Elvis Presley, who would have been 90 this week, achieved so much success in his life but sadly struggled with a prescription drug addiction, which contributed to his untimely death at just 42.
With his worldwide fame, the King of Rock and Roll orchestrated a meeting with President Richard Nixon in the White House’s Oval Office at Christmas 1970, where he gave him an incredibly dangerous gift.
Seven years later, the star would later phone President Jimmy Carter in the last weeks of his life, while in much worse shape.
Carter, whose state funeral takes place today in Washington DC, later said: “When I was first elected President, I got a call from Elvis Presley. He was totally stoned and didn’t know what he was saying. His sentences were almost incoherent.”
The phone call occurred in the summer of 1977, shortly before the King died on August 16. Elvis was on barbiturates and had called the White House from his Graceland home to seek a Presidential pardon for a sheriff who he knew was having legal problems.
According to The New York Times, Carter recalled: “I talked to him for a long time, and I finally extracted that from him.” The President found himself trying “to ease Presley out of his paranoid delusions; calming his fears that he was being ‘shadowed’ by sinister forces and that his friend was being framed.”
Carter, who was the first former US President to live to 100, added: “I asked him what the sheriff’s sentence was, and he said that he hadn’t been tried in court yet. Well, I said, ‘Elvis, I can’t consider a pardon until after a trial and sentencing and everything.’ I don’t think he understood that.” Elvis continued to call the White House with the same intensity until he died, but the President never spoke to him again after that exchange on the phone.