(Continued from Part Ten)
Presley's television special Aloha from Hawai'i in 1973 was aired throughout the world on January 14, which broke records in Japan, and the following night to 28 countries in Europe. A double album was released which went to #1 and has now sold over five million copies in the U.S. alone.
At one concert, four men rushed on stage in an attempted attack, but security stopped them. He may have escaped that danger, but Presley had become addicted to barbiturates, overdosing twice during the year, and his health was deteriorating. By the end of the year, Elvis was rushed to the hospital in a semi-coma as a result of his addiction to pethidine.
Yet Presley continued performing at the frantic pace he had begun since his comeback, doing 168 shows in 1973 and another demanding schedule the following year. The Elvis (The "Fool") Album has sold five million copies.
The combination of the hectic schedule and his drug dependency took a heavy toll. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembered one specific incident when he noticed the effects of this deadly combination (as recounted to Peter Guralnick and Ernst Jorgensen in the book Elvis Day by Day: The Definitive Record of His Life and Music):
He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People
jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't
help me.' He walked on stage and held onto the mic
for the first thirty minutes like it was a post.
Everybody's looking at each other like, 'Is the tour
gonna' happen'?
"He was slurring. It was obvious he was drugged," guitarist John Wilkinson said. "It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible."
Later in 1973, Elvis preleased the album Raised On Rock/For Ol' Times Sake.
"Polk Salad Annie" is a song written and performed by Tony Joe White, a #8 hit in 1968. Elvis picked up the song and began performing it live in his sets. Presley recorded it in 1973 and it became the only version of the song to chart in the U.K. and Ireland.
In 1974, Presley released the albums Good Times and Promised Land and Today in 1975.
Vernon Presley fired bodyguards Red West, Sonny West, and David Hebler in 1976, interpreted by Elvis' stepbrother David Stanley to be because they were speaking out about Elvis' drug addiction.
Add in the pressures from RCA and it became a toxic mix. Presley did not record at all in 1974, though another live album, Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis, was released. "How Great Thou Art" from that album earned Elvis a Grammy Award for Best Gospel Recording.
Presley did record in Hollywood, California in 1975. Don McLean's "And I Love You So" from Today He Touched Me remains a favorite among Elvis fans. Presley performed it in nearly every live show from that point on until his death.
Jean-Pierre Bourtayre and Claude Francois, with lyrics translated from the original French version "Parce que je t'aime, mon enfant" (Because I Love You My Child)" into English by Phil Coulter and Bill Martin. "My Boy" was a #20 hit in the U.S., but was bigger on the Easy Listening chart, spending one week at #1 in both the United States and Canada. In the U.K., where Presley enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, the song hit #5.
RCA did their part to accommodate Presley. In 1976, they sent a mobile studio to Graceland so Elvis could more easily record but even having the comforts of home, Presley struggled in the sessions. Presley released the Gold album From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee in May.
Timi Yuro enjoyed the biggest success with this Roy Hamilton song, taking "Hurt" to #4 in 1961. Elvis's cover reached #7 on the Adult chart and #28 overall.
Mark James, who wrote "Suspicious Minds" for Elvis, penned this next one as well. Presley recorded it in February of 1976 in the Jungle Room of his home at Graceland.
He performed it just once in its entirety on February 21, 1977 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Elvis had attempted to perform it the night before, but told the crowd that he had completely forgotten the song. When he returned on the 21st, he had a lyrics sheet in hand and sang the song with his eyes fixed to the lyrics.
Both the February 20 false-start and the February 21 performance were recorded and officially released in 2007.
"Moody Blue" was a #1 Country hit but only #18 overall in the United States, though it did much better throughout Europe--#2 in Sweden, #4 in France and #6 in the U.K.
Elvis and Linda Thompson broke up in November of 1976 and Presley quickly had a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden. By early 1977, the gyrating sex symbol of the 1950's had become severely overweight and barely able to finish his abbreviated concerts. In one show in Alexandria, Louisiana, Elvis was on stage less than an hour and was impossible to understand by all accounts. On March 31, he was unable to get out of his hotel bed and four shows had to be canceled or rescheduled.
Fans were becoming increasingly vocal about their dissatisfaction with his performances, but Presley didn't seem to notice. In his talks with Elvis, Presley's cousin Billy Smith recalled that Elvis' paranoid obsessions reminded Smith of Howard Hughes.
Presley released the single "Way Down" on June 6, a Top 10 hit in Europe, including #2 in the U.K. and the Netherlands, but it stalled at #18 in the U.S.
Two shows were filmed by CBS-TV for a television special scheduled for October called Elvis in Concert. On June 26, Elvis performed at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana in what turned out to be his final show.
Presley released the album Moody Blue (which included the title song and "Way Down") on July 19, 1977.
The three bodyguards who were fired the previous year collaborated on the book Elvis: What Happened?, released August 1. It was the first time that the public knew of Presley's drug addictions. Elvis found out about the book in advance and attempted unsuccessfully to stop its release by offering money to the publishers.
Presley suffered from being overweight, glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage and an enlarged colon. Each was made much worse by his drug abuse and could have been caused by that abuse.
On the evening of August 16, 1977, Elvis was booked for a flight out of Memphis to begin another tour. That afternoon, however, Ginger Alden found him unresponsive, sprawled out on a bathroom floor. "Elvis looked as if his entire body had completely frozen in a seated position while using the toilet," Alden said to Guralnick for his 1999 book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley, "and then had fallen forward, in that fixed position. It was clear that, from the time whatever hit him to the moment he had landed on the floor, Elvis hadn't moved."
Attempts to revive the King failed, and at 3:30 p.m. on August 17, Elvis was pronounced dead at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis. U.S. President Jimmy Carter released a statement that said Presley "permanently changed the face of American popular culture".
Memphis medical examiner Jerry Francisco announced that the cause of death was cardiac arrest, despite the fact that an autopsy was not yet completed. In fact, according to noted Presley author Peter Guralnick, "drug use was heavily implicated".
The pathologists conducting the autopsy, Guralnick wrote, thought it possible that he had suffered "anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills he had gotten from his dentist" (despite having an allergy to codeine).
Further, two lab reports completed two months later suggested that drugs were the primary cause of death. One of them found fourteen drugs in Presley's system, ten in significant quantity. Francisco's explanation of cardiac arrhythmia is a condition that can only be determined if someone is still alive.
A 1981 trial of George Nichopoulos, Presley's physician, exonerated him of criminal liability for Elvis' death, but the facts uncovered in the trial did nothing for the doctor's reputation. In 1977 alone, Nichopoulos had prescribed more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics. Nichopoulos' license was suspended for three months and was later permanently revoked in the 1990's after new charges of over-prescribing.
Thousands of fans gathered outside Graceland to view Elvis in an open casket. Presley's funeral was at Graceland on August 18 and about 80,000 people lined the route to Forest Hill Cemetery where Elvis was buried next to his mother. But after an attempt to steal his body later in the month, the remains of both Elvis and his mother were reburied in the Meditation Garden of Graceland on October 2.
Graceland was open for the public in 1982. With over 500,000 guests annually, it became the second most-visited home in the United States after the White House. In 2006, Graceland was declared a National Historic Landmark.
We are going to go slightly out of chronological order here. The compilation album Guitar Man was posthumously released in 1981 and the title song reached #1 on the Country chart and #28 overall.
Posthumously, Elvis's version of the Frank Sinatra standard "My Way" (from his Elvis in Concert album) was released in 1977 and it rose to #6 and #22 overall in the United States, #6 in Italy and #9 in the U.K.
In 2005, Elvis had the distinction of being named the top-earning deceased celebrity for the fifth consecutive year by Forbes magazine, with a gross income that exceeded $45 million. He has consistently been in or near the Top 10 every year since.
Presley holds the all-time marks for Gold albums with 101 and most Platinum albums with 57.
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