Elvis Presley once gave an all-time great band the “ultimate compliment” by covering one of their very best songs.
While The King had met the band back in the 1960s, his love of their music became clearer when the four-piece had split up. Presley would often cover artists during his live shows and even in the studio. A performance of The Beatles‘ hit song, Yesterday, is remarkable in the hands of The King. A post to the Rock History X page saw footage of Presley performing the Paul McCartney-penned classic in 1970, a year after The Beatles’ break-up had been publicised. The band’s final album, Let It Be, had been released and artists across the globe were covering the band. Everyone from Frank Sinatra to Fiona Apple has covered the band, but the “ultimate compliment” came from The King.
The post to X reads: “The ultimate compliment is to have Elvis Presley sing one of your songs, and The Beatles got it.” While many were quick to praise the song as a “beautiful” rendition, others highlighted how Yesterday is a vastly superior piece of work to that of his originals. A detractor wrote: “Elvis was wildly overrated and couldn’t conceive a song like Yesterday in a million years.”
Another fumed: “That’s God-awful even by his low standards. He couldn’t write any songs, play an instrument and was a bang average singer.” Others believed Presley offered a superior version of the song to listeners with his rendition at the start of the ’70s.
They wrote: “I do love the Beatles but honestly, Elvis’ on-stage cover of Yesterday AND Something are, to me, superior! – Sure I’m biased but to me, the music and his voice just resonate with the songs more than Paul & George [Harrison], at least for me.”
Another claimed: “His version better than the Beatles!” A third added: “He never nailed the lyrics of this song. Even in live (seemingly serious) performances he still managed to jumble them. And I guess that’s where his charm was.”
Presley is not the only big-name musician to have covered The Beatles, with veteran crooner Sinatra trying his hand at a George Harrison song during several live shows.
Hailing Harrison as an incredible songwriter, Sinatra delivered a cover of Something, which was received with rapturous applause. Planting a stool in the middle of the stage and praising The Beatles’ songwriter, Sinatra went on to call Something one of the “best love songs to be written in fifty or a hundred years.”
Sinatra continued: “It never says ‘I love you’ in the song but it really is one of the finest.” Though Sinatra received rapturous applause after performing the “marvellous song,” Harrison is believed not to have cared for the performance at all.
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