Paul McCartney Said Elvis ‘Put Away’ Priscilla Presley Quickly When The Beatles Met Her
In 1965, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr met Elvis Presley. They visited his Bel Air home one night and spent time with Elvis and his entourage. They also met Priscilla Presley, though the introduction was so brief that Harrison and Starr had no memory of her. According to McCartney, Elvis rushed her out of the room after introducing her.
Paul McCartney said Elvis Presley did not want Priscilla spending time with The Beatles
In 1965, The Beatles excitedly met Elvis at his home in California. Here, they met Elvis, his entourage, and Priscilla. McCartney found the way Elvis introduced them to Priscilla to be odd.
“We played a bit of pool with a few of his motorcycle mates, and at about ten o’clock Priscilla was brought in,” McCartney said in The Beatles Anthology. “To demonstrate the respect that country-and-western people have for their wives? Sometimes it’s a bit on the surface — as maybe their situation was shown to be later. It was like, ‘Here’s Priscilla.'”
Almost as soon as Elvis made introductions, he ushered Priscilla out of the room.
“She came in and I got this picture of her as a sort of Barbie doll — with a purple gingham dress, and a gingham bow in her very beehive hair, with lots of make-up,” McCartney said. “We all said ‘hello,’ and then it was, ‘Right lads, hands off — she’s going.’ She didn’t stay long.”
McCartney felt this was unnecessary.
“I can’t blame him, although I don’t think any of us would have made a pass at her,” he said. “That was definitely not on — Elvis’s wife, you know! That was unthinkable — she didn’t need to be put away quite so quickly, we thought.”
The other Beatles did not share Paul McCartney’s memory of Elvis and Priscilla Presley
The introduction was so brief that neither Harrison nor Starr remembered meeting Priscilla. Harrison was too busy trying to find someone with a joint.
“I don’t remember even seeing Priscilla,” Harrison said. “I spent most of the party trying to suss out from his gang if anybody had any reefers. But they were ‘uppers and whisky’ people. They weren’t really into reefer smoking in the South.”
Starr excused his lapse in memory by saying that he had been there to see Elvis, not his partner.
“I don’t remember seeing Priscilla there at all,” he said, adding, “I think it wouldn’t have mattered to me if she was there, because it was him I came to see. I don’t really remember the boys he had with him either.”
Elvis did not like Priscilla Presley talking to other men
The Beatles were not the only people to witness Elvis’ jealous streak. Though he frequently cheated on Priscilla, he didn’t like her to so much as talk to a man one-on-one.
“Although I became friends with the guys in Elvis’ retinue, he never let me, or anyone else, forget that I was his girl,” Priscilla wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “I was never to get too close or become too familiar with any of the regulars.”
Once, Elvis discovered Priscilla having a conversation with his longtime friend, Jerry Schilling, and lashed out at both of them.
“‘Cilla, you don’t need to be roaming around here late at night,’ he said, angrily ordering me upstairs. Behind me, I could hear him lashing out at Jerry. ‘If you want to keep this job son, you mind your own business. If there’s anyone who’s going to ask her how she feels, it’ll be me. You better mind your own goddamn business.'”
Though Priscilla and Schilling became friendly again in later years, Elvis’ outburst caused them to avoid each other entirely.
