Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings (18 page)

Elvis Presley arrives at the White House in full make-up, wearing a large brass-buttoned Edwardian jacket over a purple velvet tunic with matching trousers, held up by a vast gold belt. A necklace and a gold pendant hang from his neck. Though slightly put out when asked to hand over the chrome-plated World War II Colt .45 he has brought as a gift for the President, he strides confidently into the Oval Office at 12.30 p.m. and proceeds to present President Nixon with two signed photographs. He then spreads his collection of police badges over the Oval Office desk for him to admire. The two men speak about Las Vegas and young people.
Elvis launches into a passionate diatribe against the Beatles: they have come to America and taken American money, then gone back to England to foster anti-American feeling.

‘The President nodded in agreement and expressed some surprise,’ reads Bud Krogh’s official memo of the meeting. ‘The President then indicated that those who use drugs are also in the vanguard of anti-American protest ... Presley indicated to the President in a very emotional manner that he was “on your side”. Presley kept repeating that he wanted to be helpful, that he wanted to restore some respect for the flag.’

‘I’m just a poor boy from Tennessee. I’ve gotten a lot from my country. And I’d like to do something to repay for what I’ve gotten,’ says Elvis.

‘That will be very helpful,’ replies Nixon, cautiously.

Elvis senses the moment is right to ask the President for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs special agent badge.
⁶⁹
The President looks a little uncertain, turns to Krogh and says, ‘Bud, can we get him a badge?’ Krogh is unsure of the correct response. Does the President want him to bluff it out? ‘Well, sir,’ he answers, ‘if you want to give him a badge, I think we can get him one.’

The President nods. ‘I’d like to do that. See that he gets one.’

Presley is overcome. ‘This means a lot to me,’ he says. He pulls Nixon to him and hugs this least tactile of presidents to his chest. Nixon pats Presley briskly on the shoulder. ‘Well, I appreciate your willingness to help, Mr Presley.’

Managing to extricate himself from Elvis Presley’s embrace, he takes a step back.

‘You dress kind of strange, don’t you?’ he says.

‘You have your show and I have mine,’ explains Elvis.

Elvis Presley returns home, badge in hand, in such a state of triumph that he buys a further four Mercedeses as Christmas presents. His wife
later claims he only wanted the badge so he could transport all his prescription drugs and guns without being arrested. But he will use it for other purposes, too: as a fully-fledged FBI special agent, he sometimes flashes the blue light on his car to pull motorists over for speeding, or to offer assistance at road accidents.

RECEIVES

Perugia Way, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles

August 27th 1965

The negotiations have been fraught. The Beatles idolise Elvis, and long to meet him.
⁷⁰
In turn, Elvis resents the Beatles, and blames them for stealing his thunder.

Over the past year, Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, has been trying to orchestrate a meeting, but his client has been dragging his heels. Until last April, Elvis had not achieved a Top 10 single since 1963, the very same year the Beatles took off. The Beatles’ only two movies,
A Hard Day’s Night
and
Help!
, have been huge successes, while Elvis’s movie career is in the doldrums: his last,
Tickle Me
, set in a beauty parlour, made no impact at all.

Beatlemania, on the other hand, seems to know no bounds. On their last American tour, tins of Beatles’ breath sold like hot cakes in New York. After the Beatles have passed through Denver, dirty linen from their hotel beds is cut into three-inch squares, each square mounted on parchment, to be sold for $10 a square inch. The Beatles are the talk of the country, even the world. ‘I like your advance guard,’ President Johnson greets the British Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home on his arrival at the White House on February 12th 1964. ‘But don’t you think they need haircuts?’

In the spring of 1965 things begin to perk up for Elvis. His old recording of ‘Crying in the Chapel’ climbs to No. 3 in the charts in America and No. 1 in Britain. With the playing field levelled, negotiations can recommence.
⁷¹
In early August, Colonel Parker and Brian Epstein sit in the
Colonel’s office in New York on chairs made from elephants’ feet, and, over pastrami sandwiches and root beer, they reach an agreement: Elvis will meet the Beatles, but only on condition that they come to him.

Elvis is staying in a Frank Lloyd Wright house he rents from the Shah of Iran. On their way there in a Cadillac, the Beatles quell their nerves by smoking a couple of joints. They arrive giggling. ‘We all fell out of the car like a Beatle cartoon, in hysterics, trying to pretend we weren’t silly,’ says George. They are led into the presence of Elvis, who is sitting on a sofa, playing a Fender bass, watching the television with the sound turned down. He is dressed in tight grey trousers and a bright red shirt, surrounded by bodyguards and hangers-on. On the jukebox is ‘Mohair Sam’ by Charlie Rich. ‘He just played it endlessly. It was the record of the moment for him,’ says Paul. On the mantelpiece there is a sign saying ‘All the Way with LBJ’.

The wives and girlfriends in his entourage have taken care to hide their excitement at the prospect of meeting the Beatles. They have no wish to upset Elvis. After a while, the two managers peel off: the Colonel has uncovered a roulette wheel inside a cocktail table, and Brian Epstein is a keen gambler.

The Beatles can’t think of a word to say. They just look straight ahead, finding it hard to adjust to being in the same room as the King. ‘Wow! That’s Elvis!’ is all Paul can think. They are impressed, however, by the way Elvis can change channels on his television without moving from his seat. They have never seen a television remote control before.

‘Look, if you guys are gonna sit here and stare at me all night, Ah’m gonna go to bed!’ says Elvis. ‘Ah didn’t mean for this to be like the subjects calling on the King. Ah jist thought we’d sit and talk about music and maybe jam a little.’

John Lennon asks if he is preparing for his next film. ‘Ah sure am,’ says Elvis. ‘Ah play a country boy with a guitar who meets a few gals along the way, and ah sing a few songs.’ The Beatles are not sure how to respond, but Elvis breaks the ice by laughing. This is, after all, the plot of all his films.
⁷²

Ringo goes off to play pool with Elvis’s friends. Later, he describes them as sycophants. ‘Elvis would say, “I’m going to the loo now,” and they’d say, “We’ll all go to the loo with you.”’

George shares a joint with Elvis’s spiritual adviser and hairdresser; the same man combines both roles. They discuss Eastern philosophy. Some members of the entourage find it hard to distinguish one Beatle from another. One of them solves the problem by addressing each of them as ‘Hey, Beatle!’

Meanwhile, guitars are produced for John and Paul, who strum their way through some of the Elvis numbers they used to play in their Cavern days. Elvis continues to lounge on the sofa, playing his bass. ‘Coming along quite promising on the bass, Elvis,’ jokes Paul. In a break from the music, John performs a medley of Peter Sellers voices, which Elvis appears to enjoy. But he seems to bristle when John asks him why he no longer plays rock-and-roll. ‘I loved those Sun records,’ John adds.

After a couple of hours, the meeting draws to a close. Elvis sees them to the door. They invite him over to their house in Benedict Canyon, and he appears to accept. The Colonel gives the four Beatles souvenirs of their meeting, little covered wagons that light up when you push a button. As the Beatles leave, John shouts, ‘Long live the King!’
⁷³

The following evening, Elvis’s security guards come over to Benedict Canyon to check out the house. John Lennon asks one of them to tell Elvis, ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I would have been nothing.’ He tells another, ‘Last night was the greatest night of my life.’ Perhaps he senses that they have failed to make a good impression, and Elvis will not be making a return visit. Sure enough, he never arrives, and none of the Beatles ever meets Elvis again.
⁷⁴

‘It was great, one of the great meetings of my life,’ recalls Paul, forty years on.

IS CONGRATULATED BY

The Adriana Hotel, Rome

June 27th 1965

John Lennon and Paul McCartney enjoy the parties thrown by Alma Cogan
⁷⁵
in her flat at 44 Stafford Court, Kensington High Street. This flat has become something of a refuge since they first struck up a friendship with the archetypal 1950s singer when they appeared with her at the London Palladium eighteen months ago.

‘They needed to relax and get away from crowds,’ Alma’s sister Sandra remembers. ‘Our flat gave them refuge for many months to come, with Mum – Mrs Macogie, as they called her – making pots of tea and sandwiches, and playing charades.’ Fellow contestants in these games might include actors like Stanley Baker (whose new film
Zulu
has been such a huge hit) and all-round family entertainers like Lionel Blair and Bruce Forsyth.

For McCartney, the parties at Stafford Court become part of the experience of growing up. ‘One of the things that it’s hard for people to realise is that we were on the cusp of the change-over between showbiz styles ... They were all a little older than us, probably ten, twelve years older than us, but they were great fun, very confident showbiz people who welcomed us into their circle. It was exciting for us, we could hear all the showbizzy gossip and meet people that we hadn’t met before. We’d known Alma as the big singing star ... She was old-school showbiz. She invited us round to her mum’s place in Kensington, she and her sister lived with her mum,
and her mum was an old Jewish lady. They were very nice, Alma and her sister Sandra ... I saw a documentary about John Betjeman, who said that when he got out of college there was a country house to which he was invited. And he said, “There I learned to be a guest,” and that’s what was happening to us at Alma’s flat. There we learned to play charades, and we started to do it at our own parties. it was just a little learning curve.’

Alma Cogan is to become part of John Lennon’s growing up, too: over this summer, they conduct an affair.
⁷⁶
Nor is Brian Epstein immune to her charms, taking her to meet his parents in Liverpool, and even talking of marrying her.

Alma Cogan’s other guests are drawn largely from mainstream, old-fashioned showbiz: Danny Kaye, Ethel Merman, Cary Grant, Sammy Davis Junior, Frankie Vaughan, Tommy Steele. And it is here that John Lennon and Paul McCartney are first introduced to Noël Coward. Now in his sixties, for Coward the pair represent everything he detests about the modern age, with its emphasis on the working class, and its seemingly inexorable drift away from his own particular area of interest, the upper class. ‘Duchesses are quite capable of suffering too,’ he complains after seeing
Look Back in Anger
in 1956. ‘I wonder how long this trend of dreariness for dreariness’ sake will last?’ But he does not voice these qualms to the two young Liverpudlians; instead, he is charm itself.

Afterwards, in an offhand moment, Coward mentions their meeting to David Lewin of the
Daily Mail
. ‘The Beatles, those two I met, seemed nice, pleasant young men, quite well behaved and with an amusing way of speaking,’ he begins. But he does not stop there. He cannot resist adding, ‘Of course, they are totally devoid of talent. There is a great deal of noise. In my day, the young were taught to be seen but not heard – which is no bad thing.’ Lewin prints his comments in full.

Coward is greatly upset when, on June 12th, the Queen’s Birthday Honours list includes MBEs for the Beatles. ‘A tactless and major blunder on the part of the Prime Minister,’ he writes in his diary, ‘and also I don’t think the Queen should have agreed. Some other decoration should have been selected to reward them for their talentless but considerable contributions to the Exchequer.’

On June 27th, Coward goes to see them in concert in Rome. ‘I had never seen them play in the flesh before. The noise was deafening throughout and I couldn’t hear a word they sang or a note they played, just one long, ear-splitting din. It was like a mass masturbation orgy, although apparently mild compared with what it usually is. The whole thing is to me an unpleasant phenomenon. Mob hysteria when commercially promoted, or in whatever way promoted, always sickens me. To realise that the majority of the modern adolescent world goes ritualistically mad over those four innocuous, rather silly-looking young men is a disturbing thought. Perhaps we are whirling more swiftly into extinction than we know. Personally I should have liked to take some of those squealing young maniacs and cracked their heads together. I am all for audiences going mad with enthusiasm after a performance, but
not
incessantly
during
the performance so that there ceases to be a performance.’ Nevertheless, he concedes that though ‘it is still impossible to judge from their public performance whether they have talent or not ... They were professional, had a certain guileless charm, and stayed on mercifully for not too long.’

After the concert, Coward goes backstage, where he is greeted by Brian Epstein, who gives him a drink. An embarrassed Epstein is obliged to inform him that the Beatles were not amused by the unflattering remarks he made about them to the
Daily Mail
, and so do not wish to see him.

Coward bridles, but stands firm. ‘I thought this graceless in the extreme but decided to play it with firmness and dignity.’ He asks Epstein’s personal assistant to go and fetch one of the Beatles. ‘She finally reappeared with Paul McCartney and I explained gently but firmly that one did NOT pay much attention to the statements of newspaper reporters.’
⁷⁷