The Colonel had booked Elvis for New Year's Eve, in a football stadium in Pontiac, Michigan, and was promoting the idea of setting some kind of attendance record--but what about the sound? What about the weather? What if it snowed? He had never worked New Year's Eve before, and he didn't know that he wanted to start now--but he knew he could use the money.
New Year's Eve In Pontiac was a public triumph--$300,000 for an hour's work and, as the Colonel tirelessly pointed out to every reporter who would listen, a record gross (over $800,000) for a one-night performance by a single artist. In addition the Colonel had gotten Boxcar recording artists, the Bodie Mountain Express, to open the show, perhaps in hopes of finally getting the group signed to RCA.
The show was not an unqualified triumph, however. For one thing its sellout status, the first claim of any Elvis Presley performance, was questionable, as the Colonel quickly ruled twenty-seven thousand obstructed view seats not for sale after ticket sales leveled off at sixty thousand. The crowd inside the domed statium was suitably celebratory, despite the friged weather outside, but Elvis himself appeared shocked when he first walked out on stage and saw the two-tiered arrangements, with the band and singers positioned five feet below him in a setup that he would never have approved because it prevented the eye contact he considered essential to a good performance. It didn't really matter. Onstage the musicians were freezing, the sound was terrible, Elvis ripped his pants at the beginning of the show.
T.G. Sheppard and his wife had flown with Elvis to the gig in the Lisa Marie. He had persuaded Sheppard to give up a booking of hiw own because it was going to be such a big event. "He said, 'It'll be one of the largest crowds I've ever played, and I'm nervous about it, and I [want] to take my friends with me.' After the show he just exploded. Linda Thompsom just sat and let it happen. A lot of stuff had been rubbing him that day." Eventually he calmed down and decided to fly home that night, and they ended the evening in Elvis' bedroom watching tapes of old Monty Python shows.
(Careless Love by Peter Guralnick) |
