The singer that John Lennon thought was a God: “Are you kidding me?”
The Beatles, formed of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, quickly anointed themselves as the heirs apparent to rock and roll’s reign. They had added to the sensibilities of rocker style a touch of British charm, a dash of self-effacing humour, a whole host of self-written songs and three new bodies to be gawped over, and their star rose as quickly as the 1960s drove itself away from the gruelling traditionalism of the 1950s.
As Beatlemania swept the entire globe in the early 1960s, nobody could have truly predicted that The Beatles would still be as vitally important today as they were then. Except, of course, for Brian Epstein, who was famously quoted as saying: “The children of the 21st century will be listening to The Beatles.”
The band would become the most famous men in the world and later create countless musical genres and hundreds of bands off the back of their work. While they can rightly be seen as the centre of many musical universes, the group were also always quick to share their appreciation for the acts that came before them.
Cliff Richard and The Shadows, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers and Carl Perkins can all be considered gigantic figures in the growing musical lexicon of the quartet. As four kids from Liverpool, their access to a variety of music from America was limited, but one singer made a huge impression on them as he had the entire nation: Elvis Presley.
Presley’s position as the king of rock and roll was rarely challenged during the 1950s. The hip-shaking hitmaker had made a name for himself as the embodiment of the new music craze, and he gathered the plaudits and dollar bills that came his way because of it. But as the new decade began, Presley’s position as the ultimate rock hero began to wobble as a host of new acts started to feel their way into the business. The Beatles would go one step further and arguably top the huge appeal of ‘The King’.
The former royal, therefore, struggled to reconcile his throne with the new band despite how much they adored him. Lennon, however, was clear about the hierarchy, and he and his band were way below Elvis Presley. The Liverpudlian said of hearing Presley for the first time: “This fella I knew called Don Beattie showed me the name Elvis Presley in the New Musical Express and said he was great. It was ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. I thought it sounded a bit phoney: ‘Heart-break Hotel’.”
He continued: “The music papers were saying that Presley was fantastic, and at first, I expected someone like Perry Como or Sinatra. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ seemed a corny title and his name seemed strange in those days. But then, when I heard it, it was the end for me. I first heard it on Radio Luxembourg. He turned out to be fantastic. I remember rushing home with the record and saying, ‘He sounds like Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray and Tennessee Ernie Ford!’”
It went one step further when the group were actually able to meet the singer, as Lennon told Jerry Schilling: “I always wanted to be this tough James Dean type, but Elvis was bigger than religion in my life. When I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ it was so great I couldn’t speak, I didn’t want to say anything against Elvis, not even in my mind.”
The meeting was a strange one, especially considering that Presley would share a somewhat spotted history with the band, both covering their songs and apparently being incensed by their anti-American attitudes. Lennon was also particularly amused by the fact the singer had a jukebox in his house of his own songs, “But if I’d made as many as him, maybe I’d have all mine on,” he figured.
Speaking to Robert Hilburn, Lennon was asked whether he was sure that Elvis knew who The Beatles were. “Are you kidding?” the singer responded. “Elvis knew damn well who we were — from the word ‘go’. He was terrified of us and the English movement because we were a possible threat to him.”
However, for Lennon and the band, things were different: “To us, Elvis was a god. We’d like to beat his record and become the champion, but we would always give Elvis credit.”
Simply put, for Lennon, while they may have differed in their growing old, Elvis Presley was everything: “Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn’t been an Elvis, there wouldn’t have been The Beatles”.
