Muhammad Ali Called Elvis On A Private Line. 53 Minutes. D
On the afternoon of June 10th, 1972, Elvis Presley received a phone call at his Las Vegas hotel suite that nobody knew about. Not his management, not Colonel Tom Parker, not the members of the Memphis Mafia who were stationed in the adjacent rooms. The call came through on a private line, a number known to almost no one.
The person calling was Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali was 30 years old in June 1972. He was between fights. He had beaten Joe Frazier in January, the fight of the century in reverse if you counted the first Frazier fight as the century, and was preparing for what would become a long run of title defenses.
He was also, in June 1972, in the middle of something that had nothing to do with boxing. He had been calling Elvis for a week through channels, through people who knew people. He had eventually gotten the private number from a mutual contact whose identity has never been confirmed. Elvis picked up.
The call lasted 53 minutes. This is known because Elvis’s personal assistant at the time, a woman named Sandra Pierce, who handled his private schedule and correspondence, logged the call in the daily record she kept. Date, time, duration, caller. She did not log the content. Sandra Pierce gave one interview about this to a journalist researching a biography of Muhammad Ali in the late 1990s.
She described the call, what she knew of it. She knew the duration because she checked the line status periodically. She knew it was Ali because Elvis told her afterward. She knew something of the content because Elvis spoke to her when the call ended. He came out of the bedroom where he’d taken the call.
He looked, she said, in a way she hadn’t seen before. Not happy. Not unhappy. Settled. Like a man who has been carrying a question and has just been given the beginning of an answer. He told her it was Ali. He told her Ali had called to ask about something. She asked what. Elvis thought for a moment.
“He wanted to know how I do it.” Elvis said. She asked what he meant. “How I go out there.” Elvis said. “Every night when I don’t want to.” Sandra looked at him. “Muhammad Ali.” She said. “Called to ask you that.” Elvis nodded. “He said everybody thinks he loves to fight.” Elvis said. “That it comes easy.
That he just walks in and takes over.” “He said it’s never easy.” “He said some nights he’s sick with it.” Sandra waited. “He said he heard I understood that.” Elvis said. The mutual contact who had given Ali the private number had apparently told him something about Elvis. Something specific. That Elvis understood the relationship between performing and not wanting to perform.
That Elvis understood what it meant to do it anyway. Elvis sat down. Sandra described what he said next as the most candid thing she had ever heard him say about performing. He said that what he had told Ali was this. That the wanting to and the not wanting to were not opposites. That both of them lived in him simultaneously.
Every night. That the not wanting to was not something to overcome. It was something to bring with you. Because the audience can feel the difference, Elvis said. Between someone who’s performing because they want to. And someone who’s performing because they have to. The have to is what they remember.
Sandra asked what Ali had said. Elvis almost smiled. He said. I’ll be thinking about that in the ring. Muhammad Ali and Elvis Presley met in person twice. Once in 1973 at a Las Vegas event. Once in 1975 at a charity function in Memphis. Both meetings were photographed. Both were brief. The photograph from 1973, the two men standing together laughing at something is one of the most iconic images of American celebrity from the 20th century.
Both men enormous. Both men in the specific gravity field of their own legend. What the photograph does not show is the 53 minute phone call that preceded it. Ali was asked about Elvis in many interviews over the decades. he spoke about him warmly and briefly. He called him a great entertainer. He said he had met him.
He never mentioned the phone call. The phone call was private. It had been made on a private line, and whatever Ali was going through in June 1972, whatever had made the most famous athlete on Earth pick up a phone and call a singer to ask how he does it was not something he shared publicly. What we have is Sandra Pierce’s account.
The log. The duration. And the thing Elvis said when he came out of the bedroom. The wanting to and the not wanting to are not opposites. Bring both of them with you. The have to is what they remember. Two men, different arenas, the same question. How do you go out there every night when you don’t want to? Elvis had an answer.
He gave it to Muhammad Ali on a private line for 53 minutes. And Ali went to the ring thinking about it.
