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Elvis Presley was beloved by the world as the unquestionable King of Rock 'n' Roll, but the star had a dark side too. At the height of his fame, Elvis couldn't set foot out of his front door without being mobbed by crowds of his adoring fans. But as he became more and more of a recluse, his abuse of prescription drugs took hold. His battle with drug abuse was recalled in harrowing detail by his ex-partner Linda Thompson, in her 2016 autobiography A Little Thing Called Life: On Loving Elvis Presley, Bruce Jenner, and Songs in Between.
Linda, now 70, was just 22 years old when she met Elvis, who was 15 years her senior and a longtime object of her affection. They dated for four and a half years from 1972 to 1976, back when she was a beauty pageant winner and recently crowned Miss Tennessee. In her book, Linda details her incredible romance with Elvis, including how she cried as she lost her virginity to him, and was with him practically 24 hours a day. Linda and Elvis split in November 1976, less than a year before his death the following August.
While their time together was something Linda will always remember fondly, she didn't hold back in her book when she spoke about the dark times they went through together. Linda found out that Elvis had died when she received a phone call from his distraught nine-year-old daughter Lisa Marie, who she had grown close to during their relationship, called to deliver the tragic news.
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She wrote: "I stood there, catatonic, gazing at the receiver. He smothered in the carpet, repeatedly raced through my stinging mind. Those gravity-filled words sank my heart with the reality that Elvis Presley was in all probability dead. On too many occasions to count, during my years of loving and caring for him, I had found and attended to him in deathly compromising circumstances like the one Lisa had just described."
During their time together, Linda saved Elvis' life more than once, while trying to save him from the drug addiction that had taken hold of him. She explained that little was known about prescription medication at the time, and said that Elvis truly believed he could not be harmed by taking the drugs.
While they had split, Linda was hopeful that she'd one day reunite with Elvis, but her hopes were dashed by his sudden and tragic death, which sent shockwaves around the world. Their chance meeting one night, when she was invited to a private screening he was hosting at a movie theatre, was "love at first sight". After that, they became inseparable.
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During their first trip away together, when Elvis whisked her off to Las Vegas, Linda noticed "several guns" lying on his side of the bed as well as "an assortment of at least a dozen prescription medicine bottles". She asked Elvis if he had been sick, and when he said he wasn't, she asked why he had so many prescription drugs.
Linda recalled: "He looked around, so used to seeing the bottles, he apparently didn't even notice them any more, and he had to stare at them for a moment before he formulated an answer." He told her he had a "little respiratory thing" but that he was fine now. She said she believed him, because, at that point, she had no reason to.
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But she soon learned the truth about Elvis' addiction. "I didn't even know that people abused prescription drugs," she penned. "And so, of course, I didn't doubt his explanation." Elvis was practically nocturnal and would take sleeping pills every single day to help him rest during the daylight hours. Linda said he would also take 'tanning pills' which increased the melanin in his skin and helped him get a more sun-kissed look.
One of the most startling details in Linda's book is what she says about Elvis' deal with a dentist. Linda accompanied Elvis to the dentist, where he had a quick filling, then with a "wink-and-a-nod" the doctor left the room. She wrote: "Elvis immediately opened the cabinet under the sink and took out a gigantic jar of pills. Without hesitation, he began taking handfuls of the pills and stuffing them into random pockets."
Linda said it was clear this wasn't the first time he'd done this, and that although he acted like it was all totally natural, she couldn't believe what she was seeing. He explained to her that the dentist knew what he was doing, and that it was just sleeping pills, which were "tough" to get prescriptions for.
Linda said: "Having lived with him for more than a month, I knew he had to take sleeping pills to go to sleep, and something else to wake him up, as well as oftentimes something to pep him up to go onstage." She said Elvis claimed that he'd been given pulls during his time in the army to help keep him awake and on post overnight, and that he'd never been without pills since.
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She said he believed that prescription drugs were "perfectly healthy" and didn't see any reason to stop taking them or monitor his intake more carefully. Linda said Elvis didn't think of himself as an addict, and that there was a stigma attached to drug addiction that the star would have been "very embarrassed" by. "Drug addiction is not pretty for anyone," she penned. "But when it came to Elvis, the pressure was on me to try to maintain a semblance of normalcy."
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Linda said that through remaining "vigilant to prevent him from accidentally overdosing", she neglected taking care of herself and her own needs. She described one moment where she found Elvis drowning in a bowl of soup. They had been sitting up in bed eating when she went to the bathroom to wash her face. She hurried through her bedtime routine, but came back to find Elvis face down in the bowl of chicken noodle soup.
She said whatever he had taken besides his normal sleeping pill had hit him "hard and fast". Linda shouted to wake Elvis up, but he was "completely passed out" and looked "as if he was dead". She ran over to him and pulled him out of the bowl and began clearing the food from his throat. When he remained unconscious, Linda gave Elvis a shot of Ritalin that had been left by doctors for such an occasion, and called medics for help.
Doctors told her he would be fine, but she kept a "restless vigil" by his side, and when he finally woke up, he told Linda he had a dream he was dying. Elvis also proved to be quite a jealous man, despite having his own affairs. She says he once told her he didn't want to know anything about her ex-boyfriends, and that she was never to even let on that she thought another man was handsome. Linda recalled one terrifying moment when Elvis flew into a jealous rage after she had described one of Elvis' entourage as a "good-looking guy".
She said she had just got out of the shower and was standing in a towel when she felt a rush of air go by her and the bathroom mirror shattered, surrounding her with broken glass. Someone ran over to check she was okay and told her that Elvis was doing "a little target practice" with one of his guns and that a bullet had gone through the wall. Linda was horrified that she could have been shot.
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Looking back into the bathroom, she realised that if she had been sat on the toilet at that moment, the bullet would have hit her. An apologetic Elvis told her he hadn't realised she was in the bathroom, or that his bullet would go through the wall. But Elvis was besotted with Linda, and told her she was the woman he had been waiting for his whole life.
He showered her with expensive gifts, telling her she deserved to be surrounded by beautiful things. Linda explained that while Elvis could be "the sweetest man", he could be the exact opposite too. She said he had a "vicious and uncontrolled" temper that would sometimes make her feel like he'd "never calm down again". She said it was an aspect of his personality that he struggled with. Linda wrote: "When he let go of all self-control, he morphed from an angel descended from heaven to the devil incarnate, and the sparks could really fly."