Elvis Presley “lived up” to high expectations set by The Beatles, according to Paul McCartney.
The Fab Four would meet with The King and it went “exactly” like the Wings frontman imagined it would. Presley was a clear influence on The Beatles members, particularly McCartney and John Lennon. Both would speak highly of the Hound Dog hitmaker in interviews given well after The King’s death, but meeting him was a whole new level for the bandmates. McCartney says he, the rest of The Beatles, and Presley had “a bit of a do” when they met for the first time, with the Let It Be songwriter suggesting there was an atmosphere of old friends present at the meet. It seems to have lived up to expectations too, as McCartney suggested his meeting with the music legend was exactly what he had hoped for.
He said: “I think he was exactly like I imagined, yeah. I didn’t quite know what to expect when we went there, you know. I mean, I thought that he’d be the same, but I didn’t know how the atmosphere or anything would be in the place.
“But it was good, ‘cuz it was all old mates around. Old mates of his, you know, and we brought quite a few of ours. And so we just had a bit of a ‘do.” It’s a feeling that Lennon backed up too, suggesting Presley was “just how I expected him.”
Lennon said: “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.
“We couldn’t stand not doing personal appearances. We’d get bored. We get bored quickly. He says he misses it a bit, you know. He’s just… he was great. He was just how I expected him.” The pair would also praise Presley for his influence on their careers.
In the Anthology documentary series, McCartney says Presley was one of the first musical artists he ever took note of. McCartney would say Presley was “what we had been waiting for.” The songwriter would also dub The King a “guru” of music, whose influence was clear.
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.
He told the NME: “We’d never heard American voices singing like that. They always sang like Sinatra or enunciate 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 what was going on. To us, it just sounded as a noise that was great.”
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