Okay, here's my favorite of the crazy, why-the-hell-not-try-it stories of those years. In the summer of 1972, I got hooked on the World Championship of Chess, which was being shown on PBS and ABC Wide World of Sports, with Bobby Fischer, the American, playing Boris Spassky, the Russian, in Reykjavik, Iceland. The men crouched over the chessboard in utter silence for hours on end. I do not know a thing about chess, have never played it and don't want to-I was relying on the PBS commentator, who moved pieces around a board to explain the game-but I was transfixed by Fischer. He was tall, with blue eyes and wild hair and the slow, graceful motions of a hypnotist or magician. He sat stone still, radiating a weird charisma. It came right through the set. I rushed home every night to have dinner in front of the TV. You could not get me out of the house. I was mesmerized.
Jane finally confronted me.
"What is wrong with you?" she asked. "Have you gone nuts?"
"What are you talking about?" I said.
"You. You sit in front of the TV for hours every night, watching a chess match. You don't know anything about chess, not even the rules."
"I'm not watching a chess match," I told her. "I'm watching this guy Bobby Fischer."
"Why?"
"Because he's a star."
"You're insane."
"Oh, really," I said. "I will show you how insane I am."
I picked up the phone and called Icelandic Airways. I asked when they would next fly to Reykjavik.
Nine o'clock tonight.
"Good," I said. "I want a seat."
I got on a plane to Reykjavik. There was a young guy in the next seat. We started talking. He was a priest and also a grand master at chess. He knew everyone in that world, and had actually played Fischer and Spassky. He asked why I was going to Iceland. I told him I was going to meet Bobby Fischer.
"You're going to meet Bobby Fischer?" he said, surprised. "Do you have an appointment with him?"
"No," I said. "I'm just going to track him down."
"Oh, no," he said. "You can't just track down Bobby Fischer. He doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't go anywhere. He is locked off from the world."
"What? Why?"
"Because he's crazy."
It was the first indication that the goal I had set for myself-get in touch with Fischer, talk to him, pitch him, sign him, make him rich, and take a percentage-would be more difficult to achieve than I had thought.
I reserved a room in the hotel where most of the chess people were staying. The lobby was filled with tables, each with a chessboard, where grand masters were locked in combat. After each move, they hit a button to freeze the clock. Click. Click. Click. It made a kind of rhythm. A group of reporters, mostly Americans, were taking notes in the corner, searching for a new angle on the story. Spassky wouldn't talk to them because the KGB had forbidden it. Fischer wouldn't talk to them because he was nuts. When I went to the desk to check in, one of the reporters recognized me. He came over with a microphone; I was just off the plane, burned out and groggy, and now I was on the radio.
"Are you Jerry Weintraub?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"You represent rock acts, Elvis Presley, John Denver. What are you doing in Reykjavik?"
"I'm here to see Bobby Fischer."
"Do you have an appointment to see Mr. Fischer?"
"No, I don't have an appointment. I don't even know him."
"Then how are you going to see him? He won't see anybody."
"Don't worry," I said. "I'll see him."
"Do you play chess?" the reporter asked. "Are you a chess fanatic?"
"I don't even know how to play chess," I told him. "I don't know anything about it."
"Then why are you here?"
"I'm here because I've been watching Bobby Fischer on TV," I said. "I am glued to the set every night. He's like Mick Jagger. He's like Elvis. The man is a rock star."
I got my key and went to my room-it was the only hotel in Iceland, the rooms were little white cubes-climbed into bed, and passed out. A long, dreamless, time-zone-crossing sleep. The phone rang. I had the receiver to my ear before I had woken up.
Where the hell am I, half asleep in this tiny white square?
"Yeah?"
"Is this Jerry Weintraub?"
The voice was a spooky, otherworldly whisper.
"Yeah, who is this?"
"Do you really think I'm like Elvis Presley and Mick Jagger?"
"How do you know I said that?"
"I heard you on the radio."
He paused, then said, "We need to meet."
"Great," I said. "Where, when?"
I was whispering, too, acting as if someone were listening, as if the CIA had bugged the phones.
"Come to the sixth floor," he said, "take the steps, stand by the door. I will be waiting for you."
I scuttled down the stairs like a crab. (Am I being followed?) When I crossed the landing and stepped through the door, I was standing next to Bobby Fischer. The whole world was trying to talk to this genius recluse, this Howard Hughes. I mean, legions of reporters were camped in the lobby with this one goal in mind, and here I was, having pulled it off without trying, in less than a day. (What can I say? The Lord takes care of me.) Fischer motioned me to follow him. He took me down the hall to his room. It was disgusting. There were half-eaten cheeseburgers, old pizzas, boxes of shit, Coke cans, crap lying everywhere. And the smell! My God, the smell. Here and there, on the floor, on the bed, Playboy magazines were opened, and I am sure he'd been masturbating all over the centerfolds. Fischer was standing in the middle of all this, with an air of "Look what time hath wrought."
"I have no money," he whispered.
"What do you mean, you have no money?"
"The Chess Federation won't give me any money," he said. "I have nothing."
"No problem," I said. "We'll get you some money."
He looked at me. His eyes were intelligent and calculating, but their setting (his narrow, ascetic face, the face of a mystic or monk) was not reassuring.
"You can get me money?" he asked.
"Of course I can get you money," I told him.
"Good," he said. "I want to go bowling."
"Then go bowling," I said.
"I can't afford it," he said. "I have no money."
"I'll figure it out," I said. "By tomorrow, there will be a deal for you."
"Then can we go bowling?"
"Yes," I said. "Then we can go bowling."
He asked me to go with him to the match. So the next night, when Fischer climbed out of his car, with the journalists clamoring for a quote, I was the corner man at his side. I sat behind him as he played. A few days before, I had been watching this scene on television. Now here I was, in the background of the establishing shot. I had gone inside the screen. I played off Fischer, reacted to his every move.
I looked annoyed when he looked annoyed. I looked amused when he looked amused. We drove back to the hotel, huddled together in confab.
Then I took him bowling.
"How are we going to make money?" he asked.
"I've been thinking about that," I told him. "And I have a great idea. I'm going to call my friends in LA. You're going to make a record."
He looked at me like I was nuts. Being looked at like you're crazy by a crazy man is a singular experience. "What do you mean a record?" he asked. "I can't even carry a tune."
"No, you're not going to sing," I told him. "You're going to teach."
"Teach what?"
"The record is going to be Bobby Fischer teaching a six-year-old kid, who knows nothing about chess, how to play. And the cover will be a chess board. And with it, we will include chess pieces in a plastic bag. We'll sell it at Christmas. It will be huge."
I called Warner Music the next day. I sold the deal over the phone, just like that. First of all, the record executives loved the idea of getting a phone call from Reykjavik. They loved the idea of being in business with Fischer, too. He was the mystery man of the moment, a mercurial genius, all over television but nowhere at all. What's more, it was a great idea. The label gave us a lot of money for it. I don't remember the figure, but it was a primary number followed by many zeros. The contract came, Fischer signed it. Then I had another idea, which appeared to me in a vision: Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer playing a winner-take-all match in a glass box on a casino floor in Las Vegas. Could you imagine the scene, the bookmakers and high rollers and celebrities? We would sell it as a heavyweight title fight, the World Championship of Chess. For a minute, I even thought it would happen. I did not yet understand Fischer, and how nutty he was.
He flipped out in Reykjavik a few nights later. This was in the arena in the middle of a match. He was sitting there, head in his palm, drumming his fingers on his cranium. Every few seconds, he looked at the ceiling and shuddered. He leaped to his feet as if he'd been burned and ran across the floor. He went through the crowd as if he were being chased. Then he was gone, the match forfeited. There was a moment of silence, then you heard his voice, a guttural shout with a hint of Brooklyn, calling, "Jerry Weintraub! Come on, Jerry Weintraub, we're getting out of here."
I followed him into the backseat of the car. We started to drive. "What the hell just happened?" I asked.
"Did you hear it?" he said. "Tell me the truth, did you hear it?"
"Hear what?"
"The whirring, the whirring."
Then he put his fingers to his temples, as if he was holding the dark matter of his brain from spilling across the backseat, and yelled, "I CAN'T THINK!"
When we got back to the hotel, I made some calls, asked around. At first, I did not believe him. He was really crazy, but, you know, he was right-there was whirring in the ceiling. It was the ABC camera, filming for Wide World of Sports. Fischer said he could not play until it was taken out, removed.
"No more whirring. No more whirring. No more whirring."
I spoke to Roone Arledge, tried to work something out. Then I came back to Bobby, and said, "Look, Bobby, if you got paid, if there was money on the table, do you think the whirring might go away?"
He stopped pacing and looked at me. At such times, the nuttiness and confusion went out of his eyes, and, for a moment, he was sober and shrewd.
"Sure," he said, "it might go away."
"Okay," I said, "let me see what I can do."
I spoke to producers at ABC, gave them the rundown, then came back to Fischer with twenty-five thousand dollars. After that, he did not hear the whirring. He won the tournament, but the incident was a prelude, a glimpse into his soul, which was a morass, brilliance knotted with neurosis, paranoia, and fear. The guy was really something.
He moved to LA. He was brilliant at chess, but lost in the world. He bailed out of the record deal and everything else. He did not trust the businessmen, he did not trust me, he did not trust anyone. There were voices in his head. He wandered, tortured by the whirring of imaginary machines. He let himself go, typical crazy man stuff. He was a target for charismatics, a question mark in search of an easy answer. He got hooked up with a cult in the Valley, the Assembly Church of God. He fell under the sway of a high-ranking member, Dr. Stanley Rader, a total con man. Rader was an accountant from New York who had seen the light. He had been Jewish before he was baptized into the sect-in a bathtub in the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong -by the church's founder, Herbert Armstrong. This is the craziness Fischer fell into after Iceland. In this way, everything we planned, everything he could have been and done, went away. He ended up living in the basement of the church and became utterly, totally, and completely insane.
The Death of the King
Elvis is dead."
I was in Malibu, the morning of August 16, 1977, when the call came. It was Roone Arledge, who had just become the head of ABC News. His people had picked up the 911 call on a police scanner. "What are you talking about?" I asked.
"We just got the news," he said. "Elvis Presley is dead."
I was supposed to meet Elvis in Portland, Maine, the next day. We were going on tour. He had been at home, in Graceland, getting in shape for the road. He had played racquetball on his private court, sat at his piano, sung "Unchained Melody," gone upstairs, and died-they found him several hours later on the floor of his bathroom.
My second line rang. It was Joe Esposito, Elvis's right hand. He was calling from the bathroom in Graceland. He was standing next to Elvis's body, waiting for the police to arrive. He said, "Jerry, we need you here right away."
I got the next plane to Memphis. I stared out the window. The sun hung over the clouds like a fiery eye. Celebrity-that's what killed Elvis. Fame had shut him out of the world. He couldn't go to dinner. He couldn't take his kid to the park. He was always inside. He went to bed at 3:00 A.M. and woke up at noon. His life was abnormal. He dressed different and looked different. He was the first real rock star, a freak in this regard. There was no one like him. Sinatra had New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Presley had all that plus Lafayette, Louisiana, and Knoxville, Tennessee. He could draw a hundred thousand people to a field in Macon, Georgia. His stardom was unprecedented. It isolated him until his isolation became intolerable. The very talent that connected him to millions kept him sequestered. Yes, he had friends, the Memphis mafia, guys he grew up with, but it wasn't enough. He treated his condition with drugs. When you're a celebrity, if you want a pill, you will have it. He was really a tragic figure.
I took a car to Graceland. What a scene. The news had hit the streets before it was broadcast. People poured out of houses and stood on the grass median strips with tears streaming down their faces. The city was mourning. My car slowed as it approached the mansion. Thousands of people had gathered in front of the gates, their faces reflecting the strobe of police lights. I saw children waving American flags, babies held aloft by mothers, Teamsters weeping without shame, hawkers selling T-shirts and locks of hair. I went into the house, a simple suburban home that Elvis had done up. The Stamps Quartet was singing in the living room, shouting and praising the Lord. Gospel was the soundtrack of the day. The house was packed with hangers-on and celebrities. I saw Ann-Margret, in a bodysuit, her face streaked with mascara. I saw the preacher Rex Humbard waving his arms and talking about the short-term occupancy of man, who rents on this earth and does not own.
Thinking back, I realize I've probably combined a few days in my mind, but it was an irrational moment, a whirlwind, a picture drawn by a kid who cannot stay within the lines.
I looked in the coffin. There was Elvis, done up in his finery, his hair slicked back and his face just as white as porcelain. He was a saint now, a martyr to the pop gods, headed straight for the seventh heaven.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder, whispered in my ear: " Vernon and Colonel Tom are in the back. They want to see you right away." Vernon was Elvis's father. I went through the kitchen into the maid's room, where the men were huddled. The bed was covered with telegrams, thousands of condolences that had been pouring in-from the queen of England, from the president of the United States, from the most important people in the world. The men were arguing-well, if not arguing, then having a heated discussion about whether it was appropriate to sell souvenirs to the mourners in the street. Hawkers were already out there pushing memorabilia, and the attitude was, well, why should we let them take our money? I got between them and said something like, "What's wrong with you guys? The body's in the next room. We're about to leave for the funeral. Have some respect." I'm not putting them down. I think they were in shock, had not quite realized what happened, that Elvis was never coming back. What a bizarre moment, the entire world gathered around this house in tears, and, in a room in the house, the old man and the Colonel arguing about T-shirts.
We went to the funeral in a long line of white Cadillacs. These had been brought from all over the South for the occasion. I was in the car behind the hearse. Now and then, when I see newsreels shot that day, I know I am in that second Cadillac. The ride was unbelievable. It was as if the president had died. The streets were lined with people, black people and white people and children and babies. In a crazy way, it was very much the ideal of America, what our country should be about. When I had been in the South as a kid, it was segregated. I told you. On the white side, we were shooed away like rats. On the black side, we were given plates piled with food. Of course, I did not understand the meaning of that, all the oppression and suffering and misery that implied. But riding in that car in Memphis, I saw a new America. There was no hatred, no segregation, no bigotry. None of that shit. Everyone in the crowd was connected by a shared love and a shared grief. The death of Elvis marked the end of an era, but it also marked the birth of something new.