Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones on Sunset Blvd

By Harvey Kubernik

 

Elvis Presley will be the subject of a comprehensive collection, Sunset Boulevard, chronicling his 1970-1975 recording sessions and rehearsals at RCA’s landmark Los Angeles studios. The facility was located in Hollywood on 6363 Sunset Boulevard at Ivar Street. It is now the home of The Los Angeles Film School.

The 5-CD set spans 89 rarities – over half of which have never been released in the United States. It will be issued August 1, 2025, via RCA Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment,

The June 13 Sony Music announcement describes Sunset Boulevard as “delivering illuminating perspective onto Elvis’ 1970s recording output.”

The all-studio set includes recordings of such Presley favorites as “Always On My Mind,” “Burning Love,” the 40th and final Top Ten single of his career, and such choice covers of “Green, Green Grass of Home,” “For the Good Times,” “I Got a Woman,” “The Wonder of You,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” “Something, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Proud Mary, and more.

The collection also features rare alternate studio versions of late-period gems like “Separate Ways”—widely seen as the most autobiographical song Elvis ever recorded— and the rollicking “T-R-O-U-B-L-E,” which channeled the groundbreaking signature vocal style from his earlier years.

The record label announcement further details the compilation. “The first two discs feature new and never-heard mixes from four-time GRAMMY winner Matt Ross-Spang – stripping all overdubs and delivering fresh insights in the process. Opening with seventeen classics from throughout Elvis’ time in RCA Studio C, these mixes provide an intimate glimpse into the ways his riveting voice interacts with material from the era’s greatest songwriters: Kris Kristofferson’s “For The Good Times” (a 1972 b-side first released in 1995), Paul Williams’ “Where Do I Go From Here” (from 1973’s Elvis), Billy Swan’s “I Can Help” (from 1975’s Today) and Don McLean’s “And I Love You So” (also from Today), among them. Ross-Spang’s stripped-down mixes equally bolster the seventeen studio outtakes that comprise the set’s second piece.”

Sunset Boulevard implements rare archival photographs and new liner notes from music historian Colin Escott, plus an introduction by longtime friend Jerry Schilling. As Escott writes: “Elvis and his wife, Priscilla, had separated at the beginning of [1972] and he was drawn to songs heavy with regret. The first was a keynote address. Red West had known Elvis since high school. He was Elvis’s friend, bodyguard, movie stuntman, and—occasionally—songwriter. Elvis never asked him for songs, but Red would pitch one anyway if he thought it might work. ‘Separate Ways’ came from my own situation,” West said later. “I was writing about my son, Brent. Then Elvis had his own situation with Priscilla, so [Richard Mainegra and I] changed the song to relate to Lisa Marie.”

Once it was recorded, Escott adds, “Elvis’s friend Jerry Schilling remembered that ‘Separate Ways’ resonated so deeply with Elvis that he played the tape incessantly after the session. “We listened to it for three hours in the studio. He’d just look up and shake his head. ‘You guys wanna hear it again?’ And we’d play it and play it. It was a real sad time.”

During the final three discs of Sunset Boulevard, listeners get a behind-the-scenes look at Elvis’ history-making Las Vegas residency — featuring Los Angeles rehearsals from July 1970 and August 1974 with his iconic TCB Band.

Notable among the 1974 recordings are two featured tracks that Elvis never made studio versions of: “Twelfth of Never,” originally a hit for Johnny Mathis in 1957 and “Softly As I Leave You” which finds him narrating a prologue about the song’s purported origins (inspired by his love of Charles Boyer’s narrated album Where Does Love Go). Elvis’ instinctive chemistry with the TCB Band is palpable throughout the rehearsals, perhaps owing to his decision to record with a road band for the first time during this era. See the complete track listing below.

Sunset Boulevard will also be celebrated at Elvis Week 2025 in Memphis – a special edition of the annual festivities, in honor of what would have been Presley’s 90th birthday year. Sony Music will host a Sunset Boulevard listening event at Graceland’s Guest House Theater on August 13 – featuring a Q&A with special guests and much more. For more information and tickets visit ElvisWeek.com.

##

The legendary RCA studios, a Hollywood temple of sound, had been home to Presley, Sam Cooke, Bobby Womack, Ann Margaret, Shorty Rogers, Gogi Grant, Jesse Belvin, Jack Nitzsche, the Walker Brothers, Charlie Greene and Brian Stone, Merry Clayton, Keith Richards, the Monkees, Darlene Love, Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein, Grateful Dead, Cal Tjader, Rosemary Clooney, Jascha Heifetz, the Astronauts, Harry Nilsson, Jefferson Airplane, Electric Prunes, and Arthur Rubinstein.

In 2003 I interviewed award-winning engineer/producer Al Schmitt. He discussed the sonic achievements inside the RCA studios in his 1960-1966 staff position. In April of 1960, Schmitt engineered Presley’s first post-army film soundtrack for Paramount Pictures, G.I. Blues.

“Studio A and B were both the same size,” explained Al. “They were big rooms, and then there was also Studio C, a smaller room. You could mix in either room. The studios had very high ceilings and a nice parkay floor. Very nice. One of the things that made them so unique was that we had all those great live echo chambers. I think there were seven of them.

“There was very little overdubbing then. The nice thing about doing everything at one time was that you knew exactly what it was going to sound like. When you started layering things you were never sure. Then a lot of experimenting came in and it took longer and longer to make records and the expenses went up, ya know.

“RCA had a great microphone collection. Just fabulous. Great Neumann and Telefunken microphones. Great RCA microphones. Plus, they had the great, original Neve console. And they were just spectacular. They were so punchy. There was a punch and a warmth and still one of the best consoles ever made. They were using a lot of Scotch tap then. Dave Hassinger learned microphone technique and how to use them, the most important thing.

“There were no isolation booths. None whatsoever. But we had gobos, we would move around. Like a separator where you could isolate things. We did have some small rugs that we would put down sometimes under the drums and things, but no too much.”

Brian Wilson produced the Beach Boys’ “Help Me, Rhonda” at RCA, and the Byrds recorded a version of “Eight Miles High,” straying from the confines of the Columbia Records studio also located on Sunset Boulevard.

Andrew Loog Oldham who produced and managed the Rolling Stones during 1963-1967, recorded their monumental 1964-1966 albums at RCA with staff engineer Dave Hassinger.

“I was looking for a home to produce the Rolling Stones,” Andrew told me in a 2004 interview.

“When we walked into RCA and we were actually visiting studio B where the Brian Stone and Charlie Greene 45rpm for Atlantic was being cut in the best Bobby B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans fashion, including Bobby Sheen. And there was Jack Nitzsche, Gracia Nitzsche, Merry Clayton, Darlene Love, Charlie Greene and Brian Stone, and Cher. I have a total recollection of Cher. Not unlike the Vashti Bunyan vibe. The waif. Total ‘young girls are coming to the canyon.’ And there it is: Jack Nitzsche and the backing vocalists.

“When you walk into a situation like RCA, suddenly you have the physicality of it. And the physicality of it is so overwhelming that I can actually see it in front of me now. I can see the corridor, the control room on the right and the studio in front of us. And I’m watching that Nitzsche and Greene and Stone session and you know they’re doing ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’ but they’re doing it to ‘Yes Sir, That’s My Baby.’ (laughs). Which is great because it is something I am equally capable myself. It’s very Sidney Falco.

“Then I got taken into Studio A. Which was huge. I went, ‘this is it. We have our home.’ I met engineer Dave Hassinger in there, Of course, he was doing a session. Dave Hassinger looked like Los Angeles. When I produced the band at RCA, to make them feel comfortable, I shrunk and lit the room for them. I was doing set design even then. [Laughs.] There you are. I do dreams, not business. I think there are two tambourines on ‘Satisfaction.’ There’s a regular one that easily could have been Jack Nitzsche. But in the middle, it was too American for that part and that’s Brian Jones. And Jack plays piano. He was brilliant, man. Come on. The piano on ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ was just turnaround Charlie. The harpsichord on ‘Play with Fire’ is Jack.

“In 1964, Jack was the musical director of The T.A.M.I. Show. Why it works for me is the fear and loathing in Santa Monica. There you go. Come on man, it’s a magic moment. The Stones were successful and getting good, and -wait a minute-we gotta follow James Brown? Seeing Jack Nitzsche and Dave Hassinger. It was the film within the film. Steve Binder directed it and Bill Sargent produced. It was done in Electronovision like Harlow, with actress Carol Linley.”

“I met the Stones in 1964. Andrew Loog Oldham called me up,” volunteered Jack Nitzsche in a 2000 interview I published in New Times.

“He and the group had met Phil Spector and he and the Stones wanted to meet me. Brian Jones was in a three-piece suit and tie. It was at RCA studios and I was working with Edna Wright, Darlene Love’s sister. A little later, the Stones started working at RCA and it had a big impact on me. A whole new way of approaching records. I was used to a three-hour record date, and they were block booking 24 hours a day for two weeks, and doing what they wanted.

“I got them into The T.A.M.I. Show. I put the stage band together and did all the arrangements. I was the musical director. I had told the producer, Bill Sargent, the Stones were going to be big. I felt the Stones could close the show (following the Beach Boys and James Brown) . . . Bill said ‘James Brown is going to close the show.’ We all stood at the side of the stage watching James Brown do his act. People were standing and screaming for James. (Legend has it that James told the Stones, ‘You’ll never be able to follow this.’). Then the Stones came out and all the girls started crying. It was a whole new emotion!”

“If I were to try and define Jack’s overall contribution, I’d say he provided the melodic bond, the undercurrent to Keith and Brian’s layers of guitar brainwash,” stressed Andrew Loog Oldham.

“Jack was always the consummate pro. Jack gave us an understanding of tone. Which tone fits the universe? Jack understood microphone placement, where band members sat and instrument leakage. One other thing. Jack had a grasp of, and interest in sex. How to inject sex into the sound. That is a gift of understanding between you and your third ear.”

In 2002, I interviewed bass player Bill Wyman, a co-founder of the Rolling Stones.

“We had recorded at the Chess studio for a couple of dates, a few times. When we came into L.A. we went to RCA. We walked into the studio and it was too big. We were really worried. We were intimidated. We were used to recording in little places like Regent Sound. The studio was like this hotel room. And Chess wasn’t very big either. Suddenly we’re at RCA and it’s enormous. It was like Olympic (studio in England) later. But we solved that same problem. We thought, ‘God, we can’t record in here. We’re gonna get the wrong sound.’

“But Andrew had this brain wave and he put us all in the corner of one room, turned all the lights down, and just tucked us all around in a little small circle. And we forgot about the rest of the room and the height of the ceiling. And we just did it in this little corner. Dave Hassinger the engineer got all the sounds we wanted. Brian picked up all the instruments in the studio. The dulcimers, the glockenspiel, the marimbas. And I played some of that stuff as well. The RCA was our first studio that had four tracks. We were on two and three tracks before that. Jack Nitzsche was a sweet man.”

“I remember the sessions for Aftermath where “I Am Waiting” sprang from,” recalled Andrew in a 2006 interview with me.

“There’s incredible clarity to what they were doing. It was like a linear thing. Filmic. They were vivid, and the key to that vividness was Brian Jones. The organ on ‘She Smiled Sweetly’ by Brian is just amazing. I like ‘She Smiled Sweetly’ more than ‘Lady Jane’ and ‘Ruby Tuesday.’ ‘Sweetly’ was boy/girl, living on the same floor. Whereas, both those other songs have a ‘To the Manner Born’ quality to them. Trying to write and evoke. And Mick’s vocals…Remember: He’s an actor. He can’t sing. He acts the words. There you go. Between the Buttons and Aftermath, without a doubt quite a few harried moments. And we did it in Hollywood at RCA.

“Aftermath works. They wrote every song on the record. It’s like when you go see a stage show or see a movie that works, one of the keys is ‘besides the fact that’s it’s not me on stage, that’s me.’ So, there is a sense of humour with the songs and the records. But not a lot of the other stuff. My life would never be that grungy.

“The session for “Paint It Black” was not nearly done! Bill (Wyman) started futzing around with the pedals of the Hammond B-3 organ, basically imitating Eric Easton, (the Rolling Stones co-manager) who used to play organ on the pier at Black Pool. And Brian Jones’ sitar on the song. It was a visual instrument. The fun times were the work. We’re in Hollywood. Some of Hollywood came through the door and I’m one of the conduits draggng it in.”

“It’s hard to imagine Rubber Soul and Revolver coming to fruition in a Byrds-free world, just as it’s hard to imagine Arthur Lee and Love without Aftermath on the turntable,” suggested writer and novelist Daniel Weizmann in my 2014 book Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop, and Roll in Los Angeles 1956-1972.

“To dig the Beatles or the Stones in ’65 is to dig that they were arrivistes, class-conscious Euros with work visas, thrown into this New World of spinning neon and Dodge Dart Swingers, Boss Radio, and go-go dancers. In a very real sense, they are American groups, as in immigrant Americans, and the rock ’n’ roll melting pot was their Ellis Island.”

Further evidence can be found on “What to Do,” a selection on the Stones’ Aftermath. An homage to the Beach Boys, particularly their vocal harmonies. Mick Jagger initially remarked during that recording session to his producer, “What do you want me to do? Brian Wilson?”

“No place came to represent that kindred spirit more than Los Angeles,” concluded author and musician Kenneth Kubernik.

“Wheelman Sonny Bono met them at the airport on an early visit (one hopes in a splashy convertible) and chauffer’s them to where the action is. There’s the Whisky A Go Go on the Sunset Strip; De Voss for the latest in glen-plaid tailoring; supping at Martoni’s Trattoria in Hollywood, where Sinatra holds court with his fellow rat packers. More important, however, is their introduction to the fabled RCA Studios. It is here, in the capacious main room, under the watchful eyes (and ears) of engineer Dave Hassinger and arranger/orchestrator/sideman Jack Nitzsche, where that crude amalgam of Southside blues, youthful angst and an unerring instinct for seizing the moment in three giddy minutes, reaches its apogee.”

In his absorbing autobiography, 2Stoned, Andrew Loog Oldham wrote, “The confidence of the Rolling Stones grew in this time of recording in America, an experience that was then unique in and of itself for a British band. The Beatles took over America, but the Stones belonged to it. The Stones records could not have been done in New York in that particular time,” recounted Oldham, “because, like London, New York has seasons. That’s why we went to LA to record. LA placed a tone on the records we made there. Walking outside a studio anytime of the year into the LA sunshine was a trip.”

“The Rolling Stones also started a situation at our RCA studio where songs weren’t done in a standard four-hour session,” underscored engineer Al Schmitt. “They had the studio for weeks to do albums. That was new.”

In July 2025, photographer Gered Mankowitz emailed me about RCA. He was also very generous sending over photos he took of the Stones in his 1965 visit to my town.

“Being able to spend a few days in the legendary RCA studios in Hollywood with Andrew Loog Oldham and the Rolling Stones was an exciting and appropriate ending to my first ever trip to the USA, and one I will never forget!”

During a 2007 interview Andrew Loog Oldham and I conducted for MOJO magazine, he reflected on his 1966 bio-regional link to RCA studio endeavors with his band.

“Well, Aftermath and Between the Buttons, and in the U.S. Flowers were some of my finest hours as Mick and Keith reached the ability to compose whole albums for the Stones. The songs were just brilliant, only eclipsed by the idea that the Beatles, Ray Davies and, coming up through the ranks, Pete Townshend, wrote better. The media and the BBC would just not accept what damn fine writers Mick & Keith had turned into. Wonderful social commentaries that had their roots somewhere between vaudeville and the BBC World Service. I’m not just talking about the obvious, ‘Satisfaction,’ ‘Paint it, Black’ etc. I’m talking ‘She Smiled Sweetly,’ ‘Connection,’ ‘All Sold Out,’ ‘Back Street Girl. The laconic comments, the posed rancour, Mick and Keith’s songs at that time cut right through the picket fence and into the very life of then.

“I’d better stop now or Keith if he reads this might be reaching for the vomit bag.”

Can you imagine how different all those Rolling Stones sessions cut in Hollywood would be if they had booked their studio time back then in New York?

I shudder at the thought…

I went to RCA studios for a couple of recording sessions by the Monkees. My mother Hilda worked on Sunset Blvd. at the Columbia studios in Gower Gulch as a secretary and stenographer from 1962-1972. In 1966-1968 she typed scripts for Raybert Productions on the lot, producers of The Monkees.

I once delivered sheet music of a tune on my skateboard to engineer Hank Cicalo when the office messenger boy wasn’t around, and again for Colgems music supervisor Don Kirshner or Lester Sill, executives at Screen Gems Music Publishing.

In 2008 recording engineer Hank Cicalo reminisced to me about RCA.

“I had done some projects with arranger Shorty Rogers for Lester Sill. They were looking for an engineer to work with the Monkees, and my name came up. That’s how I fell into the project. I had a meeting with Lester and songwriters Bobby Hart, and Tommy Boyce. We went out and had lunch or dinner. They discussed what the project was about, and they were just about doing the pilot. Nobody knew what was going on. It was a TV show with a lot of music, and that’s all I knew about it.

“The one song I didn’t engineer at RCA was ‘Last Train to Clarksville,’ which was done by Dave Hassinger. I’d be booked for a month at a time, doing just the Monkees’ things. It was a lot of work. There was always this endless pressure of trying to do three or four musical numbers for each show while they were still shooting. We were working long hours at night, and whoever wasn’t shooting the next day could stay longer and do a vocal or this kind of thing or that kind of thing, working Saturdays and Sundays.

“For that period, because of the hours we were working at night, and also mixing, and also going through a very interesting change at that time, we would do a track on three-track or four-track, and then go from one machine to another machine, adding a vocal. We also went from four–track, to eight-track, to sixteen-track in that two-year period. It was the very beginning of multi-track, and we all progressed in a new medium as well. We were able to stack voices and double up voices without losing quality. It was a very interesting period.”

Chris Hillman of the Byrds told me his favorite record in 1965 was by the Rolling Stones’ “Get Off My Cloud.”

“You know why I like it? Brian Jones is on it,” praised Hillman in 2017. “The unknown factor of what made the Stones great was Brian Jones and nobody gives him credit. Yes, he was the pretty boy, however, as a musician, he was an unbelievably good musician. There is something about ‘Get Off My Cloud’ where they went from doing a Bobby Womack song ‘It’s All Over Now,’ straight R&B, to within six months to a year they are doing ‘Get Off My Cloud.’

“The record was recorded at RCA studios in Hollywood produced by Andrew Loog Oldham and engineered by Dave Hassinger, who engineered the Byrds when we cut a version of ‘Eight Miles High’ there.

“Hassinger did ‘Eight Miles High’ and got a little more of an edgy feel. The fact that this was the first time the Byrds had stepped away from the Columbia building. It’s very hard to tell the difference of the ‘Eight Miles High’ versions, but the one we did at RCA had a little bit more edge because we felt a little freer, and we hit a homer with it.

“Then Columbia said, ‘We will not accept this because it was not recorded at our studio.’ In those days that was the law. Recording in Hollywood then, and at our age at the time, and not being aware personally, I didn’t think about the environment being an influence. A studio was good anywhere and I didn’t care about the technical part if it was a comfortable place to work, and the engineer was quick and got sounds that were good. But it was in Hollywood at RCA where the Stones did their albums 1964-1966.

“So, when you came to record in those days, you didn’t go to Santa Monica or the San Fernando Valley, you went to Hollywood. That’s where the studios were. Back then, it was RCA, Gold Star, and Wally Heider. All those rooms made all these great records. Remember it was all analog. No digital. And Andrew Loog Oldham cut the Stones on four-track.”

In 2014 I spoke with Marty Balin from Jefferson Airplane. The band recorded Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing at Baxter’s, Crown of Creation, and Volunteers at RCA.

Marty commented about “Comin’ Back to Me” from Surrealistic Pillow.

“It just happened,” exclaimed Marty.” I left the RCA studios in Hollywood and went back to the motel I ran into Paul Butterfield and they had this joint and gave it to me. ‘Smoke this Marty. It’s the best stuff you’ll ever smoke!’ (laughs). So, I did. And I was in my room and I tell you I couldn’t find my legs. I got up and went to the guitar. Bam! In five minutes that song came out. So, I ran back to the studio, the session pretty much ended, they were cleaning up. Jerry Garcia was there, Grace and Jack Cassidy. And I said, ‘Hey guys. Play this with me.’ And I told the second engineer to turn on the tape and we did one take and that was it. And I didn’t think any more of it. Because you couldn’t play it live because it was so soft. I didn’t have any idea about that song lasting that long. It’s ended up in a movie and I’ve done it on my new album.

“I loved that RCA studio in Hollywood. We had a lot of studio time. The label would pull us off the road and say, ‘we need a new album.’ One time when I wrote ‘Today,’ Studio A had the Rolling Stones, Studio B was the Airplane and Studio C was Tony Bennett. The Stones and us wanted to meet Tony Bennett. So, I thought the best way I could meet him was write him a song. So, I wrote today and took it to the drummer who was working on that session. I gave him a tape of it. The engineers were great. Al Schmitt was top dog. He was great. He and his brother Ritchie were great people.”

##

From 1973-1980 I was at RCA on occasion, visiting the record division or inside the studios. I recall a 1973 college seminar at one RCA room with composer Henry Mancini. Hank invited a class of college students to a mixing session, coordinated by Grelun Landon, the well-respected head of public affairs at RCA Records.

I viewed the first live broadcast of Elvis’ Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite in January 1973, along with several RCA Records employees. Hearing Elvis Presley’s voice and that TCB band through those Altec 604E Super Duplex monitors inside RCA Studios!

I saw Elvis Presley in 1970 at the Inglewood Forum as a paying college student. Between 1972 and 1976, Landon arranged for me to attend or review five Elvis concerts, and meet Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker. I was also introduced to several of the TCB band members.

I had a previous Elvis Presley sighting on a Saturday afternoon during summer of 1967, when I was a teenager, in Dr. Morris Feldman’s Picwood dental office in West Los Angeles near the M-G-M studios in Culver City. Presley arrived in a Rolls Royce, flanked by two big guys. Dr. Feldman told me Elvis had broken a tooth during the filming of his 1968 movie Speedway.

I’ve always felt the reflective aspect of Elvis Presley’s 1970-1975 recording endeavors were influenced by Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh, (January 5, 1893-March 7, 1952), who was an Indian Hindu monk, yogi and guru whose teachings of meditation and Kiya Yoga reached millions of people through his organization Self-Realization Fellowship. His teachings of yoga provided unity between Eastern and Western religions. During 1925 in Los Angeles, he established an international center for SRF.

Yogananda’s life story, Autobiography of a Yogi, was initially published in 1946, and expanded by him in subsequent editions. It’s been a perennial best seller having sold millions of copies, and translated into many languages. George Harrison and photographer Henry Diltz would gift the book to friends and musicians.

In 1950, Yogananda held the first Self-Realization Fellowship World Convocation at the international headquarters in Los Angeles. He also dedicated the beautiful SRF Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, that has since become one of California’s most prominent spiritual landmarks.

It survived the January 2025 fires that engulfed and demolished Pacific Palisades. A barge and a gas-powered water pump were key to the sanctuary’s survival and everyone was evacuated from the premises.

By the late sixties, Elvis Presley was looking for a new spiritual and musical road map just before his memorable Elvis…’68 Comeback Special done at NBC studios. Presley had visited Self-Realization Fellowship center on Sunset Blvd. near the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California and devoured Autobiography of a Yogi from the movement’s founder, Paramahansa Yogananda. Presley and his wife Priscilla also had a friendship with Daya Mata of the SRF retreat in the Mt. Washington area in East Hollywood. Sir Daya Mata, born Rachel Faye Wright, was President and spiritual head of SRF from 1955 to 2010.

In Elvis and Me: The True Story of the Love Between Priscilla Presley and the King of Rock N’ Roll, by Priscilla, with contributions from Sandra Harmon, Priscilla mentioned her husband’s fascination with spirituality. Elvis made several trips to the Mount Washington retreat for sessions with Daya Mata hoping to attain the highest form of meditation.

“As Elvis’ fascination with occult and metaphysical phenomena intensified, [his friend] Larry introduced him to the Self-Realization Fellowship Center on Mount Washington, where he met Daya Mata, the head of the center,” Priscilla wrote. “She epitomized everything he was striving to be.” According to Priscilla, “Mata resembled Elvis’ mother, Gladys Presley.” Elvis would call her ‘Ma.’”

Jerry Schilling is the author (with Chuck Crisafulli) of Me and a Guy Named Elvis. Jerry was a longtime insider/adviser and trusted Presley friend. In 2007 I interviewed Schilling, one of the executive producers on HBO’s Elvis Presley: The Searcher. Until recently, he managed the Beach Boys.

“Elvis was a seeker,” reinforced Schilling. “He did go to the Bodhi Tree (a spiritual book store in West Hollywood that opened in July, 1970). There was a part of our group that did not like that. I was in the minority with [Presley’s hair stylist and spiritual adviser] Larry Geller. Elvis was open to show a spiritual and vulnerable side. He was into that. What I loved about it was that through his spiritual quest I got to know the man even deeper. We would go to SRF in Pacific Palisades and Mt. Washington in East Hollywood many times.”

 

© Harvey Kubernik 2025

 

Harvey Kubernik was an on-camera interview subject in 2007 for the M-G-M/Sony Pictures New Wave Productions Deluxe Edition DVD of Jailhouse Rock starring Elvis Presley. In 2008, Harvey penned the 5,000 word liner notes for the 40^th anniversary edition of Elvis! The ’68 Comeback Special.

Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015′s Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016′s Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017′s 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) is due for 2025 publication.

Harvey wrote the liner notes to CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.

During 2006 Kubernik spoke at the special hearings by The Library of Congress in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 he appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their Distinguished Speakers Series. Amidst 2023, Harvey spoke at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles discussing The Last Waltz music documentary. The New York City Department of Education is developing the social studies textbook Hidden Voices: Jewish Americans in United States History. Kubernik’s 1976 profile/interview with music promoter Bill Graham on the Best Classic Bands website “Bill Graham Interview on the Rock ’n’ Roll Revolution,” 1976, Best Classic Bands is included.

---