Elvis Presley

"And nobody can bring it all back like Elvis did. And that is why there are sightings, and visits to his home, and why now there is even a stamp. Finally, Elvis can be licked but he can not ever be beaten"

"i) FUN ... it is waiting for you, Mr. and Mrs. Everyday American, and guess what? It is your birthright,” writes Springsteen of that galvanic Elvis moment. Springsteen’s familiar stage voice, his corny carny barker way with action verbs, leaps from the page in assessing what Elvis promised: “The life-blessing, wall-destroying, heart-changing, mind-opening bliss of a freer, more liberated existence. ii) Somewhere in between the mundane variety acts on a routine Sunday night in the year of our Lord 1956, THE REVOLUTION HAS BEEN TELEVISED iii) There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king. iv)it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody’s ear, and somehow we all dreamed it. ii) When I heard it, it just shot straight through to my brain. And I realized, suddenly, that there was more to life than what I'd been living. I was then in pursuit of something and there'd been a vision laid out before me. You were dealing with the pure thrust, the pure energy of the music itself. I was so very young but it still hit me like a thunderbolt."

"Elvis Presley's Suspicious Minds and Cant help falling in love........."

"I asked him if he wanted me to pull up. He said, 'No.' I said, 'Are you sure? I could leave a welt.' He replied, 'That's OK.' So I belted him. That slap you hear in the film was not put in afterward – that was the slap.""

"If Elvis were playing through a stack of amplifiers, he would be called a heavy metal singer today. The problem is some of the kids who grew up loving everything he stood for, are now journalists who have become what they feared most, parents. No one name says more than his, ELVIS. It roars while others whisper."

"It's because you reminded me so much of Robert. He was gorgeous, and so are you..."

"My mom brought me home from the hospital after my birth with the radio off. This, she told me, was so when we got home and she danced me around to Elvis Presley's “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You,” it was the first musician I would ever hear."

"Return to sender..."

"My father, Herbert Stein was at the time Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and worked at the White House, often took me for lunch there where top dogs were allowed to have delicious meals, served by Navy Mess NCOs. We saw many famous people there, but one day, roughly three years before I myself started working there, he leaned towards me confidentially and said, “If you saw Elvis Presley in person, would you recognize him?” “I think so,” said I. “Well, look behind you.” I swiveled my hairy head around, and to my total shock, there was Elvis Presley eating with President Richard Nixon's Chief of Staff, Bob Haldeman a much feared but extremely pleasant and smart man. I got up, made my excuses to Mr. Haldeman, and said to Elvis, “Sir, everyone in the world is your fan, but I am your biggest fan.” In a voice and with a phrase that is incredibly famous, he simply said, “Thank yew ver’ much.” I was dazed. But I did not forget. And if you were to ask me to cite a lesson from it, it would be a line from a great Joan Didion novel called "Play It As It Lays: “You can’t win if you’re not at the table.” “Connections are golden.” Well worth remembering."

"Actually, he was an easy-going guy. No putting on airs, like he was some big star. An ordinary person, very polite, very obliging, a wonderful man, when I look back on it. It's a shame he had to go so soon.”"

"An oldies station was on the radio and it was playing that old Elvis song, 'I Want You, I Need you, I love you" so I just started singing my own song but it was 'I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.' I remember going home and I tried so hard but the best I could do was: 'I want you, I need you, but there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you, don't be sad, 'cause two out of three ain't bad' So it was still a twist but it was my closest to a simple song, and one Elvis could have done."

"Certainly the most famous performer to be attached to a tongues-speaking fellowship was Elvis Presley; shortly after the Presleys arrived in Memphis, from Tupelo, a First Assembly of God bus swung through their rundown neighborhood, so they climbed aboard and became regulars of Pastor James Hamill's congregation; Hamill remembers Elvis attended Sunday school and was exposed there to the best in Pentecostal music; in 1957, after he achieved international acclaim, Presley said 'We used to go to these religious sing-ins all the time, and there were these perfectly fine singers nobody responded to, but there were also these other singers who cut up all over the place, jumping on the piano, moving every which way, and all of which the audience liked, so I guess I learned from them'; uninhibited Pentecostalism gave young Elvis ideas about music and performance and, from then on, he was sometimes called the "Evangelist" by his inner circle of friends."

"I'll never forget it. We were in the rehearsal hall, and all of a sudden, we heard this commotion coming down the hall and there was this entourage of people coming into the room, When Elvis walked into the room, my mouth dropped. I'm like, Wow, I now understand why this guy is the biggest star in the world. He had magnetism. He filled the room. He really did. And to be able to sing with him for about a year and a-half of my life was an amazing experience. He was just a great singer. When you listen to Elvis' records, back in the day when he recorded, everything was recorded analog. There were really no computers to tune your voice or anything. He just had a natural talent. And he recorded in a recording studio just like he sang on stage. He held a microphone in his hand. He walked around the recording studio, and it was like he was doing a live performance. And he hardly ever shaded a pitch. He was just so talented, he really was.”"

"Elvis Presley, Hugh Hefner, Frank Sinatra – maybe not the kind of men you'd expect to embrace environmentally-friendly technology even if they were around to see it. However they were all diehard Cadillac guys, and we have to think that if anyone can convince its set-in-their-ways customers to go electric, it's Detroit's most famous luxury brand."

"Elvis was big for me, even from a very young age; That was the music that was around my house; I love that stuff, great songs and, as a singer, he was 'The Great' rock and roll singer."

"One word to describe him̜? Sexy"

"i) I mean, they treat me like I'm Elvis there, they really do. ii) Elvis was the king. No doubt about it. People like myself, Mick Jagger and all the others only followed in his footsteps. iii)Bloody Elvis, beating me to the top from the grave.iv) He had it all, But I am not doing too bad myself LOL"

"The third day started with a biscuit breakfast on the bus as we headed set course toward Tupelo to visit Elvis Presley's birthplace. I had given our group a loose itinerary, but what the group didn't know is that I had arranged for an Elvis tribute artist to stand on the side of the road five miles out of Oxford with his thumb out, hitchhiking. We picked him up, Jack Curtis was his name, and he performed a concert of Elvis' classics, up and down the aisle of the bus, all of the way in to Tupelo. We got out to tour the Elvis Presley birthplace and my guests said, “I don’t know how you’re going to top this.”...."

"The most important entertainer in the 20th Century, certainly, and the only people that could even challenge him were the Beatles, but they weren̪'t single performers, so it̪s Elvis Presley."

"We played Anaheim, CA in 1973. I was told to fix a problem with an unauthorized limo trying to get in the back entrance, so I tapped on the chauffeur's window but he said I should talk to the lady in the back. I knock, and there she was, . I was 22 but I had to tell her to walk through the entrance. Same thing in 1974, this time in Philadelphia, PA, but for once the unauthorized limo was carrying someone Elvis already knew, so he got to stay. It was ."

"It as a real hoot to meet him. After he toured the plane he introduced himself, like 'Well, Ron, I guess you know who I am.' I said 'Yes sir, Mr. Presley.' And then he said 'Oh no, it's not sir or mister. Just call me Elvis."

"I never understood his records at first, and then many years later, I thought, "God this guy is good". He had that wonderful sexuality about him, and energy, he was a star, you know, he was bigger than life. Anyways, because I'd met him a couple of times, singing with him was kind of easy, it felt like our spirits were kind of touching..."

"Multiple scholars have probed the Elvis cult's Celtic, Gnostic, Hindi, and vodun derivations; have contemplated Graceland's status as "sacred space"; and considered how and why some insist that Elvis, like Jesus, defeated death. Less charitable writers cynically attribute the entire phenomenon to the highly successful mass-marketing techniques of his estate and to the susceptibility of an apparently passive public bent on real-world escapism through, especially, the "transformative" ideology of consumerism."

"I was with Elvis for a few months. He was so physically beautiful, I thought I couldn't breathe. So one night he said, do you want me to sing something to you? So he played his "Spanish Eyes" song and sang it to me, seven times, back to back, as I requested he did. He was kind to his friends, to his family, to strangers, talented, thoughtful, funny. This girl came to a party in his house and I noticed she had two prosthetic legs. So I asked who she was and he said it was someone he didn't know really, but invited to his parties every fortnight so that she could feel wanted, loved....."

"Elvis was one of a kind. He bought me my first car and that's how I attended my first Hollywood premiere. Elvis said, 'Kid if you're going to go to something like your first Premiere you deserve to attend in the right Style'. And he made sure that I did""

"Growing up in Beverly Hills in the 1960s, there was no such thing as being star-struck — my neighbors were movie stars. Going shopping one day, after coffee crunch cake at Blum's, I found myself in front of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel staring at a man so beautiful and charismatic that I was magnetically drawn to him as if by a tractor beam. As I approached, he was swarmed by large burly men in Hawaiian shirts. ‘Let her through,’ he said. As if in a dream, I found myself in the magnificent presence of Elvis Presley! He signed my hand and a $5 bill. He spoke to me kindly and gently in soft Southern tones. The autographed bill? I spent it in my college tuition when I ran out of money"

"I wanted to say to Elvis Presley and the country that this is a real decent, fine boy, and wherever you go, Elvis, we want to say we've never had a pleasanter experience on our show with a big name than we've had with you."

"So who got covered on LIFE? Thirty-six covers from the first 64 years portrayed one or more of the Kennedy family. John F. Kennedy was on 25 covers, while Jackie edged him out to appear on 26 and earn the number one spot. Robert F. Kennedy appeared on five covers while Edward Kennedy was on nine. Rose Kennedy even made a solo appearance on one cover. Richard Nixon ranked third behind JFK and Jackie in number of appearances by a single individual with 15. Ronald Reagan had 11. But Marilyn Monroe beat him with 13 cover appearances, while Elizabeth Taylor was close behind at nine. Barbra Streisand made four cover appearances. Nikita Krushchev appeared on more covers (9) than Winston Churchill (7), Dwight D. Eisenhower (7), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (5) or Bill Clinton (4). The Reverends Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr. each made it onto two covers, while various popes appeared on eight covers between 1936–2000. (Those) never appearing on a LIFE cover included Elvis Presley, Monhandas K. Gandhi and Mother Teresa."

"I approve of his moves last night at the Pan Pacific (October 29, 1957), and saw nothing wrong with them but unfortunately neither my wife nor I could hear a single word out of his mouth because of all the screaming. But he is everything he is reported to be."

"I may be the only person who knows Colin Powell and Elvis Presley..."

"We didn't care as much for Elvis and his music - but once we met him - our mouths completely dropped. We could not believe a man was allowed to be this beautiful. We almost lost our job with Elvis because we focused so much on what he looked like that we forgot the lyrics to our songs. He was without doubt the most beautiful man that ever lived. And what's more beautiful: he didn't know it. - Good Lord he was beautiful!"

"It blew my brain apart. It was like Star Wars combined with Elvis Presley and these crazy, sped-up electro beats that I'd known since I was 11 years old.”"

"In 1957, I worked with Elvis a bit on ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ and got to know him as well as anybody in Los Angeles at the time. Anyways, that same year I had a beach house that I sublet to him while I was doing ‘Peyton Place.’ He needed it as a getaway, and basically wrote me a check for that month's rent. I wish I had kept the check, that would be worth more than the money I got LOL."

"Presley makes no secret of his respect for the negroes, nor of their influence on his singing. Furthermore, he does not shun them, either in public or private"

"Warhol was in the process of shifting from commercial illustrator to artist, and I both witnessed and experienced firsthand his tactics, his method of incision into the art world He used contemporary icons (Elvis and MM),as motifs in his works"

"That's it for now from us, at the first ever Presidential summit in Graceland, so thank you, thank you very much."

"The reasons for honouring Elvis are not sentimental but political. I don't own a single Elvis album but he was a champion for those amongst our people who turned against our country's Soviet-backed Government in October 1956. And although the revolution was quashed, Presley saluted the uprising in January 1957 during his last appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and performed "Peace in the Valley", a gospel standard, as a tribute to our plight. At his request, Sullivan solicited the TV audience to donate towards our relief efforts, raising US$6 million (the equivalent of US$ 49 million in 2012 dollars), or about 26 million Swiss francs."

"Before Elvis, white America was shackled by crippling conservatism. Then, four years into the 1950s, a singer from Tupelo, Mississippi, had what record producer Sam Phillips was looking for, a “white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel”, language that makes us cringe now — but at the time, Elvis' "sound" and "feel" did more to break down color barriers in popular music than any white singer ever had. Elvis' low, trembling transmission to teenage America was emancipation in the form of rockabilly, gospel, schlocky love songs, Christmas standards and muddy blues. In the ’60s, his voice was muted by forgettable films, but in 1968, wearing a leather jumpsuit, he reminded America that the suffering in his voice was sex in a sexless society — a pink Cadillac crashing into daddy’s station wagon. —"

"If you’ve made art after 1954, then the chances are you’ve been influenced by Elvis Presley"

"I was in California, saw "Jailhouse Rock" and changed my name to Vince Taylor, the former from the first name of the character played by Elvis in "Jailhouse Rock"."

"He performed at the auditorium in 1955 and 1956. For the first appearance, Elvis was paid $150. He grossed $9,000 when he returned a year later."

"I couldnt believe I was singing with Elvis. My nerves were a wreck..."

"I love Elvis because he was my generation, but then again, he's everyone's generation and will always be"

"For some people, they are just cars from the past. But classic cars represent an important market segment for investors. With their rising by more than 500 per cent in the past decade, the 2016 Motorworld Classics Fair in Berlin is a good chance for anyone interested in that kind of investment. A perfect example is a 1967 Cadillac Eldorado showcased here. It is not a very rare car, nor is it in a good state, but it was once owned by Elvis Presley, which bumps up the price tag to about half a million euros."

"People think that we're crazy because we do six nights a week, and then you see how much Elvis put into every show, for which he created this larger than life style, and he pulled it off."

"I remenber when I took Elvis by the hand and slowly pulled him on stage. And I said 'Ladies and gentlemen ..... Elvis Presley!! And he did that willow with that leg two or three times and it was over and the show was really over and the people, these were black people, they stormed that place trying to get to Elvis. And never, never in your life have you seen such a surge of black faces all converging upon a stage at the same time. I know of only two people that would have that type of magnetism that would just, they could just pull people to them, the kind of magnetism to just draw crowds in instantly effect them. [Elvis being one], the only other was Martin Luther King. The fact is people like music and if it's good it makes no difference who's doing it, black, blue, green even plaid if it's like that. And I love good music and Elvis was doing blues, rhythm and blues because that was his beginning."

"There is nothing that could force Donald Trump to release his tax returns, but precedent and Hillary Clinton's willingness to release hers would have nudged most other presidential hopefuls into taking the action. All this reminds me of the fact that accountants for Elvis Presley begged him at times to take advantage of the legal loopholes available to him. It would have saved him millions. He demurred on the basis that the patriotic thing to do was to pay for the privilege of his success."

"What makes USA the most aspirational destination to Indians is probably our own pop culture. Out of 1.3 billion Indians, there are 700 million young people who are under the age of 35. By 2020, the median age is going to be 29 years and when I think about a younger demographic, everything in the United States is appealing to them. Pop, short for popular music originated in neighborhoods across the US, when people of various ethnicities came together and merged their musical talents transcends geographical borders, races, and even traditional music styles. It is the music of today. Traditional guitars or electric ones, playing of pop music is not restricted to instruments either. Elvis Presley, in fact, is one of the first stars associated with the popularity of pop music. He fused country music with black rhythm and blues and came up with rock-and-roll."

"Just as the producer's job is to achieve the best recording possible – the kind of perfection that so grabs listeners like - so the editor should push the writer beyond the bounds of what he thinks he can achieve. It's hard to escape the feeling that there's a better book here waiting to get out. Essentially, this is a memoir consisting of 10 essays each of which attempting to examine a fairly arbitrary category of music. “Boys and Girls and Girl Groups”; “Vulnerability”; “The Spectacle of Anguish” etc. The opener looks at “The Horsemen in the Box” - Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley – who he feels would have represented the end of pop music history had the Cuban Missile Crisis not turned out so well."

"Especially in the South, they speak about Elvis and Jesus in the same breath."