By the early hours of 8 September 1970, Elvis Presley had already worked a full day. He had played the 8:15 dinner show at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. He had played the midnight show. It was the closing night of a month-long run; everybody was shattered, and the only thing left to do was go home.
Then, in the middle of that midnight performance, he announced to a room full of people—and to his own orchestra, who had no idea—that he would be coming back at three o’clock in the morning to do it all again.
Colonel Tom Parker scrambled to negotiate it with the hotel on the spot. The extra show fee was $12,500.
Elvis September 1970 | Full Show Audio
What followed has become one of the most beloved performances in Elvis folklore, and the reason is simple. Nobody was trying to be professional anymore.
Elvis and his musicians — the TCB Band and his backing group, The Sweet Inspirations — were completely exhausted and, by every account, absolutely giddy. No film crew, no record label, no reason to be careful. So they messed about for the entire show. He joked through the whole thing.
You can hear it in one detail on the surviving tape. The band introductions run over eight minutes. Eight minutes. At three in the morning. Because nobody wanted to stop.
Elvis Presley – Bridge Over Troubled Water (Las Vegas 1970)
And then, right near the end, something shifts. Elvis sang “Bridge Over Troubled Water” — the Simon and Garfunkel song, then only months old — and stopped fooling around entirely. Fans who have studied that recording consistently name it the best performance of the night. After hours of laughter and nonsense, he stood there and sang one of the biggest ballads in the world, at dawn, to a room of people who had stayed up for it.
A recording survives, taped from the audience, and it circulates among collectors under the title September Nights.
The show finally ended in the early morning. Elvis left Las Vegas and gave himself 24 hours at his Palm Springs home.
Then, on 9 September, he opened his first American tour of the 1970s in Phoenix.
One day off. That was it.