Baby, Let's Play House_ Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him - Alanna Nash [354]
And then he was gone.
Larry stood in shock, horrified.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God!’ Why didn’t he wait for Elvis to come to and say, ‘Son, I’m taking over now. You are in no shape. We’ve got to get you to a hospital right now’? I can only surmise he acted out of stupidity and denial. But still, how could he be so callous? Where was his humanity?”
Through the years, fans have blamed Priscilla for not staging an intervention. How could she just stand by and watch Elvis kill himself? “People who ask that don’t know Elvis,” she has written. “Elvis would no more have responded to an intervention than a demand to give up singing. He never considered himself a drug addict. He refused to believe he had a problem. He would have undoubtedly laughed away any attempt at an intervention. There’s no one, including his father, who could have pulled that off.”
By now, audiences braced themselves for the worst. On May 22 in Landover, Maryland, Elvis walked off stage, tossing two microphones to the floor, and announcing he needed to answer “nature’s call.” (“God went to the toilet!” said Jackie Kahane. “Incredible.”) Soon, in Baltimore, he would fall onstage and then again disappear for half an hour. “At the finale,” Variety wrote, “there was no ovation, and patrons exited shaking their heads and speculating on what was wrong with him.”
One thing, of course, was Ginger. On May 26, in Binghamton, New York, they quarreled, as they often did on tour, and he sent her home, telling Larry she was still in communication with her ex-boyfriend, and that she also couldn’t seem to cut the apron strings. “He said, ‘I’ve got to teach her. When we get back after the concert, all she wants to do is get on the phone and talk to her mother. I want her with me.’ He started to have second and third thoughts about her.”
That afternoon, he came out of the bedroom with Dr. Nick and told the guys sitting around the suite’s living room that he and Ginger needed a rest from each other, and that while she was young, if she didn’t grow up and choose between him and her “whole damn family,” there definitely would be no wedding.
Kathy Westmoreland was summoned to stay with him the rest of the tour so he could fall asleep at night and not feel so isolated and alone. But the backup singer, who had always considered Elvis “a long-lost soul I had missed and found,” was so worried about him she could hardly sleep herself. Increasingly, he talked of death.
One night, he showed her a blue jumpsuit hanging on the wall. “He was going to have to wear it, and he said, ‘I’m going to look fat in that faggy little suit, but I’ll look good in my coffin.’ ” Suddenly, Kathy was unable to utter a word. “I knew that it was inevitable and could come at any moment. He told me that he didn’t want me to wear black at the funeral, but white.”
In mid-summer, on what was to be his final tour, CBS-TV shot a one-hour special, “Elvis in Concert,” in Omaha, Nebraska, on June 19, and in Rapid City, South Dakota, two days later. Ginger once again accompanied him, and on one of the nights, he playfully introduced her to the crowd: “I’d like you to say hello to my girlfriend, Ginger. ‘Ginger, stand up, honey.’ ” She stood briefly to applause. “ ‘Sit down, Ginger.’ That’s enough for her.”
The controversial special, which aired after Elvis’s death and in the opinion of many around Elvis, should never have been broadcast at all, revealed a legend colliding with myth. All cartoonish chins, gut and hair, Elvis was often short of breath as he stumbled through his lyrics (“Are You Lonesome Tonight?”), slurred his speech, and perspired like a man on fire. Embarrassed, he poked fun of himself, and while many fans could hardly believe the sad specter that had been their hero, at times, especially on “How Great Thou Art” and “Hurt,” he was still able to evoke glimmers of greatness.
“At the beginning of ‘Elvis in Concert,’ ” Todd Slaughter, president of the Official Elvis Presley Fan Club of Great