Elvis Presley

"i) Elvis? Thank God for the goodness and the glory! I knew Elvis could do today what he's doing cos he's real. He's a champion who's has lived and kept the title, he's for real. Elvis is a southern child that is down to earth, he's beautiful just beautiful. I saw him, not too long ago, when I was singing I can't stop loving you on the stage, and I heard someone yelling and clapping, and I looked and I saw Elvis waving to me. He is true, a real pioneer ii) Like, see, when Elvis came out a lot of black groups would say, "Elvis cannot do so and so and so, shoo shoo shoo" And I'd say, "Shut up, shut up." Let me tell you this—when I came out they wasn't playing no black artists on no Top 40 stations, I was the first to get played on the Top 40 stations—but it took people like Elvis to open the door for this kind of music, and I thank God for Elvis Presley. I thank the Lord for sending Elvis to open that door so I could walk down the road, you understand?. iii) he was God given, an integrator, a blessing, they would not let black music through, a Messiah comes every thousand years and he was it this time. iv) Elvis was a good friend. One of the sweetest gentleman, and a good singer, ESPECIALLY with gospel."

"I was 10 years old and riding my bicycle at the Paramount studios during the early years of "My three sons", when suddently I came over a huge Cadillac. I was looking at it in awe, and Elvis came from behind me and offered me to take a ride inside the lot. My dad had told me to never take a ride with strangers but Elvis was no stranger to 60, even 100 million people in America, so I agreed. Anyways, I was amazed that he had a TV in a car. It was awesome to watch Popeye cartoons with him..."

"He closes with a song called "If I Can Dream," a late contribution from vocal arranger Walter Earl Brown -- a plea for peace and understanding that in the murderous year of 1968 had a timely urgency --; dressed all in white, planted before his name in lights forty feet high, he folds his body into the song as if in pain, a pain he means to kill with hope; it is as raw and real as any performance I've ever seen, the beginning of the last phase of Presley's career and, if much of what followed look like decline, it was also an apotheosis; he had only nine years to live."

"Elvis Presley. He was just the complete package. It's sort of the original."

"Elvis performed one of my songs but sadly he recorded it and that was the last thing he did. Therefore I killed him.”"

"It's what Elvis Presley used to tell his fans every night. We might have played this song 2,000 times but there's a bunch of people out there who have never heard it played live."

"He was the Neil Armstrong, the Edmund Hillary, the Elvis Presley of his sport. Sir Roger Bannister transcended athletics. He did..."

"All right, all right, Elvis has left the building. I've told you absolutely straight up to this point. You know that. He has left the building. He left the stage and went out the back with the policemen and he is now gone from the building."

"I had two big brothers. One was into rockabilly and the other into R&B. And the latter was the one who turned me onto everything from James Brown and Little Richard on through Aretha. And so I had this, what I call two ‘cradle’ languages and they somehow — I've spent my whole career trying to find that middle ground where I could blend the two. Now, being the first kid in my family to arrive home after school, I found myself in the position to raid my rockabilly brother's record collection, so I would always play ‘Hound Dog’, over and over and over again. And I had no visual to put with that. At age 8, I didn't know who Elvis Presley was, but the music was amazing. And it was all about fun, you know?"

"I've had offers to write a book about Elvis, but you know, they really didn't want to publish the stories I had to tell. They only wanted the dirt – the scandal. I never saw him use drugs and I never saw him being mean to people. He had problems, everybody does, but he was a sweet guy – real religious, and he was patriotic, he really loved America. The publishers said nobody wants to read about that stuff. I just couldn't be a part of another book trashing him, he was a real good guy and he was always nice to me.—"

"He's a multi-genre artist. You can't put him in one bracket. And, why should you? He plays guitar. He also does hip-hop music by rapping and singing. Why should we have to put his music in a box? We all want something different. We all want something new. He is, to me, the all-around artist of today. We're looking at the modern-day Elvis."

"I'd had it in my head to be a pop star for some years before the loose idea of forming a band first bubbled up inside me. The trigger was going to see Jailhouse Rock at The Scotia cinema in 1958. I was 10-years-old and Elvis knocked me sideways and awakened all sorts of feelings inside."

"I taught him some lyrics in Spanish and he learned them. I wrote it for him the way it was sung (phonetically). He was very talented. It was very difficult Mexican music."

"Elvis Presley this rare, talented, magnificent, generous and yet lonely man.A generosity that no celebrity could have. Giving for him was natural, but for those who received it was too much. Alone as few reach such dizzying heights. A prisoner of fame and fortune and a self-taught legend that surrounds him, but during those few brief years – especially during the times when Elvis, me and Marie were together – where we were able to share the special space reserved for the popular . Inside, together, none of us were alone."

"I bet you wish they would stop screaming..."

"Since the awards are all about history, I put together a few facts from the past that range from visits from famous political people such as President Kennedy and Winston Churchill to the following story about Elvis Presley staying in the hotel. He had ordered a hamburger cooked well-done and loved it so so much he went to the kitchen, found the cook and announced with a broad grin: “I just wanted to thank the person that made the best burger I have ever had."

"i) The other recording session I always think of was Elvis. Not in my wildest dreams — I mean, it was like how is this little girl singing background for Elvis Presley? How do things like that happen? The stars lined up, everything was in order, and Elvis fell in love with me because of my gospel background. Whenever he would get a chance he would go to me, 'Do you know this song? Come on, let’s go sing it.' Gospel music was the closeness that we had. "If I Can Dream" is my all-time favorite Elvis song. It was a big record, but not as big as it could have been. It was one of those records where you'd think it sold 10 billion copies, but it didn't. I did that song in my show a couple of times, but it's a really hard song to sing, it really is, the meter is really difficult. You have to really study hard to learn how to sing that song. That's why I don't sing it anymore ii) He did interact with the Blossoms, but it had a lot to do with our gospel. I came from a gospel background and my father was a minister, so I knew a lot of old hymns of the church, and that's what Elvis sang. That's how he interacted with us. Actually, when he got ready to do his 1968 comeback special, we didn't know we were actually going to be in the special because we were just singing in the background. But because of us talking to him all the time, and talking to him about gospel and everything, he told the producers, "No, I want the girls in this. I want them to be singing. He was a gentle giant."

"He was in the big room at Western Recorders, and had his cape on at the time (laughs). He was preparing to go back out on tour and he was asking us, “Well, what’s it like?” He was a really kind gentleman, couldn't have been nicer and definitely knew who The Beach Boys were. We saw him play live in Vegas at The Hilton and he was darn good. I mean, what a voice..."

"i) Rather than a biopic, I see it as a canvas, hugely ambitious, but I want to cover his whole life, many aspects of which will be truly surprising. I am now listening to a lot of Elvis and his range astounds me, from Country and Western to rock, to soul and pop. That's probably the most misunderstood thing about him as a vocal artist. There was nothing he couldn't sing.ii) When I look at musical biography, it’s not really about the life, I’m not about lionising Elvis. I just saw him as the best canvas on which to explore America in the modern age, the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.” The engine of that drama, he says, is the relationship between an artist who spanned genres, eras and races, and the P.T. Barnum character of Colonel Tom Parker, the former circus carny who made and then ruined him.I saw this story of the Colonel and Elvis as a really great prism through which to explore the latter part of the 20th century. Elvis represents what happens when a kid lives in one of four designated white houses in a black community. Something new comes about, a fusion between country and African-American music, gospel and country-and-western music."

"As an artist, he always personified total unrestrain.."

"This cat came out in red pants and a green coat and a pink shirt and socks, and he had this sneer on his face. He stood behind the mic for five minutes, I'll bet, before he made a move. Then he hit his guitar, a lick, and he broke two strings.So there he was, these two strings dangling, and he hasn't done anything except break the strings yet, and these high school girls were screaming and fainting and running up to the stage. Then he started to move his hips real slow, like he had a thing for his guitar.For the next nine days, he played one-nighters around Kilgore, and after school every day, me and my girl would get in the car and go wherever he was playing that night, in Gladewater, Alpine, Gonzales, and Lubbock, were other country singers witnessed the spectacle and heeded his call – Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings. That was the last time I tried to sing like Webb Pierce or Lefty Frizzell."

"There's a speech in the play about a mythical bird that has no legs and can, therefore, never come to rest and just hovers in the sky until it does because there is no place to land. It evoked such a memory of what I felt when I watched Presley at work: something otherworldly, inhuman (not unhuman), a kind of restless spirit that could never rest anywhere. And I thought how extraordinary it might have been to hear that speech from someone exactly like that but totally unaware of his own separation from the rest of us'."

"During my long career in broadcasting, I've had the chance to interview lots of famous people; it was late summer in 1976 when I was sent out to the Arena to cover some sort of special announcement from manager Bob Kunkel, whose look, as soon as we entered the room, told us that this was no hunting and fishing extravaganza he was promoting but an Elvis Presley concert; before leaving, I cornered him to ask about helping arrange an exclusive interview; he laughed and said, 'Good luck with that'; so, instead, I managed to get six tickets, at 15 dollars each, with each of our daughters having to come up with five bucks each, on their own, to help cover the cost; the show itself was memorable for the music, and his voice was strong but he looked tired and not well. A few months later, Elvis was back; this time, his voice was even stronger but he looked worse; two months later, he was dead and that's when my family and I went to see him, one last time, in a memorable trip where we and thousands of others, walked slowly through those gates to view his grave. That 'show' was for free..."

"It felt like we were watching Elvis"

"Whereas, Elvis Aaron Presley was born on this day in 1935 to Gladys Love and Vernon Elvis Presley in Tupelo, Mississippi and whereas Elvis' unparalleled style and song craft continues to thrill audiences, create fans and inspire new generations of musicians around the world every year we do hereby proclaim Jan. 8, 2018, as the day to celebrate the life, the work and the 83rd birthday of Elvis Aaron Presley. Thus we urge all citizens of the world to recognize the contributions of our own King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Aaron Presley, to music, this community and the world,”"

"I’ve always hated Elvis Presley from an early age. A really boring Irish cousin of mine used to be in the Irish Army. He was an Elvis fan, and he came over to my family’s house and brought all these Elvis records and sat down in my room because I had the record player. He played them for eight solid hours. Over and over. I’ve never forgotten that nonstop sound, which left me with a solid hateful impression for THAT Elvis Presley. If anyone who plays in a band digs Elvis, then it’s clearly not for me. I absolutely did not visit Elvis’s Graceland (during the Pistols' last tour), and I think Paul and Steve might have. I know I didn’t, even though we drove past it on the way to the gig. I deliberately turned my head away. I didn’t even want to see it..."

"Elvis did the Comeback Special in '68. He was falling in the ratings and it brought him right back onto the throne and, when you watch him sing – and "Baby, what do you want me to do" in particular, which is a cover of an R&B song by Jimmy Reed, Elvis makes it his own – you see this music is HIM, he's got every inflection, every feeling 100 per cent out there for all to see, it's so thrilling to watch, it's infectious. With singers and musicians, there's the surface of something and then real deep levels of being IT, and nobody gets close to Elvis because he gets that thing at the deepest level and it comes alive with him and everybody feels it, and it's like magic. He looked so great in his black leather, but even if he looked weird he'd still be King. Elvis is the total package, he was born for it.""

"As elusive as his book is, what is perceived as truth has remarkable staying power. Lynch uses an epigraph by Elvis Presley from whence comes the title of the book: “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away.” The Janus-faced nature of the book is put into relief by setting it against the journalist's craft, a juxtaposition that permeates the story. At the end, even we the readers don't know the whole truth about the main character, Roger, but we also have learned that it is perceptions and innuendos that matter more anyway."

"After playing the ukulele I told my mother I wanted a solid body guitar, because I would then be able to sing Elvis. I really liked his songs, was determined to play guitar, and ended up recording “Don’t Be Cruel”, In fact, in grade schools they started calling me Elvis Presley, the black Elvis, - they said I was trying to wear my hair like Elvis. Then I formed an all an all girls band, Bobby Lynn and the Idols."

"Certainly the most recognisable and ubiquitous semiotic marker in American cultural history, he embodies the quintessence of the postmodern condition."

"I used to mime music-making to records before I started formal piano lessons around age nine, but it was seeing Elvis Presley perform on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957 that really got me excited about playing music. I was totally in love with both Elvis and Bo Diddley, but that wasn't allowed in my house. I wanted to be a guitar player, but they wouldn't allow a guitar in the house. I had to play classical music on the piano, so it took a long time to get somewhere. Eventually, my dad bought me an alto saxophone and I fell into playing sax but before long, rock ‘n’ roll struck as part of the British Invasion, and I reverted to the keyboard."

"I don't know where that story came from. The other day, my niece begged me to tell her, so I had to swear to her, on my life, that Elvis and I had never met. And we did not."

"It might seem strange to write the phrase “a nobody” in the same sentence as Elvis Presley. But really, in rock ’n’ roll icon terms these days you're nobody until you have had a major multimedia museum exhibition in London. The Presley estate’s 1.5 million artefacts have been curated down into about 450 pieces on display here. No musical artist – or probably any human being ever – is surrounded by as many out-there stories. And as much as the music or the clothes, it is the myths that make Elvis ELVIS. There’s the police light he used to place on top of his car so he could pull people over and give out his autograph instead of tickets. LOL. The cheque for $3,000 he carried around with him until he found the perfect golden palomino horse to buy (he finally handed it over to someone, folds and all, in January 1967). A secure Mark 900 briefcase and phone with handwritten instructions, the pad with the notes for his proposed kung-fu film and the tiny white faux fur coat he had made for Lisa-Marie when she was a toddler. And on and on it goes, serving as a reminder that however weird and wild The Beatles or Bowie or Michael Jackson or Prince or Madonna or Kanye or anyone else may have got, Elvis Presley was weirder and wilder before them all. He invented the idea of the megastar eccentric and looked and sounded fabulous while doing it. This great exhibition is fitting testament"

"Others get a kick out of Elvis, a passing phase so I recommend the Government feed the souls of men with the music of Beethoven and Dvorak. I never realized that I was so far out of date until I saw this artist on a CBC television production. Heaven help us if that is the way our generation is going..."

"But it is Presley's singing, halfway between a western and a rock 'n' roll style, that has sent teenagers into a trance; they like his wailing in a popular song like "Blue Moon" or such western tunes as "I'll Never Let You Go", but they go crazy over the earthy, lusty mood of such rock 'n' roll numbers as "Money Honey"; and the reason is simple enough: Presley sings with a beat; and you can be certain that there'll always be music with a beat and that, whether you like it or not, there will always be an Elvis Presley."

"France's Elvis brought a part of America into our national pantheon. And all of us in France have something of Johnny Hallyday in us."

"He is probably more famous than anyome who has ever been famous"

"Oh, they can kiss my ass,” she says of critics who might accuse her of borrowing other cultures’ fixtures. It's a topic she seems interested to discuss. “I’m not appropriating anything. I’m inspired and I’m referencing other cultures. That is my right as an artist. They said Elvis Presley stole African-American culture. That’s our job as artists, to turn the world upside down and make everyone feel bewildered and have to rethink everything.”"

"It was Elvis’ 1957 film Jailhouse Rock which first inspired my brother and I to pursue a life in pop music. To this day, the track ‘(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care’, from the movie, remains my favourite. We saw the film when we were really young. Even if you divorce it from that scene in the movie, for me, it’s musically kind of the essence of everything that pop music should be. That track awoke something in me, beckoning me to the world of pop stardom. Upon watching the movie, my younger self couldn’t help but think, “Oh God, someday, I want to be that guy at that swimming pool, being as cool as I can possibly be, standing there singing in front of all these women at the pool party.“ With this song, there’s something so basic about it, and it’s really, really short. I think it’s just around two minutes long, but it also shows you don’t need to overstay your welcome in a pop song. You can say it all in around two minutes, and if you’ve got the goods, like he did, there’s no problem. It just makes you go and want to replay it that much quicker. There was the Elvis in his pre-army days, and he was the absolute coolest person there was."

"I came home from school one day in the fall of 1857 and my mother said she read in the newspaper that Elvis Presley was going to play the arena right near my high school. She didn't want me to go see Elvis. But years later, when the Electric Factory Concerts I then headed booked Elvis at the Spectrum, in 1971, she was the first to ask me for tickets..."

"When Ed made his weekly call to the Trendex ratings service, he confirmed what he had suspected: Allen's show with Elvis had soundly beaten his, garnering a 20.2 rating with a 55.3% share (about 40 million viewers), compared with his own show's 14.8 rating and 39.7 % share (roughly 19 million). Within the week, he called Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It was time to make a deal. Colonel Parker, knowing he had Ed where he wanted him, extracted a whopping $50,000 for three appearances, far more than any previous Sullivan guest. On September 9, 1956, the camera would pull up at times to show only his upper torso. Yet the limited camera angle didn't dampen the effect —if anything, his facial expression, the abandon on his face, was more potent than even his gyrating hips. This was untamed beatific energy, the definition of charisma, a bolt of white-hot energy. The all-girl cheering section sounded like it was on the verge of storming the stage. Never before had so much female sexual desire been broadcast into so many American living rooms. The evening was a decisive ratings triumph, garnering a 43.7 Trendex rating, an 82.6% share, translating to some sixty million people, or about a third of the country— the largest television audience to date. Indeed, Elvis' performance of “Hound Dog” that night would be one of a small handful of moments that defined the decade."

"In his Grammy-winning 1986 song "Graceland," Paul Simon reveals his thoughts during a road trip to the home of Elvis Presley in Memphis. In the lyrics, Simon states, “For reasons I cannot explain there’s some part of me wants to see Graceland.” Even though I can't list myself as a dedicated fan, I have always appreciated his tremendous talent and the major impact he had on the world of entertainment. Not only his musical talent crossed many genres, but there's no question that he is one of the cultural icons of the 20th century. So once there, we were impressed by the mansion itself, which continues to have the feel of the 1960s-style residence Elvis developed and loved so much. The original 10,266-square-foot Colonial Revival style mansion was built in 1939 for a Memphis socialite and her husband. The expansive surrounding property includes the “Meditation Garden,” containing the graves of the singer, his parents Vernon and Gladys and his grandmother Minnie Presley. So, do we recommend the Graceland experience? The answer is yes, as the house, property and family cemetery are all definitely worth seeing."

"Yes, I've known him for his music and films, and indeed he is one of my favourites"

"I had not paid attention to Elvis before 1969 but I really hadn't cared about music at all, until I was about 12, so I got into the Beatles and Elvis in my mind, at that time, was always this old dude. And then I heard "Suspicious Minds", "Any day now", and many songs that he did after the movie contracts were over and that is when I really started to love Elvis, and that was all the way to the end."

"Performing a few more classics like "Crossroads" and "Vincent" from his "American Pie" album, he takes a break between songs to talk about setting off from his hometown for the first time to pursue his music in California and witnessing the the MGM Studio auctions in the late 60's. Moving on, he took a step back in time to "And I Love You So", from his debut album, Tapestry, released in 1970. The song became an instant classic at its release, and was covered by many of the greats including "my favorite", McLean revealed, "Elvis Presley", who recorded it and used it in 125 of his live performances from 1975 until his death in 1977."

"My next book is about how the U.S. Army tried to ‘transform’ itself to meet the challenges of the atomic bomb, as well as the American experiment with a large peacetime, short-service citizen-soldier force and conscription. The idea that someone as famous and controversial as Elvis Presley could be drafted and become a symbol of the U.S. military and the nation's commitment to the defense of the free world fascinates me. His exemplary military service was well chosen, for that young man quietly accepted the call to duty, raised his hand and took the oath, wore the uniform and performed soldierly tasks as well as he had cavorted on the stage before adoring teenyboppers. Thus, after years of unremitting effort, the all-volunteer force that many call “the best Army this or any other nation has ever fielded” has come to face new enemies, new challenges with, if not sublime confidence, at least sturdy resolution. In considering the long hard period of transformation, one ponders the profound commentary of Elvis Presley's first sergeant: “By submitting to the draft and entering the Army as an ordinary private, Elvis accepted the discipline of an institution that had come to play a vital role in transforming men from assorted backgrounds into soldiers and Americans. A condensed version of those lines might stand as a pretty good inscription on the Pelvis’ tombstone."

"In "Clambake", Elvis was going to do a scene in a bar with Shelley Fabares, and in the back these waiters were wearing —you know, the tasseled cup hats and also wearing vests with gold trim and stuff, so I went and put one of those on, as a joke, and then they put a moustache on me. So I'm cleaning up a table, and Elvis is about 5 or 10 feet away from where I'm cleaning, and as he's talking to her, I'm knocking over glasses and finally they said, “Cut!” And he didn't look around —he just kind of shrugged— but I did it purposely three times in a row, and on the third time he turned around and said, ““What the hell are you doing over there? Well, anyways, I did the next take right, and you can spot me back there. He used to called me “Double Trouble,” actually because they did a movie where he was playing cousins and he had to play a blonde, so his Memphis Mafia kept teasing him: “You look like that guy on The Big Valley! So we used to play tricks on each other all the time. He’d be on stage at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, and I’d come off the other side from where he’s leaning down and singing, and I’d get some scarves and bring ’em out, and he’d hear this roaring over there from the other side of the stage, and he’d see me and go, “What the hell are you doing over there?” We'd do stuff like that all the time. We had a good time and yeah, well, Elvis and I were friends. It's too bad he died so young."

"Elvis took risks by being a pioneer in his adaptation of black culture. He received huge stick for perpetuating what some of his Southern brethren were referring to as “degenerate nigger music” and the threat it posed to the social order by the fact that blacks and whites were digging his music whether listening to it on the radio or live at (segregated) venues. Much has been made of the way in which he conducted his private life, but this had a lot to do with his living within a kind of fame that few humans could comprehend. So many people often remember how well mannered and humble he appeared to be in his interactions. He may not be ‘The King’ to all but his impact on the course of music history cannot be denied and should not be denigrated."

"I always thought that singers have what I call the Elvis Presley syndrome — they think they're Elvis Presley. But they're not Elvis Presley."

"Ever since I was a kid, I was just glued to the record player. I would save allowances to buy Elvis records every week and still remember when I first heard "It's Now or Never". I thought that was the greatest rock 'n' roll record I ever heard. It just blew my mind. But it blew my mind even more when my mom showed me it was actually an Italian aria. O Sole Mio, remains a part of my performance repertoire to this day. It was like, 'There you go. There is a connection with all of this music.' It all started from there.""