I called the Colonel again the next morning.

"What can I do for you, son?"

"Hello, Colonel, this is Jerry Weintraub. I want to take Elvis out on the road."

"You don't give up, do you, boy?"

"No, Colonel, not when I know I'm right."

I called every day for months and months. I did not flip him in the course of one of those calls, but I had planted my name so deep in his brain he would never forget it. Whenever he thought of taking Elvis on tour, he thought of Jerry Weintraub.

One morning, about a year after the dream, the Colonel called me at home.

"Do you still want to take my boy out on the road?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"Well, I'll be at the roulette table at the Hilton International Hotel in Vegas tomorrow at nine A.M. You meet me there with a check for a million dollars, and he's yours."

Great. Wonderful. Terrific. Fantastic. My dream is coming true. All I have to do is raise more money than I have ever seen in my life, and do it in twenty-four hours. Back then, a million dollars was real money. Rockefellers, Carnegies-those were the only people that had money like that. I started making calls, banging on doors, calling in favors, promising, begging-anything to get the cash. This was my shot. I did not want to blow it. I stayed up all night, getting turned down again and again, flying on coffee and adrenaline. "No," "Don't have it," "Are you crazy?" "Who do you think I am?" "A million dollars? Ha, ha, ha!" "You've lost your mind," "I will get back to you when my oil well hits"-these are the kinds of responses I was getting. I was desperate, running out of time.

Finally, late that night, I got a call back from an old friend. He said there was a guy in Seattle named Lester Smith who owned radio stations, lots of radio stations, and was a tremendous Elvis fan-this guy might give you the money just to be in business with Presley. So I called the guy-his business manager was on an extension-and I made the pitch. They wanted to see proposals, papers, and so on. I didn't blame them. I would want to see these things, too, but there was no time. "I would like to," I told him, "but I have just a few hours to get a check and meet Colonel Parker in Vegas. So, at this point, it's yes or no. You're going to have to trust me on the rest."

As he was saying yes, I was getting my keys, pulling on my coat, heading out the door. I went to the airport and got a plane. I stared out the window at the desert. I took a cab to the hotel, checked into my room, called the Colonel. "I'm getting the money," I told him, "but I'm going to need a little more time."

"All right," he said. "You have till three P.M. But that's it. You know where to meet me."

I rushed over to the bank, one of those cash-and-carry places downtown. What a sight! The place had a gold crown over the door and it was all purple and it looked less like a bank than a whorehouse. I went to the woman at the front desk. "My name is Jerry Weintraub," I told her. "I'm waiting for a million dollar wire transfer. I'm going to need a cashier's check for the same amount." She looked at me like I was nutty, maybe a bank robber. I had long hair in those days, sideburns and boots, and I was telling this girl I planned to leave there with a million dollars. I sat in a big chair, looking through the windows as I waited for the money to come in. It was a strange afternoon, spent suspended between my life as it had been and my life as it was going to be. Elvis was the biggest star in the world. If I took him on the road, if I promoted him, nothing would be the same. I knew that. Finally, after I had been daydreaming for two hours-I was pushing against the new deadline-the president of the bank, a young guy, asked me to follow him into his office.

"Your cashier's check is being prepared, Mr. Weintraub."

"Right."

"It's made out to Elvis Presley… One million dollars."

"Great."

"That's a lot of money."

"Yes, it sure is."

"What do you plan to do with it?"

"I'm taking Elvis on tour," I said.

This guy's eyes lit up. He said, "Do you need an accountant?"

"I know how you feel," I told him, "and let me think about it, but right now, I need to get that check and get over there or I'm going to miss the Colonel and no one will be going anywhere."

"Of course," he said, giving me the check, this monstrous check. I looked at it and shivered, folded it into my breast pocket, ran out, and caught a cab to the Hilton. I spotted the Colonel as soon as I walked onto the casino floor. You could not miss him. He was wearing a white cowboy hat and a ratty short-sleeved shirt, chomping a cigar. He looked like the guy ripping you off at the county fair. He was the hero of his own movie.

"Colonel Tom Parker?"

"You Jerry Weintraub?"

"Yes, sir."

He looked at me skeptically, through one eye, then asked, "You got the money?"

"I do."

"Wait a minute," he told me, "I want to finish this spin"-he was playing roulette, which is a sucker's game-then said, "Okay, follow me."

We went up to his suite, where he had a little office. He sat behind his desk, then said, "Let's have it."

I took the check out of my pocket, unfolded it, handed it to him. He looked at it for a moment, unlocked a safe, put the check inside, then said, "Okay, Jerry, what do you want to do with my boy?"

"Take him out on the road."

"Good! Let's do it."

Thinking back, I realize there were no papers, no contracts, no nothing. I handed him the check, he took the check, that's it.

The Colonel was amazing. As an old carnie, he really understood how to package and sell. He began in the music business in the 1940s promoting country acts like Minnie Pearl and Hank Snow and Eddie Arnold, but he did not get into the chips until he signed Elvis to a management contract in 1954. He built Presley's career from there, moving him from Sun Records to RCA Victor, getting him into movies, and, in the process, turning the kid from Tupelo into the king of rock and roll. Some critics thought Elvis lost authenticity in the process, but the Colonel was always a big marketing man. If you were walking this earth, he wanted to sell to you. He was, in this way, a true egalitarian. He wanted no one left out. He once scolded me, saying, "To you guys from the coasts, the country is New York and LA. Everything in between is just the blur you fly over. But I'll tell you, that blur is where the audience lives and where you make your money."

I remember the first time I went to his house. He had a statue garden in the yard, with these odd ceramic animals and plastic flamingos. His taste was not my taste-it came from the carnival, the midway. To him, art was a pink elephant. But he taught me how to look at other parts of America. To understand this country, you must understand the paintings in the Whitney Museum in New York, or know how to pretend to, but you must also understand the flamingos in Colonel Tom's garden. To this day, if you go to my office at Warner Bros., you will see, out front, two plastic flamingos in the grass. This is to remind me where I come from: from the Bronx, yes, but also from the school of Colonel Tom Parker, who taught me how to hawk my wares in every part of America.

People later said the Colonel stole from Elvis, took too much, or did not treat him right. He was vilified. But, as far as I'm concerned, none of that's true. The Colonel never stole anything from Elvis. If he had, I would have known it. I was there. Elvis made all the artistic decisions and did exactly what he wanted to do. Business and promotion-that was what the Colonel cared about. As for the movies, which some people didn't like, Colonel Parker had just two rules. One: It had to have ten songs, because ten songs made a record. Two: Elvis got paid one million dollars. This neat sum, one million, the Colonel loved it. It rolled off his tongue.