The Shirt Off Your Back

This lovely, slightly pensive photograph of Bon Scott was recently posted to my dad’s Facebook page, because it was likely taken at a Mount Lofty Rangers gig (my dad’s early/mid 70s country rock collective from Adelaide, South Australia that Bon was a part of).

It prompted some memories from people that were in the music community at that time; Carol who said she was looking for something to wear one night and Bon just gave her his denim jacket (she still has it) and then Neville, who said he and his girlfriend were at a Fraternity gig at Largs Pier in 1974 where Bon was wearing this same Elvis tee. They got chatting with Bon in the break, she told him she liked his t-shirt, he ripped the sweat-soaked t-shirt off and gave it to her - and went back on for the next set shirtless.

She and Neville went on to get married and here she is wearing the shirt off Bon’s back.

In case you ever needed a reason to love Bon Scott more, my dad - who remembers Bon wearing that t-shirt a lot - said ‘There you go. The type of bloke who would literally give you the shirt off his back. And TWO people who’d testify to the fact’.

Elvis was of course known for similar acts of generosity, only on a bigger scale, commensurate with the size of his bank account. You’ve probably heard the story of Elvis buying 14 Cadillacs in a single day and giving them all away, recipients included two policeman that were there.

Elvis buddy Diamond Joe Esposito described the day at the Cadillac dealership in Memphis: “We’re standing inside the dealership and Elvis looks outside and there’s this elderly black lady looking out the window at a two-door Coupe de Ville. Elvis sees her and she is appreciating the car. He comes out and starts talking to her. He says:

- “You like this car, huh”?

- “Oh, yes, yes, that beautiful car”!

Elvis says:

- “Would you like to have one of these”?

- “Oh! I could never buy one of those cars.”

Elvis tells her:

- “Just a minute”.

He goes back into the dealership, goes to the sales manager and says:

- “Give me the car keys.” - He comes out and says to the lady:

- “Ma’am, the car is yours.”

She just couldn’t believe Elvis just gave her that car. She was amazed, she just couldn’t believe it.

Elvis said:

- “It’s yours, enjoy it.”

“That’s the kind of guy he was,” Esposito said. “He liked to give people things he knew they couldn’t afford on their own.

Because he grew up poor, he never forgot that.” This story appears all over the internet but I’m afraid I can’t track it back to the source - although Diamond Joe wrote many books and gave many interviews so its likely true - here he tells the story of Elvis buying him a house.

Howard Massey, salesman at the dealership who claims Elvis spent over half a million dollars with him, also said Elvis would sometimes call him in the middle of the night to buy a Caddy - Massey once called the owner to check if it was OK and the owner told him to give Elvis his own front door key if he wanted it!

This photo shows Elvis (wearing the outfit known as The Silver Phoenix) and his posse, including girlfriend Linda Thompson and Joe Esposito, arriving at Madison Cadillac in Memphis to take care of a little business on their way to a show.

When Elvis invited Led Zeppelin to his home in 1974 they were all a bit too awestruck to know what to say. John Paul Jones complimented Elvis on his diamond encrusted watch, and Elvis suggested they swap - John’s was a $10 Mickey Mouse watch. The ice was broken, and they had a great night together. According to Led Zep’s security manager, Elvis was handing out jewellery and gifts - and cocaine - all night. As the party wound down and Led Zeppelin were getting ready to leave, Jerry Schilling, Memphis Mafia insider, recalls that Elvis, wearing a robe, said he wanted to do another swap and dropped his pyjama pants beneath his robe. Everybody cracked up, but no one gave him their pants.

He was also known to hand out his sweat-soaked scarves and the rings from his fingers at his concerts. He eventually travelled with his own personal jeweller, Lowell Hays, who accompanied Elvis to concerts with a suitcase loaded with expensive ‘baubles’ for Elvis to hand out to women in the front row. Lowell describes a night in North Carolina where Elvis asked him to bring the case onstage, and handed out the entire collection including solid gold rings and diamond necklaces. Lowell said after the gig, when they were zooming away in the car, he told Elvis: “I’m embarrassed. I just wish I hadn’t been here and then you wouldn’t have lost all that money. You just gave away all that money out there! … And he looked at me and he laughed that little Elvis laugh he has and he said, ‘You know what, Lowell? I’m going to have to sing five minutes more tomorrow night to pay for it.’”

This incredible diamond and ruby 14 carat ring was gifted to a fan at a 1975 Hofheinz Pavilion gig in Houston and recently went under the hammer at Omega Auctions.

Kurt Cobain gave his friend, Hole drummer Patty Schemel, this Foxes t-shirt from out of a pile of his clothes on the floor, because they bonded over ’1970s and 1980s teen angst cult movies’ together and had watched and loved ‘Foxes’ (oh my god, me too!) and so he wanted her to have it. Kurt wore it in this photoshoot with Anton Corbijn that resulted in this enduring iconic Nirvana image. Patty just sold the tee at auction for around eight grand a couple of months ago.

The pile of clothes on the floor story reminds me of the time when I was in NYC, doing a few shows and also trying to buy up a few cool vintage pieces on the cheap for my vintage fashion business The Ladies Collective, aka TLC (perhaps a few loose connections to Elvis’ TCB there) anyways, I was visiting my soul-sister number-one Lori Eastside in her Alphabet City warehouse apartment, bitching a little about how frustrating it was to see all these great clothes for TLC everywhere I turned but I was too broke to buy ‘em, when she says ‘Oh you want some vintage clothes? I got you girl” and leads me out of her apartment and up a couple of flights of stairs, to the unlocked door of the empty apartment where Jack White and Karen Elson had lived until very recently. They had moved in a hurry and left behind everything they didn’t want, which was literally piles of cool clothes, books and bits’n’pieces. Lori told me to grab whatever I wanted, it was all going to charity or trash anyway.

I filled a bag to bursting with all kinds of discarded glamour, and a mysterious broken and outrageously heavy guitar pedal that I just couldn’t leave behind, but as I was heading to Europe and would have to carry it all with me for weeks, I had to be somewhat sensible about how much I took. I really enjoyed dragging Jack White’s guitar pedal around with me for ages, until I finally realised it needed to belong to someone that actually knew how to tinker and make it work, and so I moved on without it.

There’s something lovely and psychically connecting about owning something that belonged to somebody else. I somehow ended up with a beautiful soft, ripped-up, pink and blue stripy 80s t-shirt that I had admired on the man I am now married to long before we got together, and it always felt so right and nice when I wore it. I steal his clothes all the time now - I don’t even own a coat cos I just wear his.

I think I have to send Neville a message and ask if his wife still has Bon’s Elvis t-shirt tucked away somewhere and wants to give it to me ….

As the Red Hot Chilli Peppers have been wisely yelling at us for a very long time, give it away, give it away, give it away now….

Lo x

PS: Jenny Valentish wrote a great piece about prophetic lyrics this week, including songs from the amazing Grace Cummings and me! Read it here:

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