Great Balls of Fire, the biopic of rock singer Jerry Lee Lewis, was released during the summer of 1989. The movie was based on the book written by Murray Silver, who spent three years from 1979 through 1981 documenting the most devastating period of Lewis’s life while tracking down dozens of leads for a historical perspective. Many writers had tried but none had succeeded in delivering the goods. Not only did Silver render the definitive work on Lewis, he managed to avoid being shot by his subject and was spared the same fate visited upon so many of Lewis’s friends who became addicted to drugs and awash in alcohol. Silver’s book and the movie it spawned made Lewis a star all over again, catapulting him into the inaugural class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So that when Dr. George Nichopoulos finally decided to write a book about his experiences as personal physician to Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis told him that Murray Silver was the best man for the job.

Since Presley’s death in 1977, Dr. Nick had been besieged by offers for interviews, books and television appearances, all of which he had refused. The autopsy, which had not been released to the public, had been sharply attacked for inadequacy and inaccuracy, and Dr. Nick’s reputation was repeatedly questioned. His silence created an air of mystery and intrigue, leading many observers to surmise that he was responsible for Presley’s death while others thought that the lack of a published finding could only mean that Elvis was alive and living in seclusion. Not even the lure of a $1 million advance from Doubleday associate editor Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis could get so much as a single word out of Dr. Nick.

After a dozen years spent in denial, Dr. Nick realized that the controversy surrounding Presley’s death was never going to end—at least, not until he perfected the record. Attempts were made on his life and attempts were made to rid him of his medical license, but it wasn’t until Geraldo Rivera ambushed Dr. Nick on national television and accused him of killing Elvis by over-prescribing medications that he was forced to break his silence. While Murray Silver was in Memphis making his movie, Dr. Nick asked him to take up his cause at Silver’s earliest convenience. In January 1990, Silver left his home in Atlanta and moved to Memphis to help Dr. Nick write the most explosive story in the history of popular culture.

It didn’t take long for word of the collaboration to spread. Once the media got hold of it, there was a mad rush to Memphis to find out if it was true that Dr. Nick was going to reveal the shocking details of Presley’s murder by someone in his inner circle. Speculations ran wild as to whom the culprit could be, and before Silver could finish the book it was already being hotly debated on every tabloid television show in America. The situation quickly got out of hand.

And then an odd thing happened: Hounded by camera crews that chased him down the hallways of hospitals, Dr. Nick was forced to fend them off by denying he was writing a book—and if he was writing a book, murder was not his contention. Silver was made to look like a nutcase; Elvis’s old cronies came out of the woodwork to denounce Dr. Nick as a quack, and their book has never been published. In a rather bizarre twist, the very same publishers that rejected Dr. Nick’s book instead turned out books by other writers who merely guessed at what Dr. Nick’s book would’ve been about had it been published!

As Operation Desert Shield turned into Desert Storm, the storm that swirled around Dr. Nick was pushed off the front pages of newspapers until the Tennessee board of medical examiners lifted his license in 1995, and details of his having improperly dispensed potentially addictive drugs to his patients were a hot topic once again. Dr. Nick tried unsuccessfully to have his  license reinstated and would wait three years for things to quiet down before making a renewed attempt. Having nothing else to do, he became Jerry Lee Lewis’s tour manager for a while. And when that got old quick, 72-year-old George Nichopoulos worked the graveyard shift in the Federal Express personnel department.

What happened to Murray Silver shouldn’t have happened to a dog: his talent trampled upon and his faith belied, he fled Memphis in the dead of night to avoid attempts on his life by any number of shady drug dealers who mistakenly thought Silver had stumbled upon some great plot to kill Elvis Presley which they would be caught up in. The facts of Silver’s book may have been questioned but there was no doubt that the threat to him was very real: when the Memphis police could no longer guarantee his safety, he disappeared.

Eight years later, a man who looked very much like Murray Silver was seen moving about the country as the tour manager for a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks who performed their sacred chants and dances before university audiences in an effort to spread their healing energy and draw attention to Tibet’s plight at the hands of its Chinese oppressors. If this was the same Murray Silver, this was no longer The Killer’s confidant and the man who knew who killed Elvis Presley; this was Tenzin Murray, driver of the Magic Bus.

Graceland is not like Tibet. But when Elvis meets the Dalai Lama, there’ll be a whole lotta shakin’ going on. "