Elvis Presley

"In 1991, Graceland gained a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, keeping Elvis Presley ahead of his time even in death. The National Park Service now honors the place Elvis called home from 1957 to 1977 when he died. It's very, very rare that a site is placed on the register when its the home of a famous person whose achievements are less than 50 years old, said George Berklacey, chief spokesman for the National Park Service. But the keeper of the national register, Jerry Rogers, felt Graceland and Presley were “an exceptional significance,” Berklacey said."

"So I went to his show and he introduced me as his friend. I went for about eight nights in a row just to hear him introduce me that way. And I found a little way to get backstage before the normal people got backstage and I went back there and he always treated me with such respect. I loved that about him. I remember one night backstage when he said, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m going to go play a little blackjack. Why don’t you come with me?’ And he said, ‘You know, I would give anything in the world to go out there with you’. But he thought he would get hurt, and the more I think about it, he couldn't have sat at the table like I did. I judge people by how well they treat me. That's what I loved about him. He made me feel so comfortable and I didn't really know him..."

"Elvis Presley press-agented as a singer and entertainer, played to two groups of teenagers numbering several thousand at the city auditorium here, Monday, May 14. As newspaper man, parent, and former member of Army Intelligence Service, I feel an obligation to pass on to you my conviction that Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States."

"Oh good, they didn’t send me the photograph of me and Elvis to sign.I get three or four fan letters a week and they all send me that picture of me and Elvis to autograph. I just hate that picture. I hate that dress I’m wearing and the bag I’m carrying. I just wish there were one other picture out there. It was taken in November of 1955, at the Country Music Comvention, in Nashville. He knew who I was, but I didn’t know who he was. I looked to get away from him and he kept following me.LOL. He had that charisma. Some people are just destined for fame. Later, while in NY, one of the movies we saw together was "Helen of Troy". I looked at Elvis, and I thought: he’s better looking than the guy on the screen. He had a magnificent profile, like a Roman coin. At the time, Elvis felt all the tumult about him was very amusing and in fact never really quite understood it, at that age. When I rode with him to Idlewild aiport after the Ed Sullivan Show, these girls were running after the limo and I realised that that was probably the last time I was going to see him. And it was. I once played Memphis and the phone number that he had given me was no longer in service. When he died, I remember just feeling so badly. Later, I realised that he was trapped."

"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."

"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."

"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"

"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."

"We three became four again when my sister Loree, who had entered a convent just a couple of years before me decided to return to the outside world. It was later transpired that it was the nuns who had decided Loree should return to the world. In fact, as a novice she had refused to surrender her Elvis Presley vinyls to Mother Superior. Later, (Our own) Mother became convinced that the Good Lord might have had a different vocation in mind for Loree."

"Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman's "Viva Las Vegas"(1963), was custom-written as the title song for Elvis Presley's 14th film, a rollicking tribute to the city of gambling given a spirited performance by Presley and his session musicians; strangely, it remained an underrated Presley song for a long time, finally beginning to gain some recognition from an unexpected quarter when the "Dead Kennedys" recorded it in 1980, their radical recontextualization of it helping the song to an independent life beyond its origins; on its own, it can now be appreciated as a tribute to Las Vegas that probably deserves to be the city's official anthem."

"They decamped to Munich in June 1979, and he had just checked in at the glittering Bayerischer Hof Hotel and stepped into the bath to wash away the travel grime, when a melody came to him. It was a hiccup-y rockabilly number, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. It had affectionate elements of the recently departed Elvis Presley, who had been a major vocal influence on him. Calling for assistant Peter Hince to fetch him an acoustic guitar, he wrapped a towel around his body and began to bash out the skeleton of what might be the most uncharacteristically simple song he ever wrote, which took him five or 10 minutes, doing it on the guitar as he did, and in one way it was quite a good thing because he was restricted, knowing so few chords."

"Entertainment-wise Elvis Presley played a big part for me because I'm out kicking my foot across the stage, but Elvis Presley did the same thing I do. He can get away with it. (It) kind of opened the door for me, along with B.B. King and all the guys who have come before me (Chuck Berry, Little Richard) who set a trail for me to come through the door. Now I'm one of the top five who are left to do this and I thank God for putting me in this position. I never thought that I would be an icon as the leading role of the blues cats, man, especially the black blues cats. I never thought I'd be here."

"It's funny – because we didn't talk a great deal about him. That was one thing we never got around to. When I played Elvis, in 1979, then in 2001, a lot of people said to me “Boy, you must be a great Elvis fan”. When you play a real person you have parameters. When you play a famous person that everyone knows, now the parameters become very finite. It's your job to go right up against the edges of those parameters. I said I worked with him, as a child, in 1962, but I did not know that much about his career or anything. I remember him distinctly, because I worked with him for two weeks on the movie and most of it was with him. I saw him off-camera a lot. But in 1979, I learned about him. And when I learned about him, I became a pretty decent Elvis fan. But nothing like Quentin, he probably knows everything about him. He knows about his music, he's probably seen all his movies. Yeah, so someday I'll say hey, tell me some of your feelings about Elvis."

"I'm a big Elvis fan, so I went to see him when he was playing in Las Vegas and, after the show, I was invited up to his room to meet him. I was very excited so I blurted out: "Why did you make all those stupid movies?" I couldn't believe I've said that and felt so embarrassed but Elvis just said, "Last thing I remember I was driving a truck" So now every time I say something stupid, I think of Elvis.""

"It seems like since the early days of rock and roll, there's been a uniform that's consisted of jeans, T-shirt and black leather jacket," she says. Elvis Presley, though, served his version with a twist: He was very much influenced by African American style on Beale Street in Memphis and incorporated everything from shiny suits to the poet-sleeved shirts his mother made for him into his wardrobe. But Presley wasn't exactly one for playing by the rules"

"To have two cycling riders of the calibre of Kelly and Roche emerge independently of one another within the space of four years, is akin to the town of Tupelo, Mississippi, producing a second Elvis Presley shortly after the first. It is a most astonishing accident of history."

"Every time he'd appeared on Letterman, he'd had to change his act. Written down, worked out, pre-approved by the production staff, his sweet improvisational melody was sliced and diced into a sampled, discordant riff. He just didn't come across. And he hadn't yet figured out what to do about it. At least not until that twelfth appearance. His ghost appearance, resonating forever in the memory of the Ed Sulli­van Theatre, there, center stage, near Elvis's swiveling hips. Another really big show, never to be seen."

"Elvis Presley was more influential as a performer than any other musician in world history. In some respects he resembled other influential performers, including the famous Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) and the Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt (1811–1886). Like them Elvis was exciting, charismatic, and enormously successful. Unlike Liszt and Paganini,however, Elvis did not compose any of his own music, yet the ways in which he performed the songs he sang transformed twentieth-century popular music worldwide. At his best, was most influential as a Southern White singer who introduced audiences throughout the United States and around the world to Black American music, especially to rock ‘n’ roll, a form of rhythm and blues. He was also influential because he combined in his performances elements from different American singing styles, including gospel, rockabilly, country-western and standard' pop numbers; he even employed bel canto singing in a few songs borrowed from Italian music. His stage persona was extremely influential as well, simultaneously glamorising, as he did, rock music and making it seem ‘dangerous’, thus even inspiring aspects of punk rock in the 1970s. Later, his performances as a touring artist and a Las Vegas entertainer contributed to the birth of glam rock."

"Bill was about 16 when he drove from Blanco, Texas, to see Elvis Presley play at the then Municipal Auditorium. And when he found out the show was sold out, he climbed a tree to try to get into a window. He saw Elvis there in the window so Elvis motioned to him and asked him, 'What are you doing up there in the tree?' And Bill Wittliff explained , and Elvis Presley tore out a paper towel and wrote to the ticket taker to let these three boys in. They're friends of mine. We have that piece of paper on display at the Wittliff Collection."

"I was publishing a book with the title "The case against Muhammed", dealing with the founder of Islam, from a critical point of view, and many people were asking me "why do you do that? And my answer was always "because you are asking me". Because you wouldn't if the book had been called "The Case against Elvis Presley". You would accept any criticism of any historical figure, you will consider it as freedom of art, of research, of opinion, but in the case of Muhammed, you say "The Prophet is the Muslim's world last stone of identity, so why do you attack HIM, let him in peace". And I then always answer my Muslim friends, that maybe he became the last stone of their identity because they left him in peace, alone, for fourteen hundred years."

"I suppose you'd had to call him a lyric baritone, although with exceptional high notes and unexpectedly rich low ones. But what is more important about Elvis Presley is not his vocal range, nor how high or low it extends, but where its center of gravity is. By that measure, Elvis was all at once a tenor, a baritone and a bass, the most unusual voice I've ever heard."

"I found him to be a gentleman. Elvis won everyone over. It’s true that Elvis was glowing. He also said that he wasn’t worried about the rest of his career, that he would like to focus on movies and that he was glad that he had his folks come over to Germany to be close to him. He seemed relaxed and his behavior seemed to surprise those who were covering his stay."

"He was the greatest. In fact, he was the most charismatic individual I have ever seen both off and on the screen, he was the kind of person who could not walk into a room and not stop whatever was happening in that room. Every person, man or woman would turn to look at him, he was that magical, There are no words in the vocabulary, unless it is that he had magic."

"At the start, I listened to my older brother's collection of Paul Anka and Elvis Presley records. When the Beatles arrived, at home it became a fight between my brother, who loved Elvis and I, who loved the Beatles.. but we both stayed the course...."

"There's more chance of Elvis Presley being Chancellor of the Exchequer than John McDonnell. I've never come across such financial illiteracy.""

"While touring Memphis, I was in the dressing room and my knee went and I crawled into a ball and couldn’t get up. I was carried off by a big security guy called Michael who’d once played for the Miami Dolphins. I heard he had an important boss but he didn’t tell me who his boss was. But the next day his boss called me. It was Elvis Presley. He came on the phone singing "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing", down the line. ‘I love that song, man. I hear Michael has been looking after you and that you’re a great guy. And you need to come over to the house’. he said. I was stunned, and got ready to go to spend a few days with Elvis and his girlfriend Ginger. But the next morning I heard on the radio Elvis had been taken to hospital and died. Years later, I began to think I must have dreamt the whole thing. But I met Ginger at a dinner in London, and she said ‘Elvis had been so excited at the idea of spending a few days with you.’ I had tears in my eyes when she said that.”"

"i) I didn’t like Elvis before I went to work with him in the summer of 1969. I mean, I didn’t know him. I just didn’t like his music. I was into black music mostly and jazz so when I went to work for him on the first rehearsal I told my ex-wife, I don’t think I’m going to do this gig, but I’m going to go down and check it out, see what’s going on.’ I came home that night and said, you gotta come down and hear this guy tomorrow night.’ She said, you’re kidding.’I said, no, you got to come down and hear him.’ She came down the next night to the rehearsal and she walked away a fan. It was that immediate. When I walked in and I heard him I said, Oh, oh, I believe that I've been missing something. ii) In some ways Elvis was Conservative and in other ways he was very Liberal. He wasn't someone that was following some political line, you know he'd figure out for himself what he thought was right"

"He is the king of the Democratic liars. If there was a Hall of Fame for liars, like, let's say, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he would be Elvis."

"He once rode a freight elevator to avoid fans but just as the elevator doors opened, workers were wheeling a deceased guest out on a gurney. “I hope I don’t leave that way,” Elvis quipped."

"Our country faced a similar challenge in the 1950s, when there was widespread apprehension about the safety of the polio vaccine. But when Elvis Presley posed backstage being given the shot before an appearance on the highly rated Ed Sullivan Show, the photo ricocheted across the nation and the world and triggered a rapid increase in vaccination rates."

"Iconic celebrities never die because they are, in fact, a booming licensing business. Albert Einstein t-shirts. Elvis Presley guitar straps. Marilyn Monroe finger puppets. (These are all real.) If Samuel Jackson can wisecrack his way through Captain Marvel, then a hologram Tom Petty could perform a concert on behalf of a spirits brands at thousands of bars – at the same time. Muhammad Ali could teach your Orange theory boxing class. Julia Child would be in your kitchen with you to co-cook a Thanksgiving turkey on behalf of Butterball. Gone are the days when a celebrity can only be in one place at one time."

"Andy, you have to do me a favor. I have this crazy idea. You know, you always do the paintings of stars ( like Elvis and MM) ? Well, when Maria (Shriver Kennedy) marries me, she will be a star, so you’ll be painting a star."

"He had a photographic mind, came prepared every day. I would have to say that if you, Carole, if you had ever have to do a scene with him, you be....... somewhat taken back, that's how his sex appeal hit you. His eyes, especially, so seductive..."

"We went backstage and he told me he used to play me on the jukebox when he was in the Army in Germany. He admired the high tenor male voice – he was a baritone. I was and remain a huge fan of his. He was a phenomenon."

"Little Richard, he was the first one that really got to me. He and, of course, Elvis Presley."

"Lou Reed, Elvis Presley and Kurt Cobain."

"Halfway through the show, he asked that the house lights be turned up. After that was done he stated that he had told them not to sell the seats to his back and, since they had, he turned around and did the last half facing those of us that had only seen his back for the first. He was a great singer and showman."

"For any strategy to work, people first have to perceive vaccination as a normal part of life. That is why public health officials, nonprofit groups and major brands are collaborating on nationwide public service campaigns and partnering with celebrities to make vaccine more visible. The model for the celebrity shot dates to 1956, when few teenagers were getting the year-old polio vaccine. Two critical things happened that fall to reverse the trend. First, 21-year-old Elvis Presley got the shot in front of cameras before “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Second, the March of Dimes launched a wildly successful peer-to-peer campaign among teen social groups. In short, it leveraged the cool kids, but it may not have gotten the cool kids without the King""

"The book, by contrast to "White Rage", offers an extended view, spanning from pre-colonial plots to relocate Britain's human rubbish, to Thomas Jefferson's notion of “whiteness as an automatic badge of superiority,” to modern use of adjectives like “redneck,” “cracker” and “country boy,” such as in the specific case of Elvis Presley. Isenberg's greatest historical and sociological intervention is not just the idea that divide and stratification exist between races, or that such divisions habit within them, but that it has always been this way. American democracy has never accorded all the people a meaningful voice. The masses have been given symbols instead."

"He valued his fans and he treated them with respect. If anybody had a reason to be arrogant it would be him, but it's a great lesson for other musicians and people in general and that is the better you get, the more humble you should be. His music resonated with everyone and that's what made him so special, like Elvis Presley or Mozart""

"An economist called Elvis Presley, who's unfortunately deceased now but made a significant impact on economic thought, in one of his master treatises said: 'A little less conversation, a little more action, please. A little less fight and a little more spark..."

"So Brian, who I was producing then, and I went up to Las Vegas, and we're sitting there watching him and Elvis sings "Runaway", then says that he liked to introduce me to the audience. So, the lights go all over trying to find me, and they can't, until Brian, who is a shy guy gets up and says, "Heeeeeeeeeee's over heeeeeeeeeeeere", and points to me, next to him, in front of the thousands there. So I took a bow. Later we went backstage with him, for two hours and let me tell you, I have never seen a better looking guy in my life."

"While many people assume it must have been a difficult slog for an Arab like me to gain acceptance in the Hollywood of the 1960s, I beg to differ. They treated me like a God. I had a beautiful house in Bel-Air, under me was this singer, what was his name, tall super nice guy, he was a very popular singer. I could see his swimming pool. Now I can't remember names of anybody, it's extraordinary. Wait, it was Elvis Presley! So I used to look and see if he had girls in the pool. LOL. And then he died young. I was in the Bel Air house when he died in Memphis, and suddenly the house under me was always empty....’"

"i) I spoke to over 140 songwriters whose work Presley recorded, and most remarked about his uncanny ability to capture the essence and make it his own; like a musical geneticist, he drew from every strand of DNA in a songwriter's work, which ultimately helped shape his own distinctive personal interpretation; just listen to the wide stylistic swath of genre-hopping material he recorded during his career – from Junior Parker's amphetamine-paced rockabilly classic "Mystery Train" and the poppin-perfect panache of Otis Blackwell's "All shook up", to the down and dirty blues swagger of "Reconsider baby" and the operatic grandeur of "It's now or never"-; and then there were more controversial and socially conscious anthems ("If I can dream" and "In the ghetto"), and introspective 70's fare like "Separate ways" and "Always on my my mind"; right away, you can hear the breath of a master stylist who breathed new life into every song he cut" ii) Growing up, Elvis Presley's quasi-gospel ballad "Crying in the Chapel" was the first secular recording allowed inside the Pointer Sisters' strict Church of God in Christ home in West Oakland, California. Ruth, Anita, Bonnie, and June were only allowed to listen to the radio on Sundays. On top of that, it had to be gospel stations. Thank God their mom fancied that song. In an extensive 2006 interview one of the sisters, Anita, reflected on the fact that it was so unbelievable that someone like Elvis could relate to the story in their song 'Fairytale' and want to record it. She thought Elvis did it beautifully and very pleased with his version, capturing the emotion in the song as he did. Ruth Pointer, also spoke positively of Elvis's final album 'Moody Blue' and defended him against charges of any cultural appropriation"

"I loved him. There were two icons who changed our life in the 1950's, James Dean and Elvis. He was the first singer who was loved by both girls and guys. He brought us together, boys and girls, a revolutionary, had a profound effect on all of us, culturally, musically emotionally, spiritually, still miss him..."

"I went to the cinema to see "Loving You" and when I decided to pursue a career in rock, I changed my last name to that of the character played by Elvis."