All Quotes

"I was awed by "the presence" and was a wonderful caring person and he was fit, slender and couldn't be nicer to me. It was really wonderful..."

"I'll tell you something, last Christmas I saw Elvis do something. The Salvation Army kettle at Main and Beale Streets wasn't getting any money. Elvis watched the people passing by for a while not putting money in, then he went over and put a bill in, then he began to cut up and told the people 'Let's help the poor folks out so they can at least have a Christmas dinner'. He got complete strangers to smile and then the money started dropping. So, give the boy a break. Memphis will be proud of him. He's a grand boy. I'm 53 and I grew up in the Jazz Age, so we never thought much about the Charleston or the Black Bottom crazes. I don't like rock and roll, but Elvis is different. They talk about juvenile delinquency and here is a boy who didn't have much except what was inside himself. He just has Rhythm in him and it has to come out. I think he has done a pretty good job of lifting himself. He's full of life and already I can see the rough edges being smoothed out. That dance he does, nobody said anything when Marguerite Piazza did the 'St. Louis Blues'."

"It may surprise you, but I am a Presley fan. Elvis recently saw my folks in California and told them he was a fan of mine, that I had been an inspiration to him.... What that boy has done is phenomenal. He has busted many of the disc sales records I held, in little over a year."

"I have everything ever done by Elvis, I have all his master recordings. And if you go to my home,it's like a museum there..."

"All we ever heard about back in the fifties was the space race and how we were lagging behind the Russians. That and Elvis"

"Steve Allen's ethics were questionable from the start. He fouled Presley, a fair-minded judge would say, by dressing him in white tie and tails. This is a costume often seen on star performers at funerals, but only when the deceased has specifically requested it in his will. Elvis made no such request—or for that matter, no will. He was framed. It was a gag from which no ordinary twitching vocalist ... could be expected to recover. Elvis recovered. As he left the hall, more dead than alive, he found the street hip-deep in bobby-soxers. And he bloomed like a rose, they tell me, and writhed again as of old."

"He is one of the great American icons. Rock'n'roll just kind of formed around him. Even Elvis called him the King."

"When I came on the sound stage and met him for the first time, he was like a mannequin, sitting there, so still and I thought, “Wow they have a mannequin that looks just like Elvis!” He got up, shook hands with me, and said “Nice to know you, Sir.” He was just as polite and nice as he could be. We talked about a lot of different things. He was interested in karate, which I had studied with Chuck Norris many years before. He was also interested in many of the books and writings I was involved in. He told me about his reading of Gibran's The Prophet, as well as certain things I had no idea I was going to use later, years after he passed away. I did a lot of the things that he told me in the Kurt Russell TV biography, where I had to write in an annotated script, which meant you had to take note of where each thing came from in the margins (almost like a bibliography). The legal department didn't know how much could be done without being sued, so they wanted to have every part of it locked down. It was a lot of Elvis..."

"The year was 1956 and I was in grade 6. Elvis Presley made his first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on TV and the music world was changed forever. Our school music appreciation teacher, Mr. Francis, was visibly upset, trying to teach us to love Brahms and Beethoven — but at recess, the girls would bring out a little record player and we'd hear Elvis. Mr. Francis responded by bringing an Elvis record to class, and using a hammer to smash it in front of us. He told us the music of the masters would live forever, but by next year at this time, this flash in the pan — Elvis Presley — would never be heard of again. Now, fast forward to yesterday where a paper cup Elvis drank from back in a 1956 outdoor performance just sold for more than $3,300. Maybe fittingly, it was bought by the owner of the "Icon Hotel" near London, England. What do I learn from this? I doubt some of today's entertainment will stand the test of time, but I keep watching for paper cups. Let me know what you think."

"Despite the name and best-known (striped t-shirt) scenes, Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" is not really a “prison flick.” His character does go to jail, where he discovers his musical prowess and pursues it once he gets out, but his journey to stardom proves even more challenging than his time behind bars. His James Dean-ish “bad boy” character makes bad choices, and it all leads to an obvious journey of redemption. But this one ain't about the story; it's about the exhilarating music and its star, whose charisma was so off the charts that it was quite fittingly criminal."

"I once certified the authenticity of an Elvis Presley soundtrack album, kept and played by Bruce Lee for over a decade. He had put his personal Chinese chop on it, as was customary in all his albums. This one we listened to endlessly, huge admirers of Elvis as we both were."

"He never lost that Southern, genteel, gentlemanly persona. Of course, that came from his mother. I loved that about him. He was that way to the end"

"What was once a tiny town of considerable character is now 6 times it size. Guess what: They are trying to turn me into a tourist attraction like Graceland and Elvis Presley.""

"I remember the first time I saw him on TV, when he burst upon the music scene like a blazing comet and the indescribably powerful impact he had on the youth of the nation -and the world.""

"The spirit of Elvis is way bigger than the music. I don't know how many Elvis records I actually bought. It wasn't my generation, but the spirit, the attitude, the vibe, the cool of Elvis? Elvis had many phases, many stages. Depending on who you are and how old — are you military Elvis with the perfect complexion? Were you beginning Elvis when he upset everybody with [imitates Presley's voice]? Or were you end-stage Elvis, which frankly, I enjoy that as much."

"He named the band "Ten Year After" because by 1966 it had been ten years since Elvis' advent. Some time later, in 1969, we got invited by Warner Brothers to see Elvis in Las Vegas. I thought he was terrific with James Burton on lead, Ronnie Tutt on drums, Cissy Houston and the Sweet Inbspirations on back up vocals. Fabulous. Alvin, who was the biggest Elvis fan amongst us, was disapponted because that night Elvis didnt sing "Jailhouse Rock" LOL."

"Backstage at Washington DC's ’s two locations — the Lansburgh Theatre and Sidney Harman Hall — actors and crew members maintain elaborate shrines to a creative icon. Not the Bard, but Elvis Presley. The tradition started one night in 1989. During a performance of “The Beggar’s Opera,” stage manager James Latus heard a loud sound during the show and asked his assistant, Audrey Brown, if she knew who was responsible. “Uh, um, uh…Elvis!” (In fact) Brown, a Memphis native, refused to rat out the real culprit, which led Latus to take the joke to its natural conclusion and create a full-blown shrine, consisting of a tasteful Elvis postcard and candle. Actors and crew people started donating items for good luck. When the company moved to the Lansburgh Theatre in the 1990s, the Elvis shrine came, too. Around this time, the theater received a letter from then-First Lady ’s press secretary. They were planning to come see a show, but they wouldn’t have time to visit the shrine. The letter was promptly framed and added to the shrine. But when the Clintons showed up, Hillary insisted on making a pilgrimage. The shrine now holds a photo of her pointing at the copy of her press secretary’s letter. Latus said he’d like to see an Elvis-inspired Shakespeare adaptation one day. His vote is for “King Lear,” while Cox would like to see an Elvis “Macbeth”. Both, of course, are tragedies. The Shakespeare Theatre doesn't have any Elvis-themed projects in the works right now, but maybe, with enough prayers at the shrine, some day it will happen."

"I wanted to channel my inner Elvis..."

"Presley had a unique voice, with a quite tonal perspective. He could belt tenor range notes and his vibrato is understated, especially in ballads. His pitch accuracy is also hidden, and that is one of his most outstanding qualities. Dynamically, he knew how to sing each song, leaning in, and making each performance even more personal than the writer of the song had meant or had wanted it to. The best examplle of his vocal ability is the totality of what he sang, namely in the sense that every song he sang sounded as good as it did. His natural vibrato covered several semi tones, which made his singing even more dramatic. He had the ability to change his voice to suit a song, rather than the other way around. Over the years, he added that smokey quality and the raspiness in his voice was all natural, but it was always a voice that rested in between the notes. He is one of the most heard singers of all time, which means that ultimately, his voice, at his best, can not be categorized because as npointed out earlier, it will always remain one that rests in between the notes, no matter who listens to it."

"I met Elvis in 1968 when he went to the clinic for treatment of saddle sores from riding horses. We treated him after hours. That night, I was in the room assessing Elvis, and he was sitting in the corner talking to me with his head down. I walked over, lifted his chin and said, "Elvis, if you talk to me, you look at me" I thought I was in trouble when my boss, Dr. Nichopoulos called me to his office and, with a solemn look on his face, asked me what I'd said to Presley. I told him and that is when he grinned and said "He liked you...""

"He was so above the normal person, so intelligent and humble. But look at his voice, its tremendous range, his musical abilities. And he, I mean some men are good looking, some have great personalities but he had it all. And then, I was very surprised, because he used to love to recite the Lord's Prayer. And I was a Christian in my early childhood days, Mom even saying that we had a Bible on our dining room table. But I didn't really know, and I think Elvis was one of the little budding seeds in when we would have our spiritual talks. But I had no clue that an actor would have a love for God or even want to talk about the Bible. That was a surprise, a very pleasant surprise, and he had a part in turning my life around"

"The day Elvis Presley died, which is her birthday, I remember her saying that she felt his spirit pass through her. It struck me as an arrogant statement. Now I'd be hard pressed to disprove it."

"Think too of the impact on the U.S. of earlier immigrant groups that came in search of liberty. Without the scientists who escaped Nazism and fascism in the 1930s and 1940s—such as Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard and Edward Teller—there would have been no atomic bomb, and World War II would have likely ended with a slow, brutal invasion of Japan at a cost of many more lives. A particularly good parallel with the current plight of Afghans is the evacuation of 38,000 Hungarian refugees to America after the Soviet crackdown on the 1956 revolution, thanks to the Eisenhower administration’s Operation Safe Haven. Giving those victims of communism a home in the U.S. became a national crusade. Among those who broadcast the appeal was Elvis Presley on “The Ed Sullivan Show”; in 2011 Presley was posthumously named an honorary citizen of Budapest."

"At first it was funny, but then just sad. That's pretty much how many Indonesians felt when they saw pictures of politicians Fadli Zon and Setya Novanto at a 2015 press conference held by American presidential hopeful Donald Trump. It was hilarious because it was so unreal. First, how did they get there, and why? Of all the places to visit in New York, why choose Trump's campaign headquarters? Second, what's with the star-struck faces? Couldn't they play it a little cooler? It's Donald Trump, for heaven's sake, not Elvis Presley!"

"Elvis was both a now underrecognized figure of individual artistic genius and an acknowledged but increasingly underconsidered figure of cultural revolution. The democratic impulse behind rock 'n' roll – the union of black and white, urban and rural, sophisticated and rough – had had been a kind of subterranean reality, especially in the South, for years, but became a marketplace reality across the country at the moment of Elvis' mid-'50s emergence. It was driven by a post-war youth culture whose surfeit of discretionary income had the buying power to turn a pre-existing subculture into mass and Elvis into a star. Before, it may have seemed unlikely in a nation so divided that the many tributaries of American music, and the cultures they represented, could come together in one music and one man, though Elvis was only the brightest star in a broad constellation. Elvis was a figure of great disruption who became a figure of great unity, if only for a little while. Maybe this moment needs that reminder, if we can look far enough to Young Elvis to see it."

"Wearing a red Make America Great Again baseball cap, the former president became the night's DJ and selected songs from opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, Elvis Presley, and James Brown, anonymous sources told the New York Times"

"While others might have voices the equal of Presley's, he had that certain something that everyone searches for all during their lifetime..."

"One scene in Houston was illustrative of the feeling about Presley. While he performed from a portable stage in the center of the Astrodome, some 40 policemen and security guards lined the wall that separates the field from the audience. At one point, a youth in his early 20s walked through a gate and began strolling toward the middle of the field. When a policeman called to him, the young man began running deliberately toward the stage and Presley. Normally, this type of scene will cause an audience to applaud the runner or boo the police, but there was a clear feeling of tension in the Astrodome. What was the intruder up to? All too often, charismatic figures attract the unbalanced. There was an obvious, audible sigh of relief when a policeman tackled the young man a few feet from the stage. The concert resumed but it took a few moments for the audience's attention to return fully to the music. Perhaps more than any other scene in Las Vegas or Houston, the tension shown when Presley was threatened (even the vague possibility of a threat) demonstrates the unique bond between him and his audience. More than a performer, Presley is a phenomenon. It is his exceptional talent as a singer and showman that enabled him to attract his original audience and to attract a new one today. But talent is only one reason he wears a crown. The other reason centers around the special relationship with his audience"

"There's also a special Elvis section, featuring vintage photos and artifacts such as a midcentury-era leather couch that provided a comfy seat for the crooner, some of which courtesy of late radio icon Tom Perryman, who helped a young Elvis get a foothold in the music industry, seeking out gigs in a variety of venues, from beer joints to the backs of flatbed trucks. Thousands of visitors stop by the exhibit annually to glimpse memorabilia linked to the “King of Rock and Roll.”"

"I visited eleven countries with Pres. Eisenhower during a massive 1959 peace-building campaign, took a helicopter tour of Washington with Pres. Johnson to see the devastation from the riots after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and stood on the South Lawn as a disgraced Pres. Nixon boarded Marine One for the last time and left the White House. I met Arnold Palmer when Eisenhower played golf with him at Augusta National, got the word that Elvis Presley had showed up unannounced at the White House’s northwest gate to talk to Nixon and was at Cape Canaveral to watch the Apollo 11 launch, which first put men on the moon."

"It’s insane the charisma he had. I’ve never seen anything like it to this day. When I saw Elvis on television, I just fell in love with him completely. As a singer, I want to be able to relate to an audience like this man did. Of course, nobody can – he was the best there ever was.”"

"I wear glasses anyway but I wear slightly different ones, and when I'm not working, I tend to grow a bit of a beard or stubble. I very rarely get spotted, but if I'm shaved and I've got a suit on, then I do. But there are ways of not being recognised, just by not catching people's eye and walking fast," he explains. But I'm not Elvis Presley, I'm just some comic and I haven't been on TV for a while."

"I don’t know about you, but when I see Bill Clinton I think of Elvis Presley. Tonight, the former president tried to ease the suspicious minds of Bernie Sanders’ supporters and make them feel burning love for Hillary Clinton. It was a complicated challenge: Improving the public perception of his wife, who is–in a word–unliked, while he's liked much more. Recounting how they met in college, he was charming. He credited her with inspiring his interest in public service. He made her sound committed, and tireless, while making himself sound like the second banana in their marriage. He called her the best mother in the world, his best friend, a change maker. But Bill Clinton has lost some of his Elvis: This wasn't his best speech; and I don't know if it will change a single vote. If Hillary Clinton wins, then Bill will also be moving back into the White House. So both are applying for jobs. In 1992, when he was a candidate, he told voters they'd “get two for the price of one” if he were elected. In 2016, that will be true again, if she is."

"Even in his laziest moments, Presley was a master of intonation and phrasing, delivering his rich baritone with a disarming naturalness. And when he caught a spark from his great T.C.B. Band, Presley could still out-sing anyone in American pop. You can hear it here on inspired versions of Muddy Waters' "Got My Mojo Working"(1971), Wayne Carson's "Always on My Mind"(1972), Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" (1975), McCartney's "Lady Madonna"(1970), Percy Mayfield's "Stranger in My Own Hometown"(1969), Dennis Linde's "Burning Love"(1972) and Joe South's "Walk a Mile in My Shoes" (1970)."

"Elvis Presley had an 8 year exclusive run at the Hilton, entertaining some 2.5 million people, enough to fill the Rose Bowl 25 times over, the city's all time most successful performer."

"I am indebted to Scott W. Johnson, my fellow at the Claremont Institute, for many things over the years, but not many rate higher than his "introducing" me to Elvis Presley. I came of age (i.e., reached the 9th grade), just in time for the "British Invasion" and, despite my childhood memories, soon came to think of him as the ultimate in passe; so, I was astonished when Scott told me, a year or two ago, that in his opinion Elvis Presley was the greatest male vocalist of the 20th Century; I had never thought of him in that light, to put it mildly, but that conversation caused me to realize that I had never actually 'listened'; starting then, I did – with the aid of Scott's encyclopedic music collection –, so if you have never gotten past a cartoon image of Elvis, do yourself a favor and 'listen'."

"Even in those conformist years, though, rebels were tinkering at the edges. In 1939, Philly barber Joe Cirello, after experimenting on a blind boy who hung out in his Society Hill shop, invented the duck's-ass cut and rode it all the way to Hollywood. Elvis Presley raised a ruckus with his pompadour. In retrospect, it didn't take much to get hair's cultural watchdogs agitated. There's a famous photo of Elvis getting his hair cut in 1958 as he enters the Army. The barber took a whole inch off the sides. Still, girls wailed..."

"It begins and ends in Sept. 1956 when he returned to his hometown to perform before an adoring, screaming crowd at the state fair. The documentary spends most the time delving into his childhood days in Tupelo, which included sneaking peeks into late-night blues joints and singing at black g̈ospel tent revivals. It's clear that Elvis Presley lived the music before he became a recording sensation."

"In the spring of 1957, if his life had taken a different path, it might have been possible to see Elvis filling out law school applications, or interviewing for his first job as college graduation approached. But the hardworking son of Gladys and Vernon Presley was already his family's sole breadwinner and already looking, at the age of 22, to purchase them a new home. He found that home on the outskirts of Memphis—a southern Colonial mansion on a 13.8-acre wooded estate. With a $1,000 cash deposit against a sale price of $102,500, he agreed to purchase the home called Graceland on March 19, 1957. He had already bought one house for his parents on Audubon Drive, in East Memphis, but that residential neighborhood had become overrun with gawkers and worshipers as Elvis became a megastar. There was also the matter of the growing entourage of extended family and friends around Elvis driving the need for a larger home base. Officially, Graceland was where Elvis, his parents and his grandmother Minnie Mae lived, but unofficially, it was also the home of the ever-changing cast of childhood friends who surrounded and often drew salaries from Elvis. Many girlfriends and one wife also came and went at Graceland during its 20 years as Elvis's base of operations. Today it is preserved precisely as he left it when he passed away, in his upstairs bathroom, on August 16, 1977. In the years since then, it has become one of the nation's most popular tourist attractions —the second-most-visited house in America after the big white one on Pennsylvania Avenue."

"The opening flips between a fired up Elvis Presley and a leather-clad Blake Shelton trading verses on “Guitar Man” against a multi-level backdrop of silhouetted guitarists,then it closes with Shelton looking up as Elvis' image fades into the famous red lights spelling out his first name, basking in the glow of perhaps the greatest marriage of rock & roll and television in history."

"When I met him, I had a very small role in his movie, “Live A Little, Love A Little,” but he was very kind to me. He didn't mind when I had to do 5 or 6 takes of a very simple scene. I guess I had expected him to be kind of wild and boisterous, but that was not the case. He ran lines with me, worked out a realistic way I was to knock him down in one scene, was friendly every day, liked jokes and told some good ones. I was smoking a Dutch cigar one day and, when he asked about them, I gave a few to Elvis. The next day, there was a whole pack of those cigars on my chair on the set. We talked about karate and he showed me some moves – even had the prop man set up a brick for him to break. He liked my square-toed boots and asked me where I got them – I heard he bought a half-dozen pair like them in all available colors. We also talked about things we did back home in Mississippi, like squirrel hunting. His boys were around him all the time – I talked a lot with Charlie Hodge. It was a memorable time. I never had any contact with him after that. I could not help but be impressed with how down-to-earth and laid back he was."

"And now, his revolutionary approach to period sets, his signature life’s-a-party filmmaking, his bold visual style and his ability to create a cutting-edge soundtrack seamlessly blending old and new, all converge in a 2022 release we didn't realise how much we needed: ELVIS"

"Elvis shifted our universe culturally like no one has before and he deserves to be treated like an historical figure, like Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, but instead he gets weighed down by sensationalism, and that keep us from the truth. In fact, his story is looked on as one of destruction, but it is a futile struggle to survive, through poverty and then through health issues. It was hard to be Elvis, no one had done fame like that before, and no one else could do it for him. He was trying to function within his reality."

"He's not more than 20 feet away, bigger than life. A face worthy of Adonis, with that innocent lock of hair hanging over his forehead and those bedroom blue eyes. The audience is deathly still, as if Pagliacci, the high priest in the white Superman suit up there was praying a collective prayer for all the shattered rebels of bygone eras. I think I see tears in his eyes, but can't tell for sure, seeing as how I am crying myself..."

"Being around longer than other people, you can’t help but have a certain amount of wisdom that you wouldn’t have had otherwise, and it’s inescapable. I don’t know how you write this, but when I started out, if there had been something released even once a photograph of somebody giving somebody else a blow job, end of career. And now, it makes someone a star. That’s extraordinary. Elvis Presley was on the Ed Sullivan Show and they did not photograph him below the belly button, not his gyrations. I remember women, when I first went to New York to study, every once in a while you’d see a woman crossing the street without a bra, just in a t-shirt, and it was an event, it was extraordinary."

"Sometimes I feel my life is very surreal (like when) I looked back the time we wanted to have a tour of Graceland and once there got what we were told was a special tour that was only given to rock bands. So we got to see things that everybody didn't get to see and had our own tour guide dedicated to us. The eternal flame at Elvis' tomb was out that day, so we stood around and sang “Heartbreak Hotel” ala Spinal Tap. Later on I recounted the story to Billy Steinberg and he said, wait-wait, stop-stop, it's a great story but why don't we write a song called “Eternal Flame”? And I said okay. So that's how it started. And along with "Walk like an Egyptian" they both songs went to #1 which was pretty amazing."

"When I first started wrestling he used to come in for the semi-main/main event, ride a Harley with a helmet and sit way up top at the Mid-South Coliseum. He would have beeen my dream tag team partner the one guy that I would've loved to have in the ring with me..."

"After we did the pool scene I went back to my dressing room and when I pulled the chord by the door, all of a sudden this huge flame fired at me, it was pouring out of the socket. I was so scared that I shouted for Elvis and so he came running back and pushed the door open, took me out of there and then he invited me to dinner. We talked a lot about the problems he was having, deeply concerned as he was about what was going to happen to him with the Army thing. That night I told him that he'd never have anything to worry about and that his big concern should be that nobody was ever going to say no to him. Now, during the shoot, we were in love and that is what made those scenes great because it was totally believable. It was so intense when we did it, and when we were on film that I even made things up so it was so off-the-wall. I mean, when we kissed and I said that I was coming "all unglued" , that was all an ad-lib."

"Riding a streamlined rock-and-roll beat, the singer's vocal swoops, slurs, hiccups, moans and growls added up to a new pop singing vocabulary that was instantly memorized by scores of imitators. The antithesis of a relaxed conversational crooning, Presley's style was fraught with tension and animated by an attitude of self-conscious melodrama, woving the whole unwieldy spectrum of pop singing – country-blues, Italianate crooning, Gospel, soul shouting, and honky-tonk yodeling – into an integral personal style. His crowning touch was to accentuate the spontaneously exuberant humor that had always been an ingredient of country, and the blues, but singing it in a way that seemed to poke fun at his own accomplishment."

"It was the summer of 1977. I was fresh out of high school, living on my own, generally disinterested in the church but not yet an atheist. Once a month I attended the church I grew up in, and sat with my parents. They'd be happy to see me in church, and afterwards I could score a good Sunday dinner and use the washing machine.Elvis Presley had died a few days earlier, and to my surprise the pastor mentioned it as he began his sermon.Except he didn't eulogize Elvis; he ripped the dear departed icon a new one. “He called himself The King. Well, he was the King of nothing. There is only one King, and that is Jesus.” he said. After about five minutes of Elvis-bashing and equating rock and roll to blasphemy,a Danny Wiggins stood up and said “You're just wrong. Elvis was a good man. He sang Christian music when he wasn't singing rock and roll and he never set himself up as a competitor to Christ. Everything you're saying about him is just not true.” And with that, Danny walked out of the sanctuary and out of the building, while the pastor and a few church elders called out after him. From a different section of the sanctuary, an older woman and her husband took their toddler and wordlessly followed Wiggins out, while the pastor stood and sputtered at the pulpit. After a minute, he looked at his notes and resumed his sermon from the point he'd left off but the modern Exodus continued: two young men I didn't know walked out, followed a few minutes later by the only black guy in the congregation, and after that by a couple in their 40s. By the time the sermon ended, eleven people had left. Several of the church's younger members who hadn't stormed out gave the pastor a piece of their mind afterwards. That's my happiest memory of attending church. That minister had always been a mean old man, and he gave his congregation a choice — believe in God or believe in music. Several of them made a choice he hadn't expected. It was a Sunday that really rocked the church, pun intended."