Ringo Starr Scolded Elvis for Not Taking Music Seriously: ‘I Got Really Angry With Him’
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr idolized Elvis Presley. They often spoke about his influence on them in their adolescence, and they were thrilled when their Beatles fame allowed them to meet the star. However, as the years went by, the state of Elvis’ career began to disappoint them. Starr said he once angrily scolded Elvis for not taking his music seriously.
Ringo Starr admitted he scolded Elvis for playing football
By the mid-1950s, Elvis was a global sensation. The Beatles finally met him after several attempts, but they didn’t feel insulted by his apparent hesitancy to meet them. Instead, they didn’t feel worthy of meeting Elvis.
“So although we tried many times, Colonel Tom would just show up with a few souvenirs and that would have to do us for a while,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “We didn’t feel brushed off; we felt we deserved to be brushed off. After all, he was Elvis, and who were we to dare to want to meet him? But we finally received an invitation to go round and see him when he was making a film in Hollywood.”
In the years after The Beatles met him, their opinion of Elvis shifted. He began to view them as a danger to his career, which they found sad. Starr explained that he was also disappointed in the downturn of Elvis’ career. He grew so angry at Elvis’ apparent lack of interest in music that he scolded him.
“I saw him again,” Starr said. “I remember one time I got really angry with him because he just wasn’t making any music. He’d stopped everything and was just playing football with his guys. So I said, ‘Why don’t you go into a studio and give us some music here? What are you doing?’ I can’t remember what he said — he probably just walked away and started playing football again.”
The Beatles felt Elvis needed more of this kind of presence in his life
Starr might have felt emboldened to scold Elvis about his career because he thought the American artist needed a dose of honesty. Starr believed Elvis had surrounded himself with yes-men. They weren’t telling him what he should hear, just what he wanted to hear.
“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.”
Starr appreciated that, for all their interpersonal problems, The Beatles were always honest with each other. He believed this saved his career.
“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.”
Starr tried to give Elvis this treatment in a bid to save his career. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
Did Elvis like The Beatles?
The Beatles look back fondly on their first meeting with Elvis, but the musician ultimately turned on them to a surprising degree. He didn’t just dislike them; he wanted the American government to investigate them.
In a 1970 meeting with Richard Nixon — several months after The Beatles announced their break up — Elvis said The Beatles were a “real force for anti-American spirit” (via Vox).
“The Beatles came to this country, made their money, and then returned to England where they promoted an anti-American theme,” he told a surprised Nixon.
In 1971, Elvis tried a similar tactic with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. This was, undoubtedly, a disappointing turn of events for The Beatles, who had long idolized Elvis.
