Replies

[King Of Gracelan...]

"On the drums from Dallas, Texas, is hard-working Ronnie Tutt", is how Elvis usually introduced Ronnie on stage, but I don't think that any kind of introduction is really necessary for our readers.
Not only did he play drums for Elvis from 1969 to 1977, but he's also a highly regarded session-drummer that has worked with the likes of Neil Diamond, Gram Parsons, Jerry Garcia and Elvis Costello.

Can you tell us a little about your background?
I started at about the age of three, singing to the record player and the radio, you know.
My mother put me in dancing lessons right away.
I started playing instruments...
I think my first instrument was a ukelele, which is a great little instrument.
And I went from that to four-string guitar and violin.
When I started school, I started playing trumpet, and I played trumpet all the way to my senior high school.
I switched over to drums when I was 17 or 18 years old.

What appealed you in playing drums?
I'd been a dancer all my life.
When I was three I started dancing.
So the rhythm of everything was more important to me than the melodic.
I was frustrated with playing trumpet and guitar, because I wanted to express myself rhythmically.
It was a very easy transition.

[King Of Gracelan...]

Was there a big difference between playing in Vegas and playing on the road?
Big, big difference.
All the difference in the world.
He tolerated, and only tolerated, playing in Vegas.
The first year was great, and then he became very bored.
He was like a caged animal.
Because he had this penthouse at the top, and he was like "the prince in the tower", you know.
It was very difficult for him to do that.
He was too much of a free spirit to be hung in one place and having to do two shows a night.
It was very difficult for all of us.

Then why did he keep himself "caged" so much?
Well, that was only a rumour, but there we go back to the Colonel again.
The rumour came about in the last few years that the Colonel had tremendous gambling debts in Vegas, and that he constantly manipulated Elvis to come back again and again.
I do know in the last year or two that we played Vegas, that Elvis insisted that he only do one show a night.
Which was realistic, and which is what he should have done in the first place all those years.

How did the playing itself in Vegas compare to playing on the road?
There was a big difference in the reaction.
If you think about it: we're doing a dinner-show in this big showroom, and there's plates clattering, and there's waiters dropping glasses, and people sipping their soup and eating their steaks, and there's a clamour going on, and he's out there singing his heart out, we're trying to reach out to these people.
The second show was a big step up, because all that was gone.
People were sitting there ready to be entertained.
It had a better concert feeling, but it was nowhere compared to the major arenas of the United States, where thousands of people had payed money to sit undevidedly and watch every move we made.
You can image the difference in response from people.

Before this interview we discussed that Opening Night in August 1974, where he did a totally different set-list, got disappointed with the feedback and went back to the old format one day later.
Do you think the reaction would have been different if he had tried this on the road?
Possibly, but he was a very impetious man.
He'd try something once and if he didn't like it, it was gone.
He was very impatient when it came to this kind of thing.
He was so secure in one way, and yet very insecure - almost like a small boy - in other ways.