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Legends: Steve Binder with
Elvis, at the NBC studios, 1968; Steve.
With the help of the readers of ElvisNews, who came
up with part of the questions, this interview with Steve Binder was
done by Jay Williams who made an article from it for publication.
The man who
rehabilitated Elvis Presley’s career with his legendary black
leather comeback show in 1968 has broken a 36-year silence to reveal
the stunning secrets behind the historic performance. Millions saw
Presley kick-start his ailing career with the stunning TV show,
which featured the rock legend in a black leather suit, singing raw
rockers in what was the original ‘Unplugged’ format, decades before
MTV ‘borrowed’ the idea.
The sexy look has become
one of the most famous images in rock and roll and has been copied
by everyone from Suzi Quattro to Robbie Williams, who wore a copy of
the outfit for his duet with Tom Jones at the 1998 Brit Awards.
But on the eve of the
release of a three-DVD set of the show, including unseen out-takes
and informal jam sessions - the man responsible for rejuvenating
Elvis’s career finally revealed some of the secrets behind the show.
US TV producer Steve
Binder told how:
• He watched in
amazement as Elvis rehearsed while curled up “in a fetal position”
in a pitch dark studio;
• Seconds before the
opening number of the show, Elvis hid in the studio car park
-“shaking with fear” - at the prospect of performing live for the
first time in seven years;
• Elvis begged him to
“send the orchestra home” when he turned up to his first rehearsal
because he had never sung along with “trombones and stuff”;
• He broke the ‘golden
rule’ in his first meeting with Presley, telling him how he thought
his movies and his music at that time were “going nowhere”;
• He and a business partner ‘pitched’ the idea
of an Unplugged series to MTV bosses years ago but were turned down
– only to see MTV launch their own successful Unplugged format
later;
• Presley’s notorious
manager, the self-styled Colonel Tom Parker, pulled a typical con
trick on Binder during contract negotiations.
Binder was just 23
and had just sparked controversy throughout the US with his Petula
Clark TV special, which featured a ‘mixed-race’ kiss between Clark
and Harry Belafonte, when he and business partner Bones Howe were
asked to produce Presley’s comeback. In 1968, Presley’s career was
in freefall. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and wilder rock acts,
like Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, were dominating the charts. The raw
sexuality and energy of Elvis’s early rock and roll performances
were largely forgotten. He had not had a hit in years and had grown
tired of churning out increasingly bad B movies.
Binder said,
“Originally I wasn’t interested at all. The
Colonel wanted Elvis to sing 24 Christmas songs and it was not
something that inspired me. Elvis didn’t appear to be interested in
it and the record company people weren’t getting anywhere with
Elvis. Bones and I took the meeting with Elvis and he asked us where
we thought his career was at.
“There was a pause, and
then I said ‘I don’t think you HAVE a career.’ He just shook his
head and said ‘I know’. I could tell he was not used to be talked to
like that, but from that moment on we had a totally open and honest
working relationship. He was so used to being surrounded by
‘yes-men’, to people agreeing with him whatever he said, that I
think he found us a refreshing change.”
Binder and Elvis then
hatched a plan for the star to go back to his roots, playing the
songs that made him famous – but in a stripped-down, ‘unplugged’
format.
Steve said,
“Filming took weeks and Elvis used to sleep
in his dressing-room. Every evening after rehearsals or filming, he
would hang out with his buddies and they would sing the old songs. I
thought it would be a great way for people to see Elvis – creating
music in an informal way, but, as usual, Colonel Parker was against
it. He wouldn’t let me film the impromptu sessions that took place
in the dressing room, but he eventually he agreed to let us shoot it
onstage.”
That was the moment
Binder inadvertently invented the ‘Unplugged’ format, which was
later ‘borrowed’ by MTV.
Binder said,
“Elvis basically lived in his dressing room
through that period and he played that music with his buddies to
relax in the evening after filming. Basically we just transferred
the dressing room jam sessions onto the stage, and it worked. Years
ago I went to HBO [US TV station] and MTV and 'pitched' the idea for
an unplugged series. Both turned us down and then proceeded to do
their own series without us.
“I was on a panel a few
years back at the Museum of Television in New York. The President of
MTV was on the panel with me as one of the guests, and he gave his
opening remarks, which included thanking me for letting MTV 'steal'
my idea for their Improvisation series. Show business has very
strange ethics!”
Binder was shocked to
see how nervous Elvis was during rehearsals.
He said,
“Elvis was terrified of doing the show – he
was terrified of TV. In that first meeting we had, he told me he
didn’t know anything about TV. He was worried about failure, I
think. I told him that TV was an extremely powerful medium and that
we would know the day after the show’s broadcast whether it was a
hit or not.
“I said to him, ‘You
worry about the music Elvis, let me worry about the TV’. And from
that moment on he concentrated on his performance.”
But Elvis was still paranoid about the show, and
panicked during one rehearsal with a full orchestra.
Steve said,
“I walked onto the stage for his first
rehearsal with a full orchestra and he walked straight out onto
Sunset Boulevard. He called me out and he said, ‘I have to warn you,
Steve, that I have never sung with a full orchestra behind me, and
if I don’t like the sound of those trumpets and stuff, then you’re
going to have to send them all home.
“I just kept saying,
‘Well, let’s try it out and see what happens’. Luckily he loved the
sound of the orchestra and the arrangements, so that was another
potential crisis averted.”
As the filming date
loomed ever nearer, Elvis’s anxiety increased. Binder said,
“If you look closely at the opening seconds
of the show, there’s a close-up of Elvis singing. You can see his
hand on the mike – and it’s visibly shaking. A couple of minutes
before he went on, he was in the parking lot outside, shaking with
the fear at the prospect of performing live again. He was saying, ‘I
can’t go on, I just can’t do it’. I just quietly talked him through
it – I knew once he got back inside he would be OK – and eventually
he came back in. So you see the shaking hands at the start of the
show but as it goes on you can visibly see his confidence growing as
he realises he is where he belongs – in front of a live audience.”
Binder laughs when he
is reminded of Col Parker’s claim that “Anyone who worked with Elvis
would go on to make a million dollars out of the connection”. He
said, “Bones and I received a total of
$15,000 for producing the show but we made it clear from the outset
that one of the conditions for us doing it was that we would get to
produce any accompanying record release. Bones and I produced all
the music in the show, which resulted in two number one singles and
an album that was an international hit. The Colonel told us there
would be no record release, by which time we were involved in the
making of the show.
“But a couple of weeks
after the show aired, we each received a cheque for $1,500 from the
Colonel and a letter asking us to sign away our producer rights. We
sent back the money and the forms unsigned and that was when we were
cut off from the Elvis ‘industry’.
“But I have no
bitterness about all that. I loved working with Elvis and I know he
didn’t have anything to do with the business side of things. When we
finished the special, Elvis slipped me his personal phone number and
asked me to keep in touch. I think he liked the fact that Bones and
I were not out to make money out of him, that we were just
interested in the music. But after the rift with Colonel Parker over
the money I never heard from Elvis again.”
Steve went to see
Elvis make his stage comeback in Las Vegas the following year, and
thought the star was shining brighter than ever. But within a few
years Elvis was back on “the treadmill” – singing whatever was put
in front of him, massively overweight, stoned on prescription drugs
and surrounded by money-grabbing hangers-on.
Binder and Howe shake
their heads sadly at what could have been.
“Drugs didn’t kill
Elvis,” says Binder’s former business partner Bones Howe, now
71. “He was ‘yessed’ to death.”
Legend: Note to Steve by Elvis,
saying, "Steve, You're too much Son, my boy, my boy. Elvis Presley".
Source:
Elvisnews website.
To see more
photos of NBC TV Special, check out the
Gallery. |
