50 Years Ago Elvis Presley Met The Beatles: An Inside Look at That Pop Culture Summit
Memories of the people who were there, including John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Priscilla Presley, more
If there are no recordings to listen to or photos to look at, did Elvis Presley, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, actually meet The Beatles, a.k.a the Fab Four, on August 27, 1965? Well, despite the lack of physical evidence to the contrary, they did indeed, though you’d be mistaken if you imagined a pop culture seismic moment. In fact, it could be perceived as underwhelming, though from the outside looking in, it’s pretty awesome that it happened at all.
In regards to people’s memories of that day, former Elvis road manager Joe Esposito reflects to Elvis Australia, “The day Elvis and The Beatles met—there’s a lot of different versions of this story. We’ve all gotten older. All our memories are different. And maybe when you read things or believe certain things you read, which you know are not true, eventually they become real.”
Also, before we begin, a huge shoutout to the previously-mentioned Elvis Australia, which has created an impressive database of information regarding all things Elvis, including the compilation of many of the quotes you’ll find below, which they’ve culled from a variety of sources. There’s also our archived interview with journalist Ivor Davis, author of The Beatles and Me On Tour.
Ivor Davis: “I became very friendly in 1964 with The Beatles. I was a foreign correspondent for a newspaper called the London Daily Express and I was on the West Coast. The editor called me and said, ‘Get up to San Francisco. The boys are coming and we want you to travel with them, eat with them, sleep with them and cover their concerts.’ And I flew with them in their private jet for about 35 days. So, I became a part of the family, if you like, because they weren’t able to mingle with the public. And so they were stuck with me and I was stuck with them, and I got to know them pretty well.”
Priscilla Presley: “Some stars want to meet other stars. Some stars have to hang out with other stars. Not Elvis. I can’t remember him once telling the Colonel to arrange a meeting with anyone famous. He saw Hollywood as the home of phonies. He certainly felt out of place, which is why the minute the movie [he was filming] wrapped, he was gone. One memorable evening, the Colonel arranged for Elvis to meet four famous people. But I believe it was The Beatles who were eager to meet Elvis, not the other way around.”
John Lennon: “There was only one person in the United States that we really wanted to meet — I’m not sure that he wanted to meet us — and that was Elvis. It was difficult to describe how we felt about him. We just idolized the guy so much.”
Priscilla Presley: “Elvis, like all iconic entertainers, was conscious of competitors. He understood that generational idols come and go, and that, for this new generation, The Beatles were the new idols.”
Ivor Davis: “Elvis was king of the hit parade. The Beatles—these ‘interlopers’ from Liverpool—show up and these young men become number one. Also, Elvis has made three cookie-cutter movies a year for, like, seven years, which he was not happy with. Elvis said quite honestly about those films, ‘They’re the same movie. I get a different leading lady, I fight the bad guy, I win the girl and sing 10 lousy songs.’”
Priscilla Presley: “He viewed this whole world of music coming from England — The Beatles, the Stones and the Dave Clark Five — with tremendous interest and, I suppose, some trepidation.”
Ivor Davis: “Elvis made about 30 movies and then along come these Beatles; they make one movie called A Hard Day’s Night and it is a sensational movie. So, the undercurrent of resentment was from Elvis, and The Beatles didn’t realize what was going on in Elvis’ mind. I must tell you, it was not a smash hit meeting. It was uncomfortable. Elvis always felt fairly alone. He had the Memphis Mafia as his family, which was okay, but they were a bunch of friendly sycophants who did everything Elvis told them to do. Whereas The Beatles had each other, like a family. So the dynamic there was Elvis feeling lonely, and The Beatles, again, had each other, which was the bottom line.”
Priscilla Presley: “He acknowledged their talent and energy — he told me on many occasions — but he worried about losing popularity. And in 1965, no one was more popular than The Beatles.”
John Lennon: “We tried to meet him during our first tour of the States in 1964, but couldn’t make it because of his commitments and ours. But when we came back in the summer of 1965, we found we’d be in Hollywood at the same time that Elvis was filming there. It still took three days of planning to set up the get-together in Elvis’ house.”
Ivor: “The seeds for this meeting were planted in 1964, when Elvis’ manager, Colonel Parker, appeared at the house The Beatles were staying in. He brought them cowboy gear from a place called Nuddies on Hollywood Boulevard. Nuddies had a famous store in Hollywood back in the ’60s that had cowboy gear and all sorts of wonderful stuff. Then the two managers [Parker and The Beatles’ Brian Epstein] wanted it to happen, The Beatles wanted it to happen. I’m not sure that Elvis wanted it to happen, but they’d been working on it for a year.”
The media was certainly onto the what they referred to as the “Pop Summit,” with the Daily Mirror making predictions in August, 1965, writing, “The place is secret. So is the time. But the principals are definitely Britain’s Beatles and America’s Elvis Presley. My bet is that the rendezvous will be one of Elvis’s three homes in the Beverly Hills area. Fantastic security arrangements have been made by both sides. It is feared that a leak could cause fans to riot … Earlier this evening, Paul McCartney said, “We still don’t know ourselves where it is going to be. We will just get in the car and go—unless Elvis comes here.”
Joe Esposito: “The Colonel, being the promoter he is, leaked it out that The Beatles were meeting Elvis, so we got out there and there’s thousands of kids hanging all over the walls, climbing the trees … and reporters. We pull in, go into the driveway and all the boys get out and we went to the door.”
Paul McCartney: “It wasn’t staged for publicity—and that was the best thing about it.”
Ivor Davis: “In August, 1965, I got a call from Mal Evans, who was one of the road managers, and he said, ‘Come over to the house right away’—they were renting the house of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor in Beverly Hills—’we’re going to see Elvis.’ And so I raced over there and then we jumped into the limos and we went to Elvis’ house.”
Priscilla Presley: “The night they arrived at our house on Perugia Way in Bel Air, there were nearly as many security men outside as fans. This was definitely treated as a summit.”
John Lennon: “We hoped the meeting would be a secret, but the fans and the press still got wind of it and were there in their hundreds trying to get in, and although we were used to crowds, the thought of Elvis and The Beatles being together at one time just blew the minds of some of the people.”
Ivor Davis: “The only thing that bothered me was the fact that I learned later on that the secrecy came about because Brian Epstein said, ‘We don’t want any press. We don’t want any photographs. We do not want any tape recorders.’ That was like the kiss of death, but fortunately I fit so well in with them, that I was able to be with them as they walked into the house and see what went on. I was able to be the fly on the wall for that rather remarkable meeting.”
Joe Esposito: “The only pictures of that meeting were outside, taken by fans and photographers. Nothing on the inside. No pictures were taken [of them] together. And it was great. They were real nice guys. I’m a big fan of The Beatles, too.”
Priscilla Presley: “When John, Paul, Ringo and George walked in, Elvis was relaxing on the couch, looking at TV without the sound. He barely bothered to get up. Naturally he was curious about The Beatles. He respected them. Mostly he respected the way they had achieved their artistic freedom. He saw how they did whatever they liked to do. He appreciated their songs and especially their film A Hard Day’s Night, where their creativity and sense of fun came through so powerfully. Help! was out or just about to be released.”
Ivor Davis: “We showed up at the house and walked in, and there, sitting on the couch, was a guy in a very tight-fitting outfit and with the sideburns that looked like shag carpeting. He had a remote control, which he was flicking onto the giant 16-inch television…”
Paul McCartney: “He was the first guy we knew who had a remote control on his television. That’s how long ago it was.”
Ivor Davis: “… I mean, 16-inches in those days was giant, believe me. And there was no sound, there was a jukebox in the corner and the guy with the shaggy sideburns was Elvis. It was about 10:00 at night. The drapes were drawn, of course. For about 10 minutes, nothing happened.”
Priscilla Presley: “When they were escorted into our living room and finally greeted Elvis, all they could do was stare, especially John and Paul. Intimidation was written all over their faces. They couldn’t have been more humble.”
John Lennon: “We were joined by some of his staff as well as Colonel Parker and Brian Epstein. I know Paul, George and Ringo were feeling as nervous as I was. This was the guy we had all idolized for years—from way back when we were just starting out in Liverpool. He was a legend in his own lifetime, and it’s never easy meeting a legend in his own lifetime.”
Priscilla Presley: “They looked to Elvis for an agenda. Clearly Elvis was running the show. But Elvis was simply content to recline on the couch and watch soundless TV. Was this going to be the extent of the evening’s activities?”
Ivor Davis: “It was very awkward and the reason nothing happened was that nobody had the good sense to say, ‘Elvis, here is John, Paul, George and Ringo.’ So, they sat around like uncomfortable guests.”
Priscilla Presley: “The fact that Elvis greeted them with studied casualness didn’t mean he didn’t care. He did. He was simply affirming his role as Original King.”
Tony Barrow (Beatles publicist to BBC News): “As they faced one another, there was a weird silence and it was John who spoke first, rather awkwardly blurting out a stream of questions at Elvis, saying, ‘Why do you do all these soft-centered ballads for the cinema these days? What happened to good old rock ‘n’ roll?’ They quickly exhausted their initial bout of small talk and there was this embarrassing silence between the mega-famous five, with very little of import being said.”
John Lennon: “Elvis tried to make us feel at home. We sat, Paul and me on one side of him and Ringo on the other. George sat cross-legged on the floor. A huge color television was on in the middle of the room with the sound off, while a record player was playing the latest tunes. We could have just walked in on an average Elvis-at-home evening. Elvis obviously liked to treat everybody he met the same, whoever they were.”
Ivor Davis: “I stood there watching this amazing scene of two of the greatest acts in rock and roll history not communicating. Elvis, and I’ll give it to him, he had a great sense of humor. He actually stood up and said to The Beatles, ‘I’m going to bed. I thought you guys came to jam.’ Well, that kind of broke the ice. The Beatles smiled and said, ‘Yeah.’”
John Lennon: “‘Look, guys,’ he said, ‘if you’re just going to sit there and stare at me, I’m going to bed.’ He smiled and we all laughed. ‘Let’s talk a bit, huh?’ he went on. ‘And then maybe sing a bit?’ That’s what we all wanted to do, and you could feel the tension in the room begin to ease.”
Tony Barrow: “Elvis called for some guitars to be handed out to John, Paul and George, and a piano was hauled into view. Up to that point, the party really had been a bit lifeless and unexciting. But as soon as Presley and The Beatles began to play together, the atmosphere livened up.”
Ivor Davis: “Elvis led them; Elvis played his music and Chuck Berry music — he didn’t play any Beatles music, but that broke the ice.”
Tony Barrow: “The boys found that they could make much better conversation with their guitars than they could with their spoken word. Music was their natural meeting point, their most intelligent means of communication.”
John Lennon: “I said, ‘This beats talking, doesn’t it?’ We had at last found a way of communicating through music. Only Ringo looked a bit down; he could only watch us and drum on the side of his chair. ‘Too bad we left the drums in Memphis,’ Elvis said, as if trying to console him.”
Paul McCartney: “Elvis was also playing bass, so that was great for me: ‘You’re trying to learn bass, son? Hey, I play bass, too. Sit down, let me show you a few things.’ I couldn’t give him any hints, but I could, at least, talk knowledgeably about it. I felt a bond with him.”
Priscilla Presley: “Paul was surprised Elvis played bass. The truth is that Elvis had been teaching himself bass for a while and, given his natural talent, was accomplished within no time.”
Paul McCartney: “Suddenly he was a mate. It was a great conversation piece for me; I could actually talk about the bass.”
Priscilla Presley: “For the rest of the evening, there was more music than talk. I don’t think Elvis asked The Beatles a single question and I know The Beatles were too overwhelmed to ask a question of Elvis. When it seemed Elvis was ready to retire, the evening came to an end, but not until we all enjoyed several hours of music and idle chatter.”
John Lennon: “As we were about to leave, Paul said, ‘Elvis, we’d like you and the other guys to come up to the place where we are staying tomorrow night.’ ‘Well, I’ll see,’ Elvis replied. ‘I don’t know whether I can make it or not. But thanks all the same.’ He smiled and shook our hands.”
Ivor Davis: “They never got together after that meeting.”
Priscilla Presley: “Clearly they wanted to maintain and extend this relationship. Elvis smiled and said, ‘We’ll see.’ But I knew he had no intention of returning the visit. Elvis rarely went out in Hollywood, not even for show business royalty. Several of Elvis’ boys, though, took up the offer. When they returned, they said that John wanted Elvis to know that without him, there would be no Beatles. He was their first and best inspiration.”
Paul McCartney: “I really liked him. He didn’t talk much, but he looked great. He was a really cool, casual guy.”
George Harrison: “He was exactly as I thought he would be. Very friendly, very hospitable, easy, relaxed and very interested in our music and us. A real star in every sense of the word.”
Ivor Davis: “That positive feeling wouldn’t last. Years later, I know from Ringo that The Beatles were very upset at Elvis, because he went to see President Richard Nixon at the White House. He took Richard Nixon a gift of a gun, gave it to him at the White House, and he wanted a federal agent badge from Richard Nixon. Richard Nixon gave him the badge. But, and I have seen the recordings of this, in the meeting with Nixon, Elvis, for whatever stupid reason, said, ‘Those Beatles from England, they come to America, they earn millions of dollars, they go back to England and they badmouth America.’”
“That was a lie, because The Beatles never badmouthed America. They loved America and Ringo, I know for sure, was so upset. You know, ‘Why would Elvis say that? Tell a pack of lies to Richard Nixon?’ But he did tell him that. So, the bottom line is that it was a fascinating meeting between Elvis and The Beatles, but they did not end up the best of friends.”
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Woman's World does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.
