Two and a half years before he died, Elvis Presley sat on the floor of a dressing room in Las Vegas Hilton and discussed a project that could have changed the course of his life.
The meeting, as counted by the former friend of Presley, Jerry Schilling, put the King of Rock and Roll face with Barbra Streisand, who had come to see Presley acting in the Hilton in March 1975, then looked for an audience after the show to float an idea: Pressley would be interested in appearing opposite to Streisand in his reference of “A Stars Born”?
At the time of the duo conversation, Schilling says that he, the friend of Presley, Joe Esposito and Streisand's boyfriend, Jon Peters, got into the closet with the stars in the search for some tranquility in the midst of the scenario of the shock, had spent six years since Presley had played a dramatic role on the screen; The launch of Streisand tempted him so, according to Schilling, that they ended up talking for more than two hours about the movie.
“We even ask for some food,” says Schilling.
Presley, of course, did not receive the role that Kris Kristafferson played, a victim, depending on who asked, on the insistence of Streisand in the best billing or the unreasonable financial demands of the Presley manager, Colonel Tom Parker. (In his 2023 memories, Streisand wonders if the character of a self -destructive musician was in the end “too close to his own life” for the comfort of Presley).
Whatever the case, Schilling believes that the disappointment of “A Star Is Born” established Presley on a path of poor decision making that effectively spilled his career before his tragic death at 42 on August 16, 1977, 48 years ago this weekend.
“That was the last time I saw my friend's eye in the eye of my friend,” says Schilling, 83, about the sitting with Streisand.
A new intriguing box commemorates the outbreak of the king's final creativity. Throwed this month in the five CD and two LP editions, “Sunset Boulevard” collects the presley music recorded in Los Angeles between 1972 and 1975, including the fruit of a session that is held only a few days before the meeting on “A star is born.” These were the studio dates that produced songs like “Separs Shays”, which Elvis cut in the midst of the collapse of their marriage to Priscilla Presley, and “Burning Love”, their last pop success of the 10 best top, as well as the LP “Today” of 1975, an exemplary sample of the mixture of the last days of rock, country and blue eyes soul.
Is it another repairing of Presley's music really something to get excited? Elvis's industry has never No living state and very during the half century since he died; In recent years, we have seen the Baz Luhrmann's big screen biographical, the last book of the singer Peter Guralnick (is about Parker) and not one, but two documentaries about the special call of return '68, which announced the return of Presley to the present presentation after almost a decade of cinema.
More gloomy, “Sunset Boulevard” arrives when Priscilla Presley, who received his own biographical film from director Sofia Coppola in 2023, is in the headlines thanks to a ugly legal battle with two former commercial partners that he brought to help manage the Presley brand. (The dispute itself follows the sudden death two years ago of the only girl in Priscilla and Elvis, Lisa Marie Presley).
However, the new cash set offers the opportunity to reflect on the curious position that Presley was once the shine of the return special had vanished: a pioneer of rock and roll now extracted strangely from the culture that made as much as anyone to invent.
The title of “Sunset Boulevard”, which the set shares with the iconic 1950 film by Billy Wilder, cannot avoid evoking the spoiled greatness of a aged show legend. It also refers to the physical location of the headquarters of the West Coast of RCA Records in 6363 Sunset Blvd., on the other side of Cinerama Dome Dome in Hollywood. Now, the Los Angeles Film School site, the building is where the Rolling Stones recorded “(I can't get no) satisfaction” and Jefferson Airplane made “surreal pillow”, and where Presley settled in the early 70s after cutting most of its soundtracks of films of the 60s on radio remembered near the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and the Brevard Breevard.
Jerry Schilling at home at West Hollywood.
(Jsquared Photography / for the Times)
In 1972, Rock had evolved beyond the crucial influence that Presley exerted at the beginning of his career. The king was not marked particularly in what was happening in music while he was busy in Hollywood.
“We were not so exposed as much as I wish I had been in everything,” says Schilling on a recent afternoon at his home in Los Colinas over Sunset Plaza. Schilling, a central member of the legendary Memphis Mafia, Schilling has lived here since 1974, when Presley bought the place to television producer Rick Husky and gave it to Schilling for his years of loyal implementation of friends.
“When you are making movies, you are at 7 in the morning and you are in makeup at 8,” says Schilling. “You work all day and go home, you are not necessarily putting the last records.”
More than the soring rock lothario of the first days of Presley, not to say anything about the hairy psychedelic search engines that arose in its path, what the material of RCA emphasizes is how expressive the Ballada singer Elvis Elvis in the middle age had become. Schilling says that the singer's romantic problems led him to slower songs and in a bad mood as “separated”, “Always On My Mind” and “For the Good Times” by Kristofferson, the last of which he gives in a voice that seems to tremble from repentance. (Presley had to be hazped to sing the uptempo “Burning Love”, according to Schilling, who points out with a laugh that “when he became a success, he loved it”).
But in the deep soul of this music you also listen to the relationship between Presley and the members of his live band, with whom he recorded in RCA instead of using the session players who had supported him in the 60s. Directed by guitarist James Burton, the TCB band, which deals with the business, met before the first commitment of Presley at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, which later became Las Vegas; In fact, one of the most fascinating characteristics of “Sunset Boulevard” are the hours of rehearsal tape that documents the preparation of Presley in Los Angeles for Las Vegas shows that began in 1969.
The sound quality is cloudy and quite wobbly actions, as in a version of “you have lost that love feeling” where Presley cannot decide on a key. However, it is exciting to listen while musicians find their rhythm, a kind of slow and earthly field hook, in a variety of remote songs that include “you don't have to say you love me”, “Good weather Charlie Got the Blues”, even the “Fairytale” of the sisters. “
The RCA Records building in Sunset Boulevard in a photo without date.
(RCA Records)
In an essay engraved on August 16, 1974, Presley tells his band to play the Ewan MacColl's ballad made famous by Roberta Flack: “'The first time I saw your curse' face '”, shout while we listened to the players to warm up. Then everyone locks themselves for a closely harmonized interpretation of the song so beautiful that there is something almost spooky about it.
Sitting next to the balcony in which he was standing when he received the phone call that alerted him to the news of Presley's death, Schilling was clear in turning the threads well practiced over his years with Presley: The time John Lennon told him that he told Presley that he became his Tuttie de Presley, which is known to a homenning tutor. The TCB band.
He stops more when he talks about the end of his friend's life and what he sees as the lack of a serious artistic challenge that could have exacerbated Presley's approach. Staying in Las Vegas too long, making similar records in a home study established in Graceland, these were not enough to boost the man who calls a genius. Does Schilling know if Presley saw “a star was born” when it came out at the end of 1976?
Consider the question for some good 10 seconds. “I don't know,” he finally says. He began a tour managing the Beach Boys that year and spent less time with Presley. “He never mentioned it. I wish I knew it. There is probably no one alive now to say.”
