Christine here!
It's through Wes Bryan that I got to "know" * Elvis, and got to appreciate him as a human being and started listening to his music and watching some of his films.
I knew a couple of the 70's Elvis hits, but not much else. I was a little kid Beatle's fan because of the teenagers in my life back then who were Beatles fans and had the 45's and the albums and so did some of my friend's parents! Now I know that even some of the Beatle's tunes I liked so much were actually covers of earlier rock and rollers!
We've been following 1965 here at WES BRYAN - MY LIFE IN MUSIC, and 1965 is the year that the Beatles met Elvis and Elvis met the Beatles. In various books and other media this meeting is generally said to be of disappointment on both sides. As I understand it, the Beatle's manager Brian Epstein, and Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis' manager, arranged the meeting and maybe the Beatles were in a bit of shock, or maybe it's just that they had little in common but musical fame. Elvis is said to have jammed a bit with some of them, or perhaps it was a few of Elvis' guys who did the jamming?
I listened to some Youtube videos of the Beatles, years after the fact, telling about their historic meeting with Elvis and some of what they had to say is sad. They encountered Elvis playing the electric guitar while watching TV, they didn't understand at that point why he wasn't performing because they felt they would miss the connection with the audience. (One of the reasons the Beatles stopped touring is that they understood that their screaming fans were not really listening!)
The Beatles say they didn't understand why Elvis was making movies. Elvis' music was more and more about making movie soundtrack albums at this point. (In 3 years he'd stage a "come back" as a live performer.)
As you probably know in August each year to remember Elvis there's an Elvis Week at Graceland TM. We're celebrating Elvis too!
* (A note here: I didn't mean to imply that I got to know Elvis in person like Wes did!)
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