To the Beatles, Elvis Presley really rocked!

January 8, 12:06 PMBeatles ExaminerSteve Marinucci

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"Without Elvis, we were nothing" -- John Lennon.

"Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles," Lennon also once said.

Even before the Beatles met Elvis in 1965, they were big fans. The Beatles (and in the days before the group used that name) covered several Presley songs on stage. "I Got a Woman" (sung by Lennon) "All Shook Up" (McCartney), "Blue Moon of Kentucky" (McCartney), "Hound Dog" (Lennon) "Jailhouse Rock" (Lennon) and "Love Me Tender" (Stu Sutcliffe) were just some of the songs done in the years before 1964.

But when the rock summit finally took place, it was somewhat of a anti-climax, for at least one observer, Ringo Starr. He later recalled the meeting. "I was pretty excited. We were lucky because it was the four of us and we had each other to be with. The house was very big. We walked in, and Elvis was sitting down on a settee in front of the TV. He was playing a bass guitar, which even to this day I find very strange. He had all his guys around him, and we said, 'Hi, Elvis.' He was pretty shy, and we were a little shy, but between the five of us we kept it rolling. I felt I was more thrilled to meet him than he was to meet me."

Joe Esposito and Jerry Schilling, two members of Elvis' Memphis Mafia, and Priscilla Presley, Elvis' ex-wife, describe the meeting on this Elvis fan page. One of the very little pieces of photographic evidence of the meeting is also there. If any audio of the night survives -- there was supposedly a jam session -- it has never surfaced.

Too bad.

By the way, Elvis Presley would have turned 74 this year. As the King would have said, "Too much."