Paul McCartney has looked back on the day the Beatles met Elvis Presley, describing it as a “pinch yourself” moment.
McCartney and his bandmates famously met Presley only once in 1965, when they visited his home in Los Angeles in a meeting set up by NME writer Chris Hutchins.
Now, McCartney has looked back on the occasion in a new interview on BBC Radio 2’s Tracks Of My Years, where he said of the late musical icon: “He was really great. He was a very handsome guy – but we kind of knew that. We were fans.
“We just followed everything he did, and we looked at any photo we could get. He wasn’t a disappointment at all,” he added.
McCartney went on to say that he and all his bandmates, including Ringo Starr, have discussed the meeting in the year since, and that their memories of what happened are “slightly skew-whiff”.
“I say that we rang the doorbell and Elvis came to the door and said, ‘come in guys’,” he explained. “He invited us in and we sat around and he had a jukebox, and played ‘Mohair Sam’, the record.
“Ringo says he didn’t come to the door, we went in and he was sitting there. So who’s right? I am,” he joked.
He added that it was a “great evening”, and that Presley “played a bit of bass”, saying: “He had a bass there and he was talking about the bass so we could talk, sort of, bass talk. He was great, very personable, very nice.
“He had a bunch of his minders with him – and you read stuff later, and I think they were mainly his cousins, his gang.”
McCartney also described meeting the singer’s wife, Priscilla Presley, saying it was a “highlight”, and adding: “You’re inviting four guys into your home – probably the last thing you need is them to be all over your wife.
“It was great, she was great, Elvis was great,” adding: “You pinch yourself. I met – I actually sat with, like I’m sitting with you, Elvis.”
McCartney has previously declared Presley as one of the chief inspirations behind the band’s classic album ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.
In other news, Macca will release his new album ‘The Boys Of Dungeon Lane’ on May 29 (pre-order here). So far, it’s been previewed by ‘Days We Left Behind’ and ‘Home To Us’ – his first duet with Ringo Starr.
In the run-up to the release, he’s been interviewed by his Beatles biopic counterpart, Paul Mescal.
Currently going by the title The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, the films have been written by Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem, Spectre), Peter Straughan (Conclave, Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy) and Jack Thorne (Adolescence, His Dark Materials), and they will star Mescal as McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr. They’re currently slated for an April 2028 release.
McCartney later playfully touched on Mescal’s aptness for the role. During his appearance on the last ever episode of The Late Show last week – in which he sang a duet of ‘Hello, Goodbye’ with host Stephen Colbert before switching off the lights for good at the Ed Sullivan Theatre – he was asked who was cuter out of the two of them.
McCartney simply grinned and pointed at himself. “Me,” he said.
After the crowd applauded, McCartney made clear that he was being tongue-in-cheek, adding: “No, he’s very cute, he’s very cute.”
Elsewhere, McCartney has spoken about being unable to tell what songs Bob Dylan played when he recently saw him, why he hates taking selfies and why he is still baffled by “a lot of this influencer stuff”.