Elvis Presley's Friends and Bandmates Share Rare Stories About What the King Was Really Like Offstage (Exclusive)
Elvis Presley's Friends and Bandmates Share Rare Stories About What the King Was Really Like Offstage (Exclusive)
Brianne TracyWed, March 4, 2026 at 3:30 PM UTC
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Elvis Presley in Hawaii in January 1973Credit: Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images -
In this week's issue of PEOPLE, Elvis Presley's friends and bandmates get candid about what the late legend was like offstage
Presley's 1970s career resurgence amid his Las Vegas residency is back in conversation thanks to Baz Luhrmann's new concert film, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert
Presley's friends and bandmates also take PEOPLE inside the dark years that followed for ther star
Elvis Presley learned the hard way that being known is not the same as being understood.
"There’s been a lot written and a lot said,” the rock ’n’ roll legend says in director Baz Luhrmann’s new documentary EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, “But never was my side of the story [told].”
Now, the film (currently in theaters) finally shares Elvis’ perspective like never before — in his own voice, through newly resurfaced, long-lost tapes recorded for his 1972 film Elvis on Tour. Luhrmann found the interview among 65 reels of footage filmed for that concert film and 1970’s Elvis: That’s the Way It Is that were long believed to be lost.
Ahead of his 2022 biopic Elvis starring Austin Butler, Luhrmann sent researchers to a salt mine in Kansas in search of the reels. When they found them, "they keeled over," Luhrmann tells PEOPLE in this week's issue, on newsstands Friday.
Chronicling Elvis’ 1970s career resurgence amid a record-breaking Las Vegas residency and national tour, EPiC also sheds light on his rise to fame. Raised by a working-class family in Tupelo, Miss., Elvis launched to superstardom in the ’50s with his swinging hips and hits like “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog.”
Elvis PresleyCredit: Bettmann/Getty
But when he returned home to Memphis in 1960 after serving two years in the U.S. Army, he’d found his music had lost its relevance as fans shifted away from ‘50s rock. At the same time, he was also growing increasingly frustrated with the Hollywood film career his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had gotten him locked into.
“I was doing a lot of pictures together, and the pictures got very similar,” Elvis says in the film. “I thought they would gimme a chance to show some kind of acting ability, but it did not change.”
He was, effectively, caught in a trap.
"Management and the film company basically said, ‘If you don’t fulfill these obligations, you won’t do anything,’” Elvis’ longtime friend Jerry Schilling tells PEOPLE.
Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret in 'Viva Las Vegas'Credit: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty
After fulfilling his movie contract and staging the '68 Comeback Special concert for NBC, Elvis caught a second wind as a live performer with a four-week engagement at the International Hotel in Vegas in 1969.
On opening night, stars like Cary Grant and Sammy Davis Jr. filled the seats.
“In the middle of the show, Elvis took off one of his rings and reached down and gave it to Sammy,” Elvis’ backup singer Terry Blackwood recalls. "Sammy was a huge fan of Elvis, and Elvis took note of that."
Before the run of shows even ended, a deal was struck to have Elvis return to the International Hotel (which later rebranded to the Hilton) twice a year for the next five years. In between his Vegas commitments, he’d tour the U.S.
“I’m perfectly at home out there,” Elvis says of being on stage in EPiC. “I may lose 4 or 5 lbs. every show, easily, but I don’t mind it.”
Elvis Presley in Las Vegas in 1970Credit: Neon
Each night before a performance, he would invite the band to his dressing room.
“There was a bar, and although he didn’t drink, he invited us to have one,” says his bassist Jerry Scheff. “He didn’t want a bunch of drunks on stage, but he knew one or two would help us relax.”
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Backstage, Scheff adds, Elvis “was always energetic before a show — his leg going up and down like a butter churn and his fingers tapping on his knees like a swarm of white butterflies.”
But onstage, Scheff recalls, “he always focused on the story of the song. It was like the words and melody went through his brain, then to his heart.”
Elvis’ pianist Tony Brown remembers him as a “joker man” who still “was serious about everything he did.”
"Everybody on stage had to be dead on," he says. "I mean, there was no slackers allowed. Everybody in the band wanted to make Elvis happy, because if Elvis was happy everything was okay."
One night in Vegas, Schilling says, he and Elvis unintentionally got drunk after celeb pals like Norm Crosby, Darlene Love, Bill Medley and others bought them drinks in the casino: “Neither of us were drinkers, but we wanted to be polite.”
When they left and got a cab home, Schilling recalls, “I told the driver, ‘The Hilton Hotel.’ He looked back at us and said, ‘You’re at the Hilton Hotel.’ That’s how gone we were. Elvis and I laughed all the way to the elevator.”
Elvis Presley in Las Vegas in 1969Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
On another evening, Blackwood says Elvis invited him up to his penthouse suite for a night of music. When he got there, he realized Mama Cass of The Mamas & the Papas was there.
"We stood around the piano and sang gospel music as we always did, and Mama said, 'Elvis, I love this, but why do you sing all these gospel songs?'" he recalls. "Elvis said, 'Well, just wait until we finish.' So we sing, 'Amazing Grace,' and when we got to the last verse, I looked over at Mama Cass, and she was crying. We finished with the song and there was kind of a holy hush over the room. She looked over at Elvis with tears in her eyes and said, 'Elvis, I'm so sorry. Now I know why you sing all these beautiful gospel songs.'"
Life offstage wasn’t always shiny. While Vegas “was a lot of fun for the first two or three years, it kind of started getting batty,” says Schilling. After shows, Elvis and his crew would then sleep until 5 p.m. the next day.
“For five or six weeks, we never saw daylight,” Schilling says. “We were truly nocturnal.”
Elvis also had a growing desire to perform overseas, but Colonel Parker — who couldn’t travel abroad because he had immigrated to the U.S. illegally — “had zero interest,” says Luhrmann. “So, Elvis was sort of like a bird smashing into a glass window.”
Elvis’ aversion to Vegas only intensified after he and his wife of six years Priscilla Presley — with whom he shared his only child, daughter Lisa Marie — divorced in 1973. Over time, he became a fading version of the handsome, energetic man seen in EPiC, largely due to his prescription drug abuse.
“I think there were times he couldn’t go to sleep, and so he took something where he could rest his mind,” Schilling says.
Elvis Presley performing in 1977Credit: AP
During his final show in Indianapolis, Ind., on June 26, 1977, “he was overweight, and he was frustrated with that,” says Brown. “But he’d still sing great.”
Less than two months later, on Aug. 16, Elvis died of a heart attack in the bathroom of his beloved Graceland mansion in Memphis. Schilling thinks his slide was a mix of creative disappointment and personal loss.
"He wanted to tour overseas. It never happened. He wanted to do Marlon Brando-type movies. It never happened,” he says. “Then, he went through a divorce. I think if you put all three of those together, it was hard for one man — one sensitive human being — to fight all that."
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