Of all the bizarro TV shoots I worked on, this one might have taken the cake. In October of 1994 we shot a 60th birthday tribute to Elvis Presley for ABC-TV in Memphis’s Pyramid, a 20,000-seat basketball arena. It was the rock-n-roll equivalent of one of those 70’s “Cavalcade of Stars” shows: “Let’s just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.”
We actually had some legit people from Elvis’s past like Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Scotty Moore, his contemporaries like Sam Moore and Chet Atkins. We had interviews with his creative and business partners like Sam Phillips and Leiber and Stoller. We had some cool, creative choices like NRBQ as one of the house bands and Don Was, our music director, leading another. We had Iggy Pop (“Rip It Up”) and Aaron Neville (“Young And Beautiful”) and even John Cale with the Soldier String Quartet doing a perfectly lugubrious version of “Heartbreak Hotel” (this one was so slow and bitter that it shut the entire arena down like a virus; it was awesome!).
We had some terrific acts out of Nashville like Marty Stuart and Eddie Rabbit (with Mavis Staples!) and Dwight Yoakam. We had Cheap Trick and U2.
But what the hell was Tony Bennett doing there? Or Phil Donahue? Was Billy Ray Cyrus there? Sure he was! It was 1994. Michael Bolton? Of course! John Stamos? Why not?! This being a prime time network TV show, you end up with a lot of stakeholders and they all have their say. I felt a deep Franken-mess coming on.
As talent manager for the show, it was part of my job to book the two hosts. I thought this was going to be a piece of cake; I was wrong. First of all, we had to deal with the Presley estate. Priscilla Presley had a list of everyone who had ever said or done anything nice for Elvis and another list of everyone who had ever made fun of him (and guess which list we had to stay the hell away from?). I remember a Graceland employee saying, “You know Elvis loved Mary Tyler Moore. She would be a good host.” Yeah, thanks; she’s not available. Same for Kurt Russell (who, as a little kid, kicked Elvis in the shins in “It Happened At The World’s Fair”) and half of Hollywood. I was stuck and the show was 2 weeks away.
Thank goodness my buddy Karen Duffy jumped on board; she was an absolute champ (dirty little secret: Duff? Not an Elvis fan. All she liked to listen to was Frank Sinatra and Barry White. She looked at me cross-eyed whenever I played her any of my music). But I had a really tough time getting a male host. I thought I was out of the woods when I asked Buster Poindexter’s agent if he would do it. The agent’s response: “Send the car!” (I found out later that this was TV talk for, “No thanks.”).
Now I’m really jammed. It’s show time and we don’t have a host, and this is for a major TV broadcast. Come on, Goldman! I had never met Kris Kristofferson but I knew some of his road crew; I knew he could do it. Besides, he wrote “Help Me Make It Through The Night;” Presley loved him. I called the agent: Okay, Kris will do it; he’s coming in on his tour bus from Nashville the morning of the day before the show. Done deal, praise Elvis!
The day before the show, I call Kris in his hotel room to go over the rehearsal schedule:
KK: “What are you talking about?”
MG: “You hosting the Elvis show.”
KK: “I’m not doing that.” Click.
Wait, what? What just happened? WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!
I talk to the agent. Apparently Kris had been sober for several years. The previous night his tour manager had given him a beer at the start of the 10-hour bus ride. By the time they rolled in to Memphis, Kris was back in a deep, dark place. Not good.
I should tell the producers. Nah, lemme talk to Duff: “Look, Mitchman, just tell him all he’s gotta do is park his keister on the stool next to mine. I’ll do the rest.” (Lemme tell ya something about Karen Duffy: that kid has the gift of gab like no one I’ve ever met. That, and she sinks her teeth into a crunchy work project like a Doberman with a shank bone). Kris caves, praise Elvis!
Okay, host settled, now back to running this show. Wait a minute: I just realized that there is absolutely no way I can get all these people on and off stage in an arena this size with the staff that Graceland is providing. Honestly, they can barely fog a mirror, let alone tell Bryan Adams that he needs to be on stage in 4 minutes. I send the Bat Signal to Paley back in NYC. He’s in the car and will be here tomorrow, praise Elvis!
What next? It’s the day of the show and it’s an absolute sparkler. The sun is shining, production is going perfectly. We have artists arriving in the loading dock area and walking into the arena and on to soundcheck, exactly according to plan. We can’t do everything for them the way it’s done when they headline a show but they all seem to get it. At least, no one is complaining, yet.
Then I get pulled into a meeting with the producers, the head of security for the building and local police and emergency services: “A special guest is going to arrive at 2pm. We need to clear the entire backstage area when he arrives. No one can talk to him or even look at him.” Oh, so Michael Jackson is coming after all (Michael was married to Lisa Marie Presley at the time). “We can neither confirm nor deny that at this time.” Okay, so it’s Michael.
I had worked with Michael Jackson. I knew that was going to be a pain but I had no idea how much of one. We got everyone out of the way by 2pm and, sure enough, at 2pm Michael’s SUV arrived at the loading dock. But Michael did not hop out the way all the other artists had. Michael had 6 huge slabs of beef jump out of another SUV and run into the building; Michael’s SUV followed them right in the door and down the backstage corridor. Anyone who made the mistake of being anywhere in our backstage production area (a huge space in an arena that size) was dispatched with extreme prejudice. Poor Michael Hutchence was physically lifted off his feet and thrown into a broom closet (yep, that happened).
The show actually ran without a hitch, and there were some genuine musical highlights. For all the trashy moments (and we had trashy moments), there was actual American culture on TV, something you’re not likely to see on a network these days. I had never heard of The Mavericks before this show but their take on “Love Me” was one of my favorites; it was earnest and bold. The keening heartbreak in Raul Malo’s voice shined like a chrome bumper. And he came right at you, like Patsy Cline; no one sang like that in 1994. This was not post-modern recontextualizing; this was “I’m going there and I’m taking you with me.” I was an instant fan.
When we got to the end (I’m not making this up!) Billy Ray Cyrus actually had the nerve to tell the crowd that, “The King came to me in a dream last night and told me to have all these wonderful artists come out on stage with me to sing Amazing Grace.” This drew stares of absolute disbelief backstage. Half of these people actually knew Elvis Presley or had at least seen him perform many times. I don’t know how but I managed to herd them on out there (the look on Aaron Neville’s face was as if he had stuck his nose in that bottle of milk that had been in the fridge since the days when milk came in bottles; he did not sing a note).
My favorite moment: Billy Ray turning to my friend David Soldier, the inventive composer and violinist who had written John Cale’s arrangement of “Heartbreak Hotel,” and shouting, “PLAY THAT FIDDLE, BOY!” David, not one to miss a musical moment, joined the hoedown.
Billy Ray hoisted his 2-year-old daughter Miley onto his shoulder, everybody had a bow and the crowd, exhausted, started filing toward the exits. Another highwire act without a net and not a mark on me. Now I just have to chase all the artists out of the building and it’s a wrap.
Sam Phillips was nice enough to invite us back to Sun Studio for a private party afterwards. There were the very instruments that those Elvis songs were played on, and he invited us to pick ‘em up and play ‘em. He couldn’t have been nicer (which was only appropriate considering how much cash we would be driving into his pockets with our broadcast).
More of the artists were actually to be found in the bar at the Peabody Hotel later that night. I didn’t see The Mavericks there but, being the NRBQ fan that I am, I was happy to stand the Spampinato brothers to a round (okay, maybe it was a couple of rounds). Sisyphus, when he stands at the top of the mountain, is still cursed, but he can see to the horizon, at least until he starts trudging down the hill after his rock.
We were up and out in the morning. Paley and I headed south on Highway 61, past the high cotton, to Clarksdale and West Helena and all the places Robert Johnson sang about.