Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger has revealed that advice from John Lennon after The Beatles met Elvis Presley convinced him never to meet the King of Rock and Roll, a decision he now says he regrets.
by Paul Cashmere
Mick Jagger has disclosed that one of rock music’s most intriguing missed encounters happened because he listened to John Lennon. Speaking on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, Jagger said Lennon warned him against meeting Elvis Presley after The Beatles’ famous 1965 visit to Elvis’s Bel Air home, leaving the Rolling Stones singer to preserve his own idealised image of Presley rather than risk disappointment.
For two of the defining figures of rock music never to meet is one of the genre’s enduring curiosities. Presley helped create the blueprint for modern rock and roll during the 1950s, while The Rolling Stones became one of the music’s most influential bands in the following decade. Despite moving in many of the same circles after the Stones established themselves in America, Jagger and Presley never crossed paths.
Asked by Conan O’Brien whether he had ever met Elvis, Jagger replied simply, “No, I never met Elvis.”
He then recalled how Lennon’s experience changed his mind.
Jagger explained that a well-known British journalist arranged for members of The Beatles to visit Presley at his Los Angeles home, where the meeting has since become one of the most famous photographs in rock history.
According to Jagger, Lennon later shared his disappointment.
“I remember John telling me, ‘You should never meet your heroes. I would never meet Elvis, Mick, if I were you,'” Jagger said on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast.
Jagger admitted he accepted Lennon’s judgement without questioning it.
“So I didn’t. I took John advice,” he said before laughing at the decision in hindsight.
“Which was really stupid of me really. I would love to have met Elvis.”
Jagger said Lennon had spoken about the meeting on more than one occasion and described how his expectations had not matched reality.
“The minute they got to America John kept saying, ‘Where’s Elvis? Where’s Elvis?’ That’s the only person he wanted to meet,” Jagger recalled. “Then they met Elvis at his house and John walked out and said, ‘Where’s Elvis?’ Because that was not the guy he wanted to meet.”
The story ultimately persuaded Jagger to leave his own image of Presley untouched.
“So it sort of put me off,” he said. “I wanted to keep my Elvis to myself, my version of Elvis. I didn’t want my version of Elvis shattered like John’s was. But maybe my Elvis version would have been different.”
Although Presley and The Rolling Stones never collaborated and Jagger never met him, their musical worlds frequently overlapped through the songs they admired and the artists who inspired them.
Both Presley and the Stones built their repertoires on the foundations laid by Black American rhythm and blues, blues and early rock and roll musicians. Chuck Berry, Arthur Alexander, Big Mama Thornton, Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters and many others shaped the sound of both artists, even though each interpreted the material differently.
Among the songs associated with both acts is Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”. Presley performed it live during his Las Vegas years, while the Stones made it a regular feature of their concerts. Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business” also found its way into both catalogues, as did “Memphis, Tennessee”, which Presley recorded in Nashville and the Stones performed during BBC sessions in their formative years.
Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On” became one of the Rolling Stones’ earliest recordings, while Presley is known to have sung portions of the song during studio rehearsals.
Perhaps the most famous crossover is “Hound Dog”. While Presley’s 1956 recording transformed the Leiber and Stoller composition into one of the defining records of the rock era after Big Mama Thornton’s original version, the Rolling Stones paid tribute to both Presley and Memphis history by launching into an impromptu performance of “Hound Dog” during their 1978 concert at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis.
The Stones also experimented with another Presley classic, “Don’t Be Cruel”, during a January 1985 studio jam in Paris, although the recording has never received an official release.
The shared repertoire underlines how both Presley and the Stones were drawing from the same musical well. Presley fused rhythm and blues with country, gospel and rockabilly to help define rock and roll in the 1950s. A decade later, the Stones reinterpreted many of the same influences through a tougher British blues perspective that became central to the British Invasion.
Jagger may never have met Presley, but the King’s influence continued to echo throughout the Rolling Stones’ career. Looking back, however, Jagger now appears to regard the missed introduction as one of the great “what if” moments of rock history, all because he trusted John Lennon’s advice.
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