Elvis was back on tour for a 12-day run featuring 14 shows, starting on June 9, 1972, in New York at the famous Madison Square Garden. Four shows were performed over three days, with two on June 10, 1972. For each performance, the 20,000-seat arena was sold out. Up to this point, no one had ever sold out Madison Square Garden for four consecutive performances.
On arriving in New York on June 9, 1972, Elvis gave a press conference at the New York Hilton Hotel. Now looking tanned and trim, wearing a powder-blue suit, he revealed the gold belt he was wearing, which was captured by news cameras and then added to the edit of the new movie.
When asked about war protestors and other politically sensitive issues, he politely tells the reporters that, “I’m just an entertainer and would rather keep my personal views about that to myself”. When asked about the comparison between the criticism he faced in the 1950’s for his stage gyrations compared to what the current crop of young rockers were doing, he good naturedly responded with, “I was tame to what they do now. I didn’t do anything but just jiggle.” As in previous press conferences, he was also asked about his return to live performances. It was a confident and assured press conference.
One of the reporters, Chris Chase, wrote an account of the show later that evening describing the scenes. “A girl sitting next to me in the Garden that Friday night said she was 30, and she’d loved Elvis since she was 13. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and talking to a female reporter who declared that if she’d ever had an affair with Elvis, “I’d write about it and write about it and write about it.” Way down on the floor below, a large-breasted girl in a see-through pink halter traversed the aisles slowly and proudly, stopping conversations in mid-sentence.” When Elvis took to the stage, Chase said, “He looked like a prince from another planet.” At the end of the show, she wrote, “When Joe DiMaggio hit a baseball, his grace made the act look easy and inevitable; whether it turned into a pop fly or a home run, it was beautiful, because he did what he did so well. Friday night, at Madison Square Garden, Elvis was like that. He stood there at the end, his arms stretched out, the great gold cloak giving him wings, a champion, the only one in his class.”
Both the afternoon and evening performances on June 10, 1972, were recorded by RCA. The original album, “As recorded at Madison Square Garden”, was from the evening show. The album would achieve multi-platinum status, reaching number 11 in the US and number 3 in the UK. The recording of the afternoon show was not released until 1997. Both were then released as a package named “A Prince From Another Planet”, which also featured a DVD containing over twenty minutes of decent quality amateur footage captured from the afternoon show. The package also featured the full press conference.
