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TL;DR:

  • The Beatles catapulted to success in the 1960s.
  • John Lennon saw Elton John as the first new act he’d heard since The Beatles.
  • John Lennon and Elton John became friends.
John Lennon wears a denim jacket and walks outside.
John Lennon | Vinnie Zuffante/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

In the years after The Beatles broke up, John Lennon oscillated between writing off their music and underlining its cultural significance. In an interview when he was feeling more complimentary toward the band, Lennon emphasized their importance by identifying the artist who he saw as the first “new thing” since The Beatles. Notably, he spoke about a song the artist had released nearly a decade after The Beatles began to find mainstream success. Lennon greatly admired the younger artist.

John Lennon inspired a number of artists

The Beatles formed in 1960, but their debut LP, Please Please Me, in 1963 launched the early stages of Beatlemania. When the band performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964, their popularity skyrocketed. Other noteworthy musicians have spoken about how much the televised performance impacted them.

“I was 13, and already somewhat of a music fan,” Tom Petty said in the book Conversations With Tom Petty by Paul Zollo. “This was the great moment in my life, really, that changed everything. I had been a fan up to that point. But this was the thing that made me want to play music. You saw that it could be done. There could be a self-contained unit that wrote, recorded and sang songs. And it looked like they were having an awful lot of fun doing it.”

Bruce Springsteen felt similarly.

“This was different, shifted the lay of the land. Four guys, playing and singing, writing their own material,” he said, per CBS News. “Rock ‘n’ roll came to my house where there seemed to be no way out … and opened up a whole world of possibilities.”

John Lennon said Elton John was an exciting artist

In many interviews after The Beatles broke up, Lennon harshly criticized the music of his contemporaries and former bandmates. One person he was actually excited about, however, was Elton John. 

“I’m interested in the new people,” he told Rolling Stone in 1975. “I’m interested in new people in America but I get a kick out of the new Britons. I remember hearing Elton John’s ‘Your Song,’ heard it in America – it was one of Elton’s first big hits – and remember thinking, ‘Great, that’s the first new thing that’s happened since we happened.'”

In particular, Lennon was impressed by John’s vocal abilities. 

“It was a step forward,” he said. “There was something about his vocals that was an improvement on all of the English vocals until then. I was pleased with it.”

The two musicians became friends

Lennon and John were friends from the moment they met. John said he’d liked all the Beatles but felt the closest connection with Lennon.

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“I was a little bit, obviously I was in awe, I was meeting any of The Beatles and they all treated me so brilliantly, but your dad had that edge that none of the other Beatles had kind of because he wasn’t afraid to say what he thought,” John told Sean Lennon, per Express. “Your dad was as kind and as generous and sweet and we just hit it off immediately. He was so funny. That’s what I loved about him. And we talked about music, we talked about records we loved.”

He said their friendship was very fun.

“We did a lot of naughty, naughty things together,” he said. “We had a lot of fun. Oh my god.”

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