3 Elvis Presley Songs That Had an Impact on Paul McCartney

The Beatles idolized Elvis Presley, as he became one of their rock n’ roll heroes at a young age. Each of the fab four had their own reasons for loving the king, but three songs had a particular impact on Paul McCartney. Here are three songs by Elvis that impacted Sir Paul McCartney the most. 

‘Heartbreak Hotel’

“Heartbreak Hotel” was first released as a single in 1956 and also appeared in the movie G.I. Blues. The song topped the Billboard charts for seven weeks and has become a classic rock n’ roll track. In a 2012 interview with NPR, Paul McCartney recalled listening to the Elvis Presley song at a young age and thinking it sounded different from anything else he had ever heard. 

“You heard people saying, ‘I’ve never heard anything like that before, man.’ And it was that,” McCartney said. “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.”

Later, McCartney somehow acquired the bass guitar Bill Black used for “Heartbreak Hotel”. He even did a live performance of the song using the same bass. 

‘All Shook Up’

McCartney’s relationship to “All Shook Up” shows the curative effects of music. In a 2020 interview with Rolling Stone, McCartney recalled going to a fair in Liverpool where he saw a girl so beautiful it gave him a headache. He returned to a friend’s house, where the two listened to “All Shook Up,” and his headache somehow disappeared. 

“This is just a little Liverpool fair – it was in a place called Sefton Park – and there was this girl, who was so beautiful. She wasn’t a star. 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.’”

McCartney later recorded a cover of this song for his 1999 album, Run Devil Run.

‘I Want You, I Need You, I Love You’

In a 1994 interview, Paul McCartney said he liked many of the songs Elvis recorded early in his career at Sun Studios. He said he listened to “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” again, bringing him back to his youth and to tears.

“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, [sings] ‘Hold me close, hold me tight …’”