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| Okay, let's start from the beginning. When did you very first meet Elvis?
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.
So, you made the trip out to Graceland?
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.
It’s a good few miles from Graceland isn't it?
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.
It must've been pretty important to get you back there.
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…
What did he want?
Nothing.
So what do you think the reasoning was behind asking you to drive out there three times?
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.
What happened after your hectic day running to and from the ranch?
I saw him the next day.
He called again did he?
Yeah (laughs).
When did you actually become his personal physician?
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.
But you went along in the end.
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.
You were never on the payroll?
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).
So, your boss was happy enough with the arrangement to let you go on tour?
Right.
And you looked after just Elvis?
No, a hundred and fifty people.
What kind of thing were you treating?
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.
Was it difficult to handle all those people? 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. 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? 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. I want to ask you about the efforts made by doctors in Vegas to help Elvis shed some extra pounds. How did that work? 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! 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. 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. What caused Elvis' voice to slur on stage? 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. I assume this stuff wasn't coming from a proper doctor right? 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. Did the Colonel or Vernon intervene? 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 problem 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.
But you chose to go back on tour with Elvis, to sort out the damage done by the other doctor?
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.
Did you ever come across anything given to Elvis by the feel-good doctors in Vegas or Los Angeles?
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.
Would you say that part of the problem was Elvis' addictive personality?
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.
If there were such signs of polypharmacy (a drug cocktail), why wasn't he admitted more often?
 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.
But Elvis' dosages were getting larger because he was becoming immune to the effects.
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.
You're saying that Elvis was in control of his intake?
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.
It must have got to the point where Elvis realised that he was in some kind of danger health wise.
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.
We hear about a whole series of drugs being given before and after each show.
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.
You'd honestly say that everything you ever prescribed Elvis yourself was needed, nothing extra?
Yes, the only thing that wasn't needed was placebos.
And they are?
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.
Can you tell me a little about the racquetball venture?
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 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.
So, Elvis never loaned you any money regarding the racquetball deal?
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.
Can we lift the mood a little by you telling me your fondest memory of Elvis?
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.
That sounds pretty terrifying. I bet you were worried there for a second.
Not as worried as Elvis was (laughs).
I know all you guys got along great. Any other stories from on the road?
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.
You weren’t too cruel to each other then (laughs). You have a funny story from New Years Eve 1975 in Pontiac right?
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 flew 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.
Just a regular doctor right?
That's right (laughs).
Well, I know your time is precious, thanks so much for meeting up and allowing me to talk openly with you.
(Our sincere thanks to Tom Salva and Russ Howe for their help with this interview.)
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