The musician John Lennon claimed started everything: “Before there was nothing”
People regularly credit The Beatles as the birth of modern music as we know it. From the pure rock and roll of their early albums to the sonic experimentation of their later years, the band opened doors at every turn that countless artists have walked through since. However, John Lennon himself would have been the first to say that, actually, it all started before them—with someone else entirely.
The Beatles were never shy about their influences. While pioneering in their own right, the members were always good at shining the spotlight where it should be, routinely reminding people of the artists inspiring them. Whether it be Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly or any number of great artists that came before them, the Fab Four were acutely aware that the path they were walking had already been laid before them, even if music historians or their own biggest fans often forget that.
But when John Lennon looked at that path, he thought the start it traced back to was one looming legend. “Before Elvis, there was nothing,” he said, treating Elvis Presley as a kind of musical big bang that the whole world of modern artistry was born from.
He kept the praise coming throughout his career, once remarking, “I had only three childhood idols, Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee,” counting the King as the first and arguably the most influential as he later said, “Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles.”
It was an opinion that the rest of the band shared. “You heard people saying, ‘I’ve never heard anything like that before, man.’ And it was that,” Paul McCartney said of Elvis’ influence, “You hear on the radio Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ It was like, ‘Oh my God, what is that?’”
It’s a tough thing to imagine now when music is so evolved, and rock and roll are so commonplace, but back in the 1950s when The King was emerging, and the Beatles were young boys only just starting to get into music, this was genuinely revolutionary. It was sexy, thrilling, a hundred times more exciting than the cookie-cutter, vanilla, somewhat rock and roll that had been loosely floating across the Atlantic. When Elvis emerged, it was like a door was kicked down, and suddenly, the whole world of rock and roll, including all the deeply iconic and influential black American artists that inspired him, finally had a way in.
So while there obviously was rock and roll before Elvis, it felt to the Fab Four, as young boys in Britain, like the emergence of The King was the birth of it all.
“They burned themselves into my being,” McCartney said of early Elvis songs and all the other rock and roll legends that seemed to follow directly after him, with Presley standing as the beginning of a wave that changed everything and the first spark that blew up into a whole new world.
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