Top 698 Elvis Quotes & Sayings - Page 10

When I was younger, I was always running into other girls involved in music. When I was about 14 or 15, one of my friend's dads was an Elvis impersonator and asked us to sing backups at a rehearsal. I did well and was hired. Did that for about two years.

Wouldn't it be interesting to take Elvis back to his Sun Records period? I don't know. But I'm content to listen to his Sun Records. I don't want to dig him up out of the grave.

I've been with certain stars; some are caring and pay attention to their fans and to their fellow performers and some are too busy. Elvis never seemed too busy.

When Johnny Cash died, ... I picked up my guitar and got the idea that Bob Dylan was the last man standing, the last of the real gods. It was for Dylan, Cash, Lennon, Elvis that's what I was thinking.

I never look for music by genre. I look for an artist who puts a dependable trademark on things. Like Elvis Costello - he's a great songwriter who presents his songs in a number of contexts. I feel the same about my own music.

My songs are personal music, they're not communal. I wouldn't want people singing along with me. It would sound funny. I'm not playing campfire meetings. I don't remember anyone singing along with Elvis, Carl Perkins or Little Richard.

That Elvis, man, he is all there is. There ain't no more. Everything starts and ends with him. He wrote the book. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias right now. There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king.

I'm a good party guest...the problem is, I feel like I'm working all the time. "Give us an Elvis Presley story! Give us a Frank Sinatra story!"

Elvis Presley's music said, 'Free your body.' The Beatles said, 'Free your mind.'

I was out on the golf course, a guy came riding out in a golf cart and said, Did you know that Elvis died? And I just said, Well, there you go. It was like I had kinda been expecting it.

When people nowadays say that Elvis was the first white guy to sound black, I have to shake my head; what can you do? At the time of 'That's My Desire' 1947 they were saying that I was the only white guy around who sounded black.

If you're in the heyday of rock and roll and movies, and that's where I grew up. We didn't have to look for it. We didn't have to create angst. We didn't have to create desire. We didn't have to say, see we were screwed, my generation, because we wanted to be The Beatles or Elvis Presley. That ain't going to happen. So we always had this thing to reach for.

I'm a fan of all music, and probably my first - well, not the very first music I listened to, but back in the late fifties, when I first started hearing rock & roll, it was definitely tinged with doo wop and also Elvis and all those great songs.

Theres a bunch of Elvis Costello records that made all the difference between feeling like a total freak and feeling like ... only a freak. A freak among other freaks

I'd been to Memphis before, but we stayed out of Memphis early on in the late 70s for obvious reasons. People were very sensitive about Elvis Presley, and my stage name obviously would be provocative to some people in that area at that time.

I'm trying to have my own thing, and I don't know if it's even possible. I didn't realize so many people actually think I'm trying to be like my dad. I read comments like 'She's no Elvis.' I'm not trying to be. I never set out to be.

I don't believe in magic ... I don't believe in Jesus ... I don't believe in Buddha ... I don't believe in Elvis ... I don't believe in Beatles.

I like visual images and there are certainly other bands that have strong visual images going all the way back to Elvis Presley, but it's kind of like that's never really been my bag. Probably because I'm too shy.

I saw Elvis live in '54. It was at the Big D Jamboree in Dallas and the first thing, he came out and spit on the stage...it affected me exactly the same way as when I first saw that David Lynch film. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it to.

Elvis and I were very good friends. We were such good friends that, on the day that he passed, I was the first one his father called, to let me know what had happened.

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'll miss all my teammates. I'll miss Elvis (Andrus) and (Adrian) Beltre, Mitch (Moreland), Matt Harrison and [manager Ron] Washington. To be honest with you, I hope they go 0-162. I got friends, and I love my friends, but I hope they lose their ass.

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.

The fact is Jerry Weintraub, the handsome, bearish movie producer, the man with the long career, who worked with Arthur Godfrey and Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra and George Clooney, is a great storyteller - he's this as much as he's anything else. He takes time telling stories, too.

When I lived in Las Vegas, I was meeting everybody: Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones - we won't go there - but all these people that were working in Vegas a million years ago, way before I was Elvira.

There are plenty of people who believe that Elvis is alive, or that aliens occasionally land here to do highly personal things to people, or that the whole idea of evolution is a conspiracy of godless scientists. Almost all of these people can vote and some of them have got guns.

What I like about Elvis is the same thing I like about James Brown, Michael Jackson, Prince. These guys, back in the day, there was no smoke and mirrors. It was just raw talent. They would step out onstage and command an audience.

I remember that, before John Lennon died, everyone was saying that Rolling Stone couldn't do good reporting anymore. But when he died, they wrote this amazing issue, as they should have about Lennon. They did that when Elvis died, too.

I met Elvis first in Las Vegas. I think I was appearing with Tom Jones and he came backstage to say hello to Tom or we went to his dressing room to say hello.

There's no telling from poem to poem where this brilliant 'conversation' about maleness and gender will lead---there are poems about husbands and wives, parents and children, Elvis, Apollo, Walt Whitman, rhythms of its politics. Manthology is a remarkably honest and enormously heartening collection.

Elvis deserves a lot of credit for bringing the blues to middle America, not the Vegas stuff. The early stuff, The Sun records, and the first few RCA records. He was wonderful, he had the power, the drive, and he was so dedicated to his music.

Guys like Otis Blackwell and Bobby Darin, and all the guys who were writing songs for Elvis at the time, just hanging around, writing songs, talking about music.

Ice Cube went straight outta Compton to hearing, 'Are we there yet?' Eddie Murphy blew up striding across the stage in a red leather ensemble that would have made Elvis Presley chuckle, yet is probably best known to anyone born in the 21st century as the overly chatty donkey from 'Shrek.'

People from outer space they come up to me, they don't look like Doctor Spock, they don't look like Klingons, all that Star Trek jive. They look like Elvis.

I have a respect for Elvis and my friendship. It ain't my business what he did in private. The only thing I want to know is, 'Was he my friend?', 'Did I enjoy him as a performer?', 'Did he give the world of entertainment something?' - and the answer is YES on all accounts. The other jazz just don't matter.

Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.

Elvis ate America before America ate him.

I met Elvis in your woods one night,” Terry said. One of the EMTs had given him a shot, and I thought it was beginning to work. “I knew I was nuts then. He was telling me how much he liked cats. I told him I was a dog person, myself.

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 likes of Bob Dylan and David Bowie and probably Elvis Presley or any of the Beatles, none of them would have got through Pop Idol, because they're not conventional. They're not what people think is popular now. I like the individuality in people. I don't want everyone to sound the same.

One night I saw Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Elvis for a dollar, if you believe that, in an open-air concert. Presley, I got to meet and go into his house and so forth. My wife says I should quit tellin' that story, 'cause they'll know how old I am.

I mean, you could have said Elvis Presley was new wave when it happened. I heard Willy DeVille and Tom Petty and to me they were new wave really because they were new.

Damien Hirst is the Elvis of the English art world, its ayatollah, deliverer, and big-thinking entrepreneurial potty-mouthed prophet and front man. Hirst synthesizes punk, Pop Art, Jeff Koons, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Bacon, and Catholicism.

Elvis Presleys' first album had more energy and more enthusiam than any other album at the time - when it was released it just blew everything else out. It changed the whole landscape of music

The money thing is, the sort of Elvis Presley thing of buying you mother car is great, that's very good. My mother has learned how to spend money.

The Best of Elvis Presley, Doris Day, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Hailey and the Comets, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Frankie Laine all topped the charts in the '50s. Load a playlist of rock n' roll royalty. You're spoilt for choice.

I just really want to make - to be cliche about it, I want to make pretty music. Like Roy Orbison or Elvis, man. Those guys made beautiful, tender music.

Stalking the Angel [Joe]"I could off anybody in this place five times over." [Elvis]"Could you off someone and get away with you here?" [Joe]Head shake. "I'm too good even for me.

People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had 'The Who' and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the '80s had other songs and bands. It's a way of placing ourselves culturally and temporally.

I always thought that Elvis could have been a great actor, and that he was put in a lot of unimportant movies when he could have done a lot of great ones.

I think that one of Elvis' charms was that he could sing almost any kind of music. I am sure that in his heart, which I don't know what was there, but just from his singing I could feel that he was very partial to gospel music.

Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and The Sex Pistols may come and go, but rebellion remains a key part of the rock n' roll experience. However, that rebellion - the outgrowth of a youthful search for independence and identity - doesn't always take the same form.

I think Elvis would be alive today, probably, if he had been allowed to mix and mingle with his fans. I think it was a great cross for him to bear that he couldn't get out and be with his fans.

I wasn't the biggest hip-hop fan, because I had to listen to whatever my parents listened to, so growing up, it was a lot of Dolly Parton, Elvis, and Whitney Houston. When they finally put a TV in my room and I got to listen to MTV Jams I was like: 'Here I am!'

A lost of people recognize me and maybe will ask for an autograph, but it's nothing like if Elvis would've done something like that, 'cause he's so popular, or maybe The Beatles 'cause they stirred up a lot of action.

There's this Bruno Mars guy. I met him in Hawaii when was doing Elvis imitations at the age of about five or six years old. There's a lot of old school in him. He's got a depth that I just love.

See, heroes never die. John Wayne isn't dead, Elvis isn't dead. Otherwise you don't have a hero. You can't kill a hero. That's why I never let him get older.

A formidable game of 'Name That Influence' could be based on the music of the seductive rock duo Girls: The band's first single, 'Hellhole Ratrace,' would barely reach its opening words before screams of 'Elvis Costello!' and 'Wreckless Eric!' drown out the music.

Rolling Stones came later for me. I was a Beatles guy. All of us were pretty much more along the lines of Beatles guys than we were Stones or Elvis.

I don't think there's ever been someone with as much presence as Elvis Presley, I mean if he walked into a room I think everyone would be looking at only him. Even when he was dying and through all that when you looked at him it seemed all put together. It fascinates me.