Credit: Far Out / MGM
Sat 8 August 2026 22:00, UK
Mercifully, the world never got to hear Elvis Presley’s opinions on much of the contemporary rock landscape, given that ‘The King’ left the building back in 1977.
Before he went, though, Presley did get to witness the shifting sands of the scene he had been essential in starting, but whether he liked what he heard was a different matter altogether.
You might have expected such a key figure in the rock ‘n’ roll revolution of the 1950s to be a little more open-minded to emerging artists and the changing sonic spirit of the scene, as the years marched on. In actuality, Presley was famously disparaging about much of contemporary rock post-1964, by which time his own heyday was rapidly drawing to a close. The Beatles, for instance, did not endear themselves to Presley during their rise to global domination – calling the band “anti-American” during a chat with the similarly anti-American Richard Nixon.
Eventually, though, Presley came around to the appeal of The Beatles, even performing some Lennon-McCartney covers during his rhinestoned, Las Vegas years. Aside from that, though, the performer didn’t often delve into his own musical opinions, particularly when it came to the emerging rock sound of the 1970s.
Admittedly, it would have been rather bizarre to see him pictured in CBGBs, rubbing shoulders with The Ramones or Television. If The Beatles were “anti-American,” lord knows what he thought of punk rock.
While Presley spent much of the 1970s at his Las Vegas residencies, or eating those famous peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, he did manage to take note of some emerging rock acts, albeit on the more commercial end of the spectrum. According to his stepbrother, Billy Stanley, in fact, Presley was an appreciator of bubblegum hard rockers Kiss during his later years.
“I got it cranked up, playing air guitar,” Stanley, who would have been in his early 20s at the time, recalled. “Elvis comes down [and asks] ‘What are you listening to?’ ‘It’s a band called Kiss.’ And I showed him the album cover, and he said, ‘Uh, OK.’ He sat down on the couch, looking at it, and he said, ‘OK, I get it!’”
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Not only did Presley “get” the stylings of the New York outfit, make-up and all, but he also found a particular appreciation for one of their 1974 hits. “He said, ‘So play that song again that you was just playing.’ It was ‘Let Me Go Rock and Roll,’” Stanley continued.
Adding, “I played it, I actually played it two times for him, and I was surprised when he said, ‘Play it again.’ I played it again. I said, ‘What do you think?’ He said, ‘Well, I understand the whole thing.”
“I understand the whole thing” is hardly a ringing endorsement of the group, nor is it a review that any up-and-coming rock band would hope to receive, even by a figure as important to the fabric of the music as Elvis Presley.
Nevertheless, it does appear as if ‘The King’ was an appreciator of Kiss during the mid-1970s, perhaps appreciating their ability to create a hard rock-adjacent sound with mass, commercial appeal – just as Presley had struck upon a rockabilly sound with mass appeal two decades prior.
