ELVIS & SINATRA
THE SURPRISING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO MUSIC ICONS
By Mahnuel Muñoz
Episode 1
It is little known to the general public that Frank Sinatra reached out to Elvis Presley in some of the most dramatic moments of his short life. Instead, the idea of a rivalry prevails that has even dialectically confronted the fans.
At the end of August 1975, Elvis Presley was admitted to the Baptist Hospital in Memphis, officially suffering from extreme fatigue, but the truth was that his tortured soul was trying to escape from the prison of a body too sick for medical science. During his admission he received a call from Frank Sinatra, who wished him a speedy recovery and told him not to let “those bastards” kill him. Elvis immediately understood that Sinatra was referring to the relentless pace of work that chained him, imposed by the greed of the brutal Colonel Parker and a willing army of parasites and freeloaders around him, eager for him to be discharged as soon as possible to continue. receiving money, jewelry and Cadillacs just for being there thanking him or opening doors for him.
In 1977 Dave Hebler and cousins Red and Sonny West, fired long ago for being easy on fans, wrote a book titled “Elvis: What Happened?” that aired gruesome intimacies of the king of rock. For Elvis, the publication of the book detonated the main pillar of his existence, which ended tragically on August 16 of that same year within the walls of Graceland. Frank had contacted him again to help him stop the libel from reaching the stores, but Presley declined the offer, desperately clinging to the idea that three people he had considered his friends would not be able to betray him like this.
The rivalry between Elvis and Frank existed more in the delirium of fans than in real life, since, apart from their mutual vanities, there is no basis for two artists with a twenty-year age difference and such disparate audiences to be able to fight to conquer to the other’s follower. But that’s the infantilism of popular music, someone has to be the “king”, the “president” or the “boss” who guides the helpless hosts. The “fight” between Frank and Elvis was nothing compared to what would come in the decades to come. It all started with a press article attributed to Sinatra – possibly apocryphal – in which he viciously attacked rock and roll and its representatives. According to this piece, for Frank rock was a genre with no artistic value, made by cretins and that practically pushed youth into crime. There are those who saw a clear allusion to Elvis, although his name was not mentioned at any time. Presley, for his part, upon learning of these outbursts, responded with respect and diplomacy, and the controversy between the two stars did not go any further.
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