Gates of Graceland: Secrets of the '68 Special

[Music] hi I'm Tom Brown and welcome to a very special episode of gates of Graceland during Elvis Week 2018 we were lucky enough to have three of the creative geniuses that worked with Elvis Presley on his 1968 special we had in house Billy Goldenberg who was a musical director Allen Bly the writer and Steve bender who was the director and producer those gentlemen shared their stories with all the crowds here during Elvis Week but they also found time to sit down with us and tell their story in their own words of working with Elvis on the 68 comeback special the colonel really didn't care about television to begin with he wanted NBC to finance the next movie which was change of habit and NBC said we'll give you the money the colonel was delighted and NBC said oh by the way Elvis also has to do a television special for us to give you the money well the colonel never told Elvis about the deal he made when he told him about a television special Elvis told the colonel I don't want to do it Finkle told me that he wanted to produce and directed himself but he could never get through delvis that he tried to get Elvis to call him Bob and he would only call him mr. Finkel so that's why I got the call for NBC in the first place after I hung up the phone with NBC and had turned down the show basically my partner bones how came over to me and said Steve I overheard your conversation I think you could be banking the biggest mistake of your life I know Elvis Presley I engineered one of his albums and I think personally you guys could create magic you'd hit it off I called Bob Finkel back at NBC instead if that offer is still open I'd be interested on one condition Bob kind of laughed and said what's the condition I said I meet him first one-on-one so we will see if we're compatible we could work together he said I'll call you right back he calls Colonel Parker and Colonel Parker says I've got to meet him one-on-one first if I like him he can meet Elvis if I don't like him we're not gonna set up this meeting so I trek out with my partner bones to MGM studios where Colonel hazards offices is a very funny story and about the colonel asking that I'd bring French pastries to this meeting so I think we're having coffee and pastries I walk in his office I hand him the paper bag filled with pastries and says thank you opens his briefcase cuts to the men closes the briefcase he said no coffee no pastries then he says okay this is the special that I've agreed to and NBC's agreed to that Elvis is going to do he hands me a quarter-inch audiotape designated to give to all the disc jockeys in America as Elvis's gift Christmas gift and what it is itself is singing about 20 Christmas songs well I knew instantly this is not something I want to do I go back in my office convinced this is the one and only meeting with Colonel Parker that's the end of it and Bob Hinkle calls me right after I get to my office and he said Steve I don't know what you did to charm the colonel but Elvis will be at your office tomorrow at 4 o'clock in the afternoon next day in walks Elvis Presley he had a few of his entourage with him Joe Esposito probably and Charlie Hodge and they were waiting in the lobby and Elvis and I go back into my office immediately starts talking about the music business he said basically he'd been away from the industry since he went in the army for two years in Germany then he came home and he started a movie career so it's been about eight or nine years since he's even performed and he says what do you think of my my career now and and I was kind of off the cuff and probably bad taste but I said Elvis I think your careers in the toilet and he laughed he said you know basically finally somebody's telling me what's real in life you know he said I'm not sure I can even perform on television first of all I don't like the media to begin with I like doing the Ed Sullivan Show and I started but ever since then they put me on television and make fun of me they put me in a tuxedo they put a hound dog in front of my face and they want me to sing hound dog and things like that he said it's not my turf and I said well what's your turf he said it's making records that I love I said okay why don't you make a record album and I'll put pictures to it how's it that's simple enough and a few months later he told me that's the line that convinced him that he should take a shot and do this television show Steve been there was the perfect directive perfectly producer for that show he brought all the right guys into the project we actually met the colonel first both Chris and I had decided they would have a good sense of humor and we said to him the colonel Colonel were very pleased to meet you and were particularly loved your chicken but the colonel looked at it like what what is it what does he mean just a matter of that he was not very fond of our humor Elvis was very fond of our human because his humor is very much the same it's a kind of a kind of a cynical fun approach to everybody around him the colonel told us what he wanted to do an hour of Christmas music I said to to Bob and to Steve you know what do you need Chris and me for all these guys you can you could do this show in its it's an hour to Christmas music they both explained to us we want you to give them an idea you and I you have an idea for the show you know you will have an idea for the show we want you to come up with something that will really excite him and that's all we needed to hear because we had the executive producer and the producer and director behind this we were so free we just wrote freely but they locked themselves in their writers room in my officers and they eventually came out with their idea of what the Elvis show should be and Elvis in the meantime after our first movie had gone Hawaii to vacation on the basis that he'd come back we'd pitch him our idea for an Elvis show and he'd make a decision where they want to do it or not do it by that time I had Chris and Palin in the room with me with Elvis and they basically did the pitch well Chris beard is a comedy guy to begin with and he could really deliver fun and we're going to do this and we're gonna do that and and yeah they infectious laugh you know Chris and I was too right guys to be ready for him and and everybody in the rest of the staff was they were perfect for him everybody was trying to appease him and impress him and we did and we were fit enough to gain his respect well it was terrific because he he agreed with what we were saying with it and when he had descriptions and you know for TV and so agreeable so encouraging to us they finished their pitch which is about I don't know no more than 10 or 15 minutes he said I love it let's do it I said well what do you like about it what don't you like about it he said no I like it all let's just do it I like it I got a good feeling about this what I never knew until Priscilla told me years later that when Elvis came home he said to her I don't care what the colonel thinks I got a feeling about this and this guy bender I'm gonna do what he asked me to do I just got a good feeling I thought Bob Finkel turned out to be the greatest executive producer I could possibly want to have supporting me because he spent his entire time I'm not on the set he spent his time entertaining Colonel Parker he would play liars poker with them they exchanged photographs of each other the colonel addresses a southern Colonel Bob dressed as Napoleon it was just gamesmanship which you know the colonel loved and Bob said he lost a fortune because he kept letting Colonel Parker when just to keep him occupied Elvis when he came to Rome he I didn't like there's something special about him he had other people who described it as an aura and he looked me straight in the eye and he never took his stare away from me he asked me to save world yeah I had some eyes the instrument he'll say well I'm thinking you know I come from motion pictures and other faiths and I'd like to have my guys are symphonic musicians I think is a way of combining that sounds with the earth scientists and so Elvis could Steve I have to confess something I said what never son with her gesture before in my life you know if I don't like what I hear you got to promise me that you're gonna send them all home and just keep the rhythm section and I did promise him I told him i from the very beginning I said I'm never gonna make you do anything you know so you got to understand you said you think I could say to me behold through here I said why not you want a medium you know and he said yeah and we went all around the orchestra he met the stern employers and everybody loved him afterwards no matter what this rivet was expecting anything like this but it was so decent to everyone and they all fell in love for them we had books about close to 100 look-alikes because we were going to start the show with people men of all ages and all ethnic backgrounds and they were each gonna do a few bars of if you looking for trouble you just look in my face and it caused a lot of difficulty for us because we had union problems and Steve said you've got you've got a great performer here just let's go up on him you could know you with that we recorded his guitar man sequence which was exactly the kind of music that I wanted him to sing music but not only had some tenderness to it but it basically had raw energy primitive primitivism sexuality anger but I knew he was Harbor and all of these things inside it came out in the singing I mean you see some of the expressions on on his face when he sings it's not all just smiley Jerry Reed wrote the song and it's about a career that a guy has that he doesn't get thanks much for it and he's really here's the battle his way through it and make him a lifetime and career out of it and I had to actually tell Jerry that I wanted to rewrite just a little bit of the lyrics to suit the purpose forever out of this career I was stunned that he said I'll do this for Elvis he this this song the lyrics are true to his life you know the the guitar man sequel was basically more parody of his movie career even though I justify it by saying well it's the story of a poor you know guitar man who you know has nothing nope no money no career anything he goes out of his home town finds fame and fortune and realizes the happiest he ever was in this life is being this poor kid he just loves to play and plays guitar you know sort of the Bluebird of happiness story time in a cloud or the two choreographers on the show beautifully choreographed show and the energy was so tremendous in that spiritual in the gospel from everything with the dancing and the power of that it was great it was wonderful she McEvoy is a did everything that I did in my life until he left Hollywood he was he was a great designer and I would use about every possible thing that I did [Music] so we have this incredible soundtrack and when I brought them all to the to the NBC studio in Burbank Elvis was very nervous and I had decided to put him in a sort of boxing ring stage without the ropes which made him kind of a caged animal we had this live orchestra in the bleachers behind him that you can actually see on a big screen he was magical I think I did two takes of it noters I had him do the segment where I did what they call stop-and-go where if I fell he blew something or you know something wasn't right I just stop and say do it over again and then we'd piece it all together and if we had a live studio audience for that there were all of these ladies in the audience who are now in their 30s and used to be 80 years old but they were still screaming and you know every once in a while like when we would take a break and come over and talk to me you see and you believe this thing now I feel like this is what I used to do you know I said just have fun with it you know he says I know so he did hound dog he did blue suede shoes etc you know can't help falling in love all his classic hit records it was fantastic and he was having fun I mean there's one song that he sings where he says you made my life a wreck I'm just improvising it was another expression to use my boy my boy that he used all the time I mean you know but it just brought out you know his basic instincts and his and his raw talent which was what I was looking for [Music] every day after rehearsal every day after taping he go into his bedroom and he jam acoustically whoever happened to be hanging out Lance Legault who is his film stand-in was a musician he brought a tambourine in everybody else Chris beard our writer myself his few guys from his art entourage Charlie Hodge etcetera everybody would be banging on the piano and and hitting guitar cases and so forth I said this is something I've got to photograph this is what the public is screaming for that never ever got to see so I go to Colonel Parker and I say I'm bringing cameras in there and he said over my dead body and really was adamant I mean you are not allowed and so I was so frustrated because this is this is Elvis Presley this is the magic after days of hounding him he finally turned to me out of frustration and said okay bindle he always after I started getting started calling me bindle instead of bender he said I'll make a deal with you I'll let you recreate it on stage but I won't promise you any of it goes into the show that NBC broadcast it's all I had to hear I just jumped on it I didn't have any money even for a set so I used the same set as I used in the stand-up and it was Elvis who said I hear you're gonna recreate it out on stage do me a favor can you get Scotty T to come here to do it because nobody can play guitar licks like Scotty it was the greatest thing that happened because I called them both they both refused to come because of the colonel saying the colonel was the guy who broke him up but because of Elvis they came thank God when they showed up cold they never got a chance to rehearse or anything and they hadn't seen him or played with him in years you know his their past came back instantly you know the ground rule for me is no electronics whatsoever no no amplifiers no electric guitars but they snuck him in anyway it's Kiley Scott he did and then the Elvis ended up you know having a little bit of guitar playing on it on his amp but generally speaking it was all what was happening in the dressing room I think a lot of especially the Elvis fans know the story where I gave all the tickets to Colonel Parker who had kind of promised me he was flying an airplane in from Memphis would be filled with blonde bouffant hairdo fans of Elvis and his shtick was you can't give any tickets to anybody else you got to give me a hundred percent of all the tickets and I'll deliver or else I don't want any tickets and you can have your sponsors wives and girlfriends and you know the crew I mean whoever you know you get as an audience I believe the colonel which was a very foolish looking on my part to do the night before I left the studio and we were going to be taping this improv segment the next day the guard at the guard shack at NBC said hey Steve you need any tickets for tomorrow's performance I said what tickets he said Oh some Bolly had a guy came by handed me a whole stack of tickets and told me to give them out to anybody who comes in and out of gate so we had no audience we went begging the next morning we went to a drive-in restaurant called Bob's Big Boy and we were asking people while they're eating breakfast do you want to come see Elvis Presley and we had everybody going crazy inviting there the crew inviting their girlfriends their wives that mean it just so we could get an audience in there fortunately you know by time we were ready to tape we had an audience that we can surround the stage with we had additional audience sitting up in the bleachers and so forth it turned out fine you want to talk about panic Romero it's about as panicked as I could be on top of Elvis all of a sudden kind of chickening out and saying huh I don't want to do it and I said what do you mean you don't want to do it and he said Steve I don't remember anything I said in the dressing room my mind is a blank I don't know any of the songs I sang I don't know the stories we all told so I took an 8 by 10 piece of paper and scribbled what I remembered about the section which he took out on stage with him and I said Elvis you know I've always told you I'll never make you do anything you don't want to do in this case you got to go out there you and I hereby think oh introducing him on stage while we're in the makeup room having this conversation and I said you've got to go out there I don't care if you walk out there say hello to everybody goodbye to everybody and come back but at least go out there I turned my back on him I walked out of the makeup room went up to the control room which was one flight up not knowing whether he's coming out or not I just I didn't wait to hear his answer and I didn't know he was going to do the improv until I saw him on one of the TV monitors walking out to the stage [Music] normally in television in those days especially in primetime the host would come out at the end say I hope you had a great time I enjoyed entertaining for you and so forth and so on well I knew no way could the writers write something for Elvis to speak even scripted because the colonel would say absolutely not I said okay we've had an opportunity now for a few months to really get to know Elvis he's joined our family you know who he is you know what his soul is like go write me a song to close the show you know you know what the words are going to be because of of Elvis because you know him he's not this kid from Tupelo Mississippi who's a redneck who has prejudices and so forth he kind of accepts everybody let's tell the people who Elvis really is in the meantime the colonel is saying bender is gonna close the show with a Christmas song he's gonna do Frankie Lena 1940s and 50s artists he's going to sing I believe I believe that every drop of rain that falls a flower grows or I'm saying what does that have to do with Christmas steve bender came to to Earl and I said write me a song about any told us of the idea and I went home and then we came back with if I can dream and as usual whether he called a dummy melody well I listened to this dummy melody now I said Earl is no diamond melody I said this is perfect for the song and he said no no I want you to write one I said I can't write one message right as this one this I said this is right on and we argue then he just went on I know we write together we're a collaborative team I said listen I'll write a nice arrangement for it I think they'll be shooting in this song Earl had Earl I figure that the words to the song the harmonies were there so what I had to figure out was how is it by the sound with an orchestra it was below but I'm bummed but if I can dream you know and that little motif sort of gave me a hint as to what the rest of it I get a phone call very early in the morning saying you got to come out then BC before rehearsal starts because we think we've got the song for you so I rush out to NBC that morning I knew this is the song so as soon as Elvis shows up I said I was coming where the piano is and let them play you a song and Elvis listens to it Elvis in his usual way says play it again they're playing it to him like four or five six times I knew he wanted to do it because he started at home and as soon as he heard that you know I he learned it pretty quickly and I in the meantime I'm hearing Colonel walk into the outer office saying over my dead body are they ever going to do that song for the closing and Elvis looks at me and he says I'll do it door bursts open in comes the colonel with Freddy Bienstock the head of his publishing company with a contract ready for Billy and her office sign giving away their publishing rights to the song Billy Goldenberg goes over to the piano and there is the piano lead sheet and it says music by Billy Goldenberg lyrics by Earl brown and Billy said I can't take credit for this it's not true Earl Brown wrote the music and the lyrics and he races his name off the lead sheet that was kind of the integrity of my staff I mean just you know just great people great integrity honesty and so forth and that cost Billy Goldenberg a fortune when the song took off we went to the recording studio to do the track and I would have him sing live to the track using all of the musicians that we had hired on the show after the musicians finished the track and everybody's happy with it we send them all home the only people left at the recording studio are bones how myself my assistant script supervisor Patrick E the utility guy at the recording studio and Elvis comes over to me and he says can I put my vocal on it because in those days if you played a vocal in a recording studio they had to be paid exactly as if they were there playing live so it was very expensive to you know play the tracks and I said let's turn all the lights off and it was eerie because there was still the light in the control room but out on this enormous stage one all you could see are the red lights from the amplifiers and you could barely make out through the glass elvis standing on the stage and elvis says can I have a hand mic which is nontraditional when you're making records usually it's the little boom mic over your head you're in us either in a separate booth or or you know you're isolated from the orchestra and bones get to my hand Mike he lies down on this concrete floor curls himself up into a fetal position with the hand mic up to his mouth and he now sings so he can learn the lyrics for the show if I can dream you want to talk about goosebumps I mean is unbelievable but I had no cameras there so now the choice is do I have him lip-sync which I hate kitty artists doing on television or do I have him sing live on the actual waving of the public song Aaron my decision was using live to the tracks no matter how great that recording is with your voice on it we have no video and I'm not gonna put that on the air Elvis memorized every No of that orchestration you can see it because the way he moved it was moved moving with the orchestra and you the end of the song and he knew exactly when it was going away and then and he would do that you know he was always happy yeah thank you and you have to realize this was probably the first time ever that one one artist dominating the entire show with no guest artists whatsoever which was in itself a breakthrough NB C it also looked at the show and said we don't know if we can air it because his hair is messed up you can see him sweating it's all the things made it great he didn't inspired us by his abilities to really be to put everything that we had into it we wanted it to be good we wanted it to be great we ended up with half of Americans television audience that night watching Elvis Presley that meant they had to tune out of the other networks and come over at nine o'clock halfway through their other shows to watch Elvis so we were a huge success when when the show actually was broadcast initially it was the thrill of my life as it was for every guy and girl who worked on the show we were looking at the show fifty years after taping it and it still stands up beautifully it was an experience of my life that I shall never forget and I'm honored and privileged to be the guy who happened to be at the right place at the right time 50 years from now we'll still be talking about the Elvis 68 comeback special I'm Tom Brown thanks for watching gates of Graceland [Music]

Channel: Graceland

Views: 296,923

Rating: 4.8886628 out of 5

Keywords: Elvis Presley's Graceland, Graceland Memphis, Elvis Presley, Elvis, '68 Special, NBC, Elvis All-Star Tribute, Blake Shelton, Jennifer Lopez, Post Malone, Steve Binder, Allan Blye, Billy Goldenberg, Yolanda Adams, Carrie Underwood, Pistol Annies, John Legend, Shawn Mendes, Mac Davis, John Fogerty, Alessia Cara, Little Big Town, Dierks Bentley, Josh Groban, Adam Lambert, Ed Sheeran, Kelsea Ballerini, Graceland, Memphis

Id: IZuVaRJZwcY

Length: 29min 3sec (1743 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 18 2019