The discovery of rock ‘n’ roll was a seismic, life-changing event for George Harrison, who later became one of the four most famous faces in the world alongside his Beatles bandmates. The arrival of rock music remained a vivid memory for the guitarist, who, as an adolescent, was stopped in his tracks by one song, transforming his perspective on what music could be.
The track in question is ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, released by Elvis Presley in 1956. At that time, it was a groundbreaking effort which played a significant role in bringing rock music into the mainstream, and Harrison was one of the many who was converted by this one song. From this point onwards, he began to worship at the church of Presley.
Across Britain, Elvis hysteria swept up the youth of the nation, and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ was the initial catalyst for the craze. Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant was another whose life was altered by the track, once stating: “It was so animal, so sexual, the first musical arousal I ever had. You could see a twitch in everybody my age. All we knew about the guy was that he was cool, handsome and looked wild.”
For Harrison, his first exposure to Elvis was purely accidental. It was merely the case of being in the perfect place at the ideal time. On the moment he described as his “rock ‘n roll epiphany”, Harrison recalled: “When I was about 12 or 13 riding my bike and I heard Heartbreak Hotel coming out of somebody’s house.”
On another occasion, he said of the song: “It had an incredible impact on me just because I’d never heard anything like it. I mean, coming from Liverpool, we didn’t really hear the very early Sun Records. The first record I remember hearing was probably the big hit by the time it got across the Atlantic. It was ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ – ‘Heartburn Motel’ as Elvis called it.”
With The Beatles, Harrison was fortunate enough to visit Presley’s house with the rest of his bandmates. While the encounter was initially awkward, once they broke the ice, the collective decided to have an impromptu jam, but unfortunately, Harrison’s later meetings with Elvis weren’t quite as pleasant.
“When I saw him, I was like a hippie, and I had denim on and all this long hair and stuff. It was in the early ’70s, and I went backstage to meet him, and there was, you know, one of those massive dressing rooms with miles of toilets and stuff,” Harrison recalled during a round table with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
The guitarist continued detailing the “sad” incident: “He looked like Ringo: all of his beard was varnished [laughs], all of his hair was black, and he was tanned and stuff. And he seemed…I thought I was meeting Vishnu or Krishna or somebody, it was just like ‘wow’. And I just wanted to say, ‘Oh why don’t you go and do ‘That’s Alright Mama’ and ‘Baby Let’s Play House’ and get rid of all those chicks singing [whines] ‘ooooh I did it my waaay’. It was sad, but he did a couple of good tunes.”
Harrison also remembered meeting Presley a couple of years before his death at Madison Square Garden and admitted “it was a bit sad, really” because of the singer’s health. However, these disillusioning affairs don’t detract from the importance of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ on his teenage self.
