A Quote by Roger McGuinn

Scotty Moore plays one of the first really amazing riffs in rock history on Heartbreak Hotel with Elvis Presley ... it was dangerous, it scared everybodys parents, which was part of the attraction then - as it still is now... it totally blindsided me and made me want to get a guitar and do that.
There's the whole significance of Krishna as the flute player who awakens our consciousness. It doesn't necessarily have to be a flute because for me it was a sitar or a guitar or even Elvis Presley doing "Heartbreak Hotel." It was like Krishna's flute calling me somewhere. It's just really simple when we can remember.
It was Scotty Moore's guitar riff [in "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You"] when he was doing The Steve Allen Show that got me into rock music.
I loved rock and roll when that came in, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, all those great records. So I begged my mom and dad for a guitar, which eventually they did get me for Christmas, but it went out of tune very quickly, and it hurt my fingers.
I'm a rock 'n' roll guy, really. I'm a big fan of Elvis. I got "Heartbreak Hotel" tattooed on my chest.
I was an original Elvis fan. He was the voice of my generation. I was listening to him on the radio when he released his great Sun records with Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on bass.
It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard 'Heartbreak Hotel' I thought, this is it.
Elvis Presley's talent brightened millions of lives. He widened the horizons of my world certainly. The first record I ever owned was a 78 rpm of "Hound Dog" backed by "Don't Be Cruel" and when I listened to those tunes I felt about ten feet tall and I grinned so hard that I felt like the corners of my mouth would meet in the back and the tip of my head would simply topple off. All I know about Rock and Roll is that it makes people feel good. Elvis Presley more than made me feel good, he enriched my life and made it better.
Elvis Presley was rock 'n' roll, I thought that was pretty mediocre. But since that time, the succeeding steps in music has been down, just more degradation. Then we got into punk rock, and now we are into rap music, which is a total oxymoron.
The only way you can get Scotty Moore's tone is with a big hollowbody guitar.
It's pretty amazing to me that my first hit record was an Elvis Presley record.
The first record I ever listened to was Elvis Presley, and I remember thinking, 'Man this guy is cool!' The swagger he had really helped my confidence, because he really made me think that a white boy could make music like this.
I first met Jimmy Page in London in 1961, and he was listening to James Burton, Scotty Moore and Cliff Gallup with Gene Vincent, as was I ... these were the rock and roll guys who really sparked our interest in the guitar, and later we delved into other things and went different directions ... during my time with Eric Clapton, we talked about what we'd listened to early on, and he was a huge fan of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis
I practice really hard, every day. I started that about 13 or 14 years ago; it's a discipline now. But the writing is a whole other thing. It'll come from handling a guitar, mostly; thinking up little guitar riffs. I was born and raised a rock 'n' roll guy, and that's the rock 'n' roll ethic, at least through my experience.
Presley brought an excitement to singing, in part because rock and roll was greeted as his invention, but for other reasons not so widely reflected on: Elvis Presley had the most beautiful singing voice of any human being on earth.
I think the best analogy for where we are right now is that America is Elvis Presley -- the most beautiful, talented, rebellious nation in the history of Earth. And now, you're in your Vegas years. You've squeezed yourself into a white jumpsuit, you're wheezing your way through 'Love Me Tender' and you might be about to pass away bloated on the toilet. But you're still the King.
The blues appealed to me, but so did rock. The early rockabilly guitarists like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were just as important to me as the blues guitarists.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!