Elvis Wanted to Show The Beatles He Was the ‘Original King’ Because Their Popularity Worried Him

After The Beatles spent years admiring Elvis Presley, they had a chance to meet him in the 1960s. While they were thrilled, Elvis was far less eager. He would eventually turn on The Beatles, but he respected them at this point in their careers. Still, he had slight concerns about the young band.

Priscilla Presley said Elvis worried about losing fame to The Beatles

Elvis was a massive star of the 1950s, but other musicians emerged in the early 1960s to challenge him. Soon, The Beatles had far eclipsed him. Still, they couldn’t wait to meet him, as he was a hero to them. He wasn’t nearly as excited.

“When John [Lennon], Paul [McCartney], Ringo [Starr] and George [Harrison] walked in, Elvis was relaxing on the couch, looking at TV without the sound,” Priscilla Presley wrote in her book Elvis by the Presleys. “He barely bothered to get up.”

This behavior seems cold and uninviting, but Priscilla claimed that Elvis respected the band.

“Naturally he was curious about The Beatles,” she wrote. “He respected them. Mostly he respected the way they had achieved their artistic freedom. He saw how they did whatever they liked to do. He appreciated their songs and especially their film A Hard Day’s Night, where their creativity and sense of fun came through so powerfully. Help! was out or just about to be released.”

He was conscious of their popularity, though. While he understood that new, younger acts would always exist, he worried about what it would do to his career.

“He viewed this whole world of music coming from England — The Beatles, the Stones and the Dave Clark Five — with tremendous interest and, I suppose, some trepidation. He acknowledged their talent and energy — he told me on many occasions — but he worried about losing popularity,” she wrote. “And in 1965, no one was more popular than The Beatles … The fact that Elvis greeted them with studied casualness didn’t mean he didn’t care. He did. He was simply affirming his role as Original King.”

Elvis made a rare exception when he met The Beatles

The fact that Elvis met with the Beatles at all shows that he found them compelling. According to Priscilla, he typically had no interest in meeting other celebrities.

“Some stars want to meet other stars. Some stars have to hang out with other stars. Not Elvis,” she wrote. “I can’t remember him once telling the Colonel to arrange a meeting with anyone famous. He saw Hollywood as the home of phonies.”

While his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, arranged the meeting, The Beatles had been the ones to express interest.

“One memorable evening, the Colonel arranged for Elvis to meet four famous people,” Priscilla wrote. “But I believe it was The Beatles who were eager to meet Elvis, not the other way around.”

He eventually turned against the band

While Elvis held tentative respect for The Beatles in the 1960s, he grew to despise them just several years after meeting them. When he met with Richard Nixon in 1970 — notably, after The Beatles had announced their breakup — he told the president that “The Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit” (via Vox). 

One year later, Elvis met with J. Edgar Hoover and criticized The Beatles once more.

“The Beatles laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music,” he said. 

For their part, The Beatles found this disappointing. They had long admired Elvis, and the decline of his career was sad to them.