Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 697 | Elvis: Destined to Die Young

Episode Date: August 28, 2021

Talking with Sally Hoedel, author of Elvis: Destined to Die Young. www.ElvisAuthor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ooh, European chocolate for the crossing guard? At these prices, could I find something for everyone at Winners? Stop wondering. Start gifting. Winners, find fabulous for less. Blaze Radio Network And now, chewing the fat with Jeff Fisher. I have been looking forward to the conversation with Sally Hodil, author of Destined to Die Young. The story, it's the untold story of Elvis Presley's health struggles.

And I am fascinated by the story, and she is going to be a great conversation about her book, Destined to Die Young. You can go to elvis author.com for more information and to purchase the book. And you can always reach out to the show, Chewing the Fat at theblaze.com. You can follow me on Twitter at Jeffrey JFR. You can follow me on Facebook, Jeff Fisher Radio, and Instagram, Jeff Fisher Radio. And there's always the sneaky little fat line that you can call and leave a message on, 214, 7359356. So without further ado, welcome, welcome to chewing the fat.

So I have been looking forward to talking to Sally Hodel, author of Destined to Die Young, a book looking back on The King Elvis, Aaron Presley, who was 44 years ago last week that he passed away. And you were in Memphis for the Elvis Week celebration, were you not, Sal? I was. I was in Memphis for eight days. And, you know, it was a little smaller gathering than usual just because of COVID and because the international, the international crowd couldn't come. And, you know, that's a big portion of the people that go to Elvis week because he is still, you know, universal without question. No kidding. Yeah. It was a great experience. It was my first all this week. And it was a lot of fun. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's surprising, actually. I was. Well, you know, I've been to Memphis a dozen times to research, right? And to interview. and all that, but you can't do any of that during Elfus Week because everybody's busy. So it always seemed like I should go at a slow time of year.

So I was pleasantly surprised. The candlelight vigil, you know, where 10,000 people pass by his grave, and it takes from 8 o'clock at night until 1 in the morning. It really is something to see. Who else do they do that for, you know? Right. It's incredible. That is incredible.

I loved also in the book, Destin to Die Young, as you wrote all historical figures have had the burden of judgment from future generations placed upon them. But, you know, history, after all, is the story of humans and humans are flawed. The greatest people in American history have had flaws that must be looked past or momentarily set aside by the future generations. And otherwise, the greatness of those individuals will be lost. And, I mean, that's what's happened to Elvis, really, right? I mean, many people think of Elvis. They just think of the self-destruction and not what he was.

I mean, this iconic figure, I don't know that anyone will ever be that again. Yeah, it'd be hard to top, wouldn't it? And there's just so much truth in that. You know, I love history. And I think so many of these great people have done things first. And with innovation, you know, that it's hard to be first. And I think we kind of take that for granted now. It's hard to be different.

It was hard for Washington and Jefferson and Ford and, you know, all the people that I mentioned in my book where we kind of look at their negatives instead of their contributions. Right. But certainly with Elvis, it was very difficult to be as different as Elvis was. And, you know, it all came with the onset of TV. You know, without that timing of television, Elvis wouldn't have been what he was either because he definitely had to be seen and heard, you know, because he was that radical for

1956 America without question. But yeah, I think too many young people probably know the location of Elvis's death, you know, what room in the house he died in and about the medication problem. And they don't know about how he culturally shifted, not only American culture, but music around the world. You know, by the time Elvis gets to the UK, John Lennon is saying things like before Elvis, there was nothing. And when you think about how little young people know about his contribution, you know,

I think that's that's a tragedy. No kidding. You know, I've been, you know, an Elvis fan forever. In fact, I mean, my oldest son is named Elvis. So, you know, I've been kind of a fan, kind of a fan for a number of years. And so I just, I really look forward to reading your book. And I loved the, I mean, it was incredible. And you made a great case for the destined to die young.

How long did it take you to investigate everything? It was a four-year process from the idea to actually holding the book in my hand. You know, that last six months of layout, editing, design, print, all of that is in some ways the hardest, oddly. But, yeah, it was about a four-year period. So let's go back to the beginning. Let's go back to what everybody thinks they know. You know, Elvis over-medicates.

addicted to drugs, dies in the bathroom, right? Dies on the toilet. And that's what he was. You know, I need another nanner sandwich. And, you know, that's what is perceived, right? But perception isn't always the truth, is it? And it never is through the lens of sensationalism.

And I think Elvis is, I think Elvis is the biggest victim of sensationalism in American culture ever. There is just so much untruth, so much, you know, it's cheeseburgers and women, right? It's sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It's the medication. And, you know, I say a lot that Elvis is recognizable around the world by his image and by his first name. And there's not a lot of people you can say that about, and 44 years after they pass on top of it. So he's really as recognizable as Coca-Cola and Mickey Mouse.

But Elvis was a real person. And when you take away that sensationalism, you can see his, humanity. And when you look at its humanity, you know, whether it's through these health issues like I did, you can really, his story is so much deeper and more profound than it ever was on its own. And it was already a great story. But when you really understand his poverty and then the level of fame he had that had never been experienced before and then the health ailments, you know, his story is not one of self-destruction. It is clearly a futile struggle to survive through a lot of struggle. So let's talk about that a little bit. As we go back,

He, I was really surprised and I know an awful lot about Elvis, or at least I thought I did, and then I read your book and realized I didn't know an awful lot. Um, I was really surprised at the struggles he had, uh, physically, uh, throughout his life, that, uh, he kept obviously hidden. I mean, he didn't want to, uh, you know, he's not bothering, uh, the screaming girls at the stage level of, No, not tonight. My back hurts. You know, my neck hurts.

I can't. My stomach hurts. I can't right now. That's not going to happen, right? I mean, he's Elvis. That's not going to happen, which is, was part of the struggle, right? He has to continue to be Elvis all the time. And no one can do it for him.

Right. Right. So let's talk about a little bit of the history leading up to what we know was wrong with him. I mean, there was a family. tree that was pretty devastating. It is. So by the time Elvis dies in 1977, he has disease or disorder and nine of the 11 systems of the body.

Again, lifelong fan as well. Every book would mention them in just a little blurb, you know, a few sentences. And I'd think geriatric diseases for a 38-year-old man, that's odd. And, but, you know, it just gets easily dismissed as the end result of the prescription medication problem. So what my research showed is that of those nine, five of them have absolutely. evidence that they were present prior to fame and most likely since birth. So a lot of genetic issues. And then looking at that even further, the reason for that is that Elvis's maternal

grandparents were first cousins. So again, that doubling of the gene pool, we see these issues with his mother. You know, in that relationship between Elvis and his mother for fans like us, we know that that relationship has been romanticized over time. Forever. And Elvis died wanting to be with his mother. He died at a similar age, wanted to be like his mother. And these are romanticized ideas that don't hold up when you really look at, you know, the big scope of his life. But it's she had similar health issues and three of her brothers die in a similar way. So it all adds up, you know, Gladys is 46 when she passes. She has a brother who's 46, a brother who's 48, a brother who's 58, Elvis is 42, all heart, liver, lung related issues.

And at that point, it just stops being a coincidence, right? There's something else going out there. And for sure, these relatives, didn't lead the life that Elvis led. They weren't pushing themselves to be productive members of society out in front of the public doing what he did.

They weren't on three-week tours. They weren't doing 60 shows in 30 days in Las Vegas. And yet they still met an early demise. And that was kind of the launch pad for me. As a lifelong fan, I always wondered, why do Elvis and his mother die, in a similar way, a similar four-year pattern of degenerative health and a similar age. She didn't take medication.

She wasn't a rock star. You know, there has to be a correlation there. And then when you see three brothers also meeting a similar demise, you know, again, I just had to investigate and I had the research. You know, I am a journalist. This was a crossroads of personal and professional endeavor for sure. But I really did think it was going to just be kind of a brain candy project. And then there was so much evidence that it. It turned into a real bona fide project, and it's been incredibly rewarding.

I was really surprised at how much, I was really surprised at how much the people around him knew and kept it secret for so, for so long. It seemed like that evidence would come out before now, and yet, no. I was surprised. and one of my big aha moments was how much they knew, but also how little. You know, no one knows the whole picture at any given time. You know, the Memphis Mafia guys are his employees. They're also his friends. And that's a delicate line.

He is their loss. He doesn't want to appear weak. So the Memphis Mafia guys know about a lot of his issues and they see him taking a lot of the pills and they don't know how sick he is. Like really his doctor and his nurse, you know, they were the ones who really knew the ailments that Elvis suffered from. But at one point in my research, you know, I'm reading Sunny West's book. and he was there almost all the time, you know, he was there very early on and very late

until Elvis's career. And he says, you know, when Elvis goes to the hospital in 75, they said it was a four liver biopsy, but it was really because of the drugs. And he was taking too much and he had to go in and get clean. So then I started researching it. And Elvis really did have a liver biopsy. It's there are, there's testimony after testimony of that liver biopsy and the results of it. And the other, you know, every time Elvis goes into the hospital, he leaves. he was having like five more elements than he went in with because they're identified. So even someone as close to him as Sunny West, the Memphis Mafia member, did not know what was going on. And the other thing that really surprised me was how much privacy there was about health back then, not just with Elvis, but with everyone.

So when Gladys was in the hospital in 1957, and I was privileged to talk to Barbara Hurd Smith, one of Elvis's first girlfriends when he's famous, you know, first famous there in 56, 57. And she was very close with Gladys. She lived in Memphis. So she'd spent a lot of time with her when I was without touring. And she was with Gladys during the two-week hospital stay in 1957. So I thought, surely, Barbara's going to be a wealth of information. I sit down with Barbara and I say, so what was wrong with Gladys for two weeks in the hospital? Right.

What's going on? And Barbara says, oh, we never would have asked that in 1957. I went there every day for two weeks. I never asked her why she was in the hospital. You would never talk about that. And you would never ask that question because of, privacy. Like people were just much more private about health and a lot of things back that it just wasn't proper to talk about it, you know, but it is weird. And right, he had no information on

why she was there. She just went to visit and keep her company. That is really strange. And we see, we see now that the doc, his main doctor, I mean, I realized that he had several helping him out throughout the country. But we had, you know, his main doc and friend, again, someone that was in the inner circle who was still, you know, caring for his friend knowing so much. I mean, that was the guy that knew what was happening, right? I mean, he knew that there was issues, that there were issues that needed to be addressed. And he was really trying to make that happen and keep it private. Yeah. And keep and walk that delicate line. And that line is blurred between physician and friend. You know, that's difficult in any,

Sure. Any doctor-patient relationship, if you are related to your doctor or your friends with your doctor. So certainly when you have the most, you know, recognizable man on the planet as your patient. And it's hard for Dr. Neck because he understands not only that Elvis sometimes takes too much, you know, the prescription medication did become a problem. I don't sugarcoat that. So he's trying to help with that problem.

But he also understands that Elvis has these ailments, some of which he can't identify. And he wants Elvis to go places and have, like, like long-term studies and testing done. Elvis doesn't want to do that. And a lot of these things, like we know now that Elvis had this immune system disorder. Well, we also know how hard it is to get that diagnosed in today's world. We are well aware of immune system disorder. They never would have been able to probably figure that out in 1975, 1970, you know, America.

So there were things that Dr. Nick probably couldn't have helped with, even if he did, you know, have a fully cooperating patient. And at times he did not. But yeah, he was, he was in it over his head, I think without question. Right. One of the things that I, another thing that I really enjoyed about the book is your layout of his schedule. You know, he was, you know, you don't think of this guy as, you know, working like he did. I mean, the guy was a hard.

It was never ending work. He's a workaholic. And we know so much about Elvis as the glutton, right? That's a sensationalized idea that he's just, out. there buying cars and giving him away that's all he ever does. Right, it's all he's doing. Stay at home and eating and hanging out doing drugs. Yep, that's it.

That's all this does. And the truth, the reality is that he worked very hard, very hard. And especially in the 70s, you know, we see, like some people like to complain about the movie years, but I think they might have extended his life because he ends up hospitalized. Right. He ends up hospitalized in the 1950s when he's touring on that rigorous schedule because his body can't handle it. And then the movie years, he does pretty well. But then when he starts touring, 69, 70, you know, by 73, he's in the hospital. He's in the hospital twice in 75.

And each year, he's booking more shows. You know, it's not like he slows down through those health ailments. He's booking more and more shows. So he absolutely was a workaholic. We also know that he, you know, he made such a leap financially in one year in 1956 that would have taken most families four or five generations probably. It was life altering, right? they didn't understand the money they had.

They didn't know how to control it or invest it or any of those things. And his dad who has between a third and fifth grade education is his business manager, account, you know. So Elvis spends a lot of money. And we know that too. And that is also correlated sometimes to how much he has to work because he has to make more to spend more because he does give so much away. And it makes sense that he would want to have his.

friends, the people who were in his circle, enjoy the same thing that he's enjoying, right? He pulled them out of poverty with him. And it's amazing. Like, just exploring his health, I came to understand Elvis in such a different way. And I say in one of those chapters that, you know, it's not his relationship with his mother that leads us to understanding who Elvis was. It's his relationship with poverty. And that thread is throughout his story. And it's just amazing. Once you see it, piece together. because it does impact every decision he ever makes. That's why he makes so many movies that he doesn't really want to make.

It's hard for a kid who had nothing to turn down a million dollars for a film he's not excited about. And you see it with the people in his life because I always say, too, like how many rock stars take women home to meet grandma, you know? His grandmother lived at his house. His grandmother lived at Graceland all along. His parents had lived there before Gladys died. And when she dies and Vernon remarries, they buy a house right behind Graceland. There are aunts and uncles who are employed at Graceland and who live on the grounds, many at any given time.

And then many of the Memphis Mafia and their family as well. So he had a lot of people relying on him. And consciously or subconsciously, he knew that he pulled all of those people out of poverty. And he knew he had to keep him there too. Absolutely. And that was a lot of pressure. That was a lot of pressure. That was the drive.

I mean, no matter what. And so when he's sitting home resting from being in the hospital and trying to get his head straight and his body straight, he knows he's He's got to get back to it. He's got to. He doesn't feel good. And he says it. He says it, you know, everybody, everybody talks about it. They'd be really great, healthy, straight as an arrow at the beginning of the tour, a week in,

he's not doing good again, you know, because the touring is that hard on someone who has hypogamagloblablinemia, which means his body can't fight infection. So he's getting colds and flus, you know, all the time. And then he lives at night, right? Because he's so famous, so you know he has vitamin D deficiency. So that immune system was not. working like it should. And that was just one aspect, you know, that made it very difficult to be able to test. In fact, go down the list of what was what was wrong with the man. I mean, it's incredible.

It is incredible. You know, we know he had a heart issue and right. It's hard to say exactly what that is. Obviously, he dies of cardiac arrhythmia. That's the official, you know, diagnosis decision. And we know that Gladys died. And by the way, and by the way, just I want to pause for just a moment there with the, he had a heart issue. that's what he died of. I know that, you know, we love hearing that he was dying. He died out, sitting on the toilet, and, you know, that was it. But actually, the actual documentation was is that he was up and trying to get out of the bathroom, right? So that's where we get the, the knowledge that it was a hard event because he was like, holy crap, I got to, what's going on? Grab your chest, right? And a drug-related death, he would have slumbered on the bathroom.

He would have actually been just sitting there. Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry. So, yeah. So the heart issue is correlated to the colon problem and the liver issue that he has. But, you know, the colon problem has long been written off. He had a megacolon.

It was much worse than they ever thought it was. And they didn't realize how bad it was until autopsy because they just had an x-ray. They didn't have CT scan and MRI and all those kinds of things. And they joked about it when he was a kid. His friends joked about him being backed up all the time. Yeah. So that was one of the big ones for me. because, you know, it's always just set aside.

I mean, Dr. Oz did a show a few weeks ago and said the colon problem was all because of the opiates because it closed down your digestive system. It's like we have a guy who lived with him in Lauderdale courts in high school saying he was always constipated. Right. And now from my research, we have Annie Presley, who was besties, you know, with Gladys saying that Gladys was constantly trying to get a baby and toddler and young Elvis to achieve a bowel movement. So it was a huge lifelong problem, most likely genetic. And we know it runs through the Presley family too. for my research. But that heart problem with the colon problem and the fact that he dies in the bathroom,

again, you take away the sensationalism of that and you're left with, you know, the Valcellova maneuver, which is any kind of straining, which you do during childbirth or scuba diving, you know, it changes the pressure between your heart and your blood pressure and it can create this cardiac arrhythmia. And we know from Dr. Nick's testimony that before a tour, Elvis would be straining extra hard to empty his bowels so that he wouldn't look so bloated on stage. and he was scheduled to go on tour the next day. So that cardiac arrhythmia, again, within this health context,

it makes more sense when you're not just focused on the drugs, right? So he also was a carrier for alpha-1 antitrips and deficiency, and that is a disease which affects your lungs or your liver. Again, depending if you get one bad gene or two, so that's why Gladys had the liver issue. And, you know, Elvis was diagnosed with COPD at one point. And we see him doing inhalers and things before he goes on stage in the 70s. Again, now it makes more sense.

Toward the end, he was going between songs for oxygen, right? We know that. Yeah, because so not only does he have this lung disorder, this genetic lung issue, but the megacholon starts to, it gets so bad, it's pushing up in his chest cavity. And he can't breathe. Can't breathe. So the, you know, the fact that he's saying like he did very end really is, again, the testament to his work ethic and his dedication because it's pretty amazing.

His nervous system, we know he was a lifelong insomniac. again, only a few reasons for that in a young person, and he had insomnia for the time he was a young teen. And it becomes the hardest thing to treat, but it also becomes the first thing he treats. Because being an insomnia, before he was famous, was doable. You take a nap after work, you know, but being an insomnia is Elvis Presley was not doable. And this is a time long before Ambien and UNESTA. So Dr. Nick is using things like volume and other tranquilizers, strong tranquilizers, to achieve sleep with Elvis. and all these things have addiction issues and tolerance levels,

but he could not sleep without them. They tried, you know, they tried to achieve sleep without them. Multiple times. Multiple times. And I love the one, I mean, they even did the one study when he came back from the hospital and was, you know, clean and they were trying to, you know, make him healthy. And the doc was like, just don't do anything.

Go until you sleep. Yeah. You know, three days later, three days later, it's like, okay, dude, well, we got to do something. Yeah. And in our American culture, like if you can get by in two or three hours of sleep, everybody thinks that's great, you know, but it's not healthy and it's not normal. And when you can't achieve sleep like that at all without medication, it is a nervous system disorder

without question. Without question. He had an endocrine system, he had severe problems with his adrenal glands because through his immune system issue, he would complain all the time about pain throughout his whole body. Now I think we understand that that's probably arthritis. He was diagnosed with arthritis, but we know that that's probably. caused him the inflammation associated with that immune system problem and he would have pain throughout his whole body people around him thought he was making it up for more medication but we know

now more about immune system problems and how that does create all right he's only on stage moving singing and dancing you know for his entire life right yeah so but the arthritis is the muscular and skeletal system issues and when you you know when you talk about him on stage since i research and wrote this book i look at all the concerts so differently you know aloha but he watched a 68 special and his eyes are open all the time. In 73, he does Aloha and his eyes are closed for most of that performance because the glaucoma, which he has, which is also very strange for a young person, is becoming a real problem. So he keeps his eyes closed a lot. He doesn't move a lot in that show. And a few months later, he has his first hospital stay versus, you know, Elvis, the way it is,

the documentary special, I believe that was 71, or 70 or 71, he is like the most serious, movements you can imagine. Yet also at the same time, as you know from the book, he writes a TCB oath, which is a lot of karate-driven goals that he has, but then he says, freedom from constipation. So to know that he was in pain and uncomfortable and it had a lifelong problem with that, you could still move like that on stage. Yeah, you'd have to have some pain-fills. Yeah.

You'd have to. You'd have to. Yes, absolutely. And one of the things that I enjoyed, too, in the book, And I'm not, by far, we're not even close to giving it all the way. It's well worth the read, Destin to Die Young. I absolutely loved it. One of the things that I loved was the one photographer who had followed him for hundreds of shows and thousands of pictures,

really looking back and knowing then when it was going to be a good show and when it wasn't going to be a good show, by the puffiness of his hands when he was taking the photos. That's pretty amazing. That's incredible because, again, immune system issues, right? Your body's swelling. You know, he has this microcholon, so his whole body is just kind of a toxic place. One doctor I was consulting with said he was a taking time, Bob. Like there are three things that could kill him at any time.

Right. Colin being one of them because it could just become toxic and spread and get sepsis and kill you. But yeah, and you'd be surprised. I heard that more than once. So Larry Strickland, who was one of the background singers, I just, you know, messaged him and said, do you have anything to add?

This is the topic. I know a lot of people were kind of nervous about the topic of this book and you try to explain that was his death, and I understood that going into it. But he said,

I can't really think of anything other than what his hands were swollen. I knew the show wasn't going to be as good as it could have been. You know, like he noticed the swelling with the hands too. So really interesting, such a small thing, but we now know it meant a lot. Yeah, no kidding.

Sally Hodel, destined to die young. a book on Elvis Presley, incredible story. I'm sure that has this been, is this now part of the Elvis entourage world, or are you still on the outside looking at? Well, when I was in Memphis, you know, it's pretty incredible to have people who knew Elvis,

be like, Sally, give me a hug, you know. And there are a number of people who knew Elvis that I've had that feedback from, which is incredible to hear. You know, one Memphis Mafia guy said, I wish I would have known this then. And another person said, you know, I wish, obviously I wish I would have known it, but I think you really nailed it.

Like Elvis is a really hard person to describe and to capture and you did through this lens of his health issues. So to hear that from people who knew Elvis is pretty incredible. But yeah, I still see it as, it's been very successful. You know, the book is being right around the world and that's incredible. But I do see it as a grassroots movement, you know, so to speak, to have Elvis be more understood because as any historical figure, they deserve it. They contributed to our world and to our country and did something incredible and

their humanity deserves, you know, to be understood. One of my favorite things about Elvis as far as being this global icon is that, you know, he rarely left the United States of America. I think he did a couple of shows in Canada. That's pretty much it. And yet the guy is a global icon. You could never get away with that today. I mean, we wouldn't have to.

And some people, you know, you can actually with the internet make it happen. You know, it's a different kind of stardom than what he had. But, you know, it's pretty incredible that the guy is such a global icon and a light that was just USA. It's amazing. He has Americana the world over. Yeah. And he definitely lives on. And the passion that people in other countries have for him, I think Americans can learn

lot from. And especially I say young Americans, because it's just like history and everything else. It is our job to pass that on to younger generations. And we need to do that. He was important. You know, culturally, I don't know if there's anyone more important. So, so that legacy needs to be passed on without question. Absolutely. Sally Holder, thank you very much. I appreciate you joining me on Chewing the Fat today. It's great. Absolutely. Fun talking with you. Elvisauthor.com for more information and for ways that you can get the book. I love how she goes into great detail in the book. It's really fascinating.

It's well worth the read, Elvisauthor.com. I love one of my favorite parts is when she goes into the protocols of his on-tour and-at-home drug protocols. The one protocol for his on-tour protocol is at 3 p.m. which is the stage one you get a voice shot vitamins meds for dizziness a laxative three appetite suppressants and some testosterone and then an hour prior to the performance you get a second voice shot meds for vertigo decongestant laced with codeine an anphetamine sometimes dilated then moments before performance dose of caffeine dexedrine dilated then immediately after the

performance pill for lowering blood pressure anihistamine strong sedative Demerol. Bedtime, quillude, placidil, amphetamine, laxative, blood pressure pill, three other sedatives. And then if needed, after that, only if restless and unable to sleep, which, I mean, he was

incapable of unmedicated sleep, he would get some more quilludes and some amatol. So, just fascinating read. I should just read the book to you. Now get it yourself. Elvisauthor.com. Thanks for listening to Chewing the Fat.

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