John Lennon says one American artist was a ‘great’ alternative to ‘singers like Sinatra’

An American artist was dubbed a “great” alternative to “singers like [Frank] Sinatra” by The Beatles‘ John Lennon.

The Come Together and Imagine hitmaker would cite one of his earliest influences as making his hair “stand on end” because of what he offered. It was a huge difference to what had been circulating on radio shows and on the charts at the time. Lennon, as well as fellow Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney, would both cite Elvis Presley as one of their greatest influences. While McCartney would write songs in the style of Sinatra on a handful of occasions, Lennon would say several times that Presley offered a massive alternative to the Sinatra-like styles of the 1950s and 1960s sound. Lennon also said it “took a long time for us to figure out what was going on” as the bluesy sound of Presley and similar musicians swept the UK charts.

This alternative to Sinatra would prove crucial for all four members of The Beatles, who shared the influence of singers like Presley and Little Richard in The Beatles: Anthology documentary.

Speaking to the NME, Lennon said: “When I first heard Heartbreak Hotel, I could hardly make out what was being said. It was just the experience of hearing it and having my hair stand on end. We’d never heard American voices singing like that.

“They always sang like Sinatra or enunciated very well. Suddenly, there’s this hillbilly hiccuping on tape echo and all this bluesy stuff going on. And we didn’t know what Elvis was singing about … It took us a long time to work out what was going on. To us, it just sounded as a noise that was great.”

Both Lennon and McCartney would speak fondly of Presley, with the Wings frontman even remembering the first time he laid eyes on the Hound Dog hitmaker.

He would go on to share Presley was a “good looking” musician, though it was not the music he first noticed. McCartney said: “I remember being in school when I was a kid and somebody had a picture in one of the musical papers of Elvis Presley. I think it was an advert for Heartbreak Hotel. I just looked at it and thought ‘he’s so good looking, he looks perfect.’”

Heartbreak Hotel would release on January 27, 1956, and was a Billboard Top 100 chart topper. The two-minute track would leave a lasting impression on John Lennon, too, with the Imagine hitmaker considering Heartbreak Hotel a “great” alternative to American music of the times.

It was not just Presley that McCartney was fond of, with the work of Buddy Holly also catching his and Lennon’s eye. McCartney explained briefly that the difference between Holly and the rest of the music scene at the time went beyond his sound and style. He said: “Suddenly here was a rock and roll hero who had glasses.”

The rock hero, like Presley, had a huge influence on McCartney, who says frequent home viewing of whatever was broadcast on BBC television formed part of his musical upbringing. Responding to fan questions on his website, McCartney shared: “Well, in the early days, my idea of what a real musician was came from radio or TV shows.

“As a band, we’d normally be playing in clubs and doing our own thing, not taking ourselves too seriously. Then if we arrived at something like the BBC for a radio show – or more often a TV show – there would be an orchestra that would do the theme tune, and these were the real musicians. These guys could even read music!

“I think once we were working with those kinds of people, and they were liking what we were doing, and I felt like we were playing well, that’s when I started to feel like a real musician myself.”