{"id":45477,"date":"2011-12-14T09:07:07","date_gmt":"2011-12-14T14:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=45477"},"modified":"2011-12-14T23:40:08","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T04:40:08","slug":"jerry-schilling-on-elvis-presley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=45477","title":{"rendered":"Jerry Schilling on Elvis Presley"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nJerry Schilling, Elvis Presley<\/i><\/p>\n

One of my favorite insights into Elvis Presley comes from his good friend Jerry Schilling (he who was the one who accompanied Presley on his famous visit to Washington to meet President Nixon and … give Nixon a gun as a present … because of course that’s what you do when you meet the President. You knock on the White House door at 6 o’clock in the morning and say, “I’d like to give this gun to the President as a token of my appreciation.”). Schilling was a member of the “Memphis Mafia”, to be sure, but his background was a bit different than the others, as well as his political leanings, and the other guys always suspected that he was a Liberal Commie Pinko in secret. Presley ran with a more conservative crowd. But Elvis loved and trusted Jerry, and Jerry is still one of the go-to guys for information and anecdotes in any Elvis documentaries. Many of those guys cannot be trusted now, their memories are tainted by self-interest and guilt (as Dave Marsh says in his bibliography in his Elvis book: many of these guys are now the “It’s not my fault” guys – so take their word on Elvis with a huge pound of salt), but Schilling is not one of those guys. He had grown up a bit damaged, never really had a home as a child, and Elvis took him in. Bought him a home in Los Angeles (where Schilling still lives), saying to him, “Jerry, you never had a home growing up. I want you to have one.” Traveling with the Elvis entourage (he was a late-joiner, came on in the 60s) was eye-opening for him. There’s a funny story about him sleeping on the couch at Elvis’ house in Hollywood, when suddenly, middle of the night, the front door opens. Jerry is freaked out. Who is it? A woman strolls across the room and goes and knocks on Elvis’ bedroom door. Jerry has no idea who she is, how did she get in, why does she have a key, what is going on, so he calls out to her, “Miss?” scaring her half to death. She screams at the top of her lungs. Elvis opens his bedroom door, in tears of laughter, having heard the scream, and says, “Jerry, relax, it’s just Annie.” (As in Ann-Margret.) Jerry was mortified. Elvis thought it was the funniest thing and told everyone about it the next day: Jerry interrogating Ann-Margret in the middle of the night as though she was a burglar.<\/p>\n

Jerry Schilling had the following to say about Elvis’ character, and it’s sort of lost in the shuffle of Peter Guralnick’s book, and I think it’s very important. Like I said, I trust Jerry Schilling’s opinion. His relationship with Elvis was purer than most, although many of the same rules still applied. He talks about comforting Priscilla once in the middle of an argument she was having with her husband, and Elvis’ rage when he found out, and how crushed Jerry was by all of it. He was just trying to help. Elvis said, “Don’t ever speak to Priscilla behind my back.” Etc. Jerry was in tears. Elvis came to him later that day and apologized. They loved each other.<\/p>\n

There’s so much dirt out there about Elvis that I’ve certainly had enough of it. Enough. If by “dirt” you mean womanizing, then I think you need to get out more. The man was a sex symbol. Why is his womanizing somehow … unique? If by “dirt” you mean being addicted to prescription drugs, well then welcome to America where that is the #1 addiction in the land. Elvis hasn’t quite gone through the character assassination that, say, Joan Crawford did on the heels of her ingrate daughter’s vicious book, but something similar has occurred. Not with the fans, of course, but at least in the cultural consciousness. Can we still not forgive him for being human? Is that it? What did Elvis Presley ever do that was just so beyond-the-pale wrong<\/i>? Punching a gas station attendant once? Making the mistake of dying too young? For real? Cheating on his wife? Meeting her when she was 14? But listen to her side of the story. Trust her side. Trust those who loved him over those who wanted something from him (although, granted, those lines can blur).<\/p>\n

On to the quote.<\/p>\n

Jerry Schilling on Elvis:<\/p>\n

[Elvis] knew I was sensitive, and sometimes he’d get pissed at the other guys just because they’d been around so long – but then he’d wink at me, like, “Don’t worry about it.” After a while I realized he was almost as shy as I was; there were days when he would just brood over things, because he was so unhappy with the reality of his accomplishments. Then one day you’d see nothing but anger – and I’ve never seen anyone with an anger stronger than his. If he had been just a nice guy, I don’t know if I would have loved him as much, the fact was that he had all this power; he had such extreme power that he could have gotten away with anything at this point. And yet he chose to be sensitive<\/i> – most of the time. And those times that he didn’t, you knew that they were very important to really understanding him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read those words again. “And yet he chose to be sensitive – most of the time.” <\/p>\n

A choice<\/i>. Taking enormous self-control due to his natural tendencies towards rage and anger. He held it in check. He made a choice. The majority of stories about him are about his politeness, his kindness, his generosity, and what a good listener he was. This was not an act, even though it was a choice. It was his desire to do his best<\/i> on this planet, and to be someone who would make his mother proud. Very few people operate in this space, let alone stars, who often are allowed to get away with murder. Elvis Presley got away with a lot, it is true, he had been famous from the time he was 19 years old. But he realized his potential for “turning” (he spoke of it in interviews as early as 1955, of doing his best to not let fame “turn” him), and so made a choice. Every day made a choice. A lifetime of people saying “He was the kindest person I’ve ever met’, “He was the sweetest gentlest man” is not a lie foisted upon us by an entitled star pulling the wool over our eyes. <\/p>\n

As Lisa Marie said in an interview once, “With my father, what you saw was what you got.”<\/p>\n

This is hard for mere mortals to understand, because the image of Elvis is so mythic. There’s no mystery? No hidden truth? What you saw was what you got? Our desire to look for the dirt underneath is somewhat compulsive in our culture, especially with our beloved icons. Especially with our beloved icons who disappoint us by dying too young.<\/p>\n

But my sense of Elvis was that he was always doing his best. Of course he didn’t succeed in every moment, which of us do, but that the attempt to be kind, be patient, be sweet, was always<\/i> present for him. Not because he was a gentle saint, but because he knew the potential for going the other way was titanic<\/i> in him. He understood his own worst qualities and worked to do his best against them. Those who loved him saw that. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerry Schilling, Elvis Presley One of my favorite insights into Elvis Presley comes from his good friend Jerry Schilling (he who was the one who accompanied Presley on his famous visit to Washington to meet President Nixon and … give … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[2095],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45477"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45540,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45477\/revisions\/45540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}