John Lennon says meeting with Elvis Presley was ‘just how he expected it to be’

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https://cultfollowing.co.uk/2025/11/02/ ... -it-to-be/

A meeting between Elvis Presley and The Beatles went “just how he expected” it, according to John Lennon.

He and Paul McCartney would make their love of The King known on several occasions, with the Let It Be hitmaker citing Presley as “the guru” of rock and roll music. The Beatles would meet with Presley and had “a bit of a do” with the Hound Dog hitmaker, and Lennon seemed pleased. McCartney would share he loved the meet-up with Presley, and it’s a feeling Lennon would back, with The King coming across far more “normal” than first thought. While the hitmaker may be one of the most recognisable faces in rock and roll history, he would actually appear to be much more personable than first thought. McCartney would say it was a meeting of “old mates” while Lennon would say Presley was simply “great”.

He said: “He just seemed normal to us, you know. And we were asking him about just making movies and not doing any personal appearances or TV. And he seems to enjoy it, you know. I think he enjoys making movies so much. We couldn’t stand not doing personal appearances. We’d get bored. We get bored quickly. He says he misses it a bit, you know. He’s just… he was great. He was just how I expected him.”

McCartney added: “I think he was exactly like I imagined, yeah. I didn’t quite know what to expect when we went there, you know. I mean, I thought that he’d be the same, but I didn’t know how the atmosphere or anything would be in the place.

“But it was good, ‘cuz it was all old mates around. Old mates of his, you know, and we brought quite a few of ours. And so we just had a bit of a ‘do.” It’s a feeling that Lennon backed up too, suggesting Presley was “just how I expected him.”

In the Anthology documentary series, McCartney says Presley was one of the first musical artists he ever took note of. McCartney would say Presley was “what we had been waiting for.” The songwriter would also dub The King a “guru” of music, whose influence was clear.

He would go on to share Presley was a “good looking” musician, though it was not the music he first noticed. McCartney said: “I remember being in school when I was a kid and somebody had a picture in one of the musical papers of Elvis Presley. I think it was an advert for Heartbreak Hotel. I just looked at it and thought ‘he’s so good looking, he looks perfect.’”

Heartbreak Hotel would release on January 27, 1956, and was a Billboard Top 100 chart topper. The two-minute track would leave a lasting impression on John Lennon, too, with the Imagine hitmaker considering Heartbreak Hotel a “great” alternative to American music of the times.

He told the NME: “We’d never heard American voices singing like that. They always sang like Sinatra or enunciate very well. Suddenly, there’s this hillbilly hiccuping on tape echo and all this bluesy stuff going on. And we didn’t know what Elvis was singing about … It took us a long time to work what was going on. To us, it just sounded as a noise that was great.”