A Final Word (for Now) on Elvis
It all started with the death of Michael Jackson June 25, 2009. The circumstances of the King of Pop's death were eerily close to those of the King of Rock some 30 years before. Like the Kennedy assassination (the first one) I remember exactly where I was: in the print shop of the National Investor's Life Building in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. I had just graduated from Catholic High the previous May and was preparing to start Hendrix College in the Fall. On August 16, 1977, THE biggest news was Elvis dying on the crapper.I hadn't given a damn about Elvis since the mid-1960s, when the first song I ever knew all of the words to was "Return to Sender." No, the King was a Vegas leftover for me in the late '70s. Yes, the 1968 Comeback special had been cool and that song "Suspicious Minds" was memorable, but the Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers Band, and Little Feat were occupying my listening time. And I didn't think of Elvis much. But then Michael Jackson had to go and die from his own excesses and this led me to the library.
A legion of demons were born in print after the death of Elvis Presley. The most recent of these was Dr. George Nichopoulos's The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me (Thomas Nelson, 2010), where Dr. Nichopoulos attempts to vindicate himself and his treatment of Presley in the final years of the singer's life. One need not doubt that Dr. Nichopoulos and Presley were close and quite fond of each other and the doctor does partially exonerate himself as trying to "manage" Presley's ever increasing chemical dependency.
A legion of demons were born in print after the death of Elvis Presley. The most recent of these was Dr. George Nichopoulos's The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me (Thomas Nelson, 2010), where Dr. Nichopoulos attempts to vindicate himself and his treatment of Presley in the final years of the singer's life. One need not doubt that Dr. Nichopoulos and Presley were close and quite fond of each other and the doctor does partially exonerate himself as trying to "manage" Presley's ever increasing chemical dependency.
But as detailed in The Death of Elvis: What Really Happened (Robert Hale, 1992), authors Charles Thompson and James Cole reveal not only Nichopoulos' prescribing habits for Presley, but for his entourage also. Nichopoulos' over-prescribing of controlled substances is further verified by former bodyguard Marty Lacker's Elvis: Portrait of a Friend (Bantam, 1980) for whom Nichopoulos prescribed a mountain of Placidyl, as well as Steve Dunleavy's bone-smoking hack job with former shit-kicker bodyguards Dave Hebler, Red West and Sonny West, Elvis: What Happened - Three of His Closest Companions Tell A Shocking, Bizarre Story (Ballentine, 1977).
Every White Trash low-life that ever met Presley wrote a book. One must consider the motives of the authors before reading any of them. The vast majority are sappy remembrances that attempted to 1) maintain Elvis' supposed image or 2) even a perceived score. Those doing the latter exposed Presley's more profligate tendencies, of which he had many. Almost all of them claim that, "...had Elvis only listened to me [insert any of a million names], none of this would have happened." What moonshine! Presley was so far gone in his dependency that he would not have listened to anyone if he could.
There was no Celebrity Rehab or Intervention in the '70s and chemical dependency treatment had not yet become the money-making cottage industry it would in the '80s and '90s. But Imagine for a minute Dr. Drew Pinsky introducing his class of 1977: "Well we have the King, Chet Baker, and William Burroughs here at the Pasadena Recovery Center." All three would have told the prissy bastard to go fuck himself. No, at the time there was nothing anyone could have done for Elvis Presley. He had already unwittingly seal his chemical fate years before. That is why the question as to why no one helped Presley is so asinine: not only were they all beholden to him, Presley would not have listened anyway. Presley's death was the law of nature taking it course to the only conclusion it could.
Perhaps the most even and honest memoir was written by Presley's road manager Joe Esposito, Good Rockin' Tonight: Two Decades on the Road and on the Town with Elvis (Simon & Schuster, 1994). Esposito ends his account thusly,
Nearly two decades after his death, Elvis Presley still reigns unchallenged as the king of rock 'n' roll, the greatest superstar the world has ever known. All the crude jokes and ugly rumors can't change the fact that there was never anyone like him and there never will be another again. Elvis was the most extraordinary ordinary man.
That pretty well sums it up. A body of music that includes Presley's Sun Sides, his first RCA long-player, From Elvis in Memphis, and Elvis: From Memphis to Vegas/Vegas to Memphis could not have happened anywhere else, by anyone else.
Posted by liberationtheology at 2/24/2010 6:58 AM 
Categories: Book Review
Tags: George Nichopoulos Red West Elvis Presley Dave Hebler Memphis Mafia Sonny West
Categories: Book Review
Tags: George Nichopoulos Red West Elvis Presley Dave Hebler Memphis Mafia Sonny West
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