Habe ein sehr cooles Interview mit Steve Binder gefunden, leider auf Englisch und das zu übersetzen wäre dann doch etwas heftig. Ich hoffe ihr seht es mir nach...

Steve Binder &
Elvis Presley

Q : Say your name and spell it.
A : Sure. My name is Steve Binder. It's B I N D E R. Some people
pronounce it Binder (short I), some Binder (long I), but it's Binder (short
I).

Q : Tell us how you were approached to do the 68 special with Elvis.

A : Well I think I was approached because I was so naive in 68, that I
had had a very passionate feeling about television and all, it could do
to educate America and the world. And I had gotten a break early in my
life and had directed a show in New York called "Hullabaloo." And from
there I decided to get into the specials business. And I did put
together a lot of the team from "Hullabaloo" behind the scenes to do a Leslie
Uggams special. Then the next one we did was with Petula Clark and
Harry Belafonte. And that became a shot heard around the world when it was
the first incident of a black and a white person touching physically on
prime time television. And it created a kind of a furor among very
bigoted advertising representatives from Chrysler Motors. They wanted the
scene taken out of the show and it became very controversial in Newsweek
and Time Magazine.

And, then I found out that through a phone call from a gentleman, I
think Bob Finkel, who was somebody that I only heard of in the past, cause
of all the shows he had produced and directed. And he called me and
said "Listen we got this deal at NBC with Elvis Presley." But the truth
is, "We got a deal but we're not getting the show made. We think maybe
you'll be someone who Elvis can relate to because of your age and because
of all that's gone on. And we'd love to set up a meeting if you're
interested with Elvis and see if you guys could hit it off and do the
show." And, I was convinced after the Petula Clark Belafonte special that I
would never work again in this town. I was told that by about 100
people, you know, you just crossed the line and anybody who does anything
controversial is immediately gonna be sat on by the establishment. But it
turned out to be the luckiest thing in my life.



Elvis Presley

Q : Tell us about the first meeting with Elvis.

A : Well to be honest with you I had no passion for Elvis Presley's
music. I was amused by him being a west coast kid, and I was into the
Beach Boys and all the Jimmy Webb and "McArthur Park" and so forth. And my
partner at the time was a very prolific, well-established record
producer. So we joined forces on the Petula Clark special as partners. And,
Bones Howe did the recordings for the Fifth Dimension and the
Association, Laura Nyro, etc. while we were a company. And Bones, when he heard I
got the phone call said "Hey, man, you got to meet him because you guys
are gonna be great together. I used to engineer for Elvis. And I just
know he's gonna like you a lot and vice versa." So I agreed to a meeting
at our offices on Sunset Boulevard next to Tower Records.

And I said okay but, if we're gonna have a meeting then, you know, I'm
gonna tell him that he should come to our offices and we'll chat. And
so sure enough we set up a meeting and Elvis came out with the gang. All
these Lincoln Continentals drove into our garage. In those days we were
the only show business company in the building, so nobody ever knew it
was Elvis or cared it was Elvis or even thought he was gonna be there.
And he came upstairs with Colonel Parker and Joe Esposito and a group
of his entourage. And we went into our office and we left everybody
outside. I think it was just the Colonel and myself, Bones, Allen Blye and
Chris Beard who wrote the special. And we just talked. And I don't
think we talked much about the special. We talked about life and, there was
this commonality where Elvis walked in and said "Hi Steve" and I said
"Hi Elvis." And Bob Finkel told me that he never ever called him by his
first name.



And, we talked about him going to Hawaii on vacation for a week, and so
forth and so on. I remember asking him "If I gave you 'McArthur Park'
to record, would you have recorded it?" And he said, "Absolutely." And I
knew that Elvis wasn't just a guy living in the past but he was up on
things and really wanted to join the real world, the contemporary world.
Cause I remember telling him that in my opinion if he didn't mind my
bluntness, but to me he hadn't had a hit record in years. He wasn't
makin' any movies so what was really making him this superstar was just
Colonel Parker and his publicity machine. But television was a way to
either instantly the next day become the biggest star in the world, or vice
versa. You might do the television special and fall on your ass and
that would be the end of your career other than the memory of what you
used to do. And I think he respected my honesty and we just hit it off.
Then Elvis said he was going to Hawaii and I said "Okay we're all gonna
work on the show and when you get back, we'll talk about the 68
special." Which is exactly what he did. He left and we put the show together
and he came back and heard what we had to say.

Q : You mentioned "McArthur Park." Elvis sang a line or two from the
song?

A : Yeah I believe in the subconscious and I think when he was nervous
and he was doing the special, a lot of the pre conversations and the
conversations that went on with us was in the back of his mind from the
very beginning. And I think he sang "McArthur Park" in the improv
sections specifically because of that conversation when we first met.

Q : Did Colonel Parker ever say he wanted the special to be a certain
way?



A : The first time I met Colonel Parker, Bones and I went out to MGM
Studios and the Colonel was showing off his office space. And he was
bragging about his contract with MGM that was one-page long. And, I
remember him telling me that, if they had any dispute with the studio they
could be packed and out in a moving van in about two hours. And, then he
presented me with a Snowmans Club membership which was, for those that
don't know, the Snowmans Club was a fictitious club that the Colonel was
president of. And, he was strictly for anybody who was great at knowing
how to BS, you became a member of Colonel Parker's Snowmans Club. And I
never considered myself much in that arena but it was fun to get the
certificate and the little cards that went with it and the booklet and so
forth.

Q : A lot of stories say that the Colonel wanted Elvis to come out in a
tux and sing Christmas songs.

A : Well, Colonel Parker had a lot of preconceived ideas but my
experience from the very beginning of my career to the present is that, you
know, let creative people create and let business people do their
business. And it's business people are very creative but they should keep in
the business world not the creative world. And Colonel Parker gave me a
audio tape, the old-fashioned kind that used to play on reel to reel.
And it was Elvis Christmas present to radio. And it was an hour of
recorded Christmas songs. And then there was this fake DJ stuff where, you
know, the local DJ could insert himself asking Elvis questions and Elvis
would answer, even though the two were never in the studio at the same
time. It goes on to this day. And I took it and I just heard all of the
talk of this is going to be a Christmas special. This is gonna have 26
Christmas songs in it. And to be really honest with you, it never
phased me and it never entered my mind that that was what we were gonna do.
It just wasn't part of my psyche.

Q : When did you and Elvis sit down to discuss how the show was gonna
be done?

A : Well, when Elvis came back from vacation in Hawaii, and he was
awesome looking. I mean, I'm heterosexual. I'm straight as an arrow and I
got to tell ya, you stop, whether you're male or female, to look at him.
He was that good looking. And if you never knew he was a superstar, it
wouldn't make any difference if he'd walked in the room you'd know
somebody special was in your presence. So he came back from Hawaii and he
was all tanned and he was in great physical shape and he was in a real
good mood. And, they came to our offices again. And we took him into the
back room. And Chris Beard, Allen Blye, myself, I think Bones might've
been in the room. And basically speaking we had a whole stack of his
albums, every movie he ever made, every recording he ever made, etc.,
which is how we basically tailor made the show. What I told Elvis when he
went to Hawaii is that we would make him a show that nobody else could
do. Only him. We would--- it was like making a tailor made suit. It
would be made for him. And that's the way that I like working and I like
working with all the talented people that I've surrounded myself with.
Where we'd go into a think tank, and we'd never had titles. There was no
Mister anybody in the room. There was no director, producer, star,
whatever. We just sat there and we just all pitched equally, and I love
working that way.

And so we decided that what would be better than taking a theme, a main
theme, which is here's this dirt poor basically country boy who's a
singer, who starts in life with nothing. And he works his way to fame and
fortune. And goes full cycle where after he's got all this fame and
adulation, he realizes that happiness is home. It's where he all--- you
know, he's a musician and it's all where he began. And with that thread
through the show, we then weaved a lot of different segments. But they
all related to music he had either recorded or he liked or whatever. It
was a special that we could not have, if he dropped out, we couldn't
have run to another artist and said do this show. It was impossible. It
was Elvis show. And we ran into a great conflict with NBC, who wasn't
used to having one star in prime time. It was unheard of. You had a star
and a bunch of guest stars. I think NBC at one time asked if we'd put
Milton Berle on the show or something.

And, it was a case of when Elvis came back and we pitched him the
concept, and we had broken it all out in terms of, we're gonna do this sort
of miniseries within a segment where you're gonna go to a pier. First
thing was the bordello sequence where he leaves his hometown and he goes
and the first encounter he has is he walks into a bordello. And then
there's this virgin innocent girl who's never even worked one day and she
looks Elvis and he looks at her, and just as they were about to get
together the place gets raided and they jump out the window, and he's on
the road again. And then he goes to an amusement park and he has a
confrontation with Big Daddy, who's this mean carnival barker who breaks his
guitar and so forth. And we just did this sequencing. He goes to a
little tiny dive to sing. He goes to a more upscale club. And pretty soon
he's a superstar in concert. And then it tags with, you know, where his
real happiness is his roots, being home and being an artist. And that
was one segment.

Then we knew how much Elvis loved the gospel. I was blown away with the
fact that here's a man to this day that's never won a Grammy for rock
'n' roll. The only Grammys he picked up were in the gospel area. I think
he won two in that category. So we put a gospel segment together. I
wanted the whole show to be live Elvis, even though we had an orchestra.
In some segments, I wanted him to sing live in everything. The only
regret I have about the special is in the gospel segment, he did a lot of
lip synching. And to this day I regret the fact that, I caved in and let
him lip synch cause I think his forte was live performance, even on
television.

Q : Did the sponsor give you a hard time about the bordello segment?

A : Well the show was presold to Singer Sewing Center and that was a
deal before I walked in with Colonel Parker and NBC. And Singer was doing
other specials at the time. I think they did A Don Ho special. They had
a package deal at NBC. And, but they were thrown the Elvis special and
they picked it up. And at the time, the phones were ringing off the
hook when people realized Elvis Presley was gonna do a television special.
I remember Colonel Sanders was dying to get involved and sponsor the
show, with their Kentucky Fried Chicken. It led to a really good
experience after that because, Mrs. Paul's Fish Sticks was really wanting to
sponsor the show and I'm sure NBC would've got a lot more money from
these sponsors who really wanted to be involved with Elvis. And instead
they said it was already a done deal. So when Singer was in a sense thrown
into the pie, they were obviously concerned with little old ladies who
would go to Singer Sewing Centers and buy sewing machines. So there was
no real generic relationship with Elvis Presley and his music. But as
long as they stayed out of the loop in the creative process I was happy.

And they did for a long time until we reached this scene, which now is
called for years the Bordello scene. It never was a bordello scene to
begin with. It was all part of that, you know, life cycle story of a
musician trying to become famous. And, what happened is that we did
scenically put a brass bed in the room of all these women. And somebody from
NBC all of a sudden labeled it the bordello. And that's what started
the ball rolling in terms of the negativity of shooting that scene. So
when I got the buzz that, you know, the cleavage on the ladies was too
low, I went to the costume department and I say "Okay, let's have the NBC
standards and practice person standing there," and let's get some net
and, you know, sort of work on their dresses and their cleavage to make
sure it met NBC standards. And we went through that and everybody was
happy.

And then the next thing that happened is I heard a rumor. Nobody came
to me and said, "We're gonna cut this out of the show." So I went to the
sponsors and I went to NBC and I said "Look, I want to know before I
shoot it, not after. Is it gonna stay in the show or is it going out?"
And then somebody, even though I never said it, somebody said "Binder's
gonna walk out of the show if we tell him it's gonna be cut out of the
show. So we better tell him it's okay." So I got them to give their word
of honor that this piece would not be taken out of the show. And then
as soon as I shot it, word came down that they were gonna take it out of
the show, and I threw a big tantrum I guess at the point.

And, nobody at NBC in the programming department wanted to confront me
or face me on this issue. So they decided to bring somebody from New
York who was making toasters for, you know, General Electric or somebody.
It was probably before General Electric owned NBC. But whoever it was
high up in the RCA world came down, and he had no knowledge of show
business that I knew of. And, I met him down in the videotape editing room,
and he was looking at the monitor at a Dean Martin Show. Dean Martin
had this girl in a bikini who, you know, our girls were very conservative
compared to what this girl looked like in prime time on NBC. And I
think he had Phil Harris, the bandleader, and they were basically telling a
dirty joke without the punch line. This guy was laughing his head off
and I said "This is gonna be a piece of cake." He's gonna look at our
thing and say "Fine." So I bring him over to our tape machine and I play
the sequence. He looks up and I can see his face go from smile to
frown. And, he looked at me and he said, "Out." So, that was a battle that I
really fought and I lost it for awhile. But years later, somebody said
"Hey that was a really good scene. We got to put that back into the
special" and they did.

Q : So now it's on home video?

A : And it broadcasted on NBC with it in. That's the irony of the whole
thing. The first time out they wouldn't let it, you know, they were
afraid of--- and by our standards today, it was nothing believe me.

Q : You and Elvis went for a walk on Sunset Boulevard?

A : Not a walk necessarily. I was always kinda probing and, you know,
we had a really good behind the scenes one on one relationship. And I
said "What do you think would happen if you walked out on the street
today?" And he said "What do you mean?" I said, "Well what do you think
would happen?" And he looked at me curiously and he said "Well, I don't
know what do you think would happen?" And I said "Nothing. This is 1968.
You walk down on the street on Sunset Boulevard, and I almost promise
you, guarantee you, nobody's gonna tear your clothes off. Nobody's gonna
hound you for autographs or whatever, you know, they're gonna just
accept you. These are different times, you know." And that was the end of
the conversation, and it was a few days later, we rehearsed the show at
our offices in the piano room before we ever went to NBC with the full
orchestra and the staff and so forth. And every day Elvis would come to
our office and we would rehearse the show on piano, and teach him the
arrangements and so forth. And up until this time Elvis had never
recorded in his life with anything bigger than a rhythm section. Drums, bass
guitar, sometimes he'd even have a bass and that was it. And now we're
asking him to, you know, appear before 50 musicians and sing. He was
nervous about that. And then when I fired Billy Strange and brought in
Billy Goldenberg, Elvis didn't even know who Billy Goldenberg was, to do
all the arrangements and conduct the special. It truly changed his
musical direction. After that he loved big bands and full orchestras and
what have you.

Anyway, the story, I'm digressing. But the story on Sunset is a few
days later while we were rehearsing, Elvis came to me and said "Let's go."
I didn't even know what he was talking about and I said "Lets go
where?" He said "Downstairs." So everybody grabbed their hats or coats or
whatever and they said "Let's go" and Elvis said "No, no. Only Steve and I
are going down there. You all, you can watch from the window," cause we
were on like the third floor. And he said "But we're goin' down there,
you know, to see what it's like on Sunset Boulevard." We went down at
the peak of traffic, like 5:00 in the evening. And we got down in front
of our building. And then, we stood out there for a few minutes, and we
were chatting small talk. I don't even remember what we were talking
about. But what I was observing, and what he was observing, was that
nobody was paying any attention to us. And after awhile it got
uncomfortable. And Elvis pretty soon was trying to draw attention to himself. He
was kinda waving at cars driving by and some kids were coming from Tower
Records and they bumped into us and didn't even lift their heads up to
see they had bumped into Elvis and so forth. And, we stood out there
for like 10, almost embarrassing minutes, trying to draw attention to hey
this is really Elvis Presley.

And after it was all over I could tell a real change of attitude in
him. He was loose, he was really fun, and he really trusted me. And then,
the irony of the thing is I was convinced if anybody had a sign out on
Sunset Boulevard saying, this is Elvis Presley not some Hollywood
impersonator or character or whatever, he would've been mobbed and they
would've torn his clothes off and so forth but he never knew that and I
never mentioned it to him.