Dr. George Nichopoulos - Who Killed Elvis? The King Is Dead! Hang The Doctor!
The King Is Dead! Hang The Doctor! By Stanley Booth
'Nick didn't kill Elvis. Why say he did? Laxatives killed Elvis. And ignorance.'--https://www.facebook.com/stanley.booth.948
As Dr. Nick and I drove out of Memphis, we passed one of the green and white traffic signs with a guitar pointing the way to Graceland and the likeness, sideburns clearly outlined, of Elvis Presley. Dr. Nick, driving a yellow Cadillac that Presley had given him, looked out at the cold spring rain. "For a long time," he said, "I didn't realize the full extent of the part I was playing in this thing."
We were going to Aston, Alabama, to spend a few days with Dr. Nick's mother. It was the first chance we had found to talk since the Tennessee State Medical Examiners' hearing, several weeks earlier, where Dr. Nick had been charged with misprescribing to twenty patients, including Elvis Presley.
"One day Father Verona came to my office," Dr. Nick said. The Reverend Father Nicholas Verona, priest of the Greek Orthodox church attended by Dr. Nick and his family, has known Dr. Nick for twenty-five years. "He told me that he thought I was doing myself an injustice, I was doing my practice an injustice, my patients, my family, by being gone so much. That Elvis could have any doctor he wanted and didn't really need me all the time. That I shouldn't devote so much time to him. 'Why do you need to be there? Why can't it be somebody else on all these tours that you go on?'
"I gave it some serious thought. This was in 1975. The tours had changed, they'd really gotten laborious. It used to be that after a performance, Elvis enjoyed having some of the fans who would hang around the hotel come up and talk to him, just to get a feeling of people in that area and what they thought of the show and to feed his ego some. This would take two or three hours. I thought it was good for him, because it occupied his time, kept him happier. But some of the bodyguards resented it, because it meant that they had to stay on duty. If he'd get ready for bed, go on and have his supper, then they could go on out to the bar and do their thing.
"So, somehow we got away from doing that, and it really got to be a drag, because a lot of that responsibility after the show —— who's going to be with him and talk to him for two or three hours —— a lot of times would fall on me. And this was day and night after night. My nights were just horrible. I would go to bed when he'd go to bed, and then he might sleep two or three hours and wake up wide awake, and I'd have to go in and try to get him back to sleep. Then he might sleep two or three more hours, or he might sleep four or five hours. But the average was he'd sleep two or three hours and wake up, two or three hours and wake up. It was hard for me to fit into that schedule. On a tour, I had very little time when I could go and do anything. If he woke up and I wasn't there, he'd go bananas.
'Nick didn't kill Elvis. Why say he did? Laxatives killed Elvis. And ignorance.'--https://www.facebook.com/stanley.booth.948
As Dr. Nick and I drove out of Memphis, we passed one of the green and white traffic signs with a guitar pointing the way to Graceland and the likeness, sideburns clearly outlined, of Elvis Presley. Dr. Nick, driving a yellow Cadillac that Presley had given him, looked out at the cold spring rain. "For a long time," he said, "I didn't realize the full extent of the part I was playing in this thing."
We were going to Aston, Alabama, to spend a few days with Dr. Nick's mother. It was the first chance we had found to talk since the Tennessee State Medical Examiners' hearing, several weeks earlier, where Dr. Nick had been charged with misprescribing to twenty patients, including Elvis Presley.
"One day Father Verona came to my office," Dr. Nick said. The Reverend Father Nicholas Verona, priest of the Greek Orthodox church attended by Dr. Nick and his family, has known Dr. Nick for twenty-five years. "He told me that he thought I was doing myself an injustice, I was doing my practice an injustice, my patients, my family, by being gone so much. That Elvis could have any doctor he wanted and didn't really need me all the time. That I shouldn't devote so much time to him. 'Why do you need to be there? Why can't it be somebody else on all these tours that you go on?'
"I gave it some serious thought. This was in 1975. The tours had changed, they'd really gotten laborious. It used to be that after a performance, Elvis enjoyed having some of the fans who would hang around the hotel come up and talk to him, just to get a feeling of people in that area and what they thought of the show and to feed his ego some. This would take two or three hours. I thought it was good for him, because it occupied his time, kept him happier. But some of the bodyguards resented it, because it meant that they had to stay on duty. If he'd get ready for bed, go on and have his supper, then they could go on out to the bar and do their thing.
"So, somehow we got away from doing that, and it really got to be a drag, because a lot of that responsibility after the show —— who's going to be with him and talk to him for two or three hours —— a lot of times would fall on me. And this was day and night after night. My nights were just horrible. I would go to bed when he'd go to bed, and then he might sleep two or three hours and wake up wide awake, and I'd have to go in and try to get him back to sleep. Then he might sleep two or three more hours, or he might sleep four or five hours. But the average was he'd sleep two or three hours and wake up, two or three hours and wake up. It was hard for me to fit into that schedule. On a tour, I had very little time when I could go and do anything. If he woke up and I wasn't there, he'd go bananas.
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