I came close to signing Elvis Presley. I offered $25,000 for his contract and they asked for $45,000 and I just didn't have the other $20,000.
Ahmet Ertegun
I think Jerry Lee is sad. As a musician, he was far more talented than Elvis Presley. Everybody down in Memphis knows that. Elvis became a movie star because he was beautiful. Not that Elvis wasn't talented, but Jerry Lee Lewis was incomprehensibly talented as a musician.
Alec Baldwin
I have a very long and beautiful love affair with Elvis Presley. I own every record he ever made, so I have about 150, almost 200 records of his. So much that I haven't even listened to all of them. I see an Elvis record that I don't have, and I'll buy it and put it in my collection.
Alexandra Shipp
I would like to do the Elvis Presley.
Andy Kaufman
Elvis Presley's music never meant anything to me. Mambo was the music I loved - it spoke to me.
Arne Glimcher
When people say Jerry Lee Lewis invented rock n' roll, they forget Little Richard. People talk about Elvis Presley and forget he was singing black music. I don't blame Elvis. It was the music business figuring it could make more money from this music if it weren't presented from the original source.
Ato Essandoh
Frankly speaking, I don't know much about rock music. But I enjoyed some when I was in college or high school. But I stopped listening after Elvis Presley!
Ban Ki-moon
In Hollywood, famous singer Elvis Presley used to wear gold chains. I was a huge follower of Presley. I used to think, if I become successful someday, then I will build a different image of mine. By the grace of God, I could do it with gold.
Bappi Lahiri
I saw an Elvis Presley movie Jailhouse Rock, where he gets out of jail and makes his own records and takes them to the radio stations himself. And then, he puts records in the store. After seeing that, I made records an put them in stores.
Bobby Vinton
I love Jimi Hendrix obviously, and Jimmy Page and Prince. And also Elvis Presley is a really great guitar player. I don't think he ever took lessons; he was piecing it together himself. But he has great rhythm. And rhythm, to me, you can use it to your advantage if you're not all over the fretboard.
Brittany Howard
In 20 years I had sold more records for RCA than any artist except Elvis Presley.
Charley Pride
I am playing Elvis Presley in 'Hello Darling.' The project is really exciting for me because I get to play my idol.
Chunky Pandey
Elvis Presley invited me to Las Vegas for one night but we got on so well that I stayed for three.
Dave Clark
I've loved music always, and my music fire was lit by Elvis Presley, really, and all that was happening back then.
David Lynch
Elvis Presley's music said, 'Free your body.' The Beatles said, 'Free your mind.'
David Sheff
I was raised on Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly and discovered the Stray Cats when I was 11 or 12 years old.
Drake Bell
A lot of the people I'd love to work with, like John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, aren't alive, unfortunately.
Actually, my mother turned me on to the blues. We had Lightnin' Hopkins as well as Elvis Presley records.
Dusty Hill
Elvis Presley's Sun stuff - there's an album out in England with just about all those sides on it - you know, the sound of that upright bass slapping away: that's what I like to listen to. That and Richard Pryor, that is.
Music, for me, is as important as fashion. The first visuals I remember are Elvis Presley, David Bowie, New Romantics, and different punk bands.
Edward Enninful
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.
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.'
I guess I thought I was Elvis Presley but I'll tell ya something. All Elvis did was stand on a stage and play a guitar. He never fell off on that pavement at no 80 mph.
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.
The thing is, I've always wanted to be a star. I've always wanted to be an Elvis Presley or a Tupac - like, a huge icon.
I know I'm not going to sing like Aretha Franklin or Elvis Presley or any of those people.
I was obsessed with Elvis Presley when I was little.
Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, and a lot of American artists were my greatest influences.
Buddy Holly had something very different from the other great early rock n' roll stars, whether it was Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Bo Diddley. He came across as so ordinary, as such a nerd. You know, he was a big guy, and he carried a gun. He was anything but a nerd.
I loved rock and roll when that came in, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, all those great records. So I begged my mom and dad for a guitar, which eventually they did get me for Christmas, but it went out of tune very quickly, and it hurt my fingers.
Elvis Presley, you can't define him in a couple of sentences, but he was a country boy and he was very respectful.
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.
Elvis Presley was the big bang. He was the most influential single figure in the history of American pop culture. He changed the way we looked, thought, dressed, held a guitar. He didn't invent rock & roll, but he defined it in a way that everyone who followed him owes him a debt.
To me, John Lennon and Elvis Presley were punks, because they made music that evoked those emotions in people.
The first rock stars were incredibly theatrical. Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley - they were theater artists.
But I still do believe that there are useful things to say about Elvis Presley, including what his own ordinariness as a poor Southerner says about 20th-century hero-making.
I have fame on the level of a Marilyn Monroe or an Elvis Presley, but part of the reason I didn't go the way they did was because of my beliefs. People make judgments about Scientology, but often they don't know what they're talking about.
Music and fashion have had a kind of incestuous relationship since the Fifties. It started with people like Elvis Presley and pop icons like James Dean. Then it exploded in the MTV days. Now, with the Internet, it's instantaneous.
God's the final judge for Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash too. That's solely in the hands of God.
One gets the impression that Elvis Presley does what his business advisors think will be most profitable. My advice to them: Put Elvis Presley in the studio with a bunch of good, contemporary rockers, lock the studio up, and tell him he can't come out until he's done made an album that rocks from beginning to end.
There were screaming girls, I had to learn as a blind person how to run to a limousine otherwise they'd take my clothes off and stuff. I thought to myself 'how could this happen?' I mean I could see it, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, but Jose Feliciano? It was a mystery to me.
I got so big in the Latin market, it was a bit like being Elvis Presley. The limousines, the screaming girls - stuff I wasn't used to.
Elvis Presley's estate is making 30 million a year, and they say that Marley shouldn't be, but he is from a much poorer part of the world, and a lot more people need the money.
When I was a kid, and Elvis Presley broke through to a middle class, white audience, it was a sociological phenomenon that lasted through the Beatles and even a bit through Fleetwood Mac.
Being Elvis Presley's daughter is a whole lot of pressure. It's been a constant burden in my life.
It's pretty amazing to me that my first hit record was an Elvis Presley record.
Every performer who ever performed in rock and roll or even close to it is lying if they tell you that they weren't influenced in some way or another by Elvis Presley. He turned the world around.
I'm completely absorbed by Peter Guralnick's definitive, two-part biography of Elvis Presley: 'Last Train To Memphis' and 'Careless Love.' Meticulously researched, this is a compelling mix of history, myth-busting, and, of course, some timeless music.
I saw footage of Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley just hanging out together in Memphis when they were young guys getting started at Sun, listening to records together. That was beautiful to me.
One seldom expects the country's president to adequately note the passing of a rocker, but Jimmy Carter's assessment of Elvis Presley's appeal - 'energy, rebelliousness and good humor' - is remarkably close to the mark.
