The Beatles never got through to all ages, nor did Elvis Presley, or any of the other monuments of mediocrity that we’ve had.
My pop culture ended somewhere north of Elvis but not too far.
Yeah, and I recently had my first Elvis moment. A gang of young girls was jumping all over me. It was kinda scary. And totally flattering.
Absolutely. I – you know, he was so that much a part of my life that, you know, Elvis, you know, once – once you bonded with him, I mean, there was no – there was no going back. He was just a great guy.
I am playing Elvis Presley in ‘Hello Darling.’ The project is really exciting for me because I get to play my idol.
My son Simon had one of Elvis’s favorite meals when we visited Graceland – a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Fried! Can you imagine the cholesterol?
Elvis and I continued to be friends, and I saw him once or twice a year. But he was a troubled person.
My dream collaboration would be Elvis.
The last time I saw Elvis was when I played my second New Year’s Eve show for him in 1970.
My dad is a big Outlaw country guy – Johnny Cash, Johnny Horton, Waylon, Willie. He loves Elvis and turned me onto Elvis. He was always playing me stuff. He and I would sing and entertain the family. We’d have a little skit on Thanksgiving or whatever.
People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had ‘The Who’ and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the ’80s had other songs and bands. It’s a way of placing ourselves culturally and temporally.
I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis.
The only person that anybody’s ever said I resemble is a young Elvis. It used to happen a lot more when I was younger, and more when I don’t wear a hat.
I would love to do musicals, sitcoms and even television talk shows. I think I have the potential. But most importantly, my ultimate goal as an artist is to create a new music genre like Elvis Presley.
I loved rock and roll when that came in, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, all those great records. So I begged my mom and dad for a guitar, which eventually they did get me for Christmas, but it went out of tune very quickly, and it hurt my fingers.
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
Of all the ’60s – there was Elvis, there was the Beatles, there was the British invasion, Jimmy Hendrix, and Woodstock – the No. 1 record was ‘The Twist.’
Liberace was a miracle. You talk about who he was and what he did, and then you look at who he inspired, from Elton John to Cher to Michael Jackson to Bette Midler. There are so many people that came to see him. Elvis was there, watching his shows.
In Hollywood, famous singer Elvis Presley used to wear gold chains. I was a huge follower of Presley. I used to think, if I become successful someday, then I will build a different image of mine. By the grace of God, I could do it with gold.
God’s the final judge for Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash too. That’s solely in the hands of God.
Elvis was a giant and influenced everyone in the business.
He will go down as a legend along with Elvis and the Beatles and Michael Jackson. Bob Marley is right up there. He was a leader for reggae music – he really made it appeal to a world audience.
I think that one of Elvis’ charms was that he could sing almost any kind of music. I am sure that in his heart, which I don’t know what was there, but just from his singing I could feel that he was very partial to gospel music.
I think, at some point, I might have said it must be great to be as big as Elvis, but that wasn’t a realistic dream.
Is Billy Idol just doing a bad Elvis pout, or was he born that way?
We’d play the American bases and found all these wonderful records by Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Sam Cooke. Without American music, there would not have been a British Invasion.
A lot of the people I’d love to work with, like John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, aren’t alive, unfortunately.
I love Jimi Hendrix obviously, and Jimmy Page and Prince. And also Elvis Presley is a really great guitar player. I don’t think he ever took lessons; he was piecing it together himself. But he has great rhythm. And rhythm, to me, you can use it to your advantage if you’re not all over the fretboard.
It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ I thought, this is it.
I did a string of about six or seven Elvis movies, all in a row. He made all of those movies in two years’ time. All of them bad. Don’t quote me.
On Sirius, I can find anything I want. They have about four or five different metal channels, rock channels; there’s a whole Elvis channel.
Elvis was sincere, and he was – he was so loyal. And he was so homespun. He loved his mother, he loved America. You know, he loved his fellow man. He had a great humanitarian philanthropic sense.
The artist that had the biggest impact on me was Michael Jackson. He was my Elvis and Beatles. When I was 15, I listened to a lot of Sinatra, but my jean jacket didn’t have, ‘I love Frank’ on it, it had, ‘I love AC/DC’, ‘Guns N Roses’, ‘Pearl Jam’. I thought Eddie Vedder was the second coming.
When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood – and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.
When I was in high school in the ’50s, all pop music – Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard – was aimed at teenagers. I loved that stuff.
I’ve loved music always, and my music fire was lit by Elvis Presley, really, and all that was happening back then.
I think Jerry Lee is sad. As a musician, he was far more talented than Elvis Presley. Everybody down in Memphis knows that. Elvis became a movie star because he was beautiful. Not that Elvis wasn’t talented, but Jerry Lee Lewis was incomprehensibly talented as a musician.
You can take Elvis. You can take Marilyn Monroe. Success and fame will not be the answer if something inside of you is bothering you, if things in your mind aren’t going right.
I look good, but I probably have the insides of Elvis.
My mom listened to the Beatles and Elvis, a lot of different types of music.
My grandmother was a big Elvis fan, and I am, too, because she played Elvis, and she would keep me all the time when my dad was out of town.
I love singing some Johnny Cash, which is interesting because it’s in a guy’s key; I love singing Elvis Presley.
In 1998, I received treatment for my knee by an Israeli therapist. We spoke about Israel and I mentioned ‘Scooterman’ and he just froze. It was like he had met Elvis. I thought he was kidding me and then he called his brother, they yelled to each other over the phone, and then I believed him.
Elvis Presley was rock ‘n’ roll, I thought that was pretty mediocre. But since that time, the succeeding steps in music has been down, just more degradation. Then we got into punk rock, and now we are into rap music, which is a total oxymoron.
One seldom expects the country’s president to adequately note the passing of a rocker, but Jimmy Carter’s assessment of Elvis Presley’s appeal – ‘energy, rebelliousness and good humor’ – is remarkably close to the mark.
The first record I ever listened to was Elvis Presley, and I remember thinking, ‘Man this guy is cool!’ The swagger he had really helped my confidence, because he really made me think that a white boy could make music like this.
I remember Simple Minds, Echo and the Bunnymen, Nina Hagen, Elvis Costello and Duran Duran. And the best concert I ever saw was the Rolling Stones, in the stadium of Sporting Lisbon.
Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music – it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I’m really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis – he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn’t impress me.
People don’t realize what they had till it’s gone. Like President Kennedy, there was no one like him, the Beatles, and my man Elvis Presley. I was the Elvis of boxing.
As a kid, I loved any guitarists, whether it was Elvis Presley, Lonnie Donegan, Chuck Berry or even the cowboy guitarists like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. The image of the guitar appealed to me.
Elvis’s voice was unique. Like so many others, he had natural, technical ability, but there was something in the humanity of his voice, and his delivery.
Elvis and I were very good friends. We were such good friends that, on the day that he passed, I was the first one his father called, to let me know what had happened.
U2 have a lot of religion, also people like Johnny Cash and Elvis. Those people weren’t shy about it – it’s nice there are people who’ve come before that were open about it.
I’m the world’s biggest Bob Seger fan. He’s like my Elvis.
Diana Krall I met in, I think it was Canada. She’s a lovely lady. Her husband, Elvis Costello, is a great star.
I couldn’t sing without a guitar. I like the way it feels to sing and be holding a guitar, even if I’m not playing it that much. All my idols that I grew up liking always had a guitar on them, but they didn’t play it – Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello. It’s like having a partner with you.
