The Seeker King: A Spiritual Biography of Elvis Presley

By Gary Tillery

A woman in the audience once handed Elvis a crown saying, “You’re the King.” “No, honey,” Elvis replied. “There is only one king — Jesus Christ. I’m just a singer.” Gary Tillery presents a coherent view of Elvis’s thoughts through such anecdotes and other recorded facts. We learn, for instance, that Elvis read thousands of books on religion; that his crisis over making bimbo movies like Girl Happy led him to writers such as Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, and Helena Blavatsky; and that, while driving in Arizona, an epiphany he had inspired him to learn Hindu practice. Elvis came to believe that the Christ shines in everyone and that God wanted him to use his light to uplift people. And so he did. Elvis’s excesses were as legendary as his generosity, yet, despite his lethal reliance on drugs, he remained ever spiritually curious. When he died, he was reading A Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus. This intimate, objective portrait inspires new admiration for the flawed but exceptional man who said, “All I want is to know and experience God. I’m a searcher, that’s what I’m all about.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quest Books
• Release date: Sep 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9780835630863

Book preview

Other Quest Books by

Gary Tillery

The Cynical Idealist: A Spiritual Biography of John Lennon Working Class Mystic: A Spiritual Biography of George Harrison

A Spiritual Biography of

Elvis Presley

GARY TILLERY

Theosophical Publishing House

Wheaton, Illinois * Chennai, India

Learn more about Gary Tillery and his work at www.garytillery.com

Find more books like this at www.questbooks.net

Copyright © 2013 by G.G. Tillery, LLC.

First Quest Edition 2013

Quest Books

Theosophical Publishing House

PO Box 270

Wheaton, IL 60187-0270

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

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While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Cover image: Interfoto/Mary Evans Picture Library

Cover design by Drew Stevens

Typesetting by DataPage, Chennai, India

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tillery Gary.

The seeker king: a spiritual biography of Elvis Presley / Gary Tillery.—First Quest edition.

pages     cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8356-0915-9

1. Presley, Elvis, 1935–1977. 2. Rock musicians—United States—Biography.

3. Presley, Elvis, 1935–1977—Religion. I. Title.

ML420.P96T59 2013

782.42166092—dc23

[B]     2013007596

ISBN for electronic edition, e-pub format: 978-0-8356-2122-9

5   4   3   2   1   *   13   14   15   16   17   18

For Iona,

who tried in vain to get me off my bike

to come and watch Ed Sullivan

Contents

Author’s Note

While Elvis Presley left an enormous body of creative work, it came in the form of his performances of other people’s songs or writings, not as articulation of his own thinking. Even so, it isn’t that difficult to distinguish what held special meaning for him. His deep spirituality is evident in his gospel recordings, as well as in many of the pop songs he chose to record over the years. I mention a number of these songs in the text and call out certain of them at the end of major sections. If you would like a soundtrack to this book, I urge you to listen to them. The songs are not selected with any thought of sales or popularity—no Heartbreak Hotel or Suspicious Minds, for example. However, listening to the emotion in his voice while he sings Peace in the Valley or How Great Thou Art makes it clear just how important his spiritual quest was to Elvis.

All I want is to know the truth, to know and experience God.

I’m a searcher, that’s what I’m all about.

—Elvis Presley

Prologue

The deluxe Dodge motor home thundered west on Route 66, chewing up the Arizona desert. Three passengers rode along in comfort inside the spacious vehicle, enjoying all the amenities the midsix-ties had to offer—including an eight-track tape deck, a stereo, and even a television. Two other men sat up front, the owner of the vehicle behind the steering wheel. Passing motorists who happened, out of idle curiosity, to crane their necks and glance at him received a jolt they would never forget.

Elvis Presley had delayed leaving Memphis until the last minute. He had seized every excuse to avoid departing. Now, since he hated to fly, he and his retinue of friends and assistants were forced to drive almost nonstop across the nation to be on the West Coast in time to begin production of his latest film.

Several years of trite scripts and lackluster soundtrack albums had stripped Elvis of any enthusiasm for starting a new movie. He was embarrassed by the mediocre quality of the films the Colonel kept committing him to make, and he was disenchanted with the Hollywood lifestyle. But as he headed west, that was not the worst of what was troubling him.

He found himself in the depths of a spiritual crisis.

Twelve hours earlier, during another turn in the driver’s seat, his mental anguish had reached a tipping point. Approaching Amarillo in the early morning, with no word to the others, he abruptly pulled off the highway into a motel parking lot. The entourage in the motor home and two accompanying cars—known to the world as the Memphis Mafia—poured out of the vehicles to surround him and voice their objections. They worked for the King, but they knew that if they let him fall behind schedule they would hear from the power behind the throne—Colonel Tom Parker. Elvis assured them he had no intention of a long stay. He merely wanted to take a few minutes to refresh himself.

That is what he told them. Actually, conflicted and agitated, he wanted to unburden his spirit to the only person in the group he felt could appreciate his anguish. No sooner had he taken refuge in his own room than he telephoned the room where the others had gathered and asked for Larry Geller, the man in whom he confided about matters of the spirit.

When Geller arrived he found Elvis sitting on the side of the bed. The King immediately stood up and began to stride around the room. He started letting out his frustration, earnestly wanting to know what he was doing wrong. For over a year he had been studying the books Geller had recommended—scores of books, hundreds of books—about spiritual and metaphysical matters, yet he seemed no closer to finding any solace, any peace, any answers. He kept hoping for some revelatory moment, some profound experience in which he would suddenly grasp the essence of the teachings and gain insight into the meaning and direction of his life. Instead, his voracious reading, day and night, seemed to be taking him nowhere.

Geller sympathized with his exasperation. Well aware of Elvis’s obsessive nature, he assured him that the problem was he was trying to force something that could not be forced. He began to relate the centuries-old story of a discouraged Zen student.

One day the pupil came to the master and poured out his heart. All of his years of intensive study seemed to be pointless; he felt no nearer to enlightenment than when he had started. The master listened patiently. Meanwhile, he began to fill the student’s cup with tea. The liquid reached the rim and started to overflow, but instead of stopping the master continued to pour more and more tea. It began to spill all over the table. The student interrupted himself to ask the teacher why he did not stop—the cup was obviously full.

The master replied, "Exactly. And like the cup, you are running over." Just how could he show him Zen, he wanted to know, if the student’s head was so full that nothing else could penetrate?

Geller drove home the point. Forget the books, Elvis. Let go of your knowledge. Become empty so God can have a place to enter.

Minutes later they were back on the road.¹

They crossed Texas and New Mexico that day. In the afternoon Elvis was at the wheel again, unusually quiet and thoughtful ever since the brief stop at the motel. Billy Smith, Red West, and Jerry Schilling lounged in the rear of the vehicle. Geller sat up front with Elvis, and as they passed near the Painted Desert in northeastern Arizona, the two of them gazed at the stark but beautiful landscape.

Five years earlier, Geller had been driving along the same stretch of Route 66, but in the opposite direction. Having just turned twenty-one, he was in the midst of his own spiritual crisis. On that unforgettable day, and in the same area, he had experienced an epiphany. He compared it to being struck by lightning, and could describe it no other way than as an awakening. After that moment his life changed. He undertook an earnest study of the Bible and the works of Yogananda, Krishnamurti, and Gurdjieff.²

Suddenly Elvis broke the silence: Whoa!

Geller glanced at him. Presley was leaning back in his seat, arms straightened, struck with wonder. He was staring at the horizon, and when Geller turned his eyes in that same direction he observed a single cloud in a clear blue sky.

Elvis asked, Do you see what I see?

Geller did. The solitary cloud had assumed a very specific, recognizable shape—a face—and there was no mistaking the person it resembled. Both Elvis and Geller clearly saw the features of that era’s epitome of evil—Joseph Stalin.

They sat enthralled as the cloud gradually lost its shape, distending, mutating.

Elvis abruptly hit the brakes. He guided the vehicle to a stop on the shoulder of the road and opened the door and jumped out. He called to Geller to come with him and went running across the desert sand.

When Geller caught up to Elvis he found him choked with emotion, his cheeks wet with tears. God is love, Larry. He hugged Geller and told him he loved him. Now I know. I’ll never have to doubt again. More words poured out, anxious words, words with which he strained to express the inexpressible.³

Having once experienced spiritual ecstasy himself, and in almost the same location, Geller had a sense of what Elvis was feeling. And, after all, he too had seen the personification of evil up in the crystal-pure Arizona sky. He had seen it very plainly before it dissipated.

But Elvis had seen something else—something that answered his prayers, something that reached inside him and gripped his soul….

Part One

MYSTERY TRAIN

1

Tupelo

Elvis Aaron Presley was born in one of the poorest parts of America at the very bottom of the Great Depression—at 4:35 a.m. on January 8, 1935. Gladys Love Smith Presley, unable to afford a hospital visit, gave birth to him in a little two-room house at 386 Old Saltillo Road in East Tupelo, Mississippi. Three women, including Vernon Presley’s mother, Minnie, and a midwife named Edna Robinson, helped Gladys until the delivery neared. Then Vernon brought Doctor William Hunt to take over.

Many years later, Vernon would recall strolling around outside that night as he nervously awaited the birth of his first child. He remembered the January chill and being buffeted by a wind. After a while the wind died down to silence, and he noticed a strange blue glow surrounding the house. That was when he heard sounds from inside and went in to check.

Gladys had suspected she was carrying twins, and Doctor Hunt was delivering the first. Tragically, the boy was stillborn. A half hour passed before the second child emerged. Vernon recalled that he and Gladys were so worried the second boy might die too that they placed him in the warmest place in the house—the oven—wrapped snugly and nestled in a shoebox.

They named the stillborn boy Jesse—for Vernon’s father—and buried him in an unmarked grave in Priceville Cemetery. The younger twin was given Vernon’s middle name, Elvis. The Presleys intended the middle names of the two—Garon and Aaron—to rhyme, pronounced with a long a, and Doctor Hunt reflected the pronunciation when he filled out the birth certificate two days later, registering the boy as Elvis Aron Presley. Because it appeared that way on his birth certificate, the unusual spelling of Elvis’s middle name would be used on his Social Security card and his US Army records, but he later clarified that he preferred the traditional spelling, and his tombstone reads Elvis Aaron Presley.¹

The Presley family lived in a neighborhood with unpaved streets, situated literally across the tracks from Tupelo proper. Their simple house consisted of two small rooms enclosed by whitewashed wood walls. Having no foundation, it was propped up on cinder blocks, and the surrounding yard was barren dirt. Coal oil lamps provided all light, and there was no heating. Water came from a hand-cranked pump outside, and the only toilet was an outhouse. Vernon built the house himself, with the help of his brother, Vester, and his father, Jessie. He paid for the land and materials by borrowing $180 from a dairy farmer named Orville Bean, agreeing to repay the amount in monthly payments.

Gladys had met Vernon at a service in the First Assembly of God Church, where her uncle was one of the pastors. Both children of sharecroppers, they were so poor that when they eloped in June 1933 they had to borrow three dollars from friends to pay for the marriage license. When Gladys gave up her job after the birth of their son to stay home with him, the family struggled to get by on Vernon’s earnings. He was only nineteen, and unskilled. He did whatever work came his way, from milkman to day laborer to carpenter, but times were brutally hard. He would later recall, There were times we had nothing to eat but corn bread and water.²

Then things took a turn for the worse. Just after Elvis turned three, Vernon found himself in trouble with the law. He sold Orville Bean a hog, and after they haggled Bean wrote Vernon a check to cover the purchase. Perhaps believing that he had been taken on the deal, or perhaps that he was the victim of a misunderstanding—the circumstances are unclear—Vernon or one of two friends with him at the time altered the check, assuming Bean wouldn’t notice. Bean did notice and took the three men to court. In May 1938 all three received three-year sentences and were sent to Mississippi State Penitentiary. Those who knew Vernon understood it as an indiscretion, an error from weakness. They never thought ill of him and recognized that Bean was simply making an example. In fact, Vernon’s neighbors soon submitted a petition, to which Bean attached a letter asking for the sentence to be suspended, and all three men were released in February 1939.

Even though Vernon’s absence lasted only nine months, it took a harsh toll. Gladys was unable to keep up the payments on the house and had to move in first with her in-laws, then with her cousins. She took a job at a laundry in Tupelo. As her meager pay allowed, she and little Elvis made the five-hour bus ride to see Vernon on weekends.³

Buffeted by fate, the Presleys never lost their faith in God. They were regulars at the First Assembly of God Church, which had begun in a tent on an empty lot in their neighborhood. By 1937 it was a wooden building on Adams Street, built by the preacher—a man who happened to be Elvis’s great-uncle, the husband of Gladys’s aunt. Elvis’s earliest memory was of sitting in his mother’s lap during the church service there, becoming so enraptured by the singing that he did his best to sing along. No more than two or three, he recalled slipping out of his mother’s grip and racing to the front of the church to join the chorus. He couldn’t sing the lyrics, but he mimicked the chorus and followed the melody.⁴

As part of a fundamentalist denomination, the First Assembly of God Church in Tupelo accepted the writings in the Bible as the literal word of God and took a rock-ribbed view of proper human behavior. After all, God had not sent Moses down from Mount Horeb with the Ten Suggestions. When Jesus said, in Mark 16:16, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned, he was giving voice to God’s will. There was no wiggle room.

As a Pentecostal group, the members accepted and even treasured the visits of the Holy Spirit into their lives. When God singles you out to infuse you with his awesome power, how can you possibly sit still? When you’re on fire, don’t you have to move? Sunday services were filled with uninhibited displays of swaying, shaking, rising up, clapping, shouting, and dancing around the room to vent enthusiasm. (One day Elvis would take their uninhibited physicality to the stage, showing the music he was feeling.)⁵ The Assembly of God Church also took to heart Mark 16:17–18: And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. There are no tales of handling snakes or casting out demons, but Elvis believed in faith healing. As an adult he practiced the laying on of hands himself.

Gladys worshiped Elvis from the time he was born. Perhaps because she had lost his twin at birth, she was extremely protective. He recalled that she never let him out of her sight. After he started school, she fell into the habit of walking him there every day hand-in-hand—a custom that persisted through elementary school, in spite of the embarrassment it caused him.⁶

Shy and lonely, he often visited the gravesite of his deceased twin. It is safe to assume that he spoke to his brother. At the age of four or five he began to hear a voice in his head, which he identified as Jesse. (As an adult, he referred often to his psychic twin.) The voice told him to love and care for other people, to try to see their point of view. The voice, for him, became his conscience.⁷

He grew into a gentle, caring boy. Vernon recalled asking him once to come along when he went out hunting. Elvis replied, Daddy, I don’t want to kill birds. Touched, Vernon decided not to press the issue. Why try to overcome such good-hearted convictions?⁸

For Christmas of 1940, just prior to his sixth birthday, Vernon and Gladys managed to find enough money to give