(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)

The entire concept of rock and roll could begin and end when talking about the rise of Elvis Presley. Although the concept of rock went in a million different directions after the late 1950s, ‘The King of Rock and Roll’ brought the swagger into rock and roll that put the genre in American households and made people fall in love with the outrageous dance moves he had alongside his booming voice. Paul McCartney was one of the many disciples of Presley’s music, but there was a time when he felt that his idol was dead in the water.

Looking back at Presley’s early years, there was hardly anyone who could touch him. The moment that he sang songs like ‘Mystery Train’, there was a certainly mystical quality to his voice that was both dark and erotic for any girl who wanted to see something a bit more exciting than hearing the latest single from Frank Sinatra or Perry Como.

And for people like John Lennon, there couldn’t have been a more perfect advertisement for what rock and roll could have been. The minute that anyone saw movies like Jailhouse Rock, they knew that Presley was one of the coolest people on the planet and would give their left arm to say that they knew him or could match his swagger.

Around the time before McCartney helped bring Beatlemania to the mainstream, Presley had gone through a fair bit of shakeups. His first movies may have been fun, but singing him suddenly doing films like Blue Hawaii started to look absolutely ridiculous, and during his sabbatical when joining the Army, he had come out a much different person, complete with a squeaky clean image to make him look like the all-American heartthrob everyone wanted him to be.

Fans may have been happy to see Presley back after the war, but Macca was not as impressed, saying, “You have to remember that we’d watched all that happen to Elvis. Because, y’know, the army had kind of ruined Elvis. He’d been this ultimate rebel figure who we’d all worshipped. Then they made him cut his hair and he had to call everyone ‘sir’, and he was never really the same again. You can imagine that going into the army would have done it for us, too.”

To be fair, It’s not like Presley was never spellbinding after that. His comeback special in the late 1960s reminded everyone of his enduring power, and despite people mercilessly critiquing him every time he stepped onstage during his Vegas period, he could still belt out the songs as well as he could back in the day.

The main problem with his army days was how much it created a lull in the rock world. Considering this came around the same time Little Richard was creating his new life as a preacher, Jerry Lee Lewis was steeped in controversy, and Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash, the super-wholesome sounds of Pat Boone and Frankie Avalon made it necessary for the Fab Four to collectively break everyone out of the diabetic coma they experienced whenever they turned on the radio.

But that didn’t mean that Presley didn’t still hold a special place in the band’s heart, with John Lennon being seen saluting him on his birthday during the Get Back documentary. Nothing could take away the memories that McCartney had of Presley, but the days of him being a rock and roll rebel were gone forever.