OS 013 - Legacy Interview with David Stanley

Interview with David Stanley Hugh: This is Hugh Ballou. Today, I am interviewing David Stanley. David, you and I have known each other about ten years. David: It has been a while. How are you doing today? Hugh: I’m doing great. I interviewed you years ago, in 2007, for my book Transforming Power about your leadership skills and putting a team together to do a movie. Your themes have been around your brother, Elvis. You are launching an initiative called “My Brother Elvis.” Give us a little background on who you are, your relationship with Elvis, and why this vision is so important to you and to others. David: Let me start off by saying I am excited about the new foundation called My Brother Elvis Foundation, which is a charity designed to educate and support and fight against the drug abuse problems that we have in America today. Some may ask why I would want to do that and what that has to do with Elvis. I spent seventeen years with Elvis Presley beginning in 1960 when my mother divorced my father and remarried Vernon Presley, Elvis’s father. I became Elvis’s stepbrother and moved into Graceland in 1960, and I lived there for seventeen years. This was a great experience. Elvis was a wonderful human being. He took me into his family. He really raised me. He was my father figure, my mentor, the person I looked up to. It was unusual to be driven to school in a pink Cadillac every day; I got a lot of attention for being Elvis’s brother. It was a very cool lifestyle. In 1972, I went to work for Elvis as his personal bodyguard. Working for Elvis meant being part of his entourage, traveling with him everywhere. I went on tours with him, to movie studios. Wherever he went, I went. When I toured with Elvis, I saw a chink in the armor. Elvis had a drug problem. He started off taking a couple pills to help him sleep. That number went from two to four, four to six, six to eight, and by the late ‘70s, Elvis had a very serious drug addiction problem. Unfortunately, we lost Elvis to a drug overdose on August 16, 1977. I was there. I walked into his bedroom to discover his lifeless body. While this is a very brief interview, it’s hard to discuss all of this in detail. That’s why I wrote a book called My Brother Elvis: The Final Years, which is about the final five years of my life with Elvis on the road and the things we are discussing right now. I wrote this book to tell this story about Elvis’s tragedy. Growing up with Elvis, he was such a giver. He was always giving to charities, giving his time and money. He kept writing checks to different charities throughout the world. That was his ultimate gift. I thought about my life. I was brought up this way. I saw the tragedies of what drugs can do firsthand, and now I am telling his story. Elvis’s death does not have to be in vain. Sure, it was a tragedy. Sure, he was a wonderful, loving person, a wonderful father, and a great big brother. He was the king of rock and roll. But the tragedies and realities of the human side of Elvis Presley cost him his life. I said to myself, “I can write this book and share this story. I’m not going to do a tell-all.