Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley were married for six years and divorced in 1973. Most celebrity divorces end the friendship. Theirs did not. They stayed close for the rest of his life, and Priscilla has always been clear about why. “We never lost our friendship and our care for each other,” she has said. “He would call me at night. I really valued his calls.”
That is important background, because it means their last conversation was not a dramatic confrontation or a farewell. It was just a phone call between two people who still cared about each other.
It happened a few days before he died in August 1977, and Priscilla has described it more than once.
The reason for the call was practical and rather ordinary. Lisa Marie, their nine-year-old daughter, had been staying with her father at Graceland and was due to come home to her mother in Los Angeles. So Priscilla rang about the arrangements. She has said plainly: “My last conversation, yes, it was when Lisa was coming home.”
Priscilla Presley’s Last Words To Elvis Before He Died
But she was worried, and she used the call to check on him. “We talked a few days before he passed, which was very hard,” she recalled. She asked if he was all right, and whether he was excited about going on tour. He was — he had a twelve-date tour starting on 17 August and was looking forward to it.
“He loved work,” she said, “but he was dealing with a lot of issues, decisions that he had to make, so it wasn’t easy.”
Did she try to say anything about his health? She has answered that question honestly, and it is not comfortable. She did have concerns. But Elvis did not accept that sort of advice from anybody. “He wasn’t someone who you could just say, ‘You need to really take care of yourself.’ It was hard for anyone to do anything because ultimately it was his decision and he felt he was fine.” She has said the same thing elsewhere about the whole inner circle: people did try. “You did not tell Elvis Presley what to do.”
Priscilla Presley Recalls the Day Elvis Died (Flashback)
In her memoir, she describes how the call actually ended, and it is not sad at all — it is the opposite. They ended up talking about Colonel Tom Parker, his manager of over twenty years, and Elvis made a joke about him. “Good old Colonel. We’ve come a long way. He’s still putting out that same old stuff. It’s a wonder people are still buying it.” And then she wrote, “Elvis laughed.” Her line about that is the one that stays with you: “I loved hearing Elvis laugh, something he had been doing less and less.”
So the last sound she ever heard from him was him laughing at a joke about his own manager.
She has also written the sentence that anyone who has lost someone suddenly will recognize instantly. “If only I’d known that would be the last time I’d talk to him, I’d have said so much more: things I wanted to say and never had, things I’d held inside for so many years because the timing was always wrong.”
She was in Los Angeles when the news came. She has since said something about him that she has never taken back, despite being asked nearly fifty years later. “I’ve never met anyone like him, ever. He was very easy to love.” She never remarried. Her reason is short: “No one could ever match him.”