Minutes before the most important performance of his life, Elvis Presley told the director he was not going out there. It was June 1968, he was 33 years old, and he had not stood in front of a live audience in seven years.
He was in a dressing room at NBC in Burbank, wearing a black leather suit, with a studio full of people waiting. And he turned to Steve Binder and said five words that could have ended everything: “Steve, I can’t do it.”
Understand what he was walking into. Elvis in 1968 was, in the eyes of most of the music world, finished. He had spent the decade making formulaic films with throwaway soundtracks while The Beatles and The Rolling Stones ran away with rock and roll. His manager, Colonel Tom Parker, had lined up a safe way out: an hour of Christmas songs, sponsored by a sewing machine company, with Elvis in a tuxedo. Binder handed back Parker’s tape of carols and put on a completely different show instead.
Elvis Presley – ’68 Comeback Special
The nerves had been building for weeks. Binder noticed how frightened Elvis was of being forgotten, so he did something unusual to test it — he walked Elvis out onto Sunset Boulevard at rush hour. They stood on the pavement in the middle of Los Angeles, and nobody recognized him. Binder later admitted people probably assumed he was an impersonator. It got Elvis through rehearsals. It did not get him through the night.
So when the moment came, and Elvis said he could not do it, Binder told him: “Elvis, you’ve got to go out there.” His description of what happened next is the best account we have of that evening. “When he went out there, he was scared to death. The opening number he was shaky. His throat was dry. Then, little by little, this amazing surge of confidence flowed through his body.”
Elvis Presley – If I Can Dream (’68 Comeback Special)
The best part of the show was never even planned. During rehearsals, Elvis had been sitting around in the dressing room with his original 1950s bandmates, guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana, playing old songs and telling stories.
Binder watched it and thought, “That is the television program.” So he built a small square stage with the audience packed around all four sides — often described as a boxing ring without ropes — and just let them play. Even Fontana admitted Elvis was rattled: “Elvis was hardly ever nervous, but he was then. We played a couple of songs, and it got loose after a while, and it turned out fine.”
It aired on 3 December 1968 as Singer Presents… Elvis. It became NBC’s highest-rated show of the season, drawing around 42 percent of the viewing audience. Elvis was so good that Binder cut a 90-minute version, though NBC trimmed it back down. Parker got exactly one Christmas song into the finished program — a quiet “Blue Christmas.”
Within months, Elvis was back in a Memphis studio cutting “In the Ghetto” and “Suspicious Minds.” A year later he was in Las Vegas. Historians now agree that without that hour of television, Elvis Presley would not occupy the place he does today. And it nearly did not happen, because a terrified 33-year-old almost stayed in his dressing room.