This Late 70s Star Got a Call From Elvis Days Before His Death, but His Wife Told Him Not to Tell Anyone

Elvis Presley always had the air of mystery reserved for the most iconic and revered celebrities, but his final days were even more opaque and, in a way, bittersweet. His late-career struggles were well-documented, and his time at his Memphis estate, Graceland, became more necessary and restorative than fun and relaxing. During that time, Presley was also reaching out to fellow musicians whom he believed could help him out of his slump.

And although he was encouraged not to tell anyone about his phone call with the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll just before his death, one of the musicians Presley called in his final days was Leo Sayer. Yes, the Leo Sayer behind late 1970s feel-good hits like “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” and “When I Need You”.

Elvis Presley Wanted Leo Sayer’s Energy, the Singer Said

Paths cross in mysterious ways, and the journey Leo Sayer took to get on the telephone with Elvis Presley was no exception. In the late 1970s, the “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” singer was in recovery from taking a fall on stage when he met an ex-football player-turned-masseuse. The former athlete told Sayer he worked with famous clients but wouldn’t name names. “Then, one day, he handed me the phone, and the person at the other end said, [imitates Elvis’ voice] ‘This is Elvis Aaron Presley, and you make me feel like dancing,’” Sayer recalled in a 2026 interview with The Guardian.

Sayer thought the person on the other end of the line might have been Terry O’Neill, a photographer friend of Sayer’s who was notorious for his impressions. “I said, ‘Is this Terry?’ And he said, ‘No, sir, this is Elvis Aaron Presley.’ He says, ‘Well, Michael [the masseuse] tells me you’re a great guy, and I’m going through a bit of a hole myself in my life, and things ain’t so good. I’ve just got me and my girlfriend here, and I would like you to come to Graceland and hang out. Let’s see what we can do together because I love your songs, man. I think you could be a good force of energy for me.”

The British pop singer said he and Presley spoke for about half an hour. “He was very humble and very sweet,” Sayer recalled. “He was really enthusiastic about, ‘Give me some of your energy.’”

The Pop Singer Heard the News Before He Ever Made It to Graceland

If the story had ended there, Elvis Presley and Leo Sayer’s phone call might have been a genuinely sweet example of an old head joining forces with a musician in the younger generation. But the news that broke just days later turned their half-hour chitchat into something more uncanny, almost as if Presley knew his energy was running dangerously low. Sayer told The Guardian that before he ever made it out to Memphis, Tennessee, to hang out with Elvis and his girlfriend, he heard the news that Elvis died.

Interestingly, Sayer recalled how his then-wife, Janice Lisseter, advised him not to tell people about his phone call. “She said, ‘They’ll think you are a crank. Or name dropping.’ So, I started to think it didn’t happen. That I’d made it up.”

Any remaining doubts about the interaction vanished seven years later, when Sayer was having dinner with record producer David Foster and Ginger Alden. Alden was the girlfriend Elvis spoke about over the phone. Sayer said, “Ginger told me the last thing Elvis said before she found him in the morning dead. She said, ‘He was singing your song and saying he was going to meet Leo and couldn’t wait.’”

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images