Interview with George Nichopoulos (Dr. Nick) | Elvis Presley's doctor

Dr. George Nichopoulos, known simply as Dr. Nick, talks with Andrew Hearn (2007) about his time with Elvis Presley.

Andrew Hearn: Okay, let's start from the beginning. When did you very first meet Elvis?

Dr. Nick: George Klein's girlfriend (Barbara Little) worked in my office around 1967. I was on duty one Sunday when I got a call saying that Elvis had been riding horses at the Circle G Ranch and that he was saddle sore.

AH: So, you made the trip out to Graceland?

Dr. Nick: No, I went all the way up to the damn ranch, three times! I went all the way out there to take a look and he asked if I wouldn't mind stopping by Graceland to take a look at his Grandma. I said that I was kinda on call but he insisted, saying that it'd only take a minute. When I dropped by the house, I learned that he'd called ahead asking if I could go back out there because he'd forgotten to ask me something.

AH: It's a good few miles from Graceland isn't it?

Dr Nick: Yeah, about eight or ten miles, it's a pretty good drive. Anyway, I asked one of the maids in the kitchen if she could get him on the phone so I could talk to him, but she said he wanted to talk to me personally. So I go back out there.

AH: It must've been pretty important to get you back there.

Dr. Nick: No. I don't recall what he asked me, something off the wall. I think he just wanted to check something. But then he wanted me to stop by the house again on the way back. So, I got back to Graceland and they said Elvis had called and he'd forgotten to ask me something. I went back a third time.

AH: What did he want?

Dr. Nick: Nothing.

AH: So what do you think the reasoning was behind asking you to drive out there three times?

Dr. Nick: He just liked having new people around, just someone new to talk to. He'd get tired of the same people, some of the guys. He'd get tired of their conversations too. He loved to talk about a lot of things. They'd carry three of four lockers full of books on tour - just full of books. Sometimes he may not have touched any of them, but if he wanted to read, he wanted to read and he had to have them. He was very well read.

AH: What happened after your hectic day running to and from the ranch?

Dr. Nick: I saw him the next day.

AH: He called again did he?

Dr. Nick: Yeah (laughs)

AH: When did you actually become his personal physician?

Dr. Nick: Well, as soon as he started touring he wanted me along. I told him that I just couldn't do it because I knew what would happen to me as a doctor if I did. I wouldn't be able to continue with my practice, get more schooling & do all the things I needed to do.

AH: But you went along in the end.

Dr. Nick: Yeah, and a few times he got pissed off and tried to fire me. I told him that he couldn't fire me because I didn't work for him.

AH: You were never on the payroll?

Dr. Nick: Never on the payroll. When I went on the tours we figured out a formula because the other doctors in my office were getting jealous, they thought it was all a vacation. We figured out what I probably would have made if I'd have stayed at home for the two weeks, three weeks or a month, and then Elvis would pay me that amount. I would then give it to them (the other doctors).

AH: So, your boss was happy enough with the arrangement to let you go on tour?

Dr. Nick: Right.

AH: And you looked after just Elvis?

Dr. Nick: No, a hundred and fifty people.

AH: What kind of thing were you treating?

Dr. Nick: It depended on what state we were in and what the season was. It could be flu, diarrhoea, vomiting to venereal disease. We had one guy on the tour, Felton Jarvis, who had a kidney transplant. Before he had the transplant I went along and did dialysis with him. I had to do a lot of different stuff just for Felton Jarvis.

AH: Was it difficult to handle all those people?

Dr. Nick: The worse thing about it is that they were all night people. They slept during the day, they came alive and got sick at night.

AH: And I guess that as soon as you came off the tour, you had to fit right back in to your normal hours at the practice?

Dr. Nick: Right, it was demanding. When we were home I'd still see Elvis probably five or six days out of the week. Every night on the way home I'd go by his house just to check on him or just to sit and talk. He loved to talk.

AH: I want to ask you about the efforts made by doctors in Vegas to help Elvis shed some extra pounds. How did that work?

Dr. Nick: They had figured out a way for him to lose weight by putting him to sleep for three weeks at a time, just waking to take liquids. At the end of it he'd gained ten pounds!

AH: A good rest but not much of a diet! What, in your opinion, was the most serious threat to Elvis' health? Many fans would say it was his intake of drugs.

Dr. Nick: Some fans are really ignorant of what really went on. Elvis had a colon complaint where he was born without a nerve supply to the colon and small intestine. A major problem was that nothing could move through the intestine because he didn't have the nerve to force it through. So, Elvis' colon was just getting bigger and bigger, it was simply huge at the time of his autopsy. Elvis asked why part of his colon just simply couldn't be removed. It was this problem that caused his big stomach. We talked to two or three doctors, but because it was Elvis, they just wouldn't do it. It wasn't really being done that much in the '70s and they were scared to do it. Today there wouldn't be a problem. They wouldn't think twice about it. It was serious because when you get a build up of material in the gut it can get septic. You might survive, or you may die by the time the bacteria hits the blood stream. This was the reality of one of the illnesses that he had.

Elvis Presley, Lisa Marie, Priscila Presley, Dr. George Nichopoulos (Dr. Nick), with Dr. George Nichopoulos's wife Edna.

AH: What caused Elvis' voice to slur on stage?

Dr. Nick: There was one time when I went to Vegas or Palm Springs when Elvis got mad at me and he cussed me out and we parted ways. He went out there and got on some heavy stuff. This wasn't something that he did that often.

AH: I assume this stuff wasn't coming from a proper doctor right?

Dr. Nick: I don't know where he was getting it from, not that kind of thing anyway. Elvis called me everything imaginable and another doctor went on the next tour. The new doctor changed the medicine around that I was giving him and the stuff that he gave him was a heavy tranquilliser. The problem was that it had a side effect that would drop your blood pressure and last a long, long time. It could just be a few hours, or it could last twenty-four hours. Elvis just couldn't wake up. He'd go out there and he was still groggy and half asleep. He couldn't do his shows and he couldn't move.

AH: Did the Colonel or Vernon intervene?

Dr. Nick: The Colonel and I were not real close but he called me and asked if I could rejoin the tour because things had gotten all screwed up. I said that I wasn't going to but if Elvis wants to call me to take back the things he said, then I might consider it, I just didn't know. Elvis did another bad show that night so the Colonel called me again and told me that I had to go back because the shows were getting terrible. Elvis was screwing things up, he couldn't remember what he was doing on stage. The Colonel said that they needed me to go back and figure out what was going on. So, Elvis did finally call and he told me he was sorry for what had happened. He asked if I'd go back, so I did. I found out that if he didn't use that particular drug, there was no problems with the shows. This was the only time, as far as I know, when he'd have such problems on stage. I really wanted to quit because my family was on my butt because I wasn't at home. My regular patients were on my butt saying that I was taking care of Elvis and not taking care of them.
AH: But you chose to go back on tour with Elvis, to sort out the damage done by the other doctor?

Dr. Nick: You know, when Elvis was in the hospital he did well. He got all the attention he wanted. The only thing he didn't get was the drugs because everything had to go through the nurses at the hospital. I decided that we needed to do this when he was at home too, so I told Elvis that I wasn't going to give him medication through other people and that I was going to keep his medicine. We then moved a nurse into Graceland telling Elvis she was there to look after his Grandma. If Elvis needed something during the night, the protocol was left with her. I never left anything with him.

AH: Did you ever come across anything given to Elvis by the feel-good doctors in Vegas or Los Angeles?

Dr. Nick: There was only one good thing that I learned through going to Elvis' house one time. I'd gone up to the bathroom to collect something that he'd left up there next to the sink. I found three bottles of pills, a thousand pills in each bottle. There were uppers, amphetamines, valium and codeine. When I threw those pills away Elvis got pissed off. I disposed of them right down the commode. Just think how hard it is to treat a grown man just like a child. You needed to be there to give him medicine when he needed it. He was an adult and he should have been able to read the label himself. It took a long time for him to buy that.

AH: Would you say that part of the problem was Elvis' addictive personality?

Dr Nick: Oh yeah, there was one time when Elvis came back from California and was almost dead. We took him straight from his plane to the hospital. Another doctor out in California was giving him shots of Demerol, which is a painkiller. His body had gone into shock and I had to detoxify him in the hospital.

AH: If there were such signs of polypharmacy (a drug cocktail), why wasn't he admitted more often?

Dr. Nick: I admitted him several times into the hospital and the term polypharmacy means nothing. You take any cancer patient walking the street, almost any patient of any kind with a major disease; and they take six, eight, ten medications.

AH: But Elvis' dosages were getting larger because he was becoming immune to the effects.

Dr. Nick: No, I can't think of one drug where this would be a problem. Let me give you an example. His usage was heaviest when he was on the road because things were more important to him than at any other time with the shows. He was afraid that if he didn't sleep he wouldn't do a good show. He would come home off the tours and he may go a week, ten days, two weeks without taking a thing. If he was addicted, he couldn't do that. So, I don't think he was immune to anything.

AH: You're saying that Elvis was in control of his intake?

Dr. Nick: No, he wasn't in control, we were. When you're addicted to something you don't have any say so, you've got to have that drug. It's not something that you've got any mental control over. It's kind of confusing but yes, Elvis had an addictive personality, he would've loved it if somebody was there giving him something all the time.

AH: It must have got to the point where Elvis realised that he was in some kind of danger health wise.

Dr. Nick: Yeah, he did. But when you need something, you can't rationalise. I tried to get him to go to a clinic, but back in those days there weren't many around. I could only find one and that was in Arkansas.

AH: We hear about a whole series of drugs being given before and after each show.

Dr. Nick: Well, that's true. Elvis had a lot of trouble with arthritis and he could also suffer from a lot of disc trouble in his back and neck. We could actually predict that if he did a certain number on stage, then he'd hurt like hell afterwards. You know, he'd be snapping his neck around and doing a lot of gyrations. Doing a lot of karate stuff with his bad back. We'd have to treat all that just like any other series of sport injuries.

AH: You'd honestly say that everything you ever prescribed Elvis yourself was needed, nothing extra?

Dr. Nick: Yes, the only thing that wasn't needed was placebos.

AH: And they are?

Dr. Nick: The easiest way to make up a placebo is to break open a capsule, take the medicine out and put sugar in it, or salt, instead of the medication. So, that's the way we got around it. Otherwise, everything was given for a reason.

AH: Can you tell me a little about the racquetball venture?

Dr. Nick: We got Elvis involved in racquetball because we were trying to build up some courts in the United States, we were trying to use his name. Elvis didn't put any money into it, he just agreed for us to use his name. His Daddy wasn't happy with the whole thing from the beginning because he didn't know about it. It was the only business venture that Elvis got into that his father didn't have anything to do with. Vernon was not a businessman by any stretch of the imagination. So, one of the guys involved out in Palm Springs somehow found out that one of the other guys, who ran the business part of it, was getting paid and had got himself a car. The rest of us knew nothing about it. Well, he told Elvis about it, he didn't mention it to us, and so Elvis thought we were pulling something behind his back. His Daddy found out about it and told him to get out of the deal.

AH: So, Elvis never loaned you any money regarding the racquetball deal?

Dr. Nick: He put in around $100,000 at the very end of it because there were a lot of bills that occurred through him pulling out, a lot of bills that we wouldn't have had if he had stayed there.

AH: Can we lift the mood a little by you telling me your fondest memory of Elvis?

Dr. Nick: That may've been the time Elvis shot me (laughs). His Daddy had just been discharged from the hospital after having a heart attack. Elvis had made a trip out to the dentist's office and he'd asked him for some painkillers. He must've taken a couple of grocery sacks full. I told him that he wasn't going to have them so he started firing the gun. It was a wonder that his Daddy didn't have another heart attack. A bullet bounced off something in the room and I got burned across my chest.

AH: That sounds pretty terrifying. I bet you were worried there for a second.

Dr. Nick: Not as worried as Elvis was (laughs).

AH: I know all you guys got along great. Any other stories from on the road?

Dr. Nick: We scared the shit out of one of the guys one time. We gave him some red dye in a candy bar he was eating and when he urinated he thought he was dying, it was blood red. I was sitting there when he came in saying that he didn't want to flush the toilet until I'd seen what had happened. I told him to hang on until I'd finished on the phone, but I wasn't actually talking to anybody. He walked back and forth waiting. We had set him up by telling him that this was the way Felton Jarvis had gotten sick, by his urine going red, and he eventually lost his kidneys.

AH: You weren't too cruel to each other then (laughs). You have a funny story from New Years Eve, 1975, in Pontiac right?

Dr. Nick: You know, Elvis was so nervous that night. It was so cold that he was afraid his throat wasn't going to hold up. What with the weather and everything that was going on, he insisted that we fly his throat doctor in from Las Vegas. I just told him that I had a friend who was a throat doctor and that he'd take a look at him. We got him in to attend to his throat and Elvis never knew a thing about it. He would have killed me

AH: Just a regular doctor right? That's right (laughs).

AH: Well, I know your time is precious, thanks so much for meeting and allowing me to talk openly with you.

Dr. Nick: A pleasure, no problem.

Elvis' Doctor Speaks

By Gerald Posner | The Daily Beast | Aug. 14 2009

'I was so upset when Elvis died that I couldn't listen to his music for several years', 82-year-old Dr. George Nichopoulos, Elvis' personal physician, told The Daily Beast. 'I wouldn't listen, it just upset me so bad'.

I recently had a rare chance to talk to Dr. Nick, as he was called by Elvis and his friends. He gives few interviews since he's still angry at the press for feeding the 'witch hunt' that portrayed him as the original Dr. Feelgood. Dr. Nick spent a decade with Elvis at Graceland and on the road and 32 years ago this Sunday he was in the ambulance on the King's last trip to the Baptist Memorial emergency room. After Elvis was pronounced dead, Dr. Nick signed the death certificate. And he maintains, as he did from that day, that the King of Rock died of natural causes: a heart attack.

'No one understands that Elvis was so complicated', Dr. Nick said. 'I worked so hard just to keep things together and then they turned the tables on me after he died and decided I was to blame'.

Jerry Francisco, Memphis's medical examiner, surprisingly agreed with the natural death conclusion. Although, the chief pathologist at Baptist who oversaw the autopsy felt Elvis died from a deadly mixture of drugs, he was overruled by Francisco. 'The pressure was on in Memphis', the chief pathology investigator on the case, Dan Warlick, told me, 'to make sure the King of Rock and Roll did not die a drug addict'.

Still, there's no denying that Elvis' toxicological report was a veritable what's what of the day's leading drugs. Four were discovered in 'significant' quantities: codeine; Ethinamate, a popular sedative-hypnotic; Quaaludes; and a barbiturate, or depressant, that has never been confirmed but is reported as Phenobarbital. Elvis also had the painkillers morphine and Demerol; tranquilizers Placidyl and Valium; and Chlorpheniramine, an antihistamine.

Once the tox report was public, attention focused on Dr. Nick. On the morning of Elvis' death, he had told Warlick that Elvis 'only used antibiotics'. Later, Dr. Nick admitted he had prescribed in 1977 alone over 10,000 doses of opiates, amphetamines, barbiturates, tranquilizers, hormones, and laxatives for Presley. But he claims that they were meant not only for Elvis, but also for the up to 150 people that used to hang around Graceland and go on tour with the King.

'You have to put yourself back into that time', Dr. Nick told me. 'There were no such things as pain clinics or sleep centers. I needed both. I could not write a prescription in any other state, so when we were on tour, I was like the team physician. I had to treat the team patients. If I didn't treat them, then they couldn't do their work. There was no second string for each person, the guy who put on the lights, or the one that laid out the cords. If they couldn't work, things didn't get done'.

Dr. Nick maintains he used to check with the health boards for all tour cities to find out if there was a flu outbreak or anything for which he should pack extra drugs. 'I had to carry so many drugs because of the things I might come across. And then someone might be allergic to a certain pill, so I had to carry the substitutes. I'd have several bags with the prescriptions with me'.

If they were for so many different people, why were they all dispensed only to Elvis?

'That was for his father. Only if he thought they were all for Elvis would he not complain about how much was spent'.

Dr. Nick contends that he's unfairly criticized for having written so many prescriptions, but that he was Elvis' only doctor, whereas most celebrities, like Michael Jackson, have many. 'If you added up all their prescriptions, they'd be a lot more than mine', he says.

'I don't regret any of the medications I gave him. They were necessities'. Dr. Nick says he asked large pharmaceutical companies to make placebos for Elvis for those pills that might be habit forming. After they said no, he claims he tried in vain to develop his own placebos. 'Later, everyone attacked me, saying all I was interested in was making money from Elvis. That's just not true. I never charged him for a house call, and I'd make those four or five times a week to Graceland'.

In 1980, three years after Elvis' death, Dr. Nick was indicted on 14 counts of overprescribing drugs to Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and a dozen other patients. The district attorney ruled out murder because of Francisco's natural death finding. The jury acquitted Dr. Nick on all counts. But later that same year, the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners found him guilty of over-prescribing, and gave him a slap on the wrist - suspending his license for three months and putting him on three years' probation.

In 1995, the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners permanently suspended Dr. Nick's medical license after it was revealed that he had been overprescribing to numerous patients for years. His appeals were all rejected. 'They just never stopped going after me, they always wanted a scapegoat for Elvis' death', he told me.

The man who once spent as much time as anyone with Elvis is reduced now to selling personal memorabilia for extra cash. This past June - by coincidence a day after Michael Jackson died - 45 items that had belonged to Dr. Nick were sold in Las Vegas by Julien's Auctions. Julien's is the world's largest auction house for high-end celebrity estate and entertainment sales. It has sold everything from Jimi Hendrix's studio guitar ($480,000) to a pair of Bono's sunglasses ($24,000) to a jacket worn by Kurt Cobain ($87,000) to Marilyn Monroe's personal phone book ($90,000).

'I want you to know that I had nothing to do with the Julien's auction', Dr. Nick told me. Turns out he had previously sold all those items - for an undisclosed price - to a private collector, wealthy Napa-based entrepreneur Richard Long. But Long decided to sell them through Julien's. As the auction drew near, Long asked Dr. Nick to help out by recording some video promotions. The final product, a DVD titled Dr. Nick's Memories of Elvis, explained the history and events surrounding the gifts in his own words. Nichopoulos wouldn't disclose how much he was paid for the video endorsements.

'Elvis was impulsive and very generous', says Dr. Nick, 'he'd give away things all the time. One important thing about Elvis is that material things didn't mean diddly squat to him. He would buy something and wear it one time, or sometimes never even wear it at all, and then give it away. He was crazy about gadgets and got tired of them real fast. He would have been crazy for Sharper Image'.

Elvis gave Dr. Nick, among other items - the auction sales prices are in parentheses - a puka shell necklace he had worn on a Hawaiian movie set ($8,750). 'Everyone had gone out shopping', says Nichopoulos, 'and I was in the room with him and couldn't go. So he said, ‘Here, take this', and gave me the necklace'. Some of the other items Dr. Nick says Elvis gave him included a diamond encrusted TCB necklace - Taking Care of Business, the name of Elvis' band ($117,000); a gold Piaget watch ($8,960); a Mathey-Tissot watch ($23,040); a ring with a large lapis stone ($33,750); a Cat's Eye ring ($28,125); an Angelus watch ($8,960); a copy of one of Elvis' favorite books, Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet ($16,640); and even a television set that once supposedly belonged to the King ($1,024).

Dr. Nick sold autographed pictures from Elvis, a tour scarf and jacket, a stuffed dog, one of Elvis' kitchen bowls, and even the original newspaper with the headline 'Nicholopoulos [sic] Found Not Guilty' ($768). Two pistols fetched nearly $10,000, and a display box of assorted security items brought $7,877.50. A single red strobe light went for $1,375. 'He gave that to me and told me to put it on top of my car if I ever had to get to Graceland fast. I used it once and my son did once. The police stopped my son, but when he told them that Elvis had deputized us, they just waved him on'.

But every other item put up for auction paled in comparison to one: Nicks's worn leather doctor's bag and 9 prescription bottles with Elvis' name printed on the labels. Julien's thought the prescription bottles would fetch $800 to $1,200 each. Instead they brought in nearly five times that, a total of $53,000. And the doctor's bag got a high bid of $16,000. Two items that Nichopoulos thought were virtual throwaways, a glass nasal douche used by Elvis to clean out his nostrils with a saline solution, and a laryngeal scope, used to examine his vocal chords, fetched $2,176 and $1,792, respectively. 'My God', said Dr. Nick, when I told him the final prices. 'I can't believe that'.

Does he consider it unsavory to sell Elvis' prescription bottles? 'Why?' he asked, with seemingly genuine surprise. 'The connotation is that the prescription bottle is bad, but the prescriptions are for things like antihistamines, something for diarrhea, nausea, antibiotics. Just because it's a prescription bottle doesn't mean it's a bad drug'.

What about many critics who think he was responsible for feeding Elvis' addictions and now for profiting from his relationship? 'I'm sick of being the whipping boy. No one understands that Elvis was so complicated. I worked so hard just to keep things together and then they turned the tables on me after he died and decided I was to blame. That was the worst part'.

As for second thoughts about selling memorabilia that marked their relationship, Dr. Nick says he isn't finished. 'There were several [doctor's] bags', he says. 'I still have a couple of bags. And I think I may have some other prescription bottles'.

'People say I took advantage of Elvis, or stole those things, it's all over the Internet', Dr. Nick said. 'That's all I hear in Memphis. It drives me crazy. You break your balls to help somebody and try to keep him alive and it turns around you were in it for the money. I was one of his closest friends. At times I was his father, his best friend, his doctor. Whatever role I needed to play at the time, I did'.

Originally published on www.elvis.com.au 2007.

'Dr Nick', Elvis Presley's physician dies at 88

 Elvis Presley | A Musical Prodigy
 Elvis' musical style, as a musician and impact as a vocalist and stage performer
 The Fifty Voices of Elvis Presley
 1977 CBS TV Special
 Interview with Annett Wolf, co-producer of Elvis In Concert 1977
 The Death Of Elvis Presley | August 16, 1977
 Elvis Presley 42 Years ... Gone too soon ... Gone too long
 Display of mother's Star of David headstone revives talk of Elvis Presley's Jewish roots

Interviews

 Interview with Larry Muhoberac
 Interview with John Wilkinson
 Interview with Michael Jarrett, songwriter, I'm Leavin'
 Interview with James Burton
 Interview with James Burton Sydney Australia 2006
 James Burton : First Call For The Royalty Of Rockabilly
 Interview with Ronnie Tutt
 Interview with Ronnie Tutt #2
 Interview with Jerry Scheff
 Interview with Glen D. Hardin
 Interview with Terry Blackwood & Jim Murray
 Interview with Tony Brown
 Duke Bardwell
 Interview with Scotty Moore
 Bill Black
 Interview with D.J. Fontana
 Interview with Charlie Hodge
 Interview with Ernst Jorgensen
 Elvis Presley & the TCB Band

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