“When I first heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’… me whole life changed from then on, I was just completely shaken by it,” John Lennon
In April of 1956, 15 year-old John Lennon heard Heartbreak Hotel sing from the radio by a new voice — a new voice to the UK, that is — Elvis Presley. While John had always been connected to music, something about this new sound inspired him — he not only wanted to listen to Elvis, but he wanted to be Elvis.
Immediately, John began to dress like Elvis, look like Elvis, and act just as Elvis did on those bright American stages. He even began to slick his hair back just like the rock n roll star. “It was Elvis who really got me hooked for beat music. When I heard 'Heartbreak Hotel' I thought, 'this is it', and I started trying to grow sideboards and all that gear,” said John Lennon in 1963. By the end of 1956, John Lennon had formed his own group under the name The Quarrymen.
Elvis represented what success looked like, and John Lennon wanted to have what he had — the fame, the wealth, the record label and millions of devoted fans. And after years of hard work, the group John Lennon had formed that had evolved into The Beatles, finally achieved the success Elvis had found. “There's only one person in the United States we ever wanted to meet. We just idolized him so much. The only person we wanted to meet in the USA was Elvis Presley,” John Lennon later said. The Beatles finally met their hero at his California home in August of 1965. Star struck, The Beatles could barely believe they were in the home of Elvis Presley, that they were meeting the man that had inspired them to get into music.
In 1980, John Lennon said, “Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles.” Even after all of these years, both The Beatles and Elvis Presley remain the best selling artists in the history of music and continue to draw in more fans.
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