The Elvis Presley Song That Inspired Keith Richards to Be a Rock Star

Elvis Presley was a wildly influential figure in the music industry. Plenty of rock stars still around today owe their love of the genre to the Memphis singer. Even non-American musicians learned to love Elvis, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. Richards said one Elvis song, in particular, showed him his rock ‘n’ roll destiny. 

Keith Richards knew he wanted to be a guitarist after listening to Elvis’ ‘Heartbreak Hotel’

“Heartbreak Hotel” was released as a single in 1956 and reached No. 1 on the charts in the U.S. While it peaked at No. 2 in the U.K., it still had a major impact on many of the young British musicians who heard it. In his book Life, Keith Richards recalled hearing the Elvis Presley song for the first time and needing to know more about the artist.

“The one that really turned me on, like an explosion one night, listening to Radio Luxembourg on my little radio when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, was ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. That was the stunner,” Richards wrote. “I’d never heard it before or anything like it. I’d never heard of Elvis before. It was almost as if I’d been waiting for it to happen. When I woke up the next day, I was a different guy. It was the first time I’d heard something so stark. Then I had to go back to what this cat had done before. Luckily I caught his name. The Radio Luxembourg signal came back in. ‘That was Elvis Presley, with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’.”

However, it wasn’t Elvis’ singing that had Richards in awe; it was the guitar performance from Scotty Moore. Richards said his performance in “Heartbreak Hotel” motivated him to become a successful guitarist. 

“When I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, I knew what I wanted to do in life,” he shared. “It was as plain as day. All I wanted to do in the world was to be able to play and sound like the way Scotty Moore did. Everyone wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty.”

Richards isn’t the only artist impacted by ‘Heartbreak Hotel’

Keith Richards is just one British musician who was blown away by Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”. Another artist who reacted similarly was George Harrison, the guitarist for The Rolling Stones’ rival, The Beatles. The “Here Comes the Sun” singer once said that hearing “Heartbreak Hotel” was a spiritual experience that woke him up in a sense. 

“​​In a way, when I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ by Elvis coming out of somebody’s radio when I was a kid on my bike, that is still Krishna’s flute,” Harrison said. “The music is still that mystical sound that’s saying, ‘Hey, come on!’”

His fellow bandmates, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, said similar things about hearing the song for the first time. In an interview with NPR, McCartney said it was a moment he and many other listeners would never forget. 

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