“It shined a light on what truly mattered to him – to perform,” Hehir spilled. “And I think that frustration of seven years of not being in front of a live audience and instead, just being on movie sets doing increasingly more mediocre films – a light bulb went off over his head. He wanted to do something for himself, not for his management. Not for movie audiences. He wanted to get back to the Elvis he wanted to be.”
In 1968, the “Burning Love” singer staged it return to the stage in his NBC special. However, it nearly didn’t happen. “He almost didn’t leave his dressing room,” Hehir claimed. “He was terrified of going back out in front of an audience, and he always had horrible stage fright. This goes back to the days of Ed Sullivan and the early days of performing in his career. He always had tremendous anxiety about going out and performing in front of people. But then, once he got out there, that’s where he was the most comfortable in the world, on a stage with a microphone in his hand.”