Quotes about Elvis Presley

  * It’s always been my dream to come to Madison Square Garden and be the warm-up act for Elvis.
o Senator Al Gore, Accepting the nomination for Vice-President at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, prior to Bill Clinton’s (aka “Elvis” by his security staff) acceptance of the Presidential nomination.

* Elvis was a giant and influenced everyone in the business.
>> Isaac Hayes

* Without Elvis, none of us could have made it.
>> Buddy Holly

* So what it boils down to was Elvis produced his own records. He came to the session, picked the songs, and if something in the arrangement was changed, he was the one to change it. Everything was worked out spontaneously. Nothing was really rehearsed. Many of the important decisions normally made previous to a recording session were made during the session. What it was was a look to the future. Today everybody makes records this way. Back then Elvis was the only one. He was the forerunner of everything that’s record production these days. Consciously or unconsciously, everyone imitated him. People started doing what Elvis did.
>> Bones Howe. recording engineer, as quoted in Elvis, A Biography (1971) by Jerry Hopkins.

 * That’s my idol, Elvis Presley. If you went to my house, you’d see pictures all over of Elvis. He’s just the greatest entertainer that ever lived. And I think it’s because he had such presence. When Elvis walked into a room, Elvis Presley was in the fucking room. I don’t give a fuck who was in the room with him, Bogart, Marilyn Monroe…
>> Eddie Murphy

* There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars.
o Newsweek (11 August 1969)

* He was the firstest with the mostest.
>> Roy Orbison

* It was Elvis that got me interested in music. I’ve been an Elvis fan since I was a kid.
o Elton John

* If any individual of our time can be said to have changed the world, Elvis Presley is the one. In his wake more than music is different. Nothing and no one looks or sounds the same. His music was the most liberating event of our era because it taught us new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness, but of our own potential.
>> Greil Marcus in Mystery Train

* It was the finest music of his life. If ever there was music that bleeds, this was it.
o Greil Marcus on the 1968 TV Special, in his book Mystery Train.

* He was a unique artist — an original in an era of imitators.
>> Mick Jagger

 

* Elvis had an influence on everybody with his musical approach. He broke the ice for all of us.
>> Al Green

* Elvis Presley was an explorer of vast new landscapes of dream and illusion. He was a man who refused to be told that the best of his dreams would not come true, who refused to be defined by anyone else’s perceptions. This is the goal of democracy, the journey on which every American hero sets out. That Elvis made so much of the journey on his own is reason enough to remember him with the honor and love we reserve for the bravest among us. Such men made the only maps we can trust.
>> Dave Marsh in Elvis.

* He was an instinctive actor… He was quite bright… he was very intelligent… He was not a punk. He was very elegant, sedate, and refined, and sophisticated.
>> Walter Matthau in 1987; he worked with Elvis in King Creole (1958)

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