Most telling of all, Elvis was the most popular entertainer in the world, a figure of constant attention who came off as the boy next door while his life grew increasingly bizarre, He was fascinated by guns, and in his last years rarely went anywhere without carrying one. He became a nocturnal creature who would rent an amusement park outside Memphis so he could ride the roller coaster at night -- alone except for his entourage. He covered hotel-room windows with aluminum foil to keep daylight out. His appetite for -- and dependence on --uppers and downers and painkillers was incredible.

Elvis didn't play out his final years alone. There were other actors in the drama. The Colonel. His father, Vernon, and his daughter, Lisa Marie. The women -- his former wife, Priscilla, and his girlfriends Linda Thompson and Ginger Alden. His bodyguards, Red and Sonny West, and his aides, Joe Espositno and Charlie Hodge. And his doctor: George Nichopoulos.

But by, 1974, Elvis was a very sick man. And it seemed that none of the people he gathered around him could do anything to stop him from slipping away.

What follows is excerpted from Elvis: the Final Years by Jerry Hopkins, recently published by St. Martin's Press.

September 1974-January 1975

It was a bad time for Elvis. Everything seemed to be coming apart. His father and his stepmother, Dee, separated after ten years. "Vernon treated me like a child; he kept me in a cage," Dee said.

It was a familiar theme. Priscilla had felt suffocated and restricted, too. Now as Dee was packing up and leaving Vernon's house nearby, Elvis watched as his friend Linda Thompson moved her things out of Graceland. Their relationship was an emotional one, and there would be flare-ups for years to come.

Elvis had also lost his longtime piano player, David Briggs, who was being paid $3000 a week by Elvis but wanted to return to Nashville's recording studios.

Elvis' health plummeted as his weight ballooned. Just how much weight he had put on, and how quickly, became apparent when he arrived at the University of Maryland on September 27th. So great was the change, some of the boys in the band had trouble recognizing him.

Tony Brown, who had taken Briggs' place in the backup band, remembered watching Elvis arrive, "He fell out of the limousine to his knees," said Brown. "People jumped to help and he pushed them away, like, 'Don't help me!' He always did that when he fell. He walked onstage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody was scared."