I have always been a believer in relationships, in strength in numbers and flying in a pack, which is why, in 1963, I combined my business with the businesses of two friends to form Management Three. It was me, Bernie Brillstein, and Marty Kummer. I had some acts, the biggest being Jane. Bernie had some acts, the biggest being Jim Henson and the Muppets; Marty had some acts, the biggest being Jack Paar. Together, we figured we could take over the world. Bernie died in 2008, Marty before that. More than friends, these men were family. I loved them. If you work with people you love, which, of course, is not always possible, the hard times become an epic adventure. If Bernie was around, he would tell you about the office we rented at Fifty-fifth and Lexington Avenue. He would tell you about the hundreds of nights we spent out in the city, in the nightclubs and dives, the cocktail tables crowded with martinis. We searched every nook and cranny for talent. I had set myself up as the outside man, the public face of Management Three, who had to be kept in good suits and luxury, as our potential clients would judge the health of the company by my appearance. I bought myself a Rolls-Royce and hired a driver, though I could not afford them. I figured it was all about appearance, perception, as the man who rides in style often rides away with the big contract.
Bernie went to Los Angeles to open a West Coast office. Then I went out. This is when I made the full-time move to LA. Within a few years, I moved into the house that I have called home ever since. LA was wildly exciting in those years. The last of the old moguls were still around, as were the stars of Hollywood 's Golden Age. Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly-I would come to know them all. People think New Yorkers of my generation, their memories swollen with egg cream and stickball and whatever, long for those old neighborhoods, but that is not true. What we miss, if anything, are the people, the world when it was crowded with crucial players. As for the place, I have always believed the West Coast has it over the East Coast in every way. Going from New York to LA, with its palm trees and swimming pools and white houses and green hills and Santa Ana winds, was excellent in a way it is hard to express. It was like stepping from the orchestra pit of the theater on Fordham Road in the Bronx up onto the screen. Things started to cook as soon as I was settled in LA. There were meetings, deals, parties, signings, but all of this was really just the prologue before the great early triumph of my career-the success that would make everything else possible.
I was in bed, Jane at my side. I always sleep with a notepad on the table so I can write down ideas that come in the night. That night, I saw Madison Square Garden in a dream, fronted by a huge marquee on which big, beautiful, red letters, lit against a blue velvet sky, read: JERRY WEINTRAUB PRESENTS ELVIS PRESLEY. My eyes clicked open like a camera shutter. I rolled over, started writing.
"What now?" asks Jane.
"I'm going to promote Elvis Presley," I tell her. "I'm going to take him to Madison Square Garden."
"That's crazy," she says. "You don't even know Elvis Presley."
"Not yet," I say, close the book, roll over, and am asleep before she can answer.
The next morning, I dug up a number for Colonel Tom Parker, the onetime carnie who had managed Elvis for years, got him on the phone, and said, "Colonel Parker, this is Jerry Weintraub. I would like to take Elvis Presley on the road."
The Colonel had a sly, deliberate way of talking. He took his time. You just knew he was grinning, chomping a cigar, turning it slowly in his mouth. He said, "Who are you, son?"
"This is Jerry Weintraub," I told him. "I have a strategy in mind, a way to take Elvis on the road that will mean a lot of money."
He said, "Look here, boy, in the first place, Elvis is not going on the road"-at this point, the mid to late sixties, Elvis was doing movies, and had not been on tour for years-"and, in the second, if he were to go on tour, which he's not, it would not be you taking him. I've got guys lined up for that job, people we need to take care of."
End of conversation.
If there's one piece of advice I can give to young people, to kids trying to break out of Brooklyn and Kankakee, it's this: persist, push, hang on, keep going, never give up. When the man says no, pretend you can't hear him. Look confused, stammer, say, "Huh?" Persistence-it's a cliche, but it happens to work. The person who makes it is the person who keeps on going after everyone else has quit. This is more important than intelligence, pedigree, even connections. Be dogged! Keep hitting that door until you bust it down! I have accomplished almost nothing on the first or second or even the third try-the breakthrough usually comes late, when everyone else has left the field.
I called the Colonel again the next morning.
"What can I do for you, son?"
"Hello, Colonel, this is Jerry Weintraub. I want to take Elvis out on the road."
"You don't give up, do you, boy?"
"No, Colonel, not when I know I'm right."
I called every day for months and months. I did not flip him in the course of one of those calls, but I had planted my name so deep in his brain he would never forget it. Whenever he thought of taking Elvis on tour, he thought of Jerry Weintraub.
One morning, about a year after the dream, the Colonel called me at home.
"Do you still want to take my boy out on the road?"
"Yes, Colonel."
"Well, I'll be at the roulette table at the Hilton International Hotel in Vegas tomorrow at nine A.M. You meet me there with a check for a million dollars, and he's yours."
Great. Wonderful. Terrific. Fantastic. My dream is coming true. All I have to do is raise more money than I have ever seen in my life, and do it in twenty-four hours. Back then, a million dollars was real money. Rockefellers, Carnegies-those were the only people that had money like that. I started making calls, banging on doors, calling in favors, promising, begging-anything to get the cash. This was my shot. I did not want to blow it. I stayed up all night, getting turned down again and again, flying on coffee and adrenaline. "No," "Don't have it," "Are you crazy?" "Who do you think I am?" "A million dollars? Ha, ha, ha!" "You've lost your mind," "I will get back to you when my oil well hits"-these are the kinds of responses I was getting. I was desperate, running out of time.
Finally, late that night, I got a call back from an old friend. He said there was a guy in Seattle named Lester Smith who owned radio stations, lots of radio stations, and was a tremendous Elvis fan-this guy might give you the money just to be in business with Presley. So I called the guy-his business manager was on an extension-and I made the pitch. They wanted to see proposals, papers, and so on. I didn't blame them. I would want to see these things, too, but there was no time. "I would like to," I told him, "but I have just a few hours to get a check and meet Colonel Parker in Vegas. So, at this point, it's yes or no. You're going to have to trust me on the rest."
As he was saying yes, I was getting my keys, pulling on my coat, heading out the door. I went to the airport and got a plane. I stared out the window at the desert. I took a cab to the hotel, checked into my room, called the Colonel. "I'm getting the money," I told him, "but I'm going to need a little more time."
"All right," he said. "You have till three P.M. But that's it. You know where to meet me."
I rushed over to the bank, one of those cash-and-carry places downtown. What a sight! The place had a gold crown over the door and it was all purple and it looked less like a bank than a whorehouse. I went to the woman at the front desk. "My name is Jerry Weintraub," I told her. "I'm waiting for a million dollar wire transfer. I'm going to need a cashier's check for the same amount." She looked at me like I was nutty, maybe a bank robber. I had long hair in those days, sideburns and boots, and I was telling this girl I planned to leave there with a million dollars. I sat in a big chair, looking through the windows as I waited for the money to come in. It was a strange afternoon, spent suspended between my life as it had been and my life as it was going to be. Elvis was the biggest star in the world. If I took him on the road, if I promoted him, nothing would be the same. I knew that. Finally, after I had been daydreaming for two hours-I was pushing against the new deadline-the president of the bank, a young guy, asked me to follow him into his office.
"Your cashier's check is being prepared, Mr. Weintraub."
"Right."
"It's made out to Elvis Presley… One million dollars."
"Great."
"That's a lot of money."
"Yes, it sure is."
"What do you plan to do with it?"
"I'm taking Elvis on tour," I said.
This guy's eyes lit up. He said, "Do you need an accountant?"
"I know how you feel," I told him, "and let me think about it, but right now, I need to get that check and get over there or I'm going to miss the Colonel and no one will be going anywhere."
"Of course," he said, giving me the check, this monstrous check. I looked at it and shivered, folded it into my breast pocket, ran out, and caught a cab to the Hilton. I spotted the Colonel as soon as I walked onto the casino floor. You could not miss him. He was wearing a white cowboy hat and a ratty short-sleeved shirt, chomping a cigar. He looked like the guy ripping you off at the county fair. He was the hero of his own movie.
"Colonel Tom Parker?"
"You Jerry Weintraub?"
"Yes, sir."
He looked at me skeptically, through one eye, then asked, "You got the money?"
"I do."
"Wait a minute," he told me, "I want to finish this spin"-he was playing roulette, which is a sucker's game-then said, "Okay, follow me."
We went up to his suite, where he had a little office. He sat behind his desk, then said, "Let's have it."
I took the check out of my pocket, unfolded it, handed it to him. He looked at it for a moment, unlocked a safe, put the check inside, then said, "Okay, Jerry, what do you want to do with my boy?"
"Take him out on the road."
"Good! Let's do it."
Thinking back, I realize there were no papers, no contracts, no nothing. I handed him the check, he took the check, that's it.
The Colonel was amazing. As an old carnie, he really understood how to package and sell. He began in the music business in the 1940s promoting country acts like Minnie Pearl and Hank Snow and Eddie Arnold, but he did not get into the chips until he signed Elvis to a management contract in 1954. He built Presley's career from there, moving him from Sun Records to RCA Victor, getting him into movies, and, in the process, turning the kid from Tupelo into the king of rock and roll. Some critics thought Elvis lost authenticity in the process, but the Colonel was always a big marketing man. If you were walking this earth, he wanted to sell to you. He was, in this way, a true egalitarian. He wanted no one left out. He once scolded me, saying, "To you guys from the coasts, the country is New York and LA. Everything in between is just the blur you fly over. But I'll tell you, that blur is where the audience lives and where you make your money."
I remember the first time I went to his house. He had a statue garden in the yard, with these odd ceramic animals and plastic flamingos. His taste was not my taste-it came from the carnival, the midway. To him, art was a pink elephant. But he taught me how to look at other parts of America. To understand this country, you must understand the paintings in the Whitney Museum in New York, or know how to pretend to, but you must also understand the flamingos in Colonel Tom's garden. To this day, if you go to my office at Warner Bros., you will see, out front, two plastic flamingos in the grass. This is to remind me where I come from: from the Bronx, yes, but also from the school of Colonel Tom Parker, who taught me how to hawk my wares in every part of America.
People later said the Colonel stole from Elvis, took too much, or did not treat him right. He was vilified. But, as far as I'm concerned, none of that's true. The Colonel never stole anything from Elvis. If he had, I would have known it. I was there. Elvis made all the artistic decisions and did exactly what he wanted to do. Business and promotion-that was what the Colonel cared about. As for the movies, which some people didn't like, Colonel Parker had just two rules. One: It had to have ten songs, because ten songs made a record. Two: Elvis got paid one million dollars. This neat sum, one million, the Colonel loved it. It rolled off his tongue.
Years later, I was at a meeting at the Beverly Wilshire with Colonel Parker and Hal Wallis, a Paramount producer who worked with Elvis on many movies, including Love Me Tender. He wanted Elvis for Harum Scarum, a Rudolph Valentino-type film. After going through various details, the men finally got to the salary. "Well, look, Colonel, I know the usual terms," said Wallis, "but this is a different kind of movie, with a different kind of budget. We can't pay Elvis a million dollars."
"You know what he gets," said the Colonel. "Give us the money, tell us where to be, and we'll make a movie. If not, I'm not sure why you're here."
"You don't understand," said Wallis. "This is an Academy Award film. Elvis is going to win the Academy Award."
"Oh, you're right, I didn't understand," said the Colonel. "An Academy Award! That is something. Tell you what, Hal. You give me a million dollars, and when he gets the Academy Award, I will give you back five hundred thousand."
Wallis then went directly to Elvis. "I have something amazing for you," he said. "You will play a role like Rudolph Valentino would have played. You will look like Valentino in The Sheik. He was the most handsome man in the world; you will be more handsome. This is going to make you into a great actor as well as a movie star."
"Okay," said Elvis, "but who was Valentino? I don't know anything about him."
"We'll get you books," says Wallis. "You'll learn all about him."
So Elvis starts reading up on Valentino, and learns, among other things, that Valentino was nasty, temperamental, and hard to work with, and always came late to the set. So what does Elvis do? Well, he's an actor now. He becomes Valentino. He behaves in a way he never behaved. If you wanted to do a picture with Elvis in eighteen days, it was done in eighteen days. If you wanted him on the set at 6:00 A.M., he was there at 5:30. Now he's coming late and he is leaving early, disappearing, ignoring direction. Nobody can control him. Hal Wallis finally calls the Colonel. He says, "Colonel, you've got to do something about Elvis."
The Colonel says, "It's very simple, Hal. Tell him he's not Rudolph Valentino."
That, as far as I know, was the extent of the Colonel's creative involvement in Presley's career.
After I gave the Colonel the cashier's check, he brought me to meet Elvis, who had a suite in the Hilton International. He must've been performing there at the time.
We knocked on the door, went in, and there was Elvis. He was in his thirties, about five years older than I was. It was his Sun God phase, scarves, flare-legged jumpsuits, white boots, hair long and breaking like a wave from forehead to the nape of his neck. Hal Wallis was right. He was a handsome man. "This is Jerry Weintraub," the Colonel told him. "He's the man I told you about, who paid a million dollars for you. He's going to work with us."
Elvis shook my hand and said, "It's an honor, sir. I appreciate it. There is only one thing I ask when we're on the road: Please make sure, when I perform, that every seat is filled. And please make sure my fans are in the front rows-not the big shots."
Elvis was older than me. He was also the biggest star in the world. Yet he called me sir. It's how he was raised. He was uneducated and country, but really, in many ways, a true gentleman. What happened to him later, with the drugs and the weight, was a tragedy.
We went on the road a few weeks after that. We picked the cities and dates and arenas. I did all this with Tom Hulett, who was my partner in the concert business. We did everything together. It was a groundbreaking tour. It changed the nature of the business. Before that, the concert business had been broken into territories, each region of the country controlled by a local promoter-who picked the venue, sold the tickets, arranged the publicity, and so on. There was no such thing as a national tour. An artist moved from fiefdom to fiefdom, and the manager cut deals with local power brokers-the man who "owned" Philadelphia, the man who "owned" Buffalo -who made subsidiary deals with local police, local unions, local arena operators. This system was byzantine and wasteful. At each step, the local promoter paid off and kicked back, cut sweetheart deals, cooked the books, even took profits from the hit tours to pay for the dogs. When the artists came off the road, they always had less money than they believed they had earned.
But if you tried to go around the local promoters and cut your own deals, you would find yourself frozen out of the territory. No one would rent you the hall if it was not through the local guy, who was, after all, kicking money back to the operator. But the balance changed when I was booking Elvis. I was finally able to cut deals directly with the arenas, as no one would turn away the show. Elvis was simply too big. If you said no, someone else would say yes, meaning you would miss out on the biggest payday ever. This was what I had meant when I told the Colonel I had a better way to take Elvis on the road. I cut out the middleman, which drove down costs and increased profits, meaning more money for everyone. What's more, I structured the deal as a production, like a play, in which Elvis, the Colonel, and I split the profits. I was not an agent taking a percentage, I was a partner taking a share. If Elvis saved money, I saved money; if Elvis was enriched, I was enriched. Since one person booked the entire tour, there were also economies of scale. I got better deals because I put on more shows. As a result, artists who signed with me-I am talking about later, after I went out with Elvis-made more money. Which attracted more artists. Which meant the local operators, if they wanted shows for their arenas, had to work with me. This is how I broke the old system.
None of this was easy. Every local promoter wanted me destroyed. I was ending their reign. It was a tremendous fight, but I knew if I came out intact I would have a new livelihood: This became my company, Concerts West, which, within a few years, was the largest concert business in the world. In this way, I became the most hated man in the industry. But as Don Corleone said, "It's better to be feared than loved."
When I booked that first Elvis tour, I did not know what I was doing. I was such a neophyte. Being as naive as I was about the business, I had Elvis open on the Fourth of July in Miami Beach. Have you ever been to Miami Beach in the middle of July? It's a swamp. It's five million degrees and humid as hell. No one is there, and no one should be. We booked the convention center, which had ten thousand seats.
About two weeks out, I called the guy who ran the box office. I asked him how we were doing.
"Great," he said. "We're sold out."
"Really? Sold out? Already? That's fantastic."
I thought for a moment, then said, "Hey, what do you think of a matinee?"
"Great!" he said. "You'll have no problem selling it. Demand is through the roof."
I went back and asked the Colonel.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "Book it."
One day. Two shows. Twenty thousand seats. Big-time show business.
As soon as we stepped off the plane in Miami, we needed a shower. The heat waves shimmered. Anything more than fifty yards away looked like a mirage. The concierge from the Fontainebleau sent a limousine to pick us up. I got in, smiling. The Colonel just stood there.
"Hey, come on," I said. "What are you waiting for?"
He said, "Sorry, son, but that just ain't my kind of fancy."
Instead, he climbed into the station wagon that had been sent for the luggage.
I dropped off my bags and went to the arena.
I walked into the box office and asked for the guy I had been talking to on the phone. I wanted to check the gate. The concert was the next afternoon. He was sitting in the office, holding this huge stack of tickets, smiling.
"What are those?" I asked.
"What are what, Mr. Weintraub?"
"In your hand," I said.
"These are your tickets," he said. "For Elvis. The matinee."
"Are people coming to pick them up?" I asked.
"No, Mr. Weintraub. These are the tickets that have not sold."
"What do you mean? You said you would sell them all."
There were maybe five thousand tickets in his hand-half the house. My mind was racing, a single word tolling in my mind: disaster, disaster, disaster! What did Elvis tell me, his one thing? "I just don't want to sing to any empty seats."
I got close to the ticket seller, looked into his cold, pinprick eyes. "Why did you tell me we were sold out?" I asked.
He shrugged and said, "I was just telling you what you wanted to hear."
I went wild, grabbed him by the shirt, shook him, swearing. He grinned. I picked him up, slammed him into the wall. People came running. They pulled me off. Someone said, "Take it easy. You're gonna kill him!" I stormed out, trying to cool down, trying to think. My career is going to be over before it begins. I walked outside, then followed the street to the beach. I was thinking about the concert, about what would happen when Elvis saw all those empty seats. What can I do? Give away the tickets, confess to Elvis, throw myself on the mercy of the Colonel?
On the way back to the arena, I passed the county jail, a windowless fortress just across from the Civic Center. I wandered around the arena until Elvis showed up with his entourage for rehearsal and sound check. I pulled the Colonel aside.
"What's happening, son?" he asked.
"Well, Colonel, we have a problem," I told him.
"Oh, we do," he said. "What's our problem?"
"It seems I was misled before I booked the matinee," I said, "and now I'm stuck with five thousand unsold seats."
He pushed his hat back and said, "Well, son, as far as I can tell, we don't have a problem. You have a problem."
"Yeah, well, what should I do?" I asked.
"I'll tell you what you should do," he said. "You should fix your problem."
He went back to his entourage, and I went back to the hotel. I got in bed. I tossed and turned. When I finally fell sleep, I had nightmares, a tiny Elvis, with his cape and flare boots, kung fu kicking before an empty house, storming offstage, shouting, WHINE-traub! WHINE-traub!
I woke up early and went to the arena. I stood in the aisles and studied the seats. I noticed that bolts secured each of the seats to the floor. Meaning these could be unscrewed and carried away. How long would it take to unscrew five thousand seats, how many men would it take? I wandered over to the jailhouse I had seen the day before, asked for the person in charge, and soon found myself talking to the sheriff. I don't remember what he looked like, so imagine him as you want-a trim, officious, bureaucrat, or a big, burly southern lawman, the sort played by Jackie Gleason in Cannonball Run. I moved a pile of money from my pocket to his pocket.
"What can I do for you?" he asked.
"I want to take five thousand seats out of the convention center, hide them for a few hours, then, before the nighttime show, put them right back in," I said. "Can you help me?"
"No problem."
A few hours later, the sheriff showed up with dozens of prisoners, men in orange jumpsuits who unscrewed and carried away the seats, which they piled in the parking lot and covered with a blue tarp. In my mind, I still see that blue tarp hiding the unsold seats. It is one of several images that, spliced together, tell the story of my career. The jewelry bag with my initials is the life I did not live. The seats rising from second base to the grandstand is the audience that must be attracted, satisfied, sold. The blue tarp is the need to innovate and improvise.
Elvis sang the matinee. It was great. Not an empty seat in the house. Then, as he rested between shows, the prisoners went back to work, tearing away the tarp, carrying the seats back to the arena, screwing them into the floor. The second show was even better. Elvis sang all his hits. Between songs, he dabbed sweat from his face with a scarf, then tossed the scarf to the women near the stage, who fought over it, smelled it, passed out. I went back to the Fontainebleau hotel with Elvis. He was spent, exhilarated but depleted, having given everything away. "You know, Jerry, it's amazing," he told me. "The crowd was good in the afternoon, but it's always so much better at night."
We were on the road for just under a month. I was working as a kind of advance man, traveling a day or two ahead of the tour, checking into hotels, meeting security, scouting arenas. I was learning the ups and downs and constant crises of life on the road. Now and then, I pursued a whim or a moneymaking scheme of my own. There was, for example, the near disaster of the scarves (this happened on a later tour). Having seen the girls fight over the scarves Elvis tossed from the stage-you could see the flurry, the snap of teeth-I decided to order the kind of scarves used by Elvis and sell them at the concession stands. Turn a nice little profit. The first boxes reached me at the Pontiac Dome in Detroit, Michigan. Seventy-five thousand seats, sold out, New Year's Eve. I had ordered thirty-five thousand scarves, ten cents apiece, made in Hong Kong, with Elvis's picture on them. I remember walking past the concession as the fans came in from the parking lot. They stood in line to buy T-shirts, mugs, key chains, but no one seemed interested in my scarves. During intermission, the head of concessions came up to me, shaking his head. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Weintraub, but we're not selling the scarves," he said. "It's just not going to work."
I walked into the dressing room, moping, depressed. Elvis saw me sitting in a chair with my head down. "What's wrong?" he asked. "You look terrible."
"I have a problem."
"What?"
I told him about the scarves.
"If I fix it," he said, "will you smile?"
"How are you going to fix it?"
"Don't worry," he said. "Just tell me: Will you smile?"
"Of course," I said. "I'm starting to smile just thinking about it."
So what does he do? He goes out onstage, does a number, gets the crowd going wild, stops, puts his hand on his forehead, salutelike, as if trying to make out something far away, then says, "You know, I can't see anything or anyone from up here. Turn on the lights."
The lights come up, he blinks, eyes asquint.
"I still can't see," he says. "Tell you what. I'm going to take a five-minute break. Go out to the concession. They have scarves. I want everyone to get a scarf and wave it so I can see where you are."
In those five minutes, the concessionaires sold every scarf in the arena. Then, as Elvis was walking back on stage, he looked at me and said, "Are you smiling now?"
That first tour ended in San Diego. I was standing backstage on the last night, looking through the curtain at the crowd, dazed, shell-shocked. Just then, amid all this drifting and dreaming-I was wearing my crocodile boots-the Colonel whacked me on the shoulder with his cane. "Come with me," he said. "We need to talk."
He had a big guy following him with two huge suitcases. We went through the tunnels to a little door, an electrical closet. There was a table inside, a lightbulb, and a bunch of machinery. The Colonel told the big guy where to put the bags, then said, "Beat it. I need to talk to Jerry alone."
The Colonel locked the door. "Get the bags up on the table," he told me. "Open them."
It was like a scene in an old pirate movie, in which the swashbuckler looks into the treasure chest and the glow of doubloons reflects off his face. These cases were filled with money, tens, twenties, fifties, all cash. As if we had robbed a bank. "Pour it on the table," said the Colonel.
"What's this?" I asked.
"The money from the concessions," he said. "T-shirts and collectibles. Half of it's yours."
"No, I had nothing to do with that," I said. "Just the tickets. Just the shows."
The Colonel was already giving me an incredibly generous deal: an even split. I got half, and the Colonel and Elvis together got half.
"When I have a partner," he told me. "I have a partner. Now pile up that money."
It was a mountain of bills, some stained with ketchup, some stained with chives, stacked on the table. The Colonel said, "Stand back," then raised his cane and brought it down hard on the pile, dividing it into two huge piles, which he pushed apart with the cane, saying, "That side yours, this side mine… Is that fair?"
"Sure," I said. "It's more than fair."
The tour lasted just six weeks, but it changed everything. Like what happens when you put your picture in a Xerox and press enlarge, enlarge, enlarge. I went on tour at twenty-six as just another young talent manager, but when I came back, I was a millionaire.
The Colonel had houses in LA and Palm Springs. I was with him constantly, in every kind of mood and weather, when he was happy and money was coming in, and when he was ailing and old. No matter how rich he became, he was always ready for a new idea. He was, after all, a carnival man. Take, for example, the Gordon Mills affair, maybe my greatest moneymaking idea that did not come off.
The phone rings in the middle of the night. It's Elvis. He is angry and paranoid, pacing the halls of Graceland.
"Is that Jerry?" he asks.
"Yeah, Elvis. It's me. What's up?"
"I don't know what I'm doing here," he says. "I just don't know."
"What's wrong, Elvis?"
"The Colonel," he says. "I don't need him. I'm done with the Colonel."
"Come on, Elvis."
"Listen, Jerry, you should be my manager."
This is not unusual, these freaked-out, middle-of-the-night calls made by talent-decisions made, then unmade in the morning. Especially when the artist is as brilliant and isolated as Elvis. The Beatles had each other, and Sinatra, well, Sinatra was from another era, but Elvis, who was bigger than all of them, was alone.
I said, "Look, Elvis. I am sorry, but I can't. That's not going to happen."
We talked for a little, then hung up. I could not fall back asleep. I stared at the ceiling, thinking. A few days before, I had seen a copy of Life magazine with a man named Gordon Mills on the cover, a music manager from London. According to the article, his management company, MAM, which was traded on the London Stock Exchange, was the most successful in the industry, representing two of the three biggest stars in the world: Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. Now it happened that these stars were numbers two and three. Elvis was number one.
I went to see the Colonel at six the next morning. He was drinking coffee. I threw Life magazine in front of him.
"What's this?" he asked.
"That," I said, "is Gordon Mills."
"Yeah, so?"
"Look, Colonel, what if I told you I had a way to make a hundred million bucks just like that?"
"I would tell you to keep talking," he said.
"I'm not going to bullshit you," I told him. "Elvis called me in the middle of the night and said he wants to get rid of you and make me his manager."
The Colonel made a noise like this: "Ahhhieeee."
I said, "Now, Colonel, I've had enough clients, done enough business, and been around long enough to know it doesn't mean anything. Elvis is you and Elvis. I get that. But it gave me an idea, seeing as he's talking about getting a new manager, and this is where the hundred million bucks comes in."
"Go on."
"This guy, Gordon Mills, has a publicly traded management company. He also has two of the three biggest recording artists in the world. Now here's my idea: We sell him Elvis's management contract. In name only. It will still be you running the show, but this guy will hold the paper. We structure this deal in stock, so Mills gets the contract and we-me, you, Elvis-get shares in his company. Lots of shares. Then, when word gets out that Gordon Mills has Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Elvis Presley, well, the share price goes through the roof. And we clear a hundred million easy."
"Yeah," said the Colonel. "Do it."
I called Gordon Mills and told him I had an idea, a surefire moneymaker.
"Great," he said. "Come over and explain it."
I would never sell an idea like this on the phone. It's still that way. I need to sit with a person, to watch him, read his eyes and hands, see if he is just as excited as I am, if I'm coming across.
I got on a plane and flew over. Gordon Mills lived in a mansion outside London. He had his own zoo. (A lot of rich people in England have zoos.) He was a poor kid from the East End who had made it all the way to a private zoo. We talked in his garden. Giraffes wandered by, zebras, and tigers. A lion cub pissed my lap! I explained the plan: how we would sell Elvis but not sell Elvis, how he would give us shares, how the stock price would rise. Gordon nodded through this, thinking Elvis, Elvis, then said, "Fantastic, Jerry! Let's do it!"
"Now look, Gordon, I want to make sure you understand the situation," I said. "You are not really going to manage Elvis. He won't accept that. I am talking about a business arrangement. You will sign the contracts and get commissions, but on the ground we will continue as we have been: I will handle the concerts, the Colonel will handle everything else; you will be his manager in name only. You will not talk to Elvis, or try to shape his career, and you will have absolutely no creative input. Get it?"
"Yes, yes, great. Let's do it."
"That's the first caveat," I said. "Here's the second: You can't tell anybody about this. I don't want to pick up the Daily Telegraph or the Sun and see splattered all over the pages, 'Gordon Mills to Be Elvis's Manager.' You can have that later, but not now. You've got to wait for that."
"Great, let's do it."
A few weeks later, Gordon Mills came to Vegas. The Colonel was there, too. It took me two weeks to set up a meeting. Tom Jones worked at Caesars and Elvis worked at the Hilton. Each manager wanted to meet on his home turf. I shuttled back and forth like Kissinger. I finally fixed a date at the Hilton. The Colonel won that round. He showed up in cowboy suit and hat. He sat on one side of the table, and Gordon sat on the other. These men had egos bigger than the moon. They would not talk to each other. Everything had to go through me. The Colonel would say, "Tell him he's not to travel with us." Gordon would say, "Tell him Elvis must make himself amenable to European dates." It went back and forth like that for hours, but I finally got the parameters fixed. Then, just as we were leaving, Gordon said, "Hey, Jerry, as long as I'm here, I would love to see Elvis perform."
"No problem," I said. "I'll get you seats."
"There will be eighteen of us," he said.
"What do you mean, eighteen of you?" I asked. "Who's eighteen?"
"Well, you know, my arranger, my public relations people, my this, my that…"
I said, "Look, Gordon, I was very clear about this. No creative input. You'll blow the whole deal."
"No, I understand," he said. "They just want to see Elvis."
Okay.
After the show, Gordon came backstage. We were talking. He said, "You know, Jerry, I would love to meet Elvis. Just say hello."
"Okay, I'll bring you over."
Elvis walked out of his dressing room, smiling, exhilarated.
I said, "Elvis, this is Gordon Mills. The man I told you about, that situation we're going to do."
I had explained the plan to Elvis. He was fine with it, one, because it would mean a lot of money, and two, because nothing would change.
Elvis said, "Oh, yes, Mr. Mills, it's a great pleasure to meet you, sir. Jerry told me all about this, it sounds like a terrific thing. Very excited about it."
Then Gordon said-and here's the kicker; it still kills me, all these years later-"You know, Elvis, I wanted to talk to you about the capes you wear in the show. I have some ideas."
They talked for a minute, Gordon gesticulating, Elvis, head down, like a boxer in the corner, nodding, "Yes, sir," "Yes, sir," "Yes, sir."
Elvis then said, "Can you excuse me, Mr. Mills?" and went into his dressing room.
Gordon turned to me, smiling, and said, "Oh, that went well! What a charming man!"
A second later, one of Elvis's guys came over and whispered in my ear: "Jerry, Elvis wants to see you right away."
That was the end of Gordon Mills.
There's something to be learned from this story. It shows how, even if you have the greatest script in the world, it won't work if the actors don't play their parts.
The Colonel and I were like father and son. We loved each other, but fought all the time. He used to get up early on the road, five, five-thirty in the morning, then go down to the free buffet. He would smoke his cigar and eat bacon and eggs surrounded by the lackeys who hung on his every word. I usually sat with them, but one morning-this was later-I woke up cranky and decided to eat alone. I got my food, walked by the Colonel's table, sat by myself in the corner.
He called over, "What are you, some kind of a big shot?"
I ignored him.
He said, "Hey, can't you hear me, big shot?"
I said, "What, am I bothering you?"
You were never supposed to challenge the Colonel in front of his people. He believed it undermined his authority.
He shouted, "What's wrong with you?"
"I'm eating my breakfast," I told him. "I want to be alone."
"Oh, you want to be alone?" he said. "Good. Be alone. You're fired!"
"I'm fired? No problem. You owe me a million dollars for this tour so far. Let me have my million bucks, and I'm gone."
Of course, I did not want to get fired, but I knew he would never give me a million dollars.
He stormed over to my table. "All right, big shot, follow me."
He acted like he was taking me to his room for the payout. We got up there, a stuffy motel suite, bed unmade, clothes everywhere. He walked to the bureau, opened the swinging doors and there, inside, he had made up a shrine to the Buddha. There were candles and incense set around a gold sculpture of Buddha, with his belly and grinning face and grand fleshy ears. The Colonel started lighting the candles.
"What the hell is happening?" I asked.
"We have to ask the Buddha what to do," he said.
He rubbed the Buddha's belly. He was such a con man. He said, "Tell me, O great Buddha, do you think we should keep Jerry Weintraub? Or should we let him go?"
He closed his eyes, as if he were meditating, communicating with the sages, then said to me, "The Buddha hasn't made up his mind yet."
The Colonel mumbled something, leaned in as if he was listening, then said, "It's the opinion of the Buddha that if you apologize in front of the boys all will be forgotten and it will be as it was before."
"I'm not apologizing," I said. "Tell that to the Buddha."
"You're not apologizing?"
"That's right. Tell the Buddha."
The Colonel closed his eyes, mumbled, nodded.
"The Buddha is very angry," he told me. "The Buddha says, 'Take Jerry Weintraub to the airport.' "
He blew out the candles and closed the cabinet. We went down to the van. The boys rode along. We got on the highway. I had my luggage and everything. We drove through town, past the arena. The Colonel was watching me, waiting for me to buckle. I did not buckle. I stared straight ahead. We saw the first signs for the airport. "All right, all right," he said. "Pull over."
The van stopped; the Colonel jumped out.
"Come on," he told me. "We need to talk."
He said, "Look, Jerry. You have to apologize. You have to say you were wrong. In front of everybody. All these boys work for me, and what you are doing can destroy everything."
"But I wasn't wrong," I told him. "I just wanted to have my breakfast alone."
"It's important to me that you apologize," he said. "Do it for me and later on I will do something for you."
"Fine," I told him. "What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to say that you are sorry, that you made a mistake, and that you shouldn't have done what you did."
"But I didn't do anything."
"It doesn't matter. Just say it."
We got back into the van and went to the arena. When we got out, with all the boys standing around, the Colonel said, "Jerry has something he would like to say."
"I am sorry," I told them, "I made a mistake, I should not have done what I did, and I will never do it again."
But I used that promise, the Colonel's price-"Do it for me and later on I will do something for you"-many times over the years. There is a lesson in this: Let the other guy save face with his people, but keep score.
Years later, the Colonel was living in Las Vegas, working as an advisor to Hilton Hotels. He was a great man, and still he died like most men die, little by little, then all at once. He had a stroke on January 21, 1997. He was eighty-seven years old. I was a pallbearer at his funeral and gave a eulogy, paying my respects to one of the last great showmen, and, more important, to a mentor and a true friend.