Elvis’ Friend Shared How the Singer Apologized After 1 of His ‘Wild Temper Fits’
Elvis Presley’s friends were often also his employees. The members of his entourage provided Elvis with company, but also filled roles such as road manager or security guard. They were willing to do whatever Elvis asked of them, but he wasn’t always an easy person to have as a boss or a friend. Elvis often flew into fits of rage that verged on violence. Afterward, he always tried to find a way to make it up to the target of his anger.
Elvis gave his friends elaborate gifts after flying into a rage with them
When someone did something nice for Elvis, he rarely said thank you. Instead, he would find them gifts as a way of saying thank you. These presents were typically expensive and elaborate.
“He likes to watch your reaction when he gives you something, but he doesn’t harp on it,” his bodyguard Red West said in the book Elvis: What Happened? “He never says, ‘Remember when I gave you that thing?’ He is very good like that. He will give you a sensational gift and forget about it. In return he expects total devotion and total loyalty. Sometimes, because of his moods, it’s very hard to give all the time.”
Elvis’ entourage learned to expect generous gifts from him. They also grew to anticipate his flashes of anger. They were dramatic and frightening, with the target of his rage often finding themselves on the wrong side of Elvis’ gun. Afterward, he would not apologize. Instead, he would buy them a gift.
“After one of his wild temper fits, he will never say, ‘Hey, man, I was wrong, I’m sorry.’ But then one day you will be walking through an automobile showroom and he’ll say something like ‘Hey, man, that looks great, that car, don’t it?’” West said. “And somebody will say back to him, ‘Sure does, Elvis.’ The next minute, he’ll tell you, ‘Look, you fix up the paperwork, it’s yours, you deserve it.’ That’s it. There is no argument, just ‘It’s yours, man.’”
West said this way of apologizing often moved people to tears.
“When he does things like that, I have seen pretty tough guys just choke up with emotion,” he said. “I have seen him do it, dozens of times.”
Elvis frequently threatened the lives of the people close to him
West was often on the other side of one of Elvis’ “wild temper fits.” He once called West to ask for assistance after a long day, when the latter was trying to sleep. West went to Elvis’ side, but not quickly enough. When he arrived in the singer’s room, Elvis pointed a gun at him.
“I hurriedly got dressed and went down the hallway and into his suite,” Red said. “Sonny [West] was there and he could see I was pissed off. Well, Elvis goes into his room and grabs his M-16. He says, ‘I’m going to blow your f***ing head off.’”
This was a relatively common occurrence. While on vacation, Elvis called his friend, Jerry Schilling, at three in the morning, requesting to move into his vacation home. Schilling, understandably, expressed some frustration, which enraged Elvis.
“The next thing, he tells me to beat up Jerry,” West said. “I managed to cool that kind of talk down. Well, I thought I did. Then I see him putting a bullet into a gun and cocking it … It was getting very hairy. Elvis really wasn’t himself.”
Priscilla Presley said Elvis was a good boss
Priscilla Presley recognized that Elvis was a demanding boss, but she believed that he was good to his employees.
“By today’s standards the boys’ salaries were not high — the average paycheck was $250 a week — but if the boys ever felt the pinch by the end of the month, they would go to Elvis,” she wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “They’d ask him if he could help them out with a down payment on a house or the first and last months’ payments on an apartment. Elvis always came through for them, lending them the one thousand or five thousand or ten thousand dollars they asked for. He was rarely if ever paid back.”
