Paul McCartney Accidentally Enraged Elvis by Trying to Help His Career

In 1965, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr made history when they met Elvis Presley. The Beatles were the biggest band of the moment, and Elvis had dominated the decade prior. Despite the anticipation surrounding the meeting, it didn’t go particularly well. The meeting was awkward, and McCartney accidentally insulted Elvis.

Paul McCartney made an innocent suggestion that irritated Elvis

According to Elvis’ first wife, Priscilla, he had very little interest in meeting other celebrities.

“I can’t remember him once telling the Colonel to arrange a meeting with anyone famous,” she wrote in the book Elvis by the Presleys. “He saw Hollywood as the home of phonies. He certainly felt out of place, which is why the minute the movie [he was filming] wrapped, he was gone. One memorable evening, the Colonel arranged for Elvis to meet four famous people. But I believe it was The Beatles who were eager to meet Elvis, not the other way around.”

Still, he made an exception for The Beatles, who had been eager to meet him. The initial conversation was awkward and stilted, but they eventually found common ground. The conversation went well until McCartney made a suggestion about Elvis’ career.

“I remember they talked about how they hated flying, because I think not long earlier, Buddy Holly had died in a plane crash, so they both were a bit scared of flying,” journalist Ivor Davis told Closer Weekly. “Then Paul said something to Elvis like, ‘Elvis, we love your music. We wish you would make more songs like you did in the old days.’ Well, I want to tell you that Elvis did not like that, because he actually thought, ‘Why are these guys telling me that my old stuff is better and, presumably, my new stuff isn’t very good?’ Well, it was true, because Elvis was not making any new music. All he was doing was releasing albums from his movies — movies he was not very happy making.”

Ivor Davis thought Elvis’ insecurity made Paul McCartney’s remark sting

In retrospect, Davis believed that Elvis was insecure about the state of his career going into the meeting with The Beatles. Their fame had eclipsed his, and they showed no sign of slowing down.

“Elvis was king of the hit parade,” Davis said. “The Beatles — these interlopers from Liverpool — show up and these young men become number one on the Hit Rate. Second, Elvis has made three cookie-cutter movies a year for, like seven years, which he’s not very happy with. Elvis said quite honestly about those films, ‘They’re the same movie. I get a different leading lady, I fight the bad guy, I win the girl and sing 10 lousy songs.’”

The Beatles found Elvis disappointing

Elvis was a hero to The Beatles, and they were excited to meet him. They found their time with him disappointing, though, particularly as the years wore on. He was past his career peak and didn’t seem interested in doing anything about it.

“I saw him again,” Starr said in The Beatles Anthology. “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.”