It is only when Priscilla Presley had nine years of relationship with Elvis Presley that she was able to see him play live for the first time during the recording of his Special return 68, which broadcast on NBC on December 3, 1968.

“You see all the girls lined up, all the fans going crazy, and I’m watching it going, ‘Wow,’” Priscilla, 79, recalls to PEOPLE. “And he would take his scarf off his neck and he would give it to someone right next to the stage, and they would go crazy. It was such a treat. It was a trip, a great trip.”

The taping of the special occurred at a major crossroads in Elvis’ career, as the new Netflix documentary explores. The Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley (released Wednesday, November 13).

“He was nervous because he hadn’t appeared (on stage) in so long,” says Priscilla. “People would think, ‘How can he be nervous? It’s Elvis Presley.’ He was very nervous, but he was doing his homework. He was going to rehearse and rehearse.”

Before the recording, Elvis – who became the biggest music star on the planet in the mid-1950s – had not performed in front of an audience for seven years, in part because of his enlistment in the army In 1957. training, Elvis served in Germany, where he first met 14-year-old Priscilla.

After returning from the army in 1960, Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parkersigned him to a multi-year movie studio deal. He became increasingly frustrated with the scenarios presented to him.

“One day he was reading a script and he threw it across the room and said, ‘I’m not doing that,'” said Jerry Schilling, Elvis’s longtime friend. “The Colonel loved Elvis and vice versa, but Elvis outgrew the Colonel.”

Priscilla says he “wanted to be in big movies, not the stupid movies he loved Girls! Girls! Girls! It wasn’t Elvis.”

“The colonel didn’t really understand it,” she said. “It was hard for Jerry and me, but you couldn’t say anything to the Colonel. You just had to keep quiet.”

In a scene from the documentary, Priscilla and Schilling watch footage of Elvis singing the children’s song “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” in the 1967 musical Double problem.

“For me it’s a crime”, Priscilla said in the clip. “It’s a crime. To put him in this situation and sing this song. This made him a laughingstock. And he knew it.

Although Parker tried to get him to do a family Christmas special, Elvis insisted on a return to his rock roots.

“The Colonel came from the old school where he wanted Elvis to be Bing Crosby doing a Christmas special, rather than doing sexy gospel rock and roll, like the ’68 special,” says Schilling.

The special became NBC’s highest-rated show of the year, much to Elvis’ surprise.

“He didn’t know what the public was going to think of it,” Schilling says. “It wasn’t until we saw it live on television with the rest of America that he realized it was good. Phone calls started coming in from special people he knew, and it was the first time he really relaxed and knew it was good. He was beaming in that moment. That led to everything afterwards.”

Elvis now devoted himself to live performances and gave hundreds of other concerts before his death at the age of 42 in 1977.

“I’m convinced that I lost my friend at a young age to creative disappointment. I know that,” Schilling says. “This creative disappointment caused other problems. But when faced with a challenge like the Special ’68he was going to train like Muhammad Ali. He would lose 20 pounds. »

In the documentary, Priscilla says: “I really want kids of this generation to know why he was the king of rock ‘n’ roll.”

The Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley is streaming now.