The True Reason Elvis Came To Despise 'The Beatles'
“Nothing really affected me until Elvis,” John Lennon once said. In the mid ‘50s, Lennon was a teenager in Liverpool with a troubled home life and a passion for music that rivaled that of his idol, Elvis Presley. Both musicians were destined to change the world through rock and roll. Ten years later, they couldn’t stand each other. And now, we finally know why the two superstars who had so much in common spent so much time as enemies.
Musical Inspirations
There was just a five year age difference between Elvis and John Lennon, and on the surface, they had a lot in common. Elvis spent his childhood living in poverty and was inspired by local country artists and gospel music. Lennon similarly grew up in a turbulent household and played blues records to cope. Later, those records were replaced by Elvis tunes.
King Of Rock And Roll
In the ‘50s, Elvis’s star was rising in the music world. It had taken a few years for him to break through the conservative taste of the mainstream public. After all, though he was heavily inspired by gospel music, he was really most known for his rockabilly love songs — and passionate physicality while he performed.
A Lot Of Noise...
“Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability...His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub,” said a critic from the New York Times after an early Elvis performance. Basically, many people thought Elvis was just a lot of noise. Not John Lennon.
Changing The World
In fact, Lennon even credited Elvis as one of his biggest inspirations. “Without Elvis, there would be no Beatles,” he once said. It’s true that the late ‘50s were popularized by sweet ballads about love, and that Elvis — in the U.S. and beyond — turned the music world upside down with every swivel of his hips.
