Elvis Presley was mostly supportive of rising talent. For all his status and influence, he often championed new musicians coming through. But as history shows, his admiration could sour quickly—his support just as easily turning into jealousy or resentment.
“Elvis could spot talent instantly. In Las Vegas, we regularly took in lounge acts featuring various up-and-coming artists,” Priscilla Presley recalled of her ex-husband. She added, “If Elvis liked the show, he patronised the club, encouraging the entertainers to pursue their careers, infusing them with confidence and enthusiasm.” But while Presley had that supportive streak, it often went the other way.
In particular, many of Presley’s musical enemies were once friends or people who admired him. It was often a case of a friendship turning sour or perhaps even jealousy causing problems, as the singer would turn on other artists.
Sometimes the feeling was mutual, though, as Presley’s hatred was merely him matching the energy delivered by someone else. But in other instances, criticism from The King was soul-crushing and marked the end of a lifetime of admiration. Either way, the singer’s hatred was often cruel, cold and usually backstabbing.
Five artists Elvis Presley took issue with:
The Beatles
The Beatles – Elvis Presely – Split
This one must have stung. For The Beatles, Elvis Presley was a hero. When the four lads first met, The King was a uniting and mutually inspiring force, as he seemed to be for every young musician at the time. His music was revelatory, as John Lennon once declared him his idol, and the whole band at one point or another addressed quite how inspiring and formative hearing Presley for the first time was.
However, when they met their hero, they realised they had little in common as the BBC reported at the time, “There was this embarrassing silence between the mega-famous five, stood there facing each other, with very little of import being said”. It would get even frostier. Despite Presley saying publicly in 1968, “Elvis said: ‘“’I really like a lot of the new groups—The Beatles, the Beards, and whatever’, he was allegedly singing a different tune behind closed doors, telling President Nixon, “The Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit.”
Presley’s ill feelings toward the band even went so far that he tried to get them banned from America. Luckily, that didn’t work, but it did burst the band’s bubble around their idol.
Frank Sinatra
It might be thought that Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley would get along as the two leading crooners of the day. Looking back, they feel somewhat similar, but in the early days of their careers, they sat on two sides of a clear division. Presley was a rock and roller, Sinatra was a swinger or a jazz singer—the two forms had yet to realise how closely connected they were.
So while the pair could’ve been powerful friends, they landed in a back-and-forth battle of words and public statements. Sinatra started it, telling a French magazine that rock and roll was “played and written for the most part by cretinous goons and by means of its almost imbecilic reiterations and sly, lewd – in plain fact, dirty – lyrics, and as I said before, it manages to be the martial music of every side-burned delinquent on the face of the earth… this rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore.” Naturally, with Presley being the king of rock and roll, this insult took on his face.
He took a swipe back, calling Sinatra “badly mistaken”. He noted that, at one point, Sinatra had also been part of a new wave of music, adding, “If I remember correctly, he was also part of a trend. I don’t see how he can call the youth of today immoral and delinquent. It’s the greatest music ever, and it will continue to be so. I like it, and I’m sure many other people feel the same way.”
It continued like that, back and forth, so Presley never felt all that fond towards Sinatra or his records.
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton’s Elvis Presley dilemma
To say ‘hate’ to define the situation between Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley would be harsh, but after a blow-up, the King stopped being a fan altogether.
The story goes that in the early 1970s, Presley was such a Parton fan that he was desperate to cover one of her songs. Parton was already a hit-making machine for both herself and others, as time and time again, covers of her songs would hit the charts hard. Presley wanted a piece of that and reached out, hoping to get permission to record ‘I Will Always Love You’.
But Presley covering a track always came with conditions. “[T]he night before [the recording session], Colonel Tom Parker calls me and says, ‘Well, you know we don’t record anything with Elvis unless we have publishing on it, or at least half the publishing,’” Parton recalled, “Well, I said, because I had a No. 1 song on it, I said, ‘This is the most important copyright in my whole publishing company, and I can’t do that.’”
After Parton stood up against his practices and demands to have more credits than he truly deserved on covers, the duo fell out, and Presley’s opinions on the singer pivoted when he didn’t get his way.
Elvis Presley – 1970 – Singer – Perfromer – Actor
“They were both responsible for two television sets being blown away with a .357 Magnum,” Priscilla Presley once said, with singers Mel Tormé and Robert Goulet being the culprits. Elvis couldn’t stand these two American singers so much that it genuinely turned him violent.
It was less about Tormé or Goulet’s specific work, energy or identity and more an issue that Presley believed they had absolutely nothing about them. Presley liked music with heart, soul, and spirit, and he didn’t see any of that there. “He couldn’t abide singers who were, in his words, ‘all technique and no emotional feeling,’” Priscilla said, and in Elvis’ eyes, Tormé or Goulet had nothing beyond nice voices to offer. To him, that wasn’t enough.
Elvis Presley – 1969 – Las Vegas
When Presley first emerged, he was countercultural. He was shocking and daring and a powerful force in desegregating music as he brought blues and rock to the mainstream as his popularity grew. However, as time went on, he swiftly turned on the scene that had initially nurtured him.
By 1970, Presley was trying to be a narc. It was his new mission to earn a narc badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and he was hoping to get it by taking down the countercultural scene he’d seemingly begun to hate. “Presley indicated to the President in a very emotional manner that he was ‘on your side,’” the aide of the meeting between President Nixon and Presley recorded in his write-up.
“Presley kept repeating that he wanted to be helpful, that he wanted to restore some respect for the flag which was being lost,” the record continued and, in particular, he wanted to use his stance in the music world, and the fact that other artists, including countercultural ones, trusted him in order to turn on them.