Publicly, at least initially, his death was only attributed to heart failure, and any insinuation to drug abuse was denied by Elvis’s estate. In time, what was a badly-kept secret just came to be acknowledged as an understood fact. Elvis lived in a time before there were Betty Ford clinics or places for image-conscious celebrities to go to find help. His was a generation before the words “there’s no shame in admitting you have a problem” were acceptable. He had a problem, but generational pride prevented any possibility of his ever truly finding help. Longtime associate/lackey Red West wrote of a story in his “Elvis: What Happened?” tell-all, how Elvis accidentally nearly-killed a girlfriend when they spent a quiet evening together in Palm Springs knocking back shots of Hycodan cough syrup (laced with codeine). The girl was hospitalized for almost a week but of course, Elvis never received so much as a stern warning from anyone with authority. No one had the guts to tell him his lifestyle had become reckless, dangerous and fatal. He once turned to Red West’s wife Pat and said “I’ve tried every kind of medicine there is, and believe me Dilaudid is the best out there.” Elvis took that particular drug to “help him sleep.”
It’s intended to be given to terminal cancer patients as a final painkiller.
His life was out of control and in hindsight it’s no surprise at all that it ended the way it did. The day before his death was mundane; plans for the next tour were made, some time was spent on his in-house racquetball court and then he and girlfriend Ginger Alden went to bed. She fell asleep sometime around 4am while Elvis was still sitting up reading. Ginger awoke on August 16th at about 9am to find Elvis still awake, telling her he couldn’t sleep (a byproduct of the cocktail of pills he took every day, multiple times a day). He then told her he was going to use the bathroom, which she knew meant he was going to take some “medicine” to help him sleep. In his bathroom, he had a miniature pharmacy as well as several hypodermic needles full of whatever he needed for whatever occasion. The later autopsy would show that he had at least ten different drugs swimming around his body at the time of his death. Those drugs did a number on his internal organs too. When Elvis sat on the toilet, he strained and strained and produced nothing but a coronary. Struggling and hindered by his recent intake of drugs, he staggered forward and fell onto the floor where he died.
Death has a way of changing the public perception of a celebrity. Michael Jackson was a punchline in 2009, loved only by his most loyal fans, but the moment he died, out of the woodwork came scores of people claiming “I always loved him!” The same thing happened when Prince died in 2016; he went from being the artist whose records were being ignored by the masses to being instantly remembered for what he always was: one of the greatest ever, whose records were suddenly worth listening to again. Elvis’ life was not even a joke in 1977; it wasn’t important enough to comment on to joke about. He was beyond a punchline. He was forgotten.
Then he died.
Suddenly everyone wanted to pay homage. Suddenly everyone wanted to protest how much they always loved him. Suddenly everyone wanted to buy his albums and buy his posters and buy his lunchboxes. Suddenly it no longer mattered that he died overweight, drug-riddled and just…sad in a variety of ways. It no longer mattered because Elvis was no longer “present.” He was “past.” And that means you’re free to look at the totality of his life and career and examine it in hindsight, not in real-time.
And hindsight has been very good to Elvis Presley.
Today Elvis is a global brand worth millions. He earned over twenty-five million in 2016, in fact, and sold a million records. That brand wasn’t established in 1977, however. Vernon Presley held control of the estate but he was elderly and would be dead himself within two years. He appointed a trio of custodians to oversee the estate: The National Bank of Commerce in Memphis (to whom Elvis was their biggest customer), Joseph Hanks (Elvis’s longtime accountant), and Elvis’s ex-wife Priscilla. Though they were five years divorced, they had remained on good terms and she was the mother of Elvis’s only heir, Lisa Marie. The first hurdle they had was to survive bankruptcy. Graceland cost half a million dollars a year to maintain, and Elvis had not left much behind for his benefactors to spend.
He left behind a concert tour for August of 1977 that would have seen him perform around New England and then in the southeast, ending with two shows in Memphis. He left behind a mound of debt that a bewildered father and new custodians of his estate had to manage. He left behind a nine-year-old daughter as heir to his estate, too young to make any major decisions. And he left behind a manager without a cash-cow to feed his massive gambling addictions and debt. When Parker was given the news of Elvis’s death his first words were “oh my boy” and then “okay…it’s just like when he went to the Army. We can control his image.” Parker cornered Elvis’s father Vernon immediately after the funeral with papers in hand for Vernon to sign an extended agreement with Parker. It would be almost five years before the truth of his terrible management came to light.
When Vernon died in 1979, the estate fell to Lisa Marie. Since she was a minor, a court-appointed attorney was tasked with representing her interests. The attorney discovered that the agreement Parker had compelled Vernon to sign (again on the day of his son’s funeral) entitled the Presley estate to 20% of all future earnings of Elvis Presley merchandise and record sales. Another 20% was set aside for various business partners, and the remaining 60% went to Parker. In the aftermath of Elvis’s death, his fame skyrocketed as a flood of nostalgia washed over baby boomers. But though Elvis’s name was selling like crazy, it was only Parker that was making any money. Elvis’s estate was bringing in only around a million a year, but again: half of that was being spent on upkeep and whatever modest efforts they could think of to push the Presley brand.
The estate was encouraged by the judge overseeing the case to file a suit against Parker for mismanagement, which caused Parker to counter-sue. A 1983 settlement was eventually reached and with two million dollars in “go away” money in hand, Tom Parker finally walked away from Elvis, six years after his death.
Around the same time, Priscilla had the idea of converting Graceland into a museum and turning it into a tourist destination. The move solved the two biggest problems the estate was facing: how to stay afloat financially and how to preserve and push a carefully-crafted image of Elvis into posterity. Within days of Elvis’s death, the strip mall across the street from Graceland had turned into a carnival-like hub of Elvis souvenirs and memorabilia, sold by any “rando” huckster looking to make a buck. Elvis’s estate quickly purchased the mall and over the course of several years converted into a carnival-like hub of Elvis souvenirs and memorabilia, sold by “Elvis Presley Enterprises.” In years to come the site expanded to include Elvis’s “Lisa Marie” jet and car collection, the “Heartbreak” Hotel, and the recently-opened “Guest House” hotel.
After graverobbers nearly succeeded in stealing his body from the Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis, the estate ordered his remains exhumed and moved to its permanent resting place on the Graceland grounds. Elvis’s mother Gladys was also moved and Vernon joined them in 1979. The tombstones were placed next to a small round pool in an area dubbed “the meditation garden” where fans can walk around with provided-headsets that play “If I Can Dream” while they stare at the stone marker whose name reads “Elvis Aaron Presley.”
Elvis’s middle name came from a friend of Gladys’ whose name was Aron. Elvis grew up spelling and writing his middle name with only one “a” but as an adult, he sought to legally change his name to the more traditional “Aaron.” Upon doing so he discovered that his birth certificate had featured a typo and his middle name had always been listed as “Aaron.” That didn’t convince conspiracy theorists, however, who claimed that the “Aaron” on Elvis’s gravemarker is proof that he’s not really dead.
Why the Elvis estate would lie about his death but not lie about the spelling of his middle name apparently escapes such people, but there you go. In the United States alone seven percent of the population believes Elvis faked his death. If you ask them, Elvis merely grew tired of the touring, the recording, the commitments, the fame, and walked away from it all through an elaborate hoax featuring a fake body and a gullible media. If you ask them, Elvis flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 17th, the day after he supposedly “died.” An airport employee claims a man who looked a lot like Elvis bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires under the name “John Burrows.”
That happens to be the name Elvis’s entourage used whenever they would make hotel bookings for him.
Then, of course, there’s this:
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And this…
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Checkmate.
Honestly, it’s not surprising that so many people refuse to believe he’s gone, or at least that he died in 1977. A fanbase as loyal and zealous as his—they called him “the king” for crying out loud—would naturally have a hard time accepting that his life ended so unceremoniously, so unspectacularly, so…uncinematically.
But it did…
He died with a whimper, but his legacy has only grown.
In 1984 he reached a milestone of one-billion combined records sold worldwide, a record for a single entertainer. In 1986 he entered into the first class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1998 he entered the Country Music Hall of Fame, and then the Gospel Hall of Fame in 2001. And despite never playing a single show in the UK, he was inducted into the UK Rock and Roll Hall of Fame based solely on his remarkable success in the country (second only to the Beatles during his life). Elvis is the only musician (solo or band) in UK history to have fifty top-ten albums.
In 1992 the US Postal Service took the unprecedented step of asking the American people to vote on their choice for the style of artwork to be used on their upcoming Elvis Presley commemorative stamp. Over a million ballots were returned, with the winner being a portrait of 1950’s era Elvis (the other option was a 1973 Aloha from Hawaii depiction). The stamp went on to be the most widely used in the history of the Post Office and is the top-selling commemorative stamp of all time. Demand was so high that the USPS printed 500 million copies (the typical order is around 150 million).
In 2001 a remix of his 1968 single flop “A Little Less Conversation” jumped to #50 on the Hot100 (the highest chart-placement for an Elvis single since 1981). The single went on reach number-one in a variety of international markets, including the UK and Canada, giving Elvis his first number-one hit since “Way Down” reached the top shortly after his death. RCA capitalized on the song’s success by featuring it on their 2002 album Elvis: 30 #1 Hits. The record became the first Elvis album to reach #1 since 1974, making it the longest gap ever between chart-topping albums for a solo artist.
In 2011 Elvis’s Christmas Album was the first record ever certified “diamond” by the RIAA, an award given for surpassing ten million sales.
In August of 2017, on the fortieth anniversary of his death, fans all over the world flocked to Graceland to pay homage, to listen to songs they have memorized, to reflect on movies they know are silly but don’t care, to stare at images they’ve seen a thousand times, and to say goodbye all over again to a singer, actor, performer, entertainer, and all-around American icon; a man whose legacy grows with each passing year like ancient myths, a man whose rags to riches story still inspires us, whose sudden descent to ruin still frustrates us, and a man whose passion and love for the art of music still captivates us, forty years later.
Thank you, Elvis.
Thank you very much.
