What they have said about Elvis



(by alphabetical order)


"Elvis Presley was the sweetest, most humble and nicest man you'd want to know."
Muhammad Ali

"Elvis is the 'glue' which holds our society together....which subconciously gives our world meaning"
Anonymous

"He was fantastic... When he danced, the people danced, the girls would actually faint because of what he was doing. The people didn't care if he was white or black, he was a good artist and they felt his music."
Lavern Baker

"Eventually everybody has to die, except Elvis"
Dave Barry - Humorist

"Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything - music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution - the 60's comes from it. Because of him a man like me barely knows his musical grammar anymore."
Leonard Bernstein

"Describe Elvis Presley? He was the greatest who ever was, is or ever will be."
Chuck Berry

"Blacks didn't have the air-waves Elvis had. He delivered what he obtained beautifully."
Chuck Berry

"I identified a lot with Elvis, yeah. I love his style of singing, he was a very loyal guy - he was a little misled, but in the big picture he was a good guy."
Jon Bon Jovi (Band members call Jon 'Elvis')

"Elvis Presley is like the 'Big Bang' of Rock 'n' Roll. It all came from there and what you had in Elvis Presley is a very interesting moment because, really, to be pretentious about it for a minute, you had two cultures colliding there. You had a kind of white, European culture and an African culture coming together - the rhythm, okay, of black music and the melody chord progressions of white music - just all came together in that kind of spastic dance of his. That was the moment. That's really it. Out of all that came the Beatles and the Stones, but you can't underestimate what happened. It does get back to Elvis."
Bono (From U2)

"Elvis was a major hero of mine. I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something."
David Bowie

"No one will ever touch Elvis"
Garth Brooks

"I'm sitting in the drive-through and I've got my three girls in the back and this station comes on and it's playing "Jailhouse Rock," the original version, and my girls are jumping up and down, going nuts. I'm looking around at them and they've heard Dad's music all the time and I don't see that out of them."
Garth Brooks

“I wasn’t just a fan, I was his brother. He said I was good and I said he was good; we never argued about that. Elvis was a hard worker, dedicated, and God loved him. Last time I saw him was at Graceland. We sang Old Blind Barnabus together, a gospel song. I love him and hope to see him in heaven. There’ll never be another like that soul brother.
James Brown

"Elvis was the only man from Northeast Mississippi who could shake his hips and still be loved by rednecks, cops, and hippies"
Jimmy Buffett

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.
Johnny Carson (1925 - ) US talk show host, comedian
In The Ultimate Success Quotations Library, 1997.

"Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique, irreplaceable. More than twenty years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense. And he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness and good humor of this country."
President Jimmy Carter, 1977. His official statement following Elvis' death.

"The first concert I attended was an Elvis concert when I was eleven. Even at that age he made me realize the tremendous effect a performer could have on an audience."
Cher

"Presley defined rock and roll in 1956. The sneer. The hair. The twisting knees. The thrusting hips. The pink Cadillac."
Dick Clark

“It’s rare when an artist’s talent can touch an entire generation of people. It’s even rarer when that same influence affects several generations. Elvis made an imprint on the world of pop music unequaled by any other single performer.”
Dick Clark

"Elvis Presley was the first and the best. He is my favourite of all time."
Bill Clinton

“You know, Bush is always comparing me to Elvis in sort of unflattering ways. I don’t think Bush would have liked Elvis very much, and that’s just another thing that’s wrong with him.”
Bill Clinton During the 1992 presidential campaign.

"It isn't enough to say that Elvis is kind to his parents, sends money home, and is the same unspoiled kid he was before all the commotion began. That still isn't a free ticket to behave like a sex maniac in public."
Eddie Condon - Cosmopolitan, December 1956

"Elvis will never contribute a damn thing to music"
Bing Crosby, 1956

"The things Elvis has done during his career and the things he has contributed and created are really something very important to the music buseness. Elvis helped to kill off the influence of me and my contemporaries, but I respect him for that. Because music always has to progress, and "non-one could have opened the door to the future like he did."
Bing Crosby, 1973

"I had always wanted to be like Elvis, to be a rock 'n' roll star, but I couldn't sing, so I joined a mod band instead"
Roger Daltry (The Who)

"There was something just bordering on rudeness about Elvis. He never actually did anything rude, but he always seemed as if he was just going to. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate him eleven"
Sammy Davis Jr

"If Presley copied me, I don't care. More power to him. I'm not starving"
Bo Didley

"When I first heard Elvis' voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss...Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. The highlight of my career? That's easy, elvis recording one of my songs."
Bob Dylan

"The highlight of my career? That's easy, Elvis recording one of my songs."
Bob Dylan

"Elvis Presley is the supreme socio-cultural icon in the history of pop culture"
Dr. Gary Enders

"I learned music listening to Elvis' records. His measurable effect on culture and music was even greater in England than in the States."
Mick Fleetwood

"He had that amazing voice - which was sexy for women but reached guys as well ."
Doug Flett (Songwriter)

"...At Sun Studio in Memphis Elvis Presley called to life what would soon be known as rock and roll with a voice that bore strains of the Grand Ole Opry and Beale Street, of country and the blues. At that moment, he ensured - instinctively, unknowingly - that pop music would never again be as simple as black and white."
David Fricke Rolling Stone, 1986

"After we finished shooting some days we would hear that there was a party at Elvis' house. We'd go up there but it wasn't really much of a party at all. It was just a bunch of girls sitting around watching Elvis watch TV."
Teri Garr

“It’s always been my dream to come to Madison Square Garden and be the warm-up act for Elvis.”
Senator Al Gore Accepting the nomination for vice president at the 1992 Democratic Convention & prior to Bill Clinton's (aka "Elvis" by his security staff) acceptance of the presidential nomination.

"Elvis had an influence on everybody with his musical approach. He broke the ice for all of us."
Al Green

"Elvis touched the life of every ear that heard him, and you couldn't help but listen when he sang."
Merle Haggard

"I believe the three most important events of the 1950s were the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision, the building of Levittown, and the emergence of Elvis Presley."
David Halberstam

"L'homme qui m'a donné envie de brûler ma vie."
Traduction: The man who gave me desire for burning my life
Johnny Hallyday (big french rocker)

"...a style and panache that come close to pure magic. Lithe, raunchy, the sweat pouring down his face, he now moves with the precision of an athlete, the grace of a dancer...flamboyant and flashy, sexy and self-mocking, he works with the instincts of a genius to give poetry to the basic rock performance."
W.A. Harbinson From his 1975 book, The Illustrated Elvis. A passage reflecting upon Elvis' 1969 Vegas engagement.

"Elvis was a giant and influenced everyone in the business."
Isaac Hayes

"Elvis was one of those individuals, when he sang a song, he just seemed to live every word of it. There's other people that have a voice that may be as greater than Presley's but he had that certain something."
Jake Hess

"Because part of Presley's contradictory appeal is that he could sound like nobody else and yet you can [also] hear the different characters in his voice. He would be Billy Eckstine, he would be Bill Kenny of The Ink Spots, he would be Hank Snow - all these people became Elvis Presley by the time he started touring. He has all these people inside of him."
Charlie Hodge

"None of us could have made it without Elvis"
Buddy Holly

"So what it boils down to was Elvis produced his own records. He came to the session, picked the songs, and if something in the arrangement was changed, he was the one to change it. Everything was worked out spontaneously. Nothing was really rehearsed. Many of the important decisions normally made previous to a recording session were made during the session. What it was was a look to the future. Today everybody makes records this way. Back then Elvis was the only one. He was the forerunner of everything that's record production these days. Consciously or unconsciously, everyone imitated him. People started doing what Elvis did."
Bones Howe Recording Engineer - As quoted in Jerry Hopkins' 1971 book, Elvis, A Biography.

"They called Elvis the king, why not me?"
Michael Jackson

"No-one, but no-one, is his equal, or ever will be. He was, and is supreme."
Mick Jagger

"He was a unique artist - an original in an area of imitators."
Mick Jagger

"It was Elvis that got me interested in music. I've been an Elvis fan since I was a kid. Ask anyone. If it hadn't been for Elvis, I don't know where popular music would be. He was the one that started it all off, and he was definitely the start of it for me."
Elton John

"Ask anyone. If it hadn't been for Elvis, I don't know where popular music would be. He was the one that started it all off, and he was definitely the start of it for me."
Elton John

"This man just absolutely jumps off the screen."
Hal Kanter (writer/director of Loving You after a screen test)

"I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra's. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness."
B.B. King

"Elvis, he was unique. And he loved the blues, it was a pity he didn't do more"
B.B. King

"If you're an Elvis fan, no explanation is necessary; If you're not an Elvis fan, no explanation is possible"
George Klein

"There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home...He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect from rock 'n' roll singers."
John Landau - Review of Elvis, (1968 TV Special).

"He had total love in his eyes when he performed. He was the total androgenous beauty. I would practice Elvis in front of the mirror when I was twelve or thirteen years old."
K.D. Lang

"Before Elvis there was nothing."
John Lennon

I've had the boyhood thing of being Elvis. Now I want to be with my best friend, and my best friend's my wife. Who could ask for anything more?
John Lennon (1940 - 1980) English singer, songwriter, musician
Interview for KFRC RKO Radio, given 8 Dec. 1980, the day of Lennon's murder.

"There's only one person in the United States that we have ever wanted to meet.... not that he wanted to meet us. And we met him last night. We can't tell you how we felt. We just idolized him so much. When we first came to town, these guys like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and all these people wanted to come over and hang around with us at night simply because we had all the women, all the chicks. We don't want to meet those people. They don't really like us. We don't really admire or like them. The only person that we wanted to meet in the United States of America was Elvis Presley. We can't tell you what a thrill that was last night."
John Lennon

"Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles."
John Lennon

"A lot has been written and said about why he was so great, but I think the best way to appreciate his greatness is just to go back and play some of the old records…Time has a way of being very unkind to old records, but Elvis' keep getting better and better."
Huey Lewis

"A truly good man who never forgot his friends or his fans."
Liberace

"Without Elvis you're nothing."
Madonna

“He was ahead of his time because he had such deep feelings. He had the privilege of deep feelings because he was deeply loved by his mother, Gladys. He was able to appreciate profound beauty in sounds. And he started a musical revolution. They say all revolutions start from love.”
Imelda Marcos

“...if any individual of our time can be said to have changed the world, Elvis Presley is the one. In his wake more than music is different. Nothing and no one looks or sounds the same. His music was the most liberating event of our era because it taught us new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness, but of our own potential.”
Greil Marcus From his book, Mystery Train.

"He is the "Big Bang", and the universe he detonated is still expanding, the pieces are still flying"
Greil Marcus, From his book, Dead Elvis

"It was the finest music of his life. If ever there was music that bleeds, this was it."
Greil Marcus From his book, Mystery Train, remembering the 1968 TV Special.

“Elvis Presley was an explorer of vast new landscapes of dream and illusion. He was a man who refused to be told that the best of his dreams would not come true, who refused to be defined by anyone else’s perceptions. This is the goal of democracy, the journey on which every American hero sets out. That Elvis made so much of the journey on his own is reason enough to remember him with the honor and love we reserve for the bravest among us. Such men made the only maps we can trust.”
Dave Marsh From his book, Elvis.

"He was an instinctive actor…He was quite bright…he was very intelligent…He was not a punk. He was very elegant, sedate, and refined, and sophisticated."
Walter Matthau, who co-starred with Elvis in King Creole (1958). From an 1987 interview.

"When we were kids growing up in Liverpool, all we ever wanted to be was Elvis Presley."
Paul McCartney

"I doubt very much if The Beatles would have happened if it was not for Elvis."
Paul McCartney

"It was a real thrill sitting there with the King. I mean he was always one of my favourites. I always knew that no matter how I felt, if I played an Elvis record it would make me happy. I've always dreamed of producing an album for Elvis."
Paul McCartney

"... he had a feel for rhythm in his voice. He could hear a song and he knew what he could do with a song. And nobody else could do it."
Scotty Moore

"Elvis is the best ever, the most original. He started the ball rolling for us all. He deserves the recognition."
Jim Morrison

"I love the Elvis movies. I used to watch them. In every single one of his movies he wasn't acting as a car salesman - he was acting as a car salesman who loved to play guitar."
Larry Mullen (U2 Drummer)

“That’s my idol, Elvis Presley. If you went to my house, you’d see pictures all over of Elvis. He’s just the greatest entertainer that ever lived. And I think it’s because he had such presence. When Elvis walked into a room, Elvis Presley was in the f---ing room. I don’t give a f--- who was in the room with him, Bogart, Marilyn Monroe.”
Eddie Murphy

"The Postal Service is being wasteful in spending nearly $300,000 to promote its Elvis Presley stamp. To break even, they would have to sell more than one million stamps to collectors who do not then use them."
Ralph Nader,a few months before the US Postal Service announced it had made a record breaking US$31 million on the strength of some 120 million unused Elvis stamps, out of the 500 million which were sold, the most for any commemorative stamp in US postal history.

"There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars."
Newsweek, August 11, 1969 - Review of Elvis' Las Vegas engagement.
"Elvis is everywhere"
Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper

“He was the firstest with the mostest.”
Roy Orbison

"I saw Elvis live in '54. It was at the Big D Jamboree in Dallas and the first thing, he came out and spit on the stage…it affected me exactly the same way as when I first saw that David Lynch film. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it to."
Roy Orbison

"After his famous first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, my aunt told me how foolish I was to sit screaming with joy at the spectacle of that vulgar singer on TV. It was then I knew that she and I lived in different worlds, and it was then that kids' bedroom doors slammed all over America."
Maureen Orth (Newsweek)

"This boy had everything. He had the looks, the moves, the manager, and the talent. And he didn't look like Mr. Ed like a lot of the rest of us did. In the way he looked, way he talked, way he acted - he really was different."
Carl Perkins

"We've lost the most popular man that ever walked on this planet since Christ himself was here."
Carl Perkins

"Even back then, when people would laugh at his sideburns and his pink coat and call him 'cissy' - he had a pretty hard road to go. In some areas motorcycle gangs would come to the shows. They would come to get Elvis, but he never worried about it. He went right out and did his thing and before the show was over, they were standing in line to get his autograph too."
Carl Perkins

"If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a million dollars."
Sam Phillips

"Elvis could do everything, from a very quiet sensual moan and groan to a high-panic scream and was willing to do it within the context of a three-minute song, with no inhibitions whatsoever".
Norbert Putman (His bassist)

"He epitomised America, and for that we shall be eternally grateful. There will never be anyone else like him. Let's all rejoice in his music."
Ronald Reagan

"Elvis Presley was a Gypsy. Da. I know these things. He never admitted it but he was a Rom"
Esma Redzepowa

"I owe Elvis my career and the entire music business owes him its lifeline. If there was no Elvis Presley, they're would have been no Cliff Richard. I'm sure of that"
Cliff Richard

"Elvis was God-given, there's no other explanation. A Messiah comes around every few thousand years, and Elvis was it this time."
Little Richard

"He was an integrator, Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music."
Little Richard

"Before Elvis, everything was in black and white. Then came Elvis. Zoom, glorious Technicolor."
Keith Richards

"For a dead man, Elvis Presley is awfully noisy."
Professor Gilbert B. Rodman

"History has him as this good old country boy, Elvis is about as country as Bono!"
Jerry Schilling

"I don't think there is a musician today that hasn't been affected by Elvis' music. His definitive years - 1954-57 - can only be described as rock's cornerstone. He was the original cool."
Brian Setzer

[About the song Bridge Over Troubled Water] "It was a bit dramatic but how the hell am I supposed to compete with that?"
Paul Simon

"The first time I heard his music, back in '54 or '55, I was in a car and I heard the announcer say, "Here's a guy who, when he appears on stage in the South, the girls scream and rush the stage". Then he played 'That's all right, mama'. I thought his name was about the weirdest I'd ever heard. I thought for sure he was a Black guy. Later on I grew my hair like him, imitated his stage act - once I went all over New York looking for a lavender shirt like the one he wore on one of his albums. I felt wonderful when he sang 'Bridge over troubled water', even though it was a touch on the dramatic side - but so was the song. When I first heard Elvis perform "Bridge Over Trouble Water" It was unbelivable,and I thought to myself, how the hell can I compete with that?"
Paul Simon

"His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac...It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people."
Frank Sinatra, 1950's

"Rock 'n' roll is the most brutal, ugly, degenerate vicious form of expression - lewd, sly, in plain fact, dirty - a rancid - smelling aphrodisiac and the martial music of every side-burned delinquent on the face of the earth."
Frank Sinatra, 1956

"I'm just a singer, Elvis was the embodiment of the whole American culture. life just wouldn't have been the same without him."
Frank Sinatra

"There have been many accolades uttered about Elvis' talent and performances through the years, all of which I agree with wholeheartedly. I shall miss him dearly as a friend. He was a warm, considerate and generous man."
Frank Sinatra, 1977

"I think Elvis is the sexiest man to ever walk the earth, I love him."
Britney Spears

"He's a great singer. Gosh, he's so great. You have no idea how great he is, really, you don't. You have absolutely no comprehension - it's absolutely impossible. I can't tell you why he's so great, but he is."
Phil Spector

"...it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear, and somehow we all dreamed it."
Bruce Springsteen

"Elvis is my religion. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias right now."
Bruce Springsteen

"That Elvis, man, he is all there is. There ain't no more. Everything starts and ends with him. He wrote the book"
Bruce Springsteen

"There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king."
Bruce Springsteen

"Elvis was the king. No doubt about it. People like myself, Mick Jagger and all the others only followed in his footsteps."
Rod Stewart

"I wanted to say to Elvis Presley and the country that this is a real decent, fine boy."
Ed Sullivan - During Elvis' third appearance on his show, January 6, 1957

"I love his music because he was my generation. But then again, Elvis is everyone's generation, and he always will be."
Margaret Thatcher

"Don't blame it on Elvis, for shakin' his pelvis. Shakin' the pelvis been in style way back since the River Nile."
The Fabulous McClevertys, calypso singers (1957)

"Well a lot of people said Elvis stole our music. Stole the black man's music. The black man, white man, has got no music of their own. Music belongs to the universe."
Rufus Thomas

"As the lad himself might say, cut my legs off and call me Shorty! Elvis Presley can act...Acting is his assignment in this shrewdly upholstered showcase, and he does it."
Howard Thompson - Review of King Creole - New York Times, 1958

"Without preamble, the three-piece band cuts loose. In the spotlight, the lanky singer flails furious rhythms on his guitar, every now and then breaking a string. In a pivoting stance, his hips swing sensuously from side to side and his entire body takes on a frantic quiver, as if he had swallowed a jackhammer."
Time Magazine, May 15, 1956

"I think Elvis Presley will never be solved"
Nick Tosches

"A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood."
Hal Wallis - Producer of nine of Elvis' films.

"...especially in the South, they talk about Elvis and Jesus in the same breath"
Michael Ventura - LA Weekly

"That boy made his pull from the blues, if he's stopped, he's stopped, but he made his pull from there."
Muddy Waters

"When I was 13, I saw him [Elvis] perform live and I suddenly understood what sex is all about. I was screaming at the top of my lungs"
Raquel Welch

"He inspired me to be a performer, he is a legend, the King."
Robbie Williams

"A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man’s music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis."
Jackie Wilson



Back To Main Menu