The Beatles’ love for Elvis Presley is to be expected. As the king of rock and roll, Presley paved the way for the Liverpool four-piece. With all four members initially being inspired by the rocker, it was the baby-faced Paul McCartney who was especially charmed by his work.
Reflecting on The Beatles discography, McCartney’s contributions were endless. He was the master of melody in the band, providing the Fab Four with some of their biggest anthems and more timeless grooves. He seemed to have a knack for writing bulletproof songs that were never too overdone and seemingly haven’t aged. Really, the only other contemporary artist that comes close to that accolade is Presley.
As the man who popularised rock and roll worldwide, Presley brought the previously segregated sounds of rock, rhythm and blues to the mainstream. He was a global sensation that forever changed the sound of the radio. Really, every rock and roll act to ever follow has him to thank, and The Beatles were always vocally grateful.
Three tracks in particular stood out to McCartney as especially inspiring, helping to shape him as an artist, songwriter and music fan.
“You heard people saying, ‘I’ve never heard anything like that before, man.’ And it was that,” McCartney said of Elvis’ influence. “You hear on the radio Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ It was like, ‘Oh my God, what is that?’ Now that we know it so well, you think, ‘Oh, it’s Elvis singing ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ There will be listeners who can remember that moment when you heard that.”
‘Heartbreak Hotel’ dominated the charts for weeks after its release in 1956. As part of the G.I Blues soundtrack, the song has become a rock and roll classic. With winding and changing melodies, moving from more intense verses to slow and seductive choruses, it was still exciting and even experimental despite being so widely popular. For McCartney, it was quite simply unlike anything he’d ever heard.
Elvis’ appeal has endured all the way through McCartney’s musical life. As a young lad, he remembered one song soundtracking an early brush with the opposite sex. “This is just a little Liverpool fair – it was in a place called Sefton Park – and there was this girl, who was so beautiful,” he told Rolling Stone.
He continued, “She was so beautiful. Everyone was following her, and it’s like, ‘Wow.’ It’s like a magical scene, you know? But all this gave me a headache, so I ended up going back to his house — I didn’t normally get headaches. And we thought, ‘What can we do?’ So we put on the Elvis song ‘All Shook Up’. By the end of that song, my headache had gone. I thought, you know, ‘That’s powerful.’”
A testament to the magic of music, giving a voice to deepest feelings and unusual circumstances, Presley has always been there for the musicians. In 1999, he honoured that by covering ‘All Shook Up’ in homage.
It seems that Presley especially appeals to McCartney’s younger self and the youthful nature of his early days and first steps into music. They say senses like sound hold memories the closest, and that’s certainly the case here. In a 1994 interview, McCartney recalled relistening to ‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’, an early Presley track.
“I suddenly realized the last time I listened to this thoroughly was before The Beatles, before all that happened to me, and it just stripped it all away. It was like I was a kid playing snooker again and listening,” he explained. “It actually got me crying, pow. Really did it to me. And I could remember all the words.”
Paul McCartney’s favourite Elvis Presley songs:
‘Heartbreak Hotel’
‘All Shook Up’
‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’
