elvis is the one that endures.

A bloated, drug-addled figure

belting out tired standards.

But even in this befuddled state in South Dakota just weeks

before he died, Elvis could still dig deep to find the artist within.

# Time goes by so slowly

# And time... #

This film will pull back the curtain on the glory of Elvis's Vegas years,

to show how he created the legend that lives on to this day.

# Time goes by so slowly

# And time can do so much

# Are you still mine? #

# You ain't nothin' but a hound dog

# Cryin' all the time

# You ain't nothin' but a hound dog

# Cryin' all the time

# Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit

# And you ain't no friend of mine. #

In 1956, Elvis Presley shook up the world.

Tall, dark and preternaturally handsome,

this dirt-poor southern boy scandalised segregated America

when he performed Hound Dog on NBC's Milton Berle show.

This was a white man, sullying the nation,

and its women, with the black sounds and moves he had grown-up amongst.

I believe that it is a contributing factor

to our juvenile delinquency of today.

# Cryin' all the time. #

I know the evil feeling that you feel when you sing.

I know how it feels.

I know what it does to you.

-He was good-looking.

-Let me tell you, let me tell you.

He was really good-looking, I say.

He was really good-looking and he had this amazing energy.

Elvis was a phenomenon. The biggest star of the '50s.

Key to the Elvis success story was the relationship with his manager,

Colonel Tom Parker, the mastermind behind the King's meteoric

rise from small-time country star to global superstar.

Parker's beginnings were in the world of carnivals,

where he ran a very particular sideshow.

He told me his act in the carny was the dancing chicken.

And he said, "I used to get a hotplate, cover it with straw,

"play the music Turkey in the Straw behind it,

"and then I would take a chicken and put it on the hotplate,

"and the chicken would look like it was dancing."

Colonel Parker came from carnivals, so he recognised instantly

what was going to draw people in to the big tent.

And Elvis was sort of a hoochie coochie girl.

He never understood him artistically.

He never got the music.

He just was amazed, flummoxed that people thought it was good.

Parker mesmerised the young Elvis, who felt indebted to him

for the rest of his life.

In the beginning, their partnership worked.

While Presley was the king of rock 'n' roll,

Parker was the king of the deal.

When Elvis started breaking through

somebody told the Colonel,

"Colonel, I like your boy, Elvis.

"I'll give you a million bucks to book him."

And Colonel said, "You got it. Now, what are you going to give Elvis?"

The money flowed, and soon Parker was plotting Elvis's next move.

Say you ain't lying awake every night by my side, thinking of him.

Wishing I was Vance.

Wishing you'd waited for him, and never married me.

Following the tradition of singers like Bing Crosby

and Frank Sinatra, the Colonel sent his boy to Hollywood,

negotiating a multi-picture deal that would earn Elvis millions.

In 1956, Love Me Tender was one of

the highest grossing movies in the world.

What could possibly go wrong?

Hollywood's image of me was wrong and I knew it.

And I couldn't say anything about it. I couldn't do anything about it.

I don't know, it's nobody's fault, maybe, except my own.

I didn't know what to do.

I just felt I was obligated very heavily

a lot of times to things that I didn't fully believe in.

It worried me sick.

So I became violently ill, physically, emotionally, everything.

Elvis's career had crashed.

The main problem was the movies.

He was being cast in a series of increasingly frivolous dramas

designed to showcase his music,

but the template had got very tired.

The pictures got very similar, you know.

If something was successful,

they tried to recreate it the next time around.

The songs were mediocre in most cases, you know.

I had thought that they would give me

a chance to show some kind of acting ability

or do a very interesting story, but it did not change.

It did not change.

Parker, you know, was a formula person.

He had a formula, it was working. No Elvis movie ever lost money.

So why mess with a good thing?

Around Elvis, things had changed dramatically.

He had disappeared from the charts since 1965, supplanted by a new

breed of pop stars that wrote their own material.

Elvis was reliant on songwriters to provide him with good material,

but Parker's obsession with the deal was getting in the way.

# He's your uncle, not your dad

# He's the best friend you ever had

# So come on, dig, dig, dig in until it hurts

# Just remember Pearl Harbor. #

Parker demanded a cut of everything, and that included up

to 50 percent of the songwriter's publishing royalties.

But Elvis's absence from the charts meant only second-raters

applied for the gig.

# So just bring, bring, bring everything until you bleed

# And he'll send back what he don't need. #

The result was songs like He's Your Uncle Not Your Dad

from the movie Speedway.

He was still making movies in '67, when pop music in America,

was either protest music or psychedelic music

or time for the hippies,

and Elvis looked very quaint there.

To reboot his career,

Elvis needed to reconnect with young people.

He found a most unlikely entry point

through his hairstylist, Larry Geller.

Elvis wanted to learn.

He knew that there was this big psychedelic culture happening

with the Beatles and marijuana and all this stuff.

He heard everyone is doing LSD.

He said, "Larry, I want to do LSD.

"But I'm not going to do it, unless you tell me it's OK.

I said, "Yeah." "But you got to do it with me."

I said, "OK. Absolutely."

So Elvis and Priscilla and myself went upstairs

and we dropped LSD.

About two or three in the morning, we all went for a walk

in the back of Graceland, and we were looking at the stars

and there was a peacock back there,

and we were all fascinated with the peacock.

But we got into some wonderful conversations. It was very positive.

By the end of that summer, Elvis had made a career-defining decision.

Elvis and I were in the bathroom.

And I'm doing his hair.

He wasn't saying anything, he was just looking off in the distance.

He was pensive.

And all of a sudden, Elvis said,

"Man, why am I still making these movies?

"I'll always be a singer. Singing is my life's blood."

Elvis immediately began a journey

to regain control of his musical career.

His first item of business was the songs themselves.

Elvis knew he couldn't just re-tread his former rock 'n' roll glory.

Nonetheless, to find

the sound of his future,

he looked deep into his past.

Hi, Roy. Are you all set to go?

OK, let's cut one.

His musical hero, seen here in a rare movie appearance,

was Roy Hamilton.

# My chickadee (Oh baby)

# Come here to me (Oh baby) #

An obscure R&B singer,

who greatly influenced Elvis's early vocal style.

# Let's do the rock (Oh baby) #

Roy had a record called

I'm Going To Hold on Tight and Don't Let Go.

# Aw shucks, well, I wouldn't

# Stop for a million bucks

# I love you so

# Just hold me tight and don't let go. #

HE IMITATES VOCAL STYLE

Elvis goes, "That's going to be the bottom part of my one".

And Elvis just grabbed it, OK.

# Who do you think of when you have such luck?

# I'm in love

# I'm all shook up

# Mm mm mm, mm, yay, yay, yay. #

Hamilton had managed to extend his career by abandoning

the youthful energy of his early R&B hits, for a measured

string of ballads aimed at a more mature audience.

As he demonstrates here in the movie, Let's Rock.

# True love

# But I can't find it Oh, no. #

My father was an amazing balladeer.

He had a great operatic and gospel-type style.

He had a big booming voice

and he was like, I would say,

I would call him the black Caruso.

You know, of music, rhythm and blues.

The black Caruso of rhythm and blues.

# Walk on through the rain

If Hamilton could do this, why not Elvis?

So it was to the later Hamilton

that the King looked for his own second coming.

On 10th September, 1967,

Elvis booked into RCA'S studio B in Nashville

with his producer Felton Jarvis,

to record the Rogers and Hammerstein ballad You'll Never Walk Alone,

which had been a hit for Hamilton back in the '50s.

# And you'll never walk alone. #

# You'll never walk alone. #

What I think Elvis took from my father is the big sound,

the big voice. Strong vibrato.

That gospel flavour, you know,

being Elvis was also a very spiritual person.

He just kind of adapted that style and it worked.

You'll Never Walk Alone was not a hit,

but it heralded a new direction for the King.

Elvis determined that his future would be as a balladeer,

aimed at a mature audience, but it was a direction that set him

on a collision course with the Colonel,

who had something very different in mind for the King's next move.

Parker planned an old-fashioned Christmas TV special,

and chose a young hotshot producer.

But in Steve Binder he found a man with his own vision.

I went out to see the Colonel and he told me

"Elvis is going to come on, say hello to his audience,

"sing 20 Christmas songs, say goodbye", and that was the show.

Nothing else.

In my head, at the time when he told me that,

I knew that's not what I'm going to do or want to do.

So Elvis came to my office and the first thing he asked me is,

"What do you think of my career?"

And I said, just blurted out, "I think your career is in the toilet".

He laughed. At first he didn't.

At first, he sort of stared me down,

then all of a sudden he broke out into laughter.

And he said, "You're the first guy who's actually spoken

"the truth to me in years".

And he said, "I agree with you".

Binder and Elvis formed an alliance

against Parker's Christmas-themed show,

and hatched a plan to use the TV special as a career relaunch.

The first job of the special was to demonstrate that Elvis,

the man who shook up the world ten years earlier, could still do it.

Elvis would always go in to his dressing room after we

finished rehearsing, and jam until three or four in the morning.

I knew even though we were doing all these big production numbers,

nothing touched him being Elvis

himself in the dressing room, improv-ing.

So I was bugging the Colonel every single minute.

"I want cameras in there."

Finally the colonel said, "OK, if you want to recreate it on stage,

I'll let you, but I won't promise you you can use it in the show".

There was always that little extra thing.

He's coming out with not even a band, and they're going to go

out there and do something.

He plays Baby What You Want Me To Do,

and he's playing electric guitar,

which no-one had ever seen him do before.

# We're goin' up, we're goin' down

# We're goin' up, down down up Any way you want to let it roll. #

But he's picking up on something, he's getting interested in something

and what he's getting interested in is the rhythm in the song.

And it's suddenly as if no-one has ever really heard that what this

song is about is a certain rhythm.

It's nothing to do with the words,

it's nothing to do with the vocal, there is no idea in it.

It's a rhythm that is asking to be made bigger, to go farther

and to become thing in itself.

And he just pushes and pushes and pushes,

and he makes a moan,

he makes a sound, and one of his friends, you know, shouts at him.

And it's as extraordinary a piece of pure rock 'n' roll,

pure rhythm and blues as you'll ever hear anywhere.

And it is coming together in that moment.

HE MOANS

HE MOANS

CHEERING

HE CHEERS

That is a matter of both the song serving Elvis,

because he needs this opportunity, he needs this template.

But it's really Elvis serving the song.

# You got me doin' what you want me

# Oh, baby, what you want me to do. #

The song always wanted to be more than anybody made it.

And that day, it got to be what it wanted to be.

The set proved that Elvis still had it.

But it was in the show's finale,

around the now iconic Elvis giant Elvis sign,

that the King and Binder needed to showcase the new Elvis.

This led to the inevitable showdown with Parker.

I got ordered to go see the Colonel in his office with Elvis.

And the Colonel says, "Boys, it's been called

"to my attention that there are no Christmas songs on the show".

"I want to hear from you, Brindle,

"why there are no Christmas songs on the show?"

And I said, "Because we've gone a totally direction".

But if Elvis wants a Christmas song in the show, I'll put one in.

So the colonel says, "OK, that's clear.

"Elvis, Steve is going to give you a Christmas song to sing in the show.

"Is that clear?" And Elvis mutters, "Yes, sir."

Or something like that.

And he says, "OK, since that's settled, you boys can leave."

And we turn around, we walked out and as soon as we get

out of earshot, Elvis jabs me in the ribs and says, "Fuck him."

That was it. So I never worried about

putting a Christmas song in the show.

# There must be lights burning brighter somewhere

# Got to be birds flying higher in a sky more blue

# If I can dream of a better land

# Where all my brothers walk hand-in-hand

# Tell me why oh why oh why

# Can't my dream come true? #

It was about Martin Luther King.

You know, it's in December of 1968.

King has been assassinated that spring.

The song is clearly based on the speech

that Martin Luther King gave at the March on Washington in 1963.

Elvis, who liked to recite the end of that speech,

loved that speech.

# Out there in the dark, there's a beckoning candle

# Oh, yeah. #

The vehemence and the way he sings it, and the way

he just doesn't care if he's hitting the notes properly,

if he's fitting into the rhythmic structure of the song,

he just is outside of all of those lines,

that's what gives the song its power.

You believe it.

# Right now

# Let it come true right now

# Oh, yeah. #

After I edited the show, put it together and so forth,

the great part was watching a man rediscover himself.

He went on and did that '68 special and resurrected his career.

I thought we would be great friends for life.

The last day I saw him he handed me a quickly scribbled telephone number,

and said, "If you try and reach me, this is the number to call."

Like he knew he was being watched and monitored by Parker.

And I called that number the next day to talk to him and by that time,

the Colonel made sure that I was

persona non grata in the Elvis world.

So I never saw him again or talked to him again after that.

The Elvis comeback show was the most watched television

special of that year.

In the public consciousness, Elvis was back,

but now he needed to consolidate, by recording some hit records

after his absence from the charts.

He needed fresh, cutting-edge talent.

The answer lay close to home.

# Being good isn't always easy

# No matter how hard I try

# When he started sweet-talking... #

Memphis had recently developed its own successful Southern soul

sound based around Stax Records.

One of the Stax producers, Chips Moman,

left the label to set up his own recording studio,

American Sound.

He successfully reenergised Dusty Springfield's ailing career

by adding the groove of Memphis to her soulful voice...

..in songs like Son of a Preacher Man.

# The only one who could ever reach me was the son of a preacher ma

# The only boy who could ever teach me was the son of a preacher man. #

Although this home movie footage seems to show Elvis the family man,

on daughter Lisa Marie's first Christmas,

behind the scenes, he was eager to talk business.

It's Christmas time.

We were having a Christmas dinner at Graceland,

and Elvis is in a fantastic mood.

He's so happy because the TV show was great,

and it's getting great reviews.

And Elvis stood up, straightened himself out,

looked around the table and said,

"You get that studio from Chips Moman.

"I want to stay here and record at home.

"I want good songs and I want good musicians."

And I said, "Elvis, they got great musicians over there,

that'll just knock your socks off."

We'd been recording with so many people,

it was hard to impress us with an artist, you know.

But I'll never forget.

We were standing in the studio and the back door opened

and he walked in. And, gosh, we all took

a step or two backwards, you know.

Wow, that's the King! Even though he hadn't had a hit in a long time.

It was impressive. He was very impressive.

Yeah, he looked like he just stepped off of a movie screen.

The door opens and this...

-All these guys.

-..men walk in.

Mafia, as they call them.

And then they part. You know, like the parting of the waters.

And Elvis walks out! We were so shocked, I'll never forget it.

It was great. I mean, he came over and he shook our hands,

introduced himself to each of us. "I'm Elvis Presley."

Like we didn't know. But he was really, really polite.

-Yes.

-Kind and...

-Sweet.

-Yeah.

-Yeah. Cute.

Wonderful looking.

He looked real put-together.

# I had to leave... #

Oh, shit, man.

# I had to leave town for a little while... #

He really got into our groove,

you know, the way we were recording.

Oh, God!

We got down to business. I mean, he had a ball.

He just became one of the guys.

-He really tried. He really wanted it.

-Yes.

# You said you'd be good while I was gone

# But to look in your eyes... #

That's good, but it seemed like it was a little off tune.

One of the first songs of the session, In The Ghetto,

seemed an unlikely fit for Elvis.

But thematically it represented the perfect follow-up

to the gentle political message of If I Can Dream.

# As the snow flies

# On a cold and grey Chicago morning,

# A poor little baby child is born in the ghetto... #

# People don't you understand

# A child needs a helping hand

# He'll grow to be an angry young man someday... #

# Take a look at you and me

# Are we too blind to see

# Do we simply turn our heads and look the other way? #

A real different song for him.

I mean, his management didn't want

him singing about a ghetto, you know.

So, Chips, you know, told him, if they didn't release it on Elvis,

he was going to cut in on somebody else.

And I guess that's when they got off of their duff

and went ahead and put it out.

# Well, the world turns

# And a hungry little boy with a runny nose

# Plays in the street as the cold wind blows

# In the ghetto. #

# In the ghetto. #

Can you do it again?

THEY SING

How's that?

It has been a while.

Good.

Elvis's judgment was vindicated when In The Ghetto

became a massive worldwide hit,

reaching number three in America.

His first top 10 hit for four years.

The atmosphere in American Sound Studios was already euphoric,

when in walked Roy Hamilton,

who had not only inspired Elvis's '50s career,

but was his role model for this career relaunch.

It was Elvis's first and only meeting with his musical hero.

The King took the opportunity to give back to the man from whom

he had borrowed so much,

in the only way he knew how.

Elvis actually gave my dad a song entitled Angelica.

# Each night I meant to say. #

He said, "I was going to cut it tonight or tomorrow night.

"But, Roy, you can outsing me on it.

"I'd like for you to have this song".

Take it, please. And Roy took it.

And he cut it and I am going to tell you, man,

he sung the hell out of it.

# And the shadow had been cast

# Too many springs had passed

# For Angelica

# Sweet Angelica. #

The song wasn't the hit Elvis that hoped for and, sadly,

a few months later,

Hamilton was rushed to hospital following a massive stroke.

So Elvis was very distraught,

and he sent my mother a rose every day

that my dad was in the hospital.

When my father did finally pass away

through all the complications from the stroke,

Elvis sent my mother flowers

for six months after he passed away.

# Angelica. #

But it was towards the end of the session

that Elvis really struck gold.

Songwriter Mark James was desperate for Elvis to hear one of his songs

that he had recorded a few months earlier with the same musicians.

All I knew was a perfect vehicle to put him over.

He needed a rock song with a more mature theme to it.

# We're caught in a trap

# I can't walk out

# Because I love you too much, baby. #

I went to Chips and I said,

"You've got to play Suspicious Minds to Elvis when he comes in."

And he said, "Do you think it's a hit?"

And I said, "I know so". And man, he knew,

he saw it in my eyes, and when Elvis came in the studio

with an entourage,

when he put on Suspicious Minds, Elvis said, "Let's hear that again."

# We can't go on together

# With suspicious minds... #

So we started doing it with Elvis,

but we cut it pretty much like Martin did.

I mean, we went straight in the studio and started working on it.

Because the arrangement was...

..it was as good as we could get it, I guess.

-Yeah, it was a good arrangement.

-It was.

Whatever it is, the emotion on the tracks went to a new level, too.

It went to a higher level. With everybody, you know.

It made you want to dance when we got through with it.

As the recording was completed,

the Colonel's usual publishing arrangement came into play.

They wanted a piece of the song. About half of it.

But Parker hadn't reckoned with the formidable force

that was Chips Moman.

The two guys from Colonel Parker jumped up and say, "Whoa,

"we've got to call in Colonel Parker on this, we got to call Parker."

So Chips said, "You ain't calling nobody, motherfucker."

Chips would cuss a lot.

And he told him, he says,

"I tell you what, I'm going to take this master outside

"in my parking lot and set fire to it before I'm going to do that."

Well, Elvis said, " Wait a minute, what's he trying to do?"

He said, "We don't need to be upsetting Chips."

And he backed everybody off. Told everybody to leave him alone.

-ELVIS:

-Save that last one, Chips.

-OK.

And that was the first time that Elvis or the Colonel

didn't get any piece of the publishing at all.

And all that is because of Chips.

# I'm saving the last take for me... #

Chips Moman successfully protected the publishing

of Suspicious Minds for Mark James and himself.

Moman had won the battle with Parker,

but would ultimately lose the war.

The Memphis recordings should have been the beginning of a long

and fruitful relationship between Moman and Elvis.

Parker thought otherwise, and saw to it that Elvis

would never record with Moman and the Memphis Boys again.

But Parker anyway was preoccupied with bigger things.

He'd just signed the King to a million-dollar contract

for a residency in the International Hotel, Las Vegas.

It's very easy to tar Colonel Parker as the villain.

But he was very shrewd for Elvis

and he kept him in the public eye constantly. Until his death.

So it was Colonel who figured out,

"Well, if the records die, make sure you've moving pictures lined up.

"If the movies die, make sure you can take him

"into someplace like Vegas."

To showcase the new, mature Elvis,

he needed a much fuller sound.

He hand-picked a large band with no less than eight backing singers.

# Oh, if you need a friend... #

Elvis took control of the rehearsals,

as witnessed in the documentary, That's The Way It Is.

OK. The horns are answering it there.

# If you need a... #

It's right on top of "friend", isn't it?

# Like a bridge over troubled water

# I will ease your mind

# Like a bridge over troubled water... #

Nothing Elvis did was choreographed.

He didn't have a stage manager, he didn't have a producer for the show.

Basically, Elvis did what he wanted to do.

The first night, there were so many stars in the audience.

Cary Grant, Sammy Davis Jr, Juliet Prowse -

everybody in the entertainment business were there for that show.

Because this was Elvis Presley coming back to doing live concerts

after a long period of time.

# I just can't help believing when she's lying close beside me

# And my heart beats with the rhythm of her sighs... #

That's the only one, right there, that first part. You got the rest of it.

If I can get through the first one, I got it made.

He was really concerned that,

after such a long period of where he wasn't onstage,

that the people might not like him as much.

The minute he walked on stage, it all went away,

because the applause was deafening.

He went to Vegas, and I went with him for his opening in Vegas.

He said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I got a song,

"I'd like to see what you think about it."

And he sung Suspicious Minds, the crowd went nuts.

Suspicious Minds.

BAND STARTS THE SONG

# We're caught in a trap

# I can't walk out

# Because I love you too much, baby...

But I have to tell you, I was knocked out with the show.

He was the package. Elvis was beautiful to look at.

I thought he was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen, OK?

He looked better in person than he did on film, I thought.

# Oh, let our love survive

# Or dry the tears from your eyes

# Let's don't let a good thing die, oh, no

# Cos, honey, you know I've never

# Lied to you...

There's not an ounce of fat on that body.

He's working out and doing karate.

He was really good at it.

He was really good at it.

# Caught in a trap

# I can't walk out

# Because I love you too much... #

He had a good team at that point in his life.

The band was outrageous. They were over the top.

Of course, we wouldn't go over the top in the studio,

but you needed that.

You know, we would usually record the original tracks,

like that movie, That's The Way It Is.

And in the film, you will see, of course,

they've got to stretch them out and make them longer, pick up the tempo.

MUSIC SLOWS AND FADES

HUGE LAST NOTE

Suspicious Minds sold 40 million copies.

It's the biggest record ever cut in Memphis.

-Right?

-Mm-hm.

Yeah, we made 70 or 80?

Something like that.

It was cheap back then.

The first shows in Las Vegas, they're fantastic.

Just in terms of the way he is on stage,

the way he jokes about himself, the way he's having a wonderful time.

It's just confidence, everywhere.

This is not a guy who was a puppet.

Not a guy who wasn't aware of both himself and the world around him.

I'd like to talk to you a little bit, ladies and gentlemen,

about how I got into this business and when.

Elvis took the opportunity to reflect back on his early days

and the hatred heaped on him as the white Southern man who dared

to bring black music to a white audience.

A lot of things happened from my side of the story.

He talks about being a kid in Memphis,

"People would see me on the streets,

"and they'd come running and they'd say,

"'Get him, get him, he looks like he just came out of the trees!'"

You think it's freaky now, long hair and sideburns, man,

14 years ago you couldn't walk down the street.

"Get him, get him!"

"Watch him, he's just out of the trees, man."

And then he says, "I had a record,

"and the record got on the radio,

"and everybody's saying, 'Is he, is he?'

"And I'm saying, 'Am I, am I?'"

It became pretty big overnight in my hometown.

People were saying, "Who is he? What is he? Is he, is he?" You know?

I'm saying, "Am I, am I?"

And what does that mean? They're saying, "Is he black?"

And he's saying, "Am I black?"

I mean, what an extraordinary thing to be telling these

hundreds of people, and in such a hilarious and beautiful way.

You know, Mark Twain couldn't have written that better.

I really miss the live contact, because that was always where

it was at for me, was in front of people.

And so the whole idea is to tell you from my side what happened

a little bit, that's all.

He's telling them stuff that sound like things he's never told anybody.

He was bringing the crowd into the notion

that they're in on some kind of secret.

Some kind of little secret society for the night.

The Colonel tied Elvis into a long-term contract in Vegas.

The town suited them both.

For Elvis, Vegas presented the most glittering stage in the world, where

he could give free expression to his utterly unique performing style.

And in the white heat of the Nevada desert,

Parker, the ex-carnival huckster,

had found the biggest tent on the planet for his boy.

The stage was set for the greatest show on Earth.

He really blossomed.

He became...monumental.

He reached the heights that anybody would dream of.

It was like a circus when he came out.

Every major celebrity would come and see him and just gawk.

He was a different Elvis when he started playing in Las Vegas

and he definitely put on the glitz...the costumes.

The neon signs invited you to, they lured you to, they dared you to.

Key to the Elvis glitz in Vegas was the iconic jumpsuit.

They had to be bold and they had to be rich.

Vegas is Vegas, you have showgirls everywhere,

and he can't be muted in the middle of the stage.

So I started hiding tonnes of miniature mirrors

and bigger rhinestones and more vivid colours

and more definite shapes in the embroidery that they showed

to somebody sitting in the back.

That was the first suit.

That became a standard, which is I went very elaborate with

the America theme and his love for America and so on.

It had eagles going down the sleeves, down his legs,

and there was a matching eagle cape.

Different jewels and nail heads making blast effects and so on.

But it became his jewelled era.

Now, that started snowballing.

I did an Arabian suit for him, which was one of his favourites.

I love Egyptian,

I love native artwork.

And, actually, this was influenced by The Ten Commandments.

Yul Brenner wore this great armour that inspired this.

The fact that he enjoyed this stuff that

I was turning out just inspired me more and more to have more fun

because he was having more fun with it.

# Oh, I wish I was...

The real show stopper, as we see in the 1972 film, Elvis On Tour,

was the song American Trilogy.

First put together by country music singer Mickey Newbury,

it was an unlikely combination of a Confederate anthem,

an African-American spiritual and the song of the Union.

# For Dixieland

# That's where I was born

# Early, Lord, one frosty morning

# Look away, look away

# Look away, Dixieland... #

It's a really corny idea...

..and only Elvis could pull that off.

# Hallelujah... #

Dixie, Battle Hymn Of The Republic and then All My Trials.

And All My Trials is where it comes together. That's where it happens.

And you just needed a voice as beautiful as Elvis',

and him singing in his beautiful register, to make that work.

# So, hush, little baby

# Don't you cry

# You know your daddy's

# Bound to die... #

Elvis, in a sense, codified Americana.

He encapsulated, permeated, embodied it,

and Las Vegas brought out certain aspects of that.

It is so real in its total artificiality.

The neon, the green felt tables, the slot machines.

Elvis brought his style to it, they took to each other,

and made it work.

# Glory, glory hallelujah

# His truth is marching

# On

# His truth is

# Marching on. #

The American Trilogy performance summed up how Elvis saw himself

and what he meant to America in this period.

A good old Southern boy with a deep affinity to African-American music

and a patriot to his core.

The king was at his peak.

Elvis mania was back.

What could possibly go wrong?

Elvis has left the building!

This song is...

I just recorded it, I don't know. I... I...

-Is it out?

-In two weeks.

Two weeks it'll be out? Unchained Melody.

From an album called Unchained Melody. Makes a lot of sense. OK.

How do you like it so far?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Elvis was the first act to really make a lot of money for the hotel...

..and it worked beautifully for the Colonel.

It didn't work so beautifully for Elvis

because he was the first performer who was booked seven days a week,

which was a killing schedule, and very often two shows.

Nobody can do that, nobody can put up with that pace

for years and years.

If you ever saw his show, it was very high energy,

very up-tempo, very intense.

He hardly ever went to bed before daylight.

And, so, he was so keyed up, he needed something to come down

and, so, he took a pill to go to sleep. So, then...

..about five in the afternoon...

..he was still groggy, so he'd have to have a pill to wake up.

As his weight became a big problem,

one of the things I'd invented was the two-tone suit,

so that the visual was he was slim down the middle

and dark around the sides to help with his weight problem.

This is one of his more famous suits, that's the Aztec sundial.

And, luckily, the way the embroidery was done, it was one of the suits

that was able to be let out more and more as he gained weight.

And he did gain weight.

By the mid-'70s, Elvis was obese and isolated,

and he was dependent on prescription drugs.

But, more tragically, he seemed to be dying inside.

He said, "Man, I don't know if I can go on."

And we talked and he said, "All right, I'm going to go to sleep."

It was about six in the morning now.

So, that afternoon, it was four o'clock in the afternoon.

I'm sitting in the living room suite watching television.

In the bedroom, a doctor was with Elvis.

He's holding Elvis's head up, there was a bucket of ice water...

..and Elvis was groaning.

And there was a knock on the door.

And I looked through the hole, and, lo and behold,

there is Colonel Parker. He said, "Where is he?"

I said, "Elvis is in the bedroom, Colonel,

"Let me tell him you're here."

He said, "No, I'm going right in."

He comes out a minute and 20 seconds later.

He says, "Larry, now you listen to me.

"I was just in there

"and the only thing that's important now

"is that man is on stage tonight.

"You hear me? You hear what I'm saying?

"That man has got to be on stage tonight, Larry."

And he walked out.

What?

Parker was enforcing the first rule of the carnival -

the show must go on -

so it seemed perfectly natural for him to turn up the heat.

Parker got his way.

Elvis went back out onto the Vegas stage,

but the once magisterial presence was no more

than a kitsch caricature of his former self.

Here was the first Elvis impersonator.

When he realises that it doesn't matter if he does a good show

or a bad show, the response is going to be the same,

that the applause is going to be there,

that people are going to go nuts seeing him, then he stops pushing,

he stops trying, he goes through the motions,

he throws it all away.

He just burned out.

He said on stage, "I hate Las Vegas."

I mean, he just couldn't pretend any longer.

But when he would tell the Colonel, "That's it, I'm finished,

"I'm firing you," the Colonel would turn over a bill for something

like 2 million and he knew that Elvis wouldn't pay that.

He didn't have a lot of money going on at that time.

The Colonel was always in charge of that relationship.

There were times that Elvis got the upper hand, but they were brief.

He was not strong enough to stand up to the Colonel.

# I'm

# So-o-o-o hu-u-u-u-urt

# To think that you lied to me... #

Elvis pulled off one last great vocal performance by going back

to his musical hero, Roy Hamilton, to cover his song Hurt.

# Inside of me... #

But the Las Vegas adventure was over.

# You said... #

The one-time neon nirvana for both Elvis and the Colonel

destroyed them both.

# Never, never part... #

Parker wittered away his vast fortune on the gambling tables,

ending up a greeter at the Hilton Hotel

in exchange for his room and board.

# I'm hu-u-u-urt... #

Elvis died in Graceland on 16th of August, 1977.

Sadly, the end cast a shadow over the glory of Elvis' rebirth

in the City Of Lights.

# I'm so hurt... #

By taking control of his own career in the Vegas years,

and with the impassioned delivery of his most enduring songs,

he reached heights that may never be matched.

# Though you've hurt me

# Like nobody else could ever do

# I would never

# Ever hu-u-u-u-u-u-urt

# You

# Oh, you

# No, you

# No. #