Priscilla Presley sets the record straight on life with Elvis

ASBURY PARK, N.J. — Priscilla Presley is setting the record straight.

Presley, the former wife of legendary rocker and actor Elvis Presley, is hitting the road, and she's bringing audiences the inside story on life with the King of Rock 'n' Roll.

"There are so many books that have been written about Elvis that (have) so many untruths, fables, myths, altered information, false information, that at this time I would like to clear a lot of that up," Presley said. "And, to be honest with you, I don’t want somebody else writing my book and doing the same thing to me that they’ve done with Elvis, putting their own perspective in. I want to be the one to do that.”

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Presley will be joined in conversation by E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg for "Elvis and Me — An Evening with Priscilla Presley" on Oct. 27 at the State Theatre in New Brunswick.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Elvis, Presley said, has to do with the beginnings of their relationship. The pair met in Germany while he was serving in the U.S. Army, and were married in 1967 when he was 32 and she was 21. But Presley denies speculation that it was her father who "really was pushing the relationship or pushing me to be with Elvis."

"When Elvis left Germany to come back to the States after serving his time in the Army, my father said, ‘Now let’s get back to our life,’ and that he was happy that he was gone," Presley said. "So it was that kind of a situation. Elvis kept in touch with me as I wrote him letters as well for two years, so my parents saw that there was something that was going on and it was more than just friendship.”

Presley also wants to clarify the story behind the opening of Graceland, Elvis' Memphis estate which has welcomed more than 20 million tourists since opening to the public in 1982. According to Presley, she was alone in trying to make that dream a reality.

"I was a loner in this," she said, "nobody backed me up."

The Presleys divorced in 1973, but since his 1977 death Priscilla has worked to keep Elvis' work and legacy in the public consciousness.

Most recently, that's involved the release of a series of albums on which Elvis' vocals are supplemented by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: If I Can Dream in 2015, The Wonder of You in 2016 and Christmas with Elvis Presley and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, released earlier this month.

"(That) is actually a dream that he always wanted, was to sing with a full orchestra," she said. "He loved that richness of that sound.”

An actress in her own right, Presley has appeared in the Naked Gun trilogy of films and spent years on the prime-time TV soap opera Dallas. As she hits the road sharing stories from her life, she reflected on what she learned from Elvis about the art of live performance.

“Elvis was nervous at every show, and he felt if you weren't nervous then you really didn’t care," she said. "He taught me that every audience is different. You cannot depend on an audience loving you. You have to win them over."

Elvis, Priscilla recounted, "would be spontaneous. He loved being spontaneous. He wouldn’t really stick to his set of music, he would sometimes go into something, a song that he would think of in the moment but wanted to do and the band had to be ready for it. But they pretty much knew him and knew how he would always maybe change the set around and to always expect the unexpected. So those little tips really, really helped me.”

And more than 60 years after Elvis shook global pop culture to its very foundations, Presley reflected on what aspiring artists of all stripes could learn from her former husband's example.

“Elvis wasn’t an overnight success," she said. "It didn’t happen the way maybe you would read it where he just came on the scene and that was it. Elvis worked high schools. He worked auditoriums. He worked at malls. He worked at tiny venues in the beginning. You look back and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I had no idea.’

"He was on the Louisiana Hayride, which would stop at malls or certain areas of a town, whether it be a park or somewhere. It’s (about) hard work and not giving up. You never know what the next day will bring."

Follow Alex Biese on Twitter: @ABieseAPP