Elvis Presley was one of the most famous people in the world during his lifetime, but this didn’t stop him from feeling overwhelmingly insecure. Elvis’ relatively sheltered life led to an inability to read bad reviews. He also felt insecure in his personal life. Many people who knew Elvis well said he lacked the confidence he seemed to exude in public.

Elvis Presley was surprisingly insecure

Elvis was extremely close to his mother. After her death, he felt he couldn’t fully trust the people around him.

“He was suspicious of everybody around him, even including his own dad,” Elvis’ former girlfriend, Elisabeth Stefaniak, said in the book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick.

He desperately wanted to come across as tough and knowledgeable, and he felt bad that he lacked the life experience some of his friends had. This led to some ridiculous situations, like when he tried to break up a fight or lied about his heroics on a police ride-along.

“Elvis was very insecure,” said Joe Esposito, a member of Elvis’ Memphis Mafia. “He knew nothing about the street. All he knew about was what he read in books.”

In general, he seemed unable to relax.

“He paced the floor all the time,” said Bill Morris, another friend of Elvis. “Just like you see a tiger walk a cage. Very ill at ease.” 

When Elvis felt embarrassed or disrespected, he could fly into a dangerous rage. He was known to fire a gun indoors if he felt upset. His friends warned the people around him to avoid embarrassing him in any way.

“As soon as the show was over, he was in our dressing room,” said Mryna Smith of the Sweet Inspirations, one of Elvis’ backing groups. “His guys would stay over in his dressing room, and he would just come in and sit down and talk about everything, his love life, everything. We had our arguments, but he couldn’t stay mad for long, and if you went to him in private, you could get him to do just about anything. Just don’t embarrass him — because he was so insecure, I think that was just [his nature].”

His friend said he never seemed to feel at ease on stage, either

Elvis’ magnetism on stage helped build his enormous fan base. People who knew him well said he didn’t seem entirely at ease in front of an audience, though.

“I don’t think he was ever really at ease onstage,” said Joe Guerico, Elvis’ musical director. “He would be floating, and then every time he felt an insecure moment, he would turn around and do a ha-ha to somebody, go to Charlie for a minute or somebody else — but he would always come back to home base.”

Guerico didn’t think the nerves took away from Elvis’ gravitas as a performer, though.

“Charisma makes a star,” he said. “Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Streisand — he walked out there, and there was a whole other feel. He could walk across the stage and not even have to open his mouth.”

Elvis Presley’s friends said he could also make people feel insecure

Perhaps because he knew the feeling of insecurity so well, Elvis was able to invoke it in others. His bodyguard, Sonny West, recalled a time Elvis made Priscilla Presley pack her bags for complaining Elvis didn’t spend enough time with her.

“At this time he is helping her pack, throwing her clothes out of the closet onto the floor,” West recalled in the book Elvis, What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “Well, she is all packed and he walks in and says to her, ‘Now unpack, goddamn it, you are not going anywhere.’ He told us later that ‘women can get you by the balls, you know.’”

West said he was also familiar with this sort of treatment. 

“He could make a person feel very insecure with that sort of stuff; he did it with us all the time, making you think that you were not in as tight as you might have thought you were  … It was a reverse psychology thing.”