Elvis Presley Told Priscilla Presley She Couldn’t Have a Career if She Wanted To Be With Him: ‘It’s Either Me or a Career, Baby’
In Priscilla Presley’s memoir titled Elvis and Me, she gets candid about how challenging her relationship with Elvis Presley could be. For instance, he wouldn’t let her have a career if she wanted to stay his girlfriend.
It got to the point where Elvis told her, point blank, “It’s either me or a career, Baby.”
Priscilla Presley’s entire life revolved around Elvis Presley
Priscilla Presley admits that her entire life revolved around Elvis during their 13-year relationship. Because of this, Priscilla says she didn’t have a life of her own.
“I just followed what he did,” she revealed during an episode of Loose Women. “I mean, you lived his life. You saw the movies he wanted to see, you listened to the music he wanted to listen to, you go to places that he would go… I honestly didn’t have my own life… So I really kind of lost myself.”
Elvis Presley made Priscilla Presley give up her job for him
Priscilla described how lonely it could get while Elvis was on tour. So to preoccupy her mind while Elvis was away, Priscilla took up a modeling job. When she called Elvis to tell him about it, he said she would have to quit.
She explains the incident in her memoir:
“When I told Elvis about my job, he said,
‘You’re gonna have to give it up.’
‘But I’m enjoying it,’ I said.
‘It’s either me or a career, Baby. Because when I call you, I need you to be there.’
I quit the modeling job the next day, which left me with very little to do.”
“I wanted to say, ‘Elvis, talk to me, help me get through these new experiences,’” she wrote. “But I realized that he didn’t want to hear about my problems. He felt he had enough of his own. When he asked me how I was doing, I became very animated and said, ‘Just great, Elvis. Everything is wonderful.’ But when we hung up, I still felt an emptiness.”
Priscilla Presley said she never planned on a future without Elvis Presley
Priscilla said that her main goal was to be Elvis’s girlfriend. At the time, nothing else mattered to her.
“I had no real goals after graduation,” she wrote, “But I did sometimes dream of becoming a dancer or possibly enrolling in an art academy. Now I realize that I was deeply influenced by Elvis’s casual attitude toward continued schooling. He figured I didn’t need it, and I agreed. Just being with him most of the time would provide an education- not to mention experience- that no school could give me. He wanted me to be his totally, free to go to him an instant if he needed me. That sounded great to me,” she said. “I’d never planned on a future without Elvis.”
Priscilla continues, saying that while the other kids were deciding which colleges to apply to, she was deciding which outfit to wear next around Elvis.
