All Quotes

"White teenagers embraced rock and roll, when the civil-rights struggle cultivated an awareness of African-American culture. Youths such as Elvis Presley listened to late night, rhythm-and-blues radio shows that challenged and broke down racial barriers. During the Sixties, white teens readily accepted African-American performers such as the Ronettes, the Temptations, and the Supremes who had been carefully groomed for success in a mainstream market. At the same time in Britain, teenagers such as the Rolling Stones became obsessed with Chicago blues and brought their version of the blues back to adoring fans in America. Later in the decade, white youth bought soul records and revered Jimi Hendrix as the ultimate guitar hero. By the Eighties, young white suburbanites wore baggy pants and chanted the lyrics of inner-city rappers. In the new century, American teens danced at massive festivals to the African-American sounds of house music and techno."

"He had it all going on: Punk, Algerian chaabi music, Rai, techno, and he drew inspiration from the music of North Africa, New Orleans jazz, The Clash, the delta blues and Elvis Presley."

"Though he is widely considered one of the biggest cultural icons of the 20th century, many may not know that Elvis stuttered. In a 2007 interview, his Tupelo childhood friend Mary Magdalene Morgan recalled how Elvis would stutter in elementary school, always seeming nervous, never completely sitting still, stammering, but not to the point you couldn't understand him. When he was 13 years old, his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he would listen to a variety of musicians and singers on the now famous Beale Street. Influenced by country, gospel, and blues among other styles, Elvis recorded his first songs with Sun Record but it took multiple recordings and several rejections before one of Elvis' songs hit the radio waves in mid July of 1954. In an interview in August of 1956, Elvis talked about his stuttering: ʽWhenever I get excited, I stutter a little bit. I have a hard time saying ‘when’ or ‘where’ or any words that start with ‘w’ or ‘i.’ In fact, evidence of his stuttering as an adult can be heard on recordings from the Louisiana Hayride at the start of his career. On one of these, he can be heard stuttering when he talks to the audience in between songs. After he stutters, he stops himself, pauses and then begins again, changing the words slightly. Today, almost forty after his death he is still the best-selling solo artist in the history of recorded music. He had a dream to become a successful performer and entertainer, and he didn't let his stuttering stand in his way. People struggling with stammering issues can find inspiration in knowing that they share something deeply personal with the most successful singer of all time."

"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"

"In 1956, even the youngest of his fans knew that the 21-year-old Elvis Presley was unquestionably the whole package; and, obviously, his great three octave tenor voice, with a lower register close to bass, seemed to vibrate on the inner scale of every teenager in America; they loved the high tenor, but when he "got down" with that lower register, fans exploded; Elvis translated this into his moves on stage, so it was a 10.0 assault on the senses."

"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."

"It was a bit like the Elvis Presley excitement, something new, completely revolutionary,"

"When Elvis' daddy had a heart attack, Elvis wanted him to have a private room. That was not the problem, but before getting there, rules made it impossible for him to have a private intensive care room, despite the unit was totally empty. So Elvis spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and booked the entire intensive care unit..."

"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..."

"They listened to music all the way over. And one of them kind of likes 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.”"

"Some of Symms' most popular images came from a newspaper assignment covering the June 27, 1956 performance of a young Elvis Presley before 6,000 screaming fans jammed into Augusta's Bell Auditorium. When Presley arrived, he found Symms in an alley awaiting him with a 4X5 Crown Graphic camera. Most remember hearing Presley sing several hits including "Hound Dog", which he would record a month later, but it was Symms' photos which preserved their memories of the performance and continued to sell reprints over the next half-century."

"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"

"No person should be allowed to be so great looking and with so much talent. LOL. He's standing on a stage all by himself, like a person in a boxing arena Now the swagger and the swooning are awesome, but the interesting thing about him is how he gets the emotion into the song. And it all sounds so authentic because he believes in what he sings."

"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."

"i) To me this album is the purest expression of Elvis there was. In fact, when I was young, I used to think Elvis was the voice of truth. I don't know what that means, but his voice, shit man, it sounded so fucking pure. The hillbilly cat never let you down. ii) You’re either an Elvis man or a Beatles man, and I’m an Elvis man."

"I walked into the lobby of the International Hotel in Las Vegas with Tom Jones, which was like walking in with the Good Lord himself, and next minute we were in Elvis Presley's dressing room. As I stared at him, stunned, one of Elvis's assistants said to me, ‘Sir, will you give this drink to Elvis?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ took the drink and stood there gaping, like a stagestruck schoolgirl. Couldn't move a muscle. Tom nudged me and said, ‘Give ’im the drink for God’s sake. I struggled to speak to Elvis because I was so overwhelmed and amazed to be in the presence of such a great singer. Next night, it was Elvis who came to Tom’s room. I was in heaven..."

"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. —"

"When I’m here, I’m not James Taylor the entertainer, I’m James Taylor the Elvis fan,’"

"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"."

"Back in 1956, Elvis Presley recorded his massive hit “Don’t Be Cruel.” With all due respect to the King, this great song has many virtues but providing a guide to policy isn’t one of them. Yet it appears to be dictating Democrats’ current approach to the red-hot immigration issue despite its profound inadequacy in the policy realm. Consider that Democrats have been unremittingly hostile to Trump’s immigration policy since he began his second term, despite its undisputed success in completely shutting down the southern border to illegal immigration. Instead, Democrats have focused relentlessly on the question of interior enforcement—that is, the activities of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) aimed at detaining and deporting illegal immigrants currently living within the United States. The general approach has been to portray all ICE actions as essentially illegitimate, arbitrary and, well, cruel.Conspicuously lacking has been any recognition that, in fact, interior enforcement against illegal immigration is an entirely legitimate law enforcement operation and that ICE is the government agency charged with these legitimate activities. Therefore, what ICE does is presumptively legitimate not illegitimate. Obviously, the current Democratic vogue for treating all ICE activities as illegitimate and susceptibility to dumb maximalist slogans like “Abolish ICE” points them in precisely the wrong direction for dealing with the thorny and complex realities of the immigration issue. They’re just setting themselves up for future failure. In short, it’s time to stop coddling the “In This House, We Believe” crowd and adopt a serious, grown-up approach to immigration and immigrants. “Don’t Be Cruel” isn’t gonna cut it."

"Elvis Presley. I don't do impersonations, but Elvis is the most impersonated performer in the world. Just the more I've read about him, the more he's someone I've wanted to get into. I want to do the "Walk the Line" version of Elvis. Like Joaquin Phoenix doesn't look like Johnny Cash but I still felt like I was watching Johnny Cash in that movie."

"It is an honor for me to be with you, here where the most celebrated people have made history. In this iconic arena, think of this, here, where I stand, is where the King, Elvis Presley played for 80,000 screaming fans"

"I strongly believe he knew he was ill, but didn't know why. In retrospect, his was a classic case of cumulative head trauma, followed by an autoimmune inflammatory disorder. None of this was known or even recognized in his day and I'm confident he would have been pleased to know that the knowledge that now exists about his predicament will in future help others, as he was a kind and generous person"

"Elvis was very classically orientated with his voice, and diction, and very sincere and wanting to get everything perfect."

"At some point on the night of October 22, 2018 the home fans at Old Trafford Stadium will probably sing a round of "Viva Ronaldo". From distant metro platforms to wind-raked terraces, it has been a Manchester United standard of the past decade, an Elvis-riff on those six years when he transformed himself from dazzling gadfly to the best footballer in the world. Until then, this still feels like a homecoming curiosity, a reminder of just how exhilarating that "Ronaldo-as-Elvis footballer" was; and a reminder too, whatever his ultimate destiny, of happier past associations for a player who was for at least three of those years, the best the league has ever seen."

"About Cristiano Ronaldo's first trip to Manchester to play his old team since he joined Juventus AC, as written by Barney Ronay in an article entitled "Ronaldo’s return to Old Trafford a reminder of how life used to be", published in the Guardian's October 21, 2018 edition"

"i) Q magazine bravely attempted to name the best and worst singers ever. They did a good job, wisely going big with Elvis as the to choice. ii) There was no model for Elvis Presley's success; what Sun Records head Sam Phillips sensed was something in the wind, an inevitable outgrowth of all the country and blues he was recording at his Union Avenue studio; enter Presley in 1954, bringing with him a musical vocabulary rich in country, country blues, gospel, inspirational music, bluegrass, traditional country, and popular music -- as well as a host of emotional needs that found their most eloquent expression in song; his timing was impeccable, not only as a vocalist, but with regard to the cultural zeitgeist: emerging in the first blush of America's postwar ebullience, Presley captured the spirit of a country flexing its industrial muscle, of a generation unburdened by the concerns of war, younger, more mobile, more affluent, and better educated than any that had come before; (as such), the Sun recordings were the first salvos in an undeclared war on segregated radio stations nationwide. iii) At Sun Studio in Memphis Elvis Presley called to life what would soon be known as rock and roll with a voice that bore strains of the Grand Ole Opry and Beale Street, of country and the blues. At that moment, he ensured – instinctively, unknowingly – that pop music would never again be as simple as black and white.”"

"Though Elvis seems nearly as much a function of time and place as of talent and personality, his rise was clearly no accident. Peter Guralnick presents Elvis as the vessel, Sam and Dewey Phillips as the catalysts, and rock 'n' roll as a historical inevitability. Now, "Why him?" is what other Memphis boys kept asking in the summer of 1954, when Sun issued his first single, "That's All Right Mama" backed with "Blue Moon of Kentucky". There were a hundred other kids in Memphis with talent and ambition, any one of them as accomplished as Elvis so, again, why him?. To Marion Keisker, Sam's assistant, "He was like a mirror in a way: whatever you were looking for, you were going to find in him. In short, he had all the intricacy of the very simple." This ability to mirror the dreams and yearnings of others is the hallmark of every great star, from Judy Garland to Marilyn Monroe to James Dean. Within two years, Elvis would be one of them."

"In December of 1968, while punching a heavy bag in a gym in L.A. I hear a voice sing out, 'Hey, Lionel! What's doin'?' And it was Elvis Presley himself. I was in awe of him, but he said he was in awe of me (LOL)."

"I was really impressed and surprised to learn a lot of things about him,"

"It had been a sensational interview and I knew I had everything I needed for an excellent story for Rolling Stone. I truly felt a real connection with Paul Rogers and his new band Band Company which gave me the courage to do what I did next: invite the singer to see Elvis Presley, who was performing on the night of May 11, 1974 at the Inglewood Forum. And I knew Rodgers was a huge fan, even trying to sneak into Graceland one time back when he was with his previous band Free. As we made the 45-minute drive to the Inglewood Forum —a huge 20,000-seat arena where the Los Angeles Lakers played— Paul couldn't stop talking about finally seeing Elvis. We parked and I handed Paul his ticket. He looked at it like it was the Holy Grail itself. We walked inside, found our seats and from the moment Presley took the stage, Rodgers could barely contain himself, screaming, shouting and jumping up and down like a kid, acting the way I did when I first saw his previous band, Free, so many years earlier when they opened for Blind Faith. Watching Paul while he watched a then-34-year old Elvis do his thing felt like an out-of-body experience. It was like some perfect circle. When the lights came up and as everybody was exiting the arena, Paul saw various members of Led Zeppelin along with Peter Grant, who by then managed both Bad Company and Led Zeppelin, going backstage. I knew I wouldn't be able to go there myself, but I didn't really care, all I wanted was for Paul to get to meet his hero. However, we were stopped by a pair of burly bodyguards guarding the backstage entrance. I tried to explain to them that this was Paul Rodgers, but they weren't bulging. Eventually, we had a message relayed backstage and when Peter finally came back out, he told Paul he couldn't get him in. If Paul was hurt by being treated so selfishly —it felt as if Led Zeppelin wanted an audience with the King all by themselves— he didn't show it. Paul was still jubilant so when we returned to the hotel, that's when Paul told me, “I’ll just tell my friends I talked to him anyway." He had purchased a souvenir booklet and would use that as evidence though Paul and I would always know the truth."

"Few have probably heard of him unless you're a serious fan of Jewish cantorial music. But if you have, you know he's the equivalent of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Luciano Pavarotti -- a singer to be remembered forever."

"Elvis Presley’s home, Graceland, is behind me. I just went on a tour throughout the crib. Very enlightening. Elvis was a legend, an icon. As we all can see, me and Elvis had a lot of things in common. His ranch is Graceland, mine is Promiseland. I love the planes. I love he was a hustler. He was a man amongst the people. I’m doing something different today.”"

"It was a nice shot of adrenaline for him.."

"His 2019 election victory took him from popular buffoon to prime minister just like Elvis’ comeback TV special in 1968, which crowned him the undisputed king of rock ‘n’ roll. However, after a year, the name ‘Boris’ suddenly no longer sounded like a buddy, but now carried the same contemptuous undertone as ‘Maggie’ , the last person in office who was customarily referred to by her first name. Once the brand has become a dirty word, there is no turning back. The fact is Johnson is now in the ‘Fat Elvis’ stage of his career"

"I was contacted, not all that long ago, by the son of a military officer who was at the time the military attache to Prime Minister Harold Holt. He told this story just before he died to his son who told me that his dad was in Harold Holt's office and Harold was struggling with popularity and the anti-war movement. The officer said to Harold Holt “what you need is an Elvis Presley. Get Normie Rowe called up”. If the Prime Minister says something is going to happen then there is a pretty good chance it is going to happen"."

"After Maria Callas, Elvis Presley is the #2 of the Holy Trinity for taking blues, gospel and spirituals, and sexing them together while also desexualizing the more rough-edged and raunchy root ingredients (ie: removing the black stigma) to make it into rock n' roll and music for the masses. Elvis had an undeniably great voice and incredible moves..."

"Even as a kid, I knew music was central to my personality. Like many of us, I recognized that it could also be my source of income after I saw Elvis Presley on The Tommy Dorsey Show. When he made it so big, all us Southern boys thought maybe we had a shot, too."

"In Bedford there’s probably more chance of seeing Elvis than seeing your local GP.”"

"David Trimble was a huge fan of Elvis Presley and his favourite film was "King Creole", The song used during the tribute, "Trouble", is the most well known song from that film and was used to reflect his wide range of interests."

"As he stepped back into the ring, singing as if his life depends on it, you can feel the visceral thrill as this underdog eagerly reclaims his title. It paid off in spades, rejuvenating his career and proving that, as pop culture spun on its axis, even its most stalwart participants could change gears and reinvent themselves. It wasn't quite Ali vs. Foreman, but as 1968's highest-rated television special, it was close."