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[King Of Gracelan...]

Glen D. Hardin played in Elvis' 70s road-band for six years, tickling the ivories and arranging things like 'The Wonder Of You', 'Let It Be Me' and 'I Just Can't Help Believing'.
Before that, he was an in demand session-musician, arranger and songwriter, working with artists like Merle Haggard, George Jones, The Everly Brothers and Ricky Nelson.
After leaving Elvis in 1976, he has toured with Emmylou Harris, John Denver, The Crickets and, since 1997, with the ELVIS THE CONCERT show. In this interview we talked about his years with The King.

You started working for Elvis in February 1970.
What were your first impressions of him?
The first time I met him and played at a rehearsal, I enjoyed his company very much.
He was a lot of fun, very friendly.
We didn't work very hard, we just played and laughed, told jokes...
He seemed like a very ordinary fellow.
I enjoyed his company a lot.

Musically speaking, did he contribute a lot of ideas?
At that time I didn't notice that much 'cause we just did some of his old stuff.
But from then on, yeah, he contributed a whole lot.
Most of the time he knew an awful lot about what he wanted, and he was very clear about things.
He was especially good at working with singers.
He left a lot of orchestration work to me, and I did that the way I wanted it.
It was very easy to work with him.

It's been said that he had difficulty taking criticism...
Well, I don't remember ever criticizing him outright! (laughs)
But no, I don't know, I don't think he was like that.
I think he could take direction very well.
As a matter of fact, when he did all those movies, he was known to be very cooperative.
You know, just do the job as best as he could.