Elvis Knew Far Less About the Guitar Than It Seemed, Said His Friend
When Elvis Presley took the stage, he frequently did it with a guitar in hand. He played the instrument for years and, today, visitors to Graceland can see his guitars on display in the home. According to Elvis’ longtime friend and bodyguard, Red West, though, he was no master guitarist. West shared why he saw Elvis as a natural musician even though he wasn’t an expert at any particular instrument.
Elvis Presley was not an expert guitar player
Elvis began playing guitar as a child. He brought the instrument onstage with him in countless concerts and was often photographed with it in hand. Despite this, West said he couldn’t play it all that well.
“Elvis doesn’t play the guitar, apart from the rhythm chords,” West said in the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “Most people think he is an expert guitarist, which he is not. He doesn’t read a lick of music, either.”
Still, West thought Elvis was highly skilled as an artist. Though he didn’t have much technical knowledge, he was a natural musician.
“Although when he is singing, he knows what he is doing,” West said. “He has natural music in him. He has never had a lesson on the piano, either, but he can pick up a number with surprising skill. But there are a lot better guitarists than him around, which is kind of funny because that guitar was his trademark, and most people think he is fantastic on it.”
What instruments could Elvis play besides the guitar?
Elvis never had music lessons, but he gave a number of instruments a try. According to Graceland, Elvis played the guitar, bass, piano, drums, ukulele, and accordion to varying degrees of success over the years. He stuck with the guitar and, occasionally, the piano while onstage, but he experimented with the other instruments.
Even The Beatles have memories of Elvis picking up a bass when they visited him at his home.
“He had a massive amplifier with a bass plugged into it, and he was up playing bass all the time…” John Lennon said. “So we just got in there and played with him. We all plugged whatever was around, and we played and sang.”
The last instrument he played was a piano
The final instrument Elvis ever played was the piano. Per the book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick, Elvis and several friends gathered in his racquetball building on the day he died. After playing racquetball for a bit, Elvis sat at the piano and played a few songs.
The final song Elvis played at the piano was “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” a song he had covered in 1976. Several hours after he played the song on the piano, Elvis’ fiancée, Ginger Alden, found him unresponsive on his bathroom floor. Doctors pronounced him dead shortly after he arrived at the hospital on Aug. 16, 1977.
