Elvis' good friend Marty Lacker has put up the original drawing of Elvis' "Tree Of Life" for auction on Ebay.
This is how he describes it:
"One night in December, '64, unable to sleep, I started to doodle on some paper and without any preconceived thought started drawing a tree that I dubbed The Tree Of Life. It made me think of the relationships that Elvis had with the original guys in the Memphis Mafia and how much our lives were intertwined with him. Him being the glue that held us all together.
"One night in December, '64, unable to sleep, I started to doodle on some paper and without any preconceived thought started drawing a tree that I dubbed The Tree Of Life. It made me think of the relationships that Elvis had with the original guys in the Memphis Mafia and how much our lives were intertwined with him. Him being the glue that held us all together.
Without thinking I wrote his name vertically down the trunk of the tree and then wrote the names of the guys on the branches, using a letter from his name to be part of each of the guy's names. It had great meaning to me and I felt it would to him to.
I included one of his favorite sayings about the truth setting you free and to designate the different heritages of the guys, I had it written in english, hebrew and latin.
The next day I showed it to Elvis and it moved him so much that he had slight tears in his eyes. That gave me an idea for his Christmas gift from the guys that as Foreman, it was my job to come up with from the guys. We all chipped in and bought Elvis a beautiful big white Bible that I took to a caligrapher who I had draw the Tree Of Life on the front page in gold leaf.
We gave that to Elvis for Christmas '64 and he was thrilled with it. Then to make it even more personal I took the drawing to jeweler Harry Levitch and had him get an engraver to engrave the tree on a beautiful gold medallion that we gave to Elvis for his 30th birthday on Jan. 8, '65. He proudly wore that necklace every day for years.
The day after I showed my original drawing to Elvis, I made two xerox copies of it in case something happened to the original. The original drawing is no longer in existence and neither is one of the copies I made.
I have been saving the one existing copy of the original drawing in my photo album since '64 in plastic and I have decided to make it available to an Elvis fan by offering it here on ebay to the highest bidder. It will be accompanied by a Letter Of Authenticity that I will be happy to sign that will contain the information I have written above.
- Thank you, Marty Lacker.
Source: epgold.com