|
|
Post by rick on Jul 6, 2015 18:50:59 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by sliderocker on Jul 6, 2015 19:19:04 GMT -5
The story on the movie he couldn't get made about Elvis, Col. Parker and himself pretty much points to a possible reason why Jerry Weintraub might not have gotten the managerial reins from Parker if Elvis had stuck with his guns and dumped Parker in '73. As someone who learned artist management from Parker, Elvis may have been scared off of taking on Weintraub. One of the things I said for years on why Elvis didn't dump Parker (and some of Elvis's friends agreed with me on this) was that when it came down to it, Elvis preferred the devil he knew (Parker) to the devils he didn't know (all the other would be managers). Elvis knew he had gotten screwed over royally by Parker but that had the effect of making him nervous about trusting others. What could others have done? More good than harm? Or more harm than good? Or worse than Parker ever was on his worst day?
Weintraub was said to be ready and on standby to take over the reins of Presley's management in 1973, but a question remains as to why he didn't go ahead and start looking over Presley's contracts with Parker and see what could've been done to have broken them. As has been mentioned of the 1973 incident in which Parker was fired, Parker presented Elvis with a bill for two million dollars for his unpaid services. Elvis had been prepared to do it but was talked out of it by his father, who thought Elvis wouldn't be able to come up with another two million dollars, despite the fact Elvis's yearly royalties averaged seven million dollars. And the concerts brought in more. At the end of the day, Elvis's dad (who liked Parker) prevailed and for all intents and purposes, that was the day Elvis's death warrant was signed. Elvis didn't trust other would be managers to do right by him even though he didn't want to remain with Parker. When Elvis sang "We're caught in a trap, I can't walk out" on "Suspicious Minds," it was a prophetic accurate description of his problematic managerial situation, in which there was no way in resolving the issue.
|
|
|
|
Post by erik on Jul 6, 2015 19:45:20 GMT -5
Quote by sliderocker:
The most bizarre thing about Elvis in the last years is that the man was a profligate spender, or so the mythology goes. It is said that he earned $7 million in 1974, for example; but at the end of the year, he found that he had to dip into his own reserves to the tune of $700,000 just to merely make ends meet. And of course that $2 million bill by his High Holy Eminence the Colonel, which was basically a blackmail ploy (Parker might have exposed a lot of unseemly stuff if he were shown the door), certainly didn't help. Would Weintraub (who was also handling John Denver at the time as well) have done a better managerial job? It does seem like the most painful what-might-have-been in pop music history at the very least, since he might have found a way to give Elvis time to get back to health--and get him off the Vegas treadmill. The Colonel sure didn't seem to want to try.
|
|
|
|
Post by sliderocker on Jul 6, 2015 21:48:08 GMT -5
The most bizarre thing about Elvis in the last years is that the man was a profligate spender, or so the mythology goes. It is said that he earned $7 million in 1974, for example; but at the end of the year, he found that he had to dip into his own reserves to the tune of $700,000 just to merely make ends meet. And of course that $2 million bill by his High Holy Eminence the Colonel, which was basically a blackmail ploy (Parker might have exposed a lot of unseemly stuff if he were shown the door), certainly didn't help. Would Weintraub (who was also handling John Denver at the time as well) have done a better managerial job? It does seem like the most painful what-might-have-been in pop music history at the very least, since he might have found a way to give Elvis time to get back to health--and get him off the Vegas treadmill. The Colonel sure didn't seem to want to try. Managing Elvis Presley was going to be problematical for whoever took over the reins. Weintraub was ready as was Presley's lawyer but I think in anyone wanting to manage Elvis, the problem was what were you going to do for him that hadn't been done? Elvis loved to be challenged as a performer. That was why he wanted to do the movies. He set goals for himself which included working in quality movies, shooting for an Oscar. Parker killed that idea in no time at all. Same on recording. Parker interfered in the process and killed Elvis's spirit in even wanting to go into the recording studio. He played guitar and piano on many of his recordings through the early 60s but as the tunes got crappier and crappier because of Parker's greed, even Elvis as a musician fell by the wayside although he never would completely stop playing on his recordings. I would blame Parker for killing Elvis's interest in trying to write songs but he wasn't the villain on that score, so far as I know. It was Priscilla, who ridiculed the two songs he actually wrote with Red West. After Priscilla dissed them, he never tried writing again or at least writing and recording. (To be fair to Priscilla, the two songs Elvis and Red wrote were ballads. Priscilla thought Elvis should've been writing some rock songs.) But, there's no telling if Colonel Parker didn't find a way to get his two bits in on Elvis's songwriting attempts. Parker never signed Elvis as a writer to BMI although he had and occasional writing credit and the writing credit on arranging and adapting songs that were in the public domain. That resulted in a lot of money that would've been due Elvis not being paid to him. All the Elvis-as-songwriter royalties went into Parker's bank account. No doubt a new manager (of any kind) could've gotten Elvis into shape - maybe - for a return to the movies and a world tour, but another fact to consider is that Elvis was a very sick man the last three years of his life. There is a British documentary on youtube, a tv series called Autopsy in which Elvis's death was discussed by a coroner. Elvis had actually not been well at all the last ten years of his life but in the last three years of his life, he had deteriorated so quickly, it was said he was a walking timebomb waiting to die. Drugs got a lot of the blame but he had so many medical issues - blocked colon, extremely enlarged heart and liver, early stage diabetes, very high blood pressure, glaucoma, overweight/obese, and those were just the known. A new manager would've had their work cut out for them and it was possible it would've proved an impossible task. The Autopsy show concluded Elvis did die from a violent massive heart attack and that even if help had arrived earlier, it wouldn't have done any good. At least he had the chance to die at home rather than on another road tour. Really, for any new manager to have been effective in revitalizing Elvis, it was something that should've happened from around 1964 to maybe 1967, before the downhill slide got out of control. |
|
