Mick Jagger regrets allowing John Lennon to stop him meeting Elvis Presley: “It was really stupid of me”
The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger has shared his regret at not meeting Elvis Presley.
Jagger did have opportunities to meet Presley, too. However, after John Lennon had a bad experience with Elvis, he warned his friend off meeting ‘The King’, and much to Jagger’s regret, he listened to the poor advice.
The rock icon made the revelation to Conan O’Brien on the latest episode of the Conan Needs a Friend podcast, sharing, “No, I never met Elvis. You know why? I’ll tell you why. There was a showbiz journalist, I can’t remember his name, but he was famous at the time, and he took the Beatles in Los Angeles to visit Elvis. And there’s pictures of this.”
Jagger added, “So they went up to Elvis’s house and his pool. They don’t remember anything. But I remember John telling me: ‘You know you should never meet your heroes, I would never meet Elvis, Mick, if I were you.’ And so I didn’t.”
Much to his deep shame, Jagger took those words on board, adding, “I took John’s advice, which is really stupid of me, really. I mean, I would have loved to have met Elvis, why did I take John’s advice? But I mean at the time it seemed to ring true.”
He also shared that Lennon “told me all this story more than once” which hammered the message home, and “sort of put me off”.
The Stones singer continued, “I wanted to keep my Elvis to myself, my version of Elvis, and so I didn’t want my version of Elvis shattered like John’s was. But maybe my Elvis version would have been different.”
Lennon did publicly speak about his rather mundane encounter with Presley, which shattered the illusion of Elvis, once stating, “He just seemed normal to us, you know. And we were asking him about just making movies and not doing any personal appearances or TV. And he seems to enjoy it, you know. I think he enjoys making movies so much.”
However, he did also say, “He’s just… he was great. He was just how I expected him,” which goes against the comments made by Jagger in regards to their private conversations.
Elsewhere in the podcast with Conan, Jagger also reflected on his unique relationship with Lennon, which was spurred on by their desire to constantly outdo one another comedically.
Jagger explained, “I think John and I were very competitive too, John Lennon. But we’re more competitive in being sarcastic. Just verbal competitiveness.”
He then asked Conan if he’d ever seen the famous video of Lennon and Bob Dylan in the back of a taxi while completely stoned in 1966, which he said “was John at his most… he’s being very sarcastic with Bob and Bob’s not really coming back with zingy answers.”
He added, “It does give you a good illustration of (John Lennon), because most of the other things are kind of short, and that’s extended sarcasm (laughs).”
While Jagger said Lennon “could be lovely”, he also said, “He’s one of those people that if you’d say something stupid he’d pick you up (on it). He’d clock it right away.”
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