Growing up in 1950s Liverpool, John Lennon, who would have turned 82 this month, Paul McCartney fell in love with the rock and roll of rising star Elvis Presley. When the Beatles reached the height of their fame themselves, the Fab Four met the King at his Los Angeles home in 1965. However, over time, their assessment of the singer—who told President Nixon in 1970 that they were anti-American—changed.
Just two days before his murder on December 8, 1980, Lennon told BBC Radio 1 that Elvis was never the same again after he joined the army in 1958. The king went to West Germany to spend two years in military service and returned to star. A series of films, many of which were of poor quality.
The 40-year-old said, “When Elvis died, people were harassing me in Tokyo for a comment. Well, I’ll give it up now, he died when he went to the army. That’s when they killed him. What was left of him was just live death.”
Lennon said of Elvis’ military service: “But [it wasn’t like] Go to Zen Monastery and go to India to meditate. Or go to Scotland and grow watermelons or something, whatever they’re doing there in that place.”
In 1994, McCartney shared a similar view of King during an interview with guitar writer Tony Bacon.
“Elvis was the guy,” said the Beatles legend. “He ended up being a complete adventurer, unfortunately — he eventually turned around, and he wanted to be a federal drug lord.”
Read more: Elvis’s death – the last songs the king sang hours before his death
Like Lennon in particular, Taylor believed everything was down to the King after his military service. The drummer said, “I think after Elvis entered the army, he had no effect [Queen] Absolutely. In fact, it became a kind of side vertebra. I thought it didn’t really have much importance. He was a rebel, but when he joined the army, he disappeared into bad movies and paid off his manager’s debts in Las Vegas.”
Hearing the Beatles’ view of the singer, he replied, “I couldn’t agree more. John Lennon also said Little Richard is better than Elvis and I should agree with him there!”
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