Elvis Presley Once Admitted He Had Changed for the Worse
Elvis Presley’s longtime bodyguard Red West met the singer in high school. The first version of Elvis he met was a shy, kind boy who rose to atmospheric success not long after graduation. Over the years, West watched Elvis drift further away from the person he was in his early days of fame. Once, Elvis even admitted to West that he didn’t like the way he was changing.
Elvis Presley discussed how he’d changed with his bodyguard
By 1975, West had grown tired of watching Elvis self-destruct. He was heavily using drugs, had frequent mood swings, and seemed bored with his career. West loved Elvis as though he was family, but he was also angry with him. He finally decided to speak to him about it.
“This night he wasn’t high. He had taken a tranquilizer, and I just sort of came out with it, because when you start to think of all the gifts he has bought us and all the good deeds he has done, it’s hard to just sit there and take it without caring for the guy,” West said in the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “I mean, man, I love the guy. There were times I felt like beating the s*** out of him, but there is no getting past it: I love him even if he doesn’t love me. This night I told him that all the s*** he was swallowing had changed his personality. I told him I wished he could get back to like he was in the old days.”
To West’s surprise, Elvis appeared receptive. He typically lashed out when people spoke to him in this way.
“Well, he surprised the hell out of me,” West said. “He didn’t flash with anger, he just said quietly, ‘Yeah, I agree with you.’ And he didn’t have too much to say that night. So I thought I had done a really good deed. I left with tears in my eyes and all that jazz. I was a bit emotional and I thought, well, things may be different from now on. The good old fun days are going to come back.”
Elvis Presley later altered his stance
Elvis’ agreement only lasted a few hours, though. The following morning, West walked to Elvis’ hotel suite to order him breakfast.
“I knew something was bugging him. I could see his face,” West said. “He was building up to something. He said to nobody in particular, but I knew it was aimed at me, ‘So, I’m not myself anymore, huh? Goddamnit. I don’t want to hear all that s***… I wish people would stay out of my personal life. I’m going to do what the f*** I want to do. I don’t need anybody preaching to me.’”
West was so angry about this reversal that he walked into the kitchen and punched the refrigerator. Elvis followed him and told him that he gave his entourage expensive gifts to make up for his behavior.
“I replied, ‘Yeah, but the talk we had last night didn’t mean anything, right? It was just going in one ear and out the other.’ And he said, ‘I’m going to do what I want to do and that’s the way it is,’” West recalled. “At that stage, I gave up on him. I never talked to him about the drug stuff ever again.”
He often grew more upset when he thought about things overnight
According to West, Elvis did this often. He would have a calm conversation with someone at night and, by morning, would have lathered himself up into a fury.
“You could talk to him quiet, sensibly, about something and maybe that night you would say something that didn’t quite go along with his way of thinking or doing things, but he would talk calmly about it and sort of see your way of looking at something,” West said. “Then he would go to bed and get out of it on his so-called medicine, and the next day, man, wow.”
It happened enough that his entourage learned to avoid him when he was in these moods.
“He would stew on something all night and then it would work up inside of him and he would lose total reason and just explode,” West said. “On those days you would try to keep out of his way.”
