Jerry Schilling: Elvis’ Most Loyal Friend Gives an In-Depth View of the King

jerry shilling met elvis when he was just a boy and elvis was a teenager and he met him on one of the last weekends before elvis became elvis jerry knew elvis for 23 years and in those years he grew up with him lived with him worked for him learned from him and even laughed with him and shared one amazing experience after another and jerry shilling is more than just being a close friend to elvis presley jerry is a movie and television producer a film editor and the manager of the legendary beach boys and so much more priscilla presley said jerry schilling is authentic honest a purity of a man who truly loved his friend elvis and lisa marie presley says jerry tells the story of her father with humility honesty and dignity and even bono of you two was quoted to say jerry shilling brought grace to graceland while jerry shilling's life has spanned from the early days of guthrie park playing football with elvis in north memphis to standing in the white house with the most powerful man in the united states and i'm not talking about president nixon i'm talking about the greatest entertainer in the world elvis presley so without further ado let's welcome the closest and most loyal friend elvis the man himself jerry shilling welcome to the show thanks ward i got a lot to live up to for that introduction well i tell you what um read your book and uh what a life what a story that you have to tell over and over again and i want to ask you because the moment you heard that's all right mama the night dewey phillips played the song on the radio in your book you said it gave you hope what did you mean by hope it was uh i was a very lonely uh young kid my mother died when i was an infant i was living with relatives in poor north memphis where elvis grew up too but i got a lot of love but i didn't have much hope i was a very sickly kid i had no friends no personality still working on that and um i've been listening to dewey phillips for two years since i was 10 years old uh because he was playing exciting music you know rhythm and blues and anything that your parents or developers wouldn't want you to listen to do what he was playing and so i've been listening to for close to two years when one night he uh played this record from the boy from dean's eye well i lived two blocks from humesville from my great school you can see literally see humans and vice versa and my mother had gone to humes my cousins were going to news and it was after he played the record and then the lights started coming up and he played it again and now legend has that's all they played but you know how that goes but he did play it you know three or four times and uh because of the response he got in touch with sam phillips who got in touch with vernon and gladys presley because elvis knew the record was going to be played that night he was so nervous he went to a movie theater and so they found him and dory brought him on the show and he was a nervous wreck and dewey was just talking to him and elvis didn't know that the interview was going on at that time and what was really cool about him is i was looking for heroes i think young kids do that and i was an early brando james dean whatever and [Music] this this guy the way he talked was like james dean at that time he kind of stuttered he kind of mumbled and and the music was really cool and that's the most hope of excitement i had experienced as a kid now my life got much better after that you know i uh at the time was a good little catholic boy i go to bed because do his show went over until midnight and uh i said a little prayer hey god this the neighborhood's not that big i'd like to meet this boy from amsterdam no one ever never happened and of course the next day i go to guthrie park that you mentioned and uh by myself and there were five older guys trying to get up a football game they didn't have six people because nobody knew who elvis was yet because no no i had seen him they just played the record you know that night or the night before and uh red west who was a big kingside football player knew my older brother and he said jerry uh do you want to play with her wow i'm going to play football with red west i'm in grade school he's an all memphis high school player get in the huddle she's upside down only three hours and three hours and i realized that my quarterback was the boy from homestead i mean there was no high callers there was no nobody he just had it you know movie stars and recording artists they get a certain well-deserved uh charisma after a while or something close to it there's a guy who didn't even have a hit record had done but he had it i mean the hope i have had listening to the record he became my hope uh because i could tell after we played a couple hours uh he kind of liked that i thought he was cool before it was popular i could kind of tell we hit it off a little bit you know for an elder kid and a young kid and then he said you know you want to play next week and i'm saying trying to be cool you know and say yeah i know what time man i was there two hours before you know yeah it was a great start of a great friendship a great ride i've been extremely blessed and elvis is kind of in a certain way my relationship with elvis has given me a backstage task to other artists and producers and i think they feel hey if he was cool with elvis he's got to be okay and then it was up to you to prove yourself you know you know if you're managing jerry lee lewis or you know producing film or whatever so well when did the actual roller coaster ride with elvis really begin for you i mean was it that time at guthrie park or was it just a special moment when it just took off and it was you and elvis being friends for the next 23 years i think it started at guthrie clark uh obviously his career started off pretty fast and he was controversial not everybody liked him at that time certainly some of the guys didn't like him because of their girlfriends liking him most of the guys did and every guy that i got they got to know him really liked him but he really had a close-knit group of friends that were his about his age that he trusted that later became the memphis mafia and i uh you know was included in that i couldn't you know within a few months some of them went on the rug with him like george klein i couldn't do that i was too young it was a great school but uh you know within a few months he was so popular that he couldn't go to a movie theater so he would rent the memphian theater at nighttime around midnight i was always welcome we played football every sunday he was in town and then we we played daytime with guthrie who was so into it go to whitehaven because they had lights on the field at whitehaven high school and we continued playing so it was football games in the 50s 54 55 it was he started running the amusement park you know maybe once a week after it closed and it's great to be on you know a ferris wheel or pippin at midnight and uh you know with a group of friends you know we just go from light you know to ride for hours uh and then in 57 when he bought graceland uh i was pretty much a welcomed guest in united they will start running up there quite a bit so what did you do what did you do when elvis was drafted into the army so elvis was drafted white for two years what what did you do for those two years well i i went to high school uh i got healthier i'd gotten a lot of hope and it's kind of cool that elvis came this big star and he was my friend and i played high school football i was all memphis like red west i got a scholarship to work at the university of arkansas state and i had planned on you know being a history teacher and potentially a football coach elvis came back in 60 and you know i went up to the house i guess the second day he was back in town and um you know he really uh there was a maturity from when he left memphis uh it's almost like he left his as james dean and he came back as john wayne he was very confident part of that confidence was in his off time in germany as a soldier he had this by great karate instructor that would come to the house that he rented at night time off the base and as always did anything he always did to extreme powers and boy he was really good so i go up to graceland i hadn't seen elvis in two years you know obviously he remembered because when you go down to the gate they say so-and-so's here uncle bestow let's say you know jerry songs here have him come up or we're you know we're not doing anything tonight whatever it was so i go up there and he's doing a karate demonstration in the living room and i go in and uh uh first thing he does is it's like we were just together yesterday hey man you know i'll stand there and show you something and he started doing this karate stuff and he uh accidentally but not badly hit me in a very practically in a very private place so that was uh and he was like oh you're okay you know but that was my welcoming welcome uh back to graceland uh with elvis in 1916. yeah go ahead go ahead well i was going to ask you about uh you know people people imagine elvis you know again he's he is still to this day the world's greatest entertainer even though he's been gone for 45 years i don't think anybody can ever fill that persona that elvis brought to the world and i've always wondered because in your book uh you made a mention that elvis was probably the most underrated producer in music why was he so underrated as a producer well you know elvis came from the generation that was changing you know but he came from a generation where singers sang the songs writers wrote the songs and producers produced the song that was everybody not just albus um and um i i think as sam phillips really produced elvis because stan phillips who was a genius he knew to let elvis do what he wanted to do after he found elvis pooling around you know because elvis went into the sun and was doing everything on the hip parade that sneaky landson and you know dean martin or whatever and you know sam was looking for something different because he was only doing r b arts black artists and so when when elvis took the break with scotty and dj and they started doing that's all right that's when all this came up i mean that's when sam came out of the control room and so what are you doing so from that moment on sam knew that elvis had something special and sam supported that i don't think anybody produced all this he had good producers almost like executive producers chips moment in american studios great producer but his producing was getting elvis great material letting elvis choose between publishing and great material so and to get right down to your question being in the studios from hollywood to nashville and in between and spending a lot of hours watching elvis record watching everybody seeing how the process took place elvis was the greatest unknown producer first of all he knew how to pick the material he also knew how to pick the right musicians singers they sure sell me out of sin and that was a natural so when you sit and you watch him choosing material we would go into a little office and elvis morley unless it was something special he had from high school or something first time he heard the music is when we got to the studio the one in office that he would listen and he would say hey let's try this one send it out to the band you know you know start making up some charts and whatever and he would go out and try it but while he was doing that he picked the material he had the musicians that he wanted to work with a lot that he had admired as a kid towards the singers uh you know and uh he would say hey let's try well let's do it a little you know can we slow this part down a little bit wait a minute i hear voices hey girls can you come in here okay there's where i want he was producing nobody else in that studio was doing that you know so uh when you listen to and especially after uh rca bought the sun catalog from sam phillips they really they really did not know what to do with elvis at that time uh i don't think he you know he was so different uh and that's where elvis had to you said elvis chose the material um did anybody else have any say as to what songs elvis would sing at all or did elvis had full control on what songs he chose unfortunately elvis did not have he had full control of what he was able to listen to to choose but there was a whole behind the scenes business thing going on where the publishing company if a certain writer didn't give 50 or whatever the percentage was uh of the publishing to hill and rings or gladys music or elvis presley music that music would never get to elvis's ears and he didn't know that so he had control over what was presented to him uh there were two major issues one was and that's why i mentioned uh chip's moment earlier george clyne our friend who went to high school with elvis there was a great disc jockey as well pioneering george and marty lacker one night we had dinner at graceland and said and uh american studios was getting really hot with uh mealtime and you know a lot of harvest and said elvis i think you should why don't you record in memphis now that's a very dangerous thing for any friend of elvis to say because a big business would say hey stay out you know whatever and elvis thought about and said okay now when elvis made a decision big business are nobody unless elvis was not a weak human being he was a strong guy but he could both deal strongly with the information he was given so george told chips the producer he said if you want to talk to elvis don't do it around everybody just say can i talk to you privately and so chip said elvis can we have a chat nova says sure so you go into the room and chip says elvis i have two statue records here your publishing company owns the stack of records i don't hear any hits the other i have hits you own no publishing what do you want to do all of a sudden i want to hit records they had seven could be eight major hits of that one reporting session now you would think that that would be the next place that the next session would go no because the machinery you know took over and and part of the machinery was good for us i'm not putting it all down yeah you know part of how elvis presley enterprises abg can feel today with certain likes and stuff is because colonel parker because of those publishing deals you know you have to get those approvals you need that music to do a basilarman film or to do a tv show like i did in memphis uh the abc television series years ago so what you know it's it's a it was a fine line between management business and creativity it's a very gray line and you have to know when to stay away when you step in and when to let your artist be a butterfly or let them be a worker and i'm still working on that well what what did the the studio think what did colonel parker think when elvis wanted to do a gospel album the very album that won him the grammys i think uh colonel was very supportive of the gospel album you know he he wanted that image for elvis but he had nothing to do with it always like until elvis chose it and then colonel really supported it loved it and i i nobody had a problem with that and everybody was supportive studios had nothing to do with that this was elvis's recording career they had something to do with soundtracked albums from movies they were doing but this was the record company this was elvis this is the publishers you know helen range was a very credible publishing company a very old school so yeah it was the gospel and i had the opportunity on the first session when i went to work for elvis 1964. we went in the bus elvis drove up to nashville and i was there the other guys had been to so many recording sessions and i'm the new kid on the block you know as far as on the road and they are waiting to play poker how this process is taking place i mean it's like going to a broadway show and you're all excited about the show that you're going to see and you can hear the musicians in the orchestra tuning up well that's how it was watching you know the stance you know the jordaniers and floyd kramer and luke's randolph and you know all these great jet atkins all these working out stuff so i'm sitting there in the studio just mesmerized and then elvis records how great they are and it is the greatest concert that wasn't a concert that i ever saw in my life i happened to be on the other side of the room and elvis saying that was so powerful and with all of his heart he lord at the end of it he turned grossly white it was like his soul left his body went down on his knees and he looked up i just happened to be on the other side of him and he did his little boy's smile he knew he had accomplished something right and i got to observe that and lo and behold that was his first grammy and one of only three which were all gospel why and even when he's saying how great they are even in concert i mean the intensity that that poured out of him i mean where did that intensity come from well i would have to say it came from god you know it was a spiritual thing that you can't explain i'm not that i'm not a great religious person but there are certain things that make you feel religious and make you believe and give you hope and what elvis did you'll never walk alone how great thou art uh it was it was pretty spiritual yes and it still is today now uh in your book you mentioned the 68 tv special which a lot of people now call it the comeback special but it originally it's a 68 tv special and in your book you you said that it was the first time somebody let elvis be elvis your words who was that somebody i would have to give credit to three people the producer at nbc trying to think of his name uh did go to colonel parker about not just having a christmas special but having an elvis special with a person's son and a god i wish i could remember his name and then he hired and colonel agreed then he hired two young producers steve bender and bones howard and they had done the tammy special which was a great music rock show rolling stones i think first appearance on stage at the forum in america and i went there on one of the first days that i was in los angeles allen force who worked for office took care of all the transportation so he said you want to go motorcycle rides i got on the back of the motorcycle and we went around hollywood wound up at the forum and there was all this music and people running into a bus and alan knew everybody because everybody knew it was with elvis and uh and this group came in and where ironically i didn't know until i started managing years ago the beach boys were performing on that show as well so and here i am 16 years of management with a beachbox so um yeah it was it was a real exciting time well in the movie and the brand new elvis let me finish it oh yeah go ahead uh the 68 come back i would have to say that the person that maybe one on one was steve bender you know it was steve who said he saw them fooling around rehearsing backstage it was steve's idea to bring that out and have friends and everything and steve bender and bones howe who had been an engineer at recorders what elvis had done in the in the 60s mid 60s a lot of his recording for the movie soundtracks so it was a pretty sophisticated group of people well so in the movie in the new movie elvis and there's that whole storyline about the 68 tv special um was was that storyline in the movie was that pretty much true to life i think the storyline in the movie the overall storyline is in character with what was happening you know it's different making a documentary or making a drama a docudrama so you know basil orman did one hell of a job i'm very thrilled with this meeting uh is there some things he had to cheat yeah you can't put 23 years and even two and a half hours the length of this movie there are certain things that embellish that are still in character you know i've had the opportunity to be in that situation on things i've produced and sometimes even as far back as the tv series on abc there are scenes that were shot in memphis in the delta there are scenes like elvis on beale street with a black artist named moody blue in this relationship now did that relationship ever happen with that one lie no but was it in character for who elvis was and his love of bill street and black artists and did he meet some yes and i still get asked is moody blue still alive he never was so what i'm trying to say is what bazwarman did beautifully is he put as much into the story and in character where you know you must take creative uh freedoms but he did it with care and research into who elvis was and it's a fantastic film and i've heard that he has another four hours worth of footage that didn't make it into the film do you know what's going to happen to that four hours of footage because i think the fans would love to see it i'm sure if well there was a there was a uh there was a rough cut that was actually four and a half hours long without takes from that not being there nasa's been cutting it down for the last year and priscilla and i were going to a screen uh because they wanted us to see how we liked the film and to go on the promotion tour with tom hanks and austin butler and the cask and oh i should say luke grayson he plays me and um so right when he was getting ready to show it to us he got the message from the cannes film festival you know for us to consider this we have to have a running time edit so bass had to leave warner brothers here go back to australia for all the editing where they shot everything and re-cut the film so you know knowing bass i mean uh there's i'd love to see he had invited me way back you know way back to see the screen test on austin buckley who i didn't know who was this was three years ago we were promoting the hbo elvis presley and we were up at the tribeca film festival in new york and that was the last of our promotion we've done memphis nashville south by southwest and very proud of that project uh as executive producer and uh so really tired bristol is going to leave early next morning i'm sleeping in we're in new york a friend of mine at uh rca sony uh called and uh bottom line you know we had a drink and he said do i have dinner tomorrow night yes i'm really deep call me tomorrow and he called me the next morning and said i said yeah of course rob sanchez i said sure he said do you mind if i bring basil on me i said are you kidding no because i know dad's been working for two years physically on this before three years now and the idea came about 11 years between him and gail berman who's with producers on the show he ran by his idea 11 years ago to gail herman and i just learned that on emotions so but yeah you know um 68 to me is last month july i look at the 68 comeback special and what that meant to elvis in his career and how he gave him hope and turned his career around last month july 7 7 11 july 11th 68 years ago is when i met elvis and [Music] help promoting this film and being on a promotion tour i think that the elvis film is the 68 legacy comeback 68 years ago when elvis came on the scene so it's quite a i just i woke up one morning and i was telling my wife's name wow you know and i was gonna do an interview is there anything i can do to tie this into you know i tied it into 68. and it is i mean you know it is elvis's second comeback and i think this film definitely is bringing in more new f young fans who may have never really you know they may have heard the name elvis but didn't really know who he really was and why so many of us love him and i you know it is a second coming of elvis plain and simple and it's going to be a lot of young people uh i mean you've got to download the soundtrack album i mean unbelievable and you know you you've got songs like eminem and celo and eminem talking about elvis uh you know pioneering black music back in the 50s as a as a white guy and then eminem with hip-hop and rap and he said we were in the same jailhouse but it's a great upbeat song but i think to me personally growing up in memphis you know you know i say i physically live in hollywood my soul's in beale street in memphis and that's how i feel and uh um i i just think that uh the most important thing about this film to me is the relationship that and the feelings that elvis had um not just for the music but for the artists and real people it really there's been confusion over the years that you know elvis was racist he didn't have a racist bone in his body you know i guess because we were from the south or whatever but in this movie really really without hitting people over the head really bridges that gap and i know that bass had some screens with some very important uh black people and artists i mean on the highest levels and you know they were like well why am i going to see this office movie they came out with a whole different perspective to me that's the most important thing with this movie because elvis deserves to be remembered as who he was not who i wanted to be or not what somebody else thinks he was to be who he was was the story nobody could have written it better very well said and you know and you bring something up because back in 68 the country was in such division so much going on you could tell that america was coming to a crossroads a turning point and then l and then when mlk was assassinated and then elvis sings if i can dream i mean even today that song is what we need today to bring our country back together because we're back to that same division and as i was watching the elvis movie that whole area of the 68 tv special was absolutely my favorite because i didn't know the back story and now when i hear that song that song has much a much stronger meaning to me today because what happened in 68 is happening in 2022 word i think what i just said about the racial situation you just took it to the next level i totally agree and i you know i happened to be the only person in that trailer wrestling room trailer at mgm when came up on the tv monitor uh and the trailer breaking news this is when breaking news was breaking news uh from memphis tennessee we're here at mgm in hollywood so i'm standing in for all this in this movie it is live a little lovely and we hear breaking news from method we both stopped and they said dr martin luther king was assassinated in memphis tennessee and i just remember i was looking down at the floor because elvis could recite i have a dream and sound like he was okay i'm glad that scene vast put that scene in the movie and um but what you're saying is i think if i could dream i consider elvis a writer on that song maybe the only song i consider him the participant right because steve bender bones however wanted to interview elvis for the six days and somehow that didn't come about so they wanted to do this song they brought in this writer earl brown and earl wanted to talk to elvis about life his philosophy what he felt where he was and i guess they stayed together for two hours or more and i love the line you know i could dream when my brothers walk hand in hand so i think as you said that was an extension of what we lived with how far uh i'm so proud of memphis how far it's come you know certainly musically but i think politically too and you know we've had some great mirrors white and black and but i think that music has done more for us understanding our brothers different far away close to whatever than politics or music i'm not putting down politics and music like you know of religion but music translates maybe because there's a feeling besides the voice and [Music] i think that this movie that's one of the movie has done that uh austin butler uh he doesn't get an oscar i mean we're watching him uh tom hanks is beautiful great guy but yes uh i hope that this spurs uh maybe not a movie or maybe some type of uh next live aid or whatever to try to get people together and i think we have great artists out there today that would try men on that you know jerry as you were as you were saying that the thought came to me that when elvis sang if i can dream at that time that was there we are the world moment yes we now need another we are you know we need that now you know and and tell you i personally sometimes i just have these weird crazy ideas but i would love to see a modern day version to celebrate the 68 tv special and to see it done in 2022 and bring if i can dream and then bring this country back together i mean elvis still has that power where'd you may see that well i want a front row ticket when i see it too but you may see that well let me ask you this because i want to ask you about you and you worked alongside martin scorsese on the documentary elvis on tour uh what did you learn from martin that helped you to be an editor and to become a producer well um he was marty at the time and young guy just got off of woodstock and relatively unknown um but his intensity uh was amazing when i you know i was an assistant editor when i go into this room you know it was intense and uh so and i was very young this one my first editing jobs uh and when the first but it was you know one of them and uh so we didn't have a lot of conversation except one night we worked really late on editing of all the songs and we were sitting out in the lobby for people to lock up and marty score says he says jerry you know what i got disease or something i said no he said i got that's right mama 68 sun records that's when i knew he really knew his music but marty is responsible for me to start having a working relationship creatively with elvis presley because now i i was on the tour looking for elvis then i asked him if i if these guys would hire me and mind if i quit i went to work in the editing and he kind of knew always had this you know wanting to learn other stuff so he basically he said okay he wasn't thrilled which is good i didn't want him to be happy about me leaving but i knew i wouldn't believe that i've seen every weekend so anyway uh marty did this great montage of elvis's life from child to current day at that time and colonel came over one day he did this at uh i think it's called american associates right now to do studio and um he came over and then we're just showing him this was like a three panel it was a new thing at the time editing stuff they just happened to have marty's monetize on it and chrono said i dropped that i just don't want any old pictures now i think what colonel was referring to and what elvis had expressed is he didn't want old pictures on new album releases so anyway i go to i was this house out here from there one night i said jerry how's the movie going i said no it's really going good i think you would be really pleased with me you know i said and this was the day chrome came over i said there's this good editor that uh you know did this montage but uh uh colonel said that you know to drop it and uh he said well tell me about it so i i went to frame by flame detail all of a sudden i don't have any problem with that so i go back to bob able here as the producers and i say elvis presley said he has no problem with marty's montage it goes into film so various things like that over the years that in 74 which most people don't know unless they read again i was doing something outside of house then elvis asked me to open up this film production and elvis presley enterprises films which we did and we had editing offices on hollywood and vine i used a lot of researchers editors from elvis on tour there were two projects there was a documentary fact bill wallace from memphis a famous karate champion was one of the team ed parker father of american karate put together this team from american champs went to england uh sparred against their chance went to france and elvis's idea was you want to be like the old movie producer that sits in the screen there's a little screen around where you see the data is what we shot the day before and explain what's going on in polite because you know the elvis came back from new orleans karate they didn't even want him to do it the movies because it was too fast they didn't uh so he kind of introduced that so uh not only was elvis an underrated and developed music producer but he was an undeveloped could have been a film producer he could have been a marvel striker at clint eastwood i sit in those days with him and he's still watching this and he would talk about timing wow i'm in every scene but when i go see brando i don't see him for 10 minutes i can't wait for him to get back on screen i mean he just had the feel and he's why i went into film medicine because i really wanted to learn about film and um then there was a second film that was going to be like a dean martin that hill where this guy was at a regular job in the daytime he was a ci agent at nighttime and so elvis was going to run a dog job in the daytime but he's going to be a ci agent cia agent at the time and my big brother at arkansas state uh became a big producer out here the customer everything from charlie's angels the canadian swat cage county at the end here's the biggest television producer outside very spelling at the time he did a lot there in the stock and so he wrote the treatment for this this is again where you must let your artist if it's a genius artist like alice you've got to let them experiment you've got to let them have their creator and that was kept and it's kind of depicted in the movie but colonel did not want elvis to going i was taking the books and cancelled checks and having all this approval you know so this is all documented in fact an unfinished version came out that i went involved and i didn't probably finish things called the gladiators and what you didn't have it was you know just wasn't finished and i wouldn't ask but a lot of what we did is well did elvis ever i mean did could elvis did he ever have the power to override the colonel's decision especially if it came to certain movies well that night in las vegas uh over the two issues touring overseas and the production company and elvis and i were the co-producers together uh elvis five department and the only time i ever saw them in our life and you know i and i don't want to read this interview that colonel parker did everything you want he did a lot of stuff right especially in the beginning the colonel parker loved elvis yes was there a great relationship with yes that elvis outgrowing creatively and maybe too late yes so there's no black and white i don't know i will say this colonel parker could be but he was not a dishonest man he was a hard-working man i wish he would have listened more to elvis's creative communities later in life and colonel made some great creative decisions in the 50s kept his career alive while he was in the army by you know strategically putting on the song you know i i knew the colonel as well and better than the most i mean his wife he just passed away a couple years ago i said i was the closest person to one of these years but i was alone out with colonel parker from elvis one day a week when we were at the studios and i would drive the criminal to palm springs but the windows rolled up and him smoking the cigar and i'm thinking you know you have to be careful with artists because that was one of his personal lives personal colonel said you know he went he didn't care about his personal life but he did and colonel cared about everything so you had to be really in that relationship you know my loyalty and my love and that worked for elvis but it was you know i needed to have a good relationship with the colonel too which i was able to do so you know i i had a long dinner with tom hanks at his home priscilla and i and his wife rita talking about the criminal we knew he was going to be the protagonist we knew he was the easy to go to bad guy but also wanting tom to know his good side you know he's the guy that will call you up on your birthday saying happy birthday to you he's a guy to give you a little gift he's the guy and i always dreaded the day i had to work for him because it was so different from the lifestyle that i've lived without seven o'clock breakfast sometimes we were going to bed at 7 o'clock but every day i worked with him after it was into it was always interesting he was fascinated he was just fascinating and you know they were a great team you know up to a certain point well then well let me ask you this because and i've seen you know i've seen the movie i've seen elvis and nixon and there are some points that that really come out and that is you uh you really wanted to blaze your own path you didn't want to be writing elvis cape so how important was that for you personally to kind of find your own career outside of elvis whether it's two things that's a great question lord there were two things the hardest decision i ever made after going to work for hours i was always going to be friends but there's a when you became part of the memphis market and you live within travel work that was really family and as a kid i dreamed about that as i got older i didn't think it was gonna happen and i was preparing in my life you know and would always be french i think that um when i made that decision to look for a job in film attitude and told elvis that i was going to do this he had i don't know a year or so before a year or so a couple of years after i went to warframe so i was i guess 66 or something i went to the den out here in bel air and beverly hills there was just elvis sitting in there and he said you know what's going to be the hardest thing for you to what are do talking about i said to do nothing i think he was talking about me i think he was talking about him too i i i didn't digest it until years so that was a very difficult decision to have then accepted and be part of the family and then to lead but i felt the main thing i wanted out of the relationship with elvis was friendship and respect i didn't think you could have both and i was the young guy in the group uh colonel parker handled all the business he did not want you to get you know you don't handle music you know and in the script so i made that decision and i didn't know if i would you know what would happen to the relationship and i don't know about two weeks after now i moved from bel air to the richest place of america to a little apartment my wife and i in culverson one room bedroom and i'm looking for a job and uh and have no money so i get a call from elvis so jerry you're going to do that editing on the weekends he said i said no i'm thrilled relationship's still the air he said okay uh tell joe how to get there we'll come back pick you up we're going to palm springs for the weekend so we continued that and uh but i think because of doing that and then at a point later he wanted me to come back and see if you can add it on my phones as well there's a respect and then he quit doing films he did the road then i quit i wanted to learn the road i went out with a little unknown artist for a couple of weeks we were well we went out for a year or so a couple weeks he was opening up for the beach was uh that was billy joel and i wound up being his tour manager for a year and then we did an australian tour where i was his manager and then the beach boys asked me in 1976 7576 i worked for billy joel elvis presley and the beach house so it was a good year well well then let me ask you this because um we you know i watched elvis and nixon so i have one nixon question and i wanna it kind of backs up to what you just said so was it the improvised setup of the appointment with president nixon that made you realize you had strong managing skills or did you already well that was yeah that would be before 75. so by getting elvis into the oval office did that help you later on with what you've been doing for so long now actually i wasn't working for elvis uh when we went to washington i was i had gone up from these little editing things to fairmont studios and i was working as an assistant editor at paramount studios and uh i get a call one night after i'm asleep and that's elvis i go who is this he goes it's me he said elvis he said yeah i said where are you and he said i'm changing planes and doubts i'm coming into lax los angeles can you pick me up and i said who's with you i was trapped with the mantra this is the only time he did and he said nobody that i don't want anybody in the world to know so i got a car because mine was over went to the airport picked him up late saturday night he had promised the stewardesses and dropped them off of their homes it's four o'clock in the morning you went to a house called the hillcrest house beverly hills it was up for sale and he said let's just go up to the house and uh so it was really late this time and he said you know what why don't we just uh go to bed you know and you and i'll get together in the morning and have coffee so i said okay great so here i am you know been in a lot of situations with elvis so i'm not totally shocked you know but he goes to the bedroom and goes to bed and i'm saying whoa i'm the only person in the world that knows where elvis presley is and like i'm gonna go to sleep you know i don't think so i mean that's priscilla does vernon think he's kidnapped i mean i'm not going to say anything to anybody when i gave elvis my work so the next day he gets up it's following the day and two friends we're sitting in the kitchen overlooking los angeles beautiful view having coffee catching up and we talk all afternoon about nothing about everything right there's one thing somebody said you had one wish what would you do i'd stay up all night and talk to us i don't know what about but i just love doing that so towards sunset he said jerry i this is the first i heard about wilson he said i need you to go back uh go go to washington with me he had told me about the problems he had had coming in changing planes in dallas stuart told him he couldn't bring his guns on because he had permits he had three guns and he stormed off the plane the pilot came after him and said mr presley it's okay imagine this happening today not at all so he's telling me the story and everything and then he's saying i need you to take this flight i was i spent a year abc news energy to get to paramount i just got this job i have to be at work in the middle and it does it looks like the little boy goes okay you know i'll just go back by myself i can't let him do this i mean he could have been a real trouble in dallas i believe his pilot he was a nice guy guy who always was so i said okay elvis let's do this i said nobody knows who you are and i'm sure everybody's special if i can call vernon your father and priscilla back impression because he told me stronger he was madness and criticizing me if i could have either sunny red security come up and meet us i will go back with you and hopefully i won't lose my job i pair them up by using them one day he said okay you know if you knew what you're talking about your reason was like it was it was like the chips moment thing you knew your stuff helps you and you knew it he was a very bright guy he didn't get it so i called back graceland you know i asked elvis and everybody said have sonny come up and uh so i don't think elvis at that point we we have no money i have no money elvis didn't carry money uh i had a credit card especially american express so i make all the arrangements hotel flights all night flight from los angeles to washington dc and it was a lot of arrangements to do you know it wasn't me i'm traveling with elvis presley and i think i know what he was going to do to carry on the story about him wanting to travel overseas he wanted it was at the time called the dea is the dea now the time is the department of dangerous drugs today same agency uh he wanted to meet with a guy named john finlay they've gotten the contact from the private detective and so that was his mission to go back because he wanted this badge that was accepted internationally because he was still preparing to travel internationally he had heavyweight death threats on his side so he was reasonable and he was very proficient with guns and he had you know badges that he went to the training and whatever you know so but as we got awarding the plane uh he there was a senator back in they couldn't coach first class politically uh and the officers back feedback to say hello and talk to him and he came back and the flight took off and i think that's where as a secondary uh the nixon king came in because as we were flying he said jerry do you think there's any stationery on this planet now i think elvis had only written three letters in his life and he was american airlines stationed and he started riding i'm sitting in the window seat he's sitting next to me i always gave all the support were you riding there yeah let him do his thing what he wants me to know he'll tell me if i need to know something i'll ask him so he spends a lot of time on this and then he said um jerry would you proofread this so i started reading this slide and i realized i'm reading a letter from the most popular and you psychology but the most popular person in the world to the most powerful person president united states there was grammatical things i could have changed but the thing was written so much from his heart you know so we get to washington dc at dawn and it's still kind of dark out and elvis is wanting to deliver this to the white house i'm saying i've been out for two days now let's go to the hotel hotel washington i made arrangements you don't clean up or whatever you know nope you have to drop it off now so we go to the i guess it was the west wing of the white house and elvis has a cane his hair is a little longer than normal he's got cake it's still kind of dark it's you know dawn and he said you could just stay in the and closet he walks up and board the white house all over i mean not physically but yeah drop out of the crying excuse me guys this is michelle especially he just wants to drop the letter off for the president and they warmed up immediately no one went to the hotel and that's when elvis uh left me to say you went here for a call from the white house and said contact my public relations man jerry schweins i didn't want to hurt his feelings until he went and got a call from the white house but then he went to john filner's office and he gave me the number of stuff that all those people around him did but uh when needed elvis could deliver himself so i don't know i'm there about 40 minutes and i get a call from the white house from blood eagle club he's on books and staff and you know i became good friends uh and he said and he what he didn't know if his cronies at the white house would put him in there so he's kind of feeling me out he said well you know the president just read mr presley's letter he would like to meet him in 30 minutes so and this is when nobody was getting up on the hill because i kept up with that political science minor so i called the number of escape and this real quick yeah and i said this is jerry sewing i'm your javascript would not give him as a friend most people he said you stand out in front of the hotel and you have a driver they swing by and pick you up so i'm waiting i see sonny coming up from memphis they take my place where i can go back hopefully to keep my job in paramount and i say sonny just dropped your stuff there this is a limousine coming up with elvis we're going to the white house and uh that's how we got in the other room with the white house you know there's a lot of stories to be doing like a guy's running film yeah well let me you know jerry uh my goodness you know there's there's just so much about elvis but about you what's next for jerry shilling what's next for me uh you know that's a good question i uh it's a very exciting time with the beach boys career right now we are the only they are the only band in america maybe in the world that can celebrate 60 years so we've got a some record releases that are topping the charts field flows and last week came up sounds of summer the times square digital billboard that's on there a lot of the elvis movies uh around the country opened with a commercial for the b sports new album which i had nothing to do with i'm going to take credit for it so i'm looking forward to to this year uh my 16th year with the beast boys i 40 years ago i managed to for 10 years and i've been back for six years uh i always pick and choose but will always you know my heart and soul is with all this and always be uh maybe an interview maybe a project do some things you know you never talk about a project this hasn't uh been bringing you until it comes about but um i i see a couple of important things with elvis i see a really good year with the beach boys and uh i hope to go to the beach and and not think about anything well how would you like to be remembered outside of knowing elvis i'd like to be remembered as a person who hopefully tried to always see both sides of the story no matter what my opinion may be i always have respect for the other person's opinion and i would like to think that the projects and the personal appearances and things that i've had the opportunity and been blessed to do over the years help bring people closer together that's about all we can do that's probably the most important thing we can do if we can do that with respect and love absolutely and ladies and gentlemen as the song says if i can dream we need to walk hand in hand and just like jerry schilling said that's exactly what we need to be doing right now so ladies and gentlemen if you want to know the full story of jerry schilling his life with elvis and more get his book me and a guy named elvis my lifelong friendship with elvis presley by jerry shilling it is available on amazon and i will tell you this many of you have already told me you have seen the brand new elvis movie more than once more than twice some of you have seen it more than four times and for those of you who have not seen it yet you need to get to the theater as soon as possible to see the greatest elvis movie ever made and again jerry i want to thank you so much for honoring us with your time and your presence with us today ward it's been a real honor and i love that you do your research you know what you're talking about and you ask questions that make me think so thank you it's been a real question thank you thank you jerry and ladies and gentlemen stick around i will be right back after these messages you

Channel: drwardbond

Views: 158,560

Keywords: Jerry Schilling, elvis, Elvis week, elvis presley, The Beach Boys, producer, director, writer, songwriter, Lisa Marie Presley, Priscilla Presley, Ward Bond, music

Id: s8jcl9B9bd0

Length: 79min 43sec (4783 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 16 2022