Credit: Far Out / Bibliothèque nationale de France

Why Bob Dylan always knew Elvis Presley was “an American king”

Sun 31 May 2026 4:00, UK

Bob Dylan never claimed to be one of the greatest gifts to songwriting when he first made ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’.

He was only following in the footsteps of the songwriters that came before him, and while anyone would have thought that the key to success was making rock and roll, Dylan was usually more comfortable pulling from the pre-rock and roll days, whether that was idolising Woody Guthrie or trying to dissect what made Robert Johnson’s songs work so well. But when you look at some of the biggest names in the country, Dylan knew that there was no way of knocking the true legends that he came up with.

Because, really, who the hell was going to guess that some random kid from Minnesota with a guitar in his hand was going to become one of the biggest stars in the world? Dylan certainly had the right kind of attitude when he was making his anthems, but when you look at the way that he constructed a lot of his messages, he wasn’t just looking to make a typical pop song. He wanted to make people think, and that’s half the reason why rock and roll took to him so much.

The main MO of any good rock act was about going against the grain, and Dylan was the epitome of what the next generation was supposed to be. He didn’t want to blindly follow what was happening with the Vietnam War, and if The Beatles were coming from overseas writing flowery love songs, Dylan was the one reminding the audience of what could happen if they didn’t take the state of the nation seriously.

And given the state of rock and roll at the time, that’s something that most of the country sorely needed to hear. The last few years had been inundated with the manufactured side of rock and roll, and while the older kids were raised on people like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, the idea of settling for people like Fabian and Frankie Avalon was the exact opposite of what rock was supposed to be.

But not all legends were safe from going a little bit soft from time to time. John Lennon was always going to be a die-hard fan of Elvis Presley, but after ‘The King of Rock and Roll’ came back from doing time in the service, seeing him walk his way through several embarrassing acting gigs would have been enough to break the hearts of any fan who grew up listening to ‘Hound Dog’.

Dylan certainly noticed when everything changed, but he could at least acknowledge that no one else could ever take Presley’s place in history, saying, “I never met Elvis, because I didn’t want to meet Elvis. Elvis was in his Sixties movie period, and he was just crankin’ ’em out and knockin’ ’em off, one after another. And Elvis had kind of fallen out of favor in the Sixties. He didn’t really come back until, whatever was it, ’68? I know the Beatles went to see him, and he just played with their heads. [But] Elvis was truly some sort of American king. His face is even on the Statue of Liberty. And, well, like I said, I wouldn’t quite say he was ridiculed, but close.”

Then again, half the reason why he was the king of American music was that he did every single pop star trope first. He set the example for everyone, for better or for worse, and while many of his demons led him to an early grave, that wasn’t going to diminish the kind of adrenaline that thousands of kids got when they heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’ for the first time.

The girls may have been screaming from the first time that he came on the screen in some of his movies, but compared to every other teen heartthrob, Presley deserves to be more of a cultural milestone than a singer these days. He was the blueprint for what a rock and roll frontman was supposed to be, and while Dylan could rely on his words, he could still bow in reverence to the great rock and roll monarch.