Ringo Starr Said Seeing Elvis in Concert Was ‘Scary’ for Him
Ringo Starr took early inspiration from Elvis Presley, and he finally had a chance to meet him after joining The Beatles. The band played music with Elvis and watched him perform in a concert in Las Vegas. Starr said that seeing Elvis play was frightening for him. He explained that he didn’t want to end up in the same place as Elvis.
Ringo Starr met Elvis in 1965
All of The Beatles looked up to Elvis growing up, and they met him in 1965. At this point, they were the biggest band in the world. According to press officer Tony Barrow, the meeting was a bit awkward at first.
“The ice didn’t really break in the early stages at all,” Barrow said, per BBC. “The boys and Elvis swapped tour stories, but it hadn’t got going. They quickly exhausted their initial bout of small talk and there was this embarrassing silence between the mega-famous five, stood there facing each other, with very little of import being said. Apart from anything else, I think it was just that each was in awe of the other. Elvis didn’t have that much confidence, as far as I could see. He was a fairly easily embarrassed person by the look of him.”
Eventually, they started playing music together, which helped them connect.
“Up to that point, the party really had been a bit lifeless and unexciting,” Barrow said. “But as soon as Presley and The Beatles began to play together, the atmosphere livened up.”
He said a concert was scary to him
Starr met Elvis again in 1970. Starr was in Las Vegas to film a music video, and Elvis was playing a residency there.
“The second time I met Elvis, they took me to Vegas just because of the video for ‘Sentimental Journey’ when I was dressed up with the bow tie and we had the dancing girls. [laughs],” Starr told Goldmine Magazine in 2003. “They said, ‘Oh, he can play Vegas now.’ [laughs].”
Starr said the concert was a little frightening because he didn’t want to end up in the same place as Elvis.
“It was just far out,” he said. “Elvis’ show was good, but it was a bit scary for me. It was fine seeing Elvis and that, but the idea of playing that room was pretty scary.”
Ringo Starr said The Beatles handled their fame differently from Elvis
Starr believed that The Beatles were able to manage their fame better than Elvis because they had each other.
“We’d get in the car. I’d look over at John and say, ‘Christ. Look at you. You’re a bloody phenomenon!'” Starr said, per the book Ringo: With a Little Help by Michael Seth Starr. “And just laugh because it was only him. Elvis went downhill because he seemed to have no friends, just a load of sycophants.”
Without his bandmates, Starr said things might have been different for him.
“Whereas with us, individually, we all went mad, but the other three always brought us back. That’s what saved us,” he explained. “I remember being totally bananas thinking, I am the one, and the other three would look at me and say, ‘Scuse me, what are you doing?’ I remember each of us getting into that state.”
