ELVIS: MY BEST MAN
The New Book By George Klein
In the New York Post, we get a sneak peek at
the new book from George Klein.
From reading the following text, one cannot help
but notice a few inaccuracies and wonder if
these are down to the NY Post's own lack of
finding facts, or from the mind of Klein?
Anyway, the book is sure to cause controversy
& divide amongst the Elvis World.
The only thing we say is that dear Georgie has
been one of the few insiders (of
EPE) who said
they would always keep any stories about Elvis
positive has given in to the lure of the tabloid
trash by writing tales of BOOZE, DRUGS,
ORGIES, VIOLENCE and who knows what else?
INSIDE PEEK AT THE KINGS WILDEST DAYS
From the New York Post
Written By Susannah Cahalan
Elvis Presley wasn't always the King.
In fact, he was a total misfit who hadn't yet grown into his looks, wore strange,
out-of-style clothes and was harassed by jocks in his Memphis high-school days,
according to his oldest friend, George Klein, who co-wrote a new book "Elvis: My
Best Man" (Crown) about their 30-year friendship.
Elvis and Klein met when they were in the eighth grade and stayed friends until
the day Elvis died. Elvis was Klein's best man at his wedding -- and Klein was at
the King's side when he wed the love of his life, Priscilla. Klein worked as Elvis'
"travel companion," arranging trysts for him on the road, and he also witnessed
the spiral of booze, pills and overeating that eventually killed his friend in 1977.
The Post exclusively reveals some of Klein's best memories from the book, out
Jan. 5 . . .
Friends From the Start
Klein, who attended North Memphis Humes HS with Elvis, met him in an
eighth-grade music-appreciation class (which Elvis had to take because he was
rejected from the marching band), where he would often bring his guitar in and
sing songs to schoolmates.
"Do you mind if I bring my guitar to class and sing?" he asked the teacher.
"There were a few snickers and laughs," Klein recalls. "Back in 1948, there
wasn't anything cool about a 13-year-old kid playing a 'country' instrument like a
guitar."
After he sang his songs, there was a "moment of shocked silence and then just
a smattering of applause," Klein writes.
Elvis was far from the swaggering star the world would embrace. "Elvis wasn't
quite as handsome in those years. He hadn't quite grown into his looks yet,"
Klein recalls. "So most Humes girls weren't sure what to make of this very
different classmate."
While everyone else was wearing jeans and button-downs, Elvis would wear
"black slacks with a pink stripe down the side and a black sport coat with the
collar turned up. He'd let his hair grow out and had it combed back high. He had
those sideburns."
The jocks didn't take to the quiet singer.
"One day he was cornered in a Humes bathroom by a tough group who
brandished a pair of scissors and said they were going to cut off his hair.
"He tried to fight them off, but his pompadour was only saved when one of the
strongest, most fearless guys at Humes, Red West, happened to walk into the
bathroom and saw what was going on. Red told the would-be barbers that if they
wanted to cut Elvis' hair they'd have to cut his first, and that was the end of that,"
writes Klein. (West later became a bodyguard and co-songwriter for Elvis, as
well as an actor, appearing in many of Elvis' movies and later "Road House" with
Patrick Swayze.)
Don't Be Cruel
Although Elvis could be incredibly kind -- he gave Klein an expensive ring, a
Corvette and paid for his wedding -- he could also be irrationally mean.
Elvis had a "sharp temper lurking under the surface," writes Klein.
While recording the soundtrack to the movie "Jailhouse Rock" in 1957, Elvis had
a particularly bad day and took it out on his suite at the luxurious Beverly
Wilshire Hotel.
He played pool in the room, aiming the balls at furniture, breaking mirrors and
tables in the process.
"He just moved around the table fir ing off shots and shattering just about
everything in the room that was breakable, including a wall-sized mir ror," Klein
writes. "When he ran out of balls to shoot, he turned the pool cue around in his
hands and began to swing it like a golf club at the bumpers on the pool table."
When Elvis and his entourage returned to Memphis, his paramour at the time --
screen starlet Yvonne Lime -- visited him.
To introduce her to the Memphis lifestyle, he took her snake hunting with his
closest friends, including Klein.
Arthur Hooton, part of Elvis' crew, came up behind Lime and hugged her. She
shrieked in surprise and then laughed.
Elvis didn't find it funny.
"All of a sudden, Elvis had his gun to Arthur's head, and he said, 'You do that
again and I'll blow your f- - -ing head off,' " Klein recalls. That was the "first time I
saw how dark Elvis' moods could become."
A similar situation happened years later, when Elvis was dating a woman while
married to Priscilla.
Singer Jimmy Dean was "doing some pretty obvious flirting with Elvis' date,"
writes Klein. "Elvis walked over and put a small handgun to the side of Jimmy's
head and said, 'Leave her alone.' I suppose Elvis was being half-playful -- but
only half. Everybody tried to laugh it off, especially Jimmy, but the message was
clear: You just didn't mess with Elvis' woman."
Pistol-Packing Papa
Elvis, who famously gave President Richard Nixon a gun, had an obsession with
firearms and a paranoid temperament, Klein reveals.
The singer's love of weaponry started in 1957. A carload of teens passed by his
parents' Memphis home and yelled obscenities at his mother to harass the
budding star.
"[Elvis] darted back into the house and quickly returned with a rifle in his hands.
He sat down, laid the rifle across his lap and sat there with a cold, steely
expression on his face," writes Klein.
Later that year, Elvis found himself surrounded on a Memphis street by a group
of five or six angry Marines.
"I'm going to see how tough this movie star is. He's been messing with my wife,
and I'm going to whup his ass," one of the Marines threatened.
But Elvis didn't take it lying down. "He reached into his sports jacket's inside
pocket and calmly, smoothly, pulled out a gun, then quickly extended his arm so
that the barrel was just an inch away from a spot right between the big guy's
eyes," Klein writes.
"OK, you bad-ass son of a bitch,' he growled. 'Let's see what you can do now."
Although Elvis later revealed that the gun was just a prop from Paramount
Studios, Klein was shaken by the experience.
The Hound Dog
Klein, nicknamed "GK" by Elvis, had a pressing responsibility when on the road
with the King: Find beautiful girls to take back to his hotel room.
"I'd take them up to Elvis' room for a party -- the kind of party that quite often did
get a little wild," Klein writes.
One such party occurred in 1970, while Elvis was married and his daughter, Lisa
Marie, was 2.
His father, Vernon Presley, was with Klein in Tampa on a worldwide tour with
Elvis when things went a bit crazy backstage with a group of girls "falling
somewhere between groupies and hookers."
Vernon wanted to know where his son was.
"Oh, they're all in a room down the hall, Mr. Presley. There's going to be a show
down there," Klein replied.
But Klein mistakenly brought Vernon to the hotel suite where a girl-on-girl orgy
was going on.
"I can't even describe the look Elvis shot at me when I walked into that room with
his daddy," Klein writes. "But his anger at me didn't stop the scheduled
entertainment. Vernon just found a place to stand with the rest of us and
watched as Elvis began directing the girls like a certain kind of movie director:
You touch her here; you kiss her there; hang on to that; hold still."
It was hardly the only time Elvis was unfaithful to his wife.
"Elvis considered himself capable of loving the woman he'd left at home while
devoting himself fully to the woman he happened to be with elsewhere," says
Klein.
At the same time, Elvis also was carrying on a serious relationship with actress
and two-time Playboy centerfold Barbara Leigh, best known for her role in the
1972 film "Junior Bonner" with Steve McQueen.
Insecurities & Face-lifts
Even when the King became a musical sensation, his insecurities persisted. At
the age of 40, Elvis asked Klein to join him in getting cosmetic surgery.
"GK, you and I are going to get face-lifts," Elvis said when he called Klein to
Graceland in 1975.
"Elvis, you've still got the face of a Greek god," I said. "Why in the world would
you have a face-lift?"
"If we just have a little bit done now, we don't have to have a lot of work done
later," the King responded.
So Elvis and Klein got mini-face-lifts in Memphis. Elvis insisted on paying for
both.
"I have to admit, Elvis was right," Klein writes. "The mini-face-lift slowed down the
aging process."
Dark Depression
Elvis' deep-seated insecurities and self-destructive streak made for a moody
and depressive star, writes Klein.
The King expressed disappointment in his film work.
"When I asked Elvis what one of his mid-'60s films was about, he said wearily,
'Same story, different location. I get the girl, I beat up a guy, I sing 12 songs,' "
Klein writes.
By 1976, four years after his divorce from Priscilla, it was obvious Elvis was
using too many prescription pills.
Klein, a popular disc jockey, was working on Aug. 16, 1977, when he got a call
from a fellow DJ.
"I hate to make this call to you, GK," the DJ said, "but we just got a wire story
that Elvis passed away."
Klein was a pallbearer at Elvis' funeral, and he was the last person to touch his
casket.
"Elvis. The boy I'd met at Humes High. The kid who sung 'Old Shep' to our music
class," Klein writes. "The guy who had me into his fantastic life. The person who
had given me more than anyone I'd ever known. My best man. My best friend.
He was gone."
21.12.2009, 12:00
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