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Wed 31 December 2025 17:00, UK
For any musician who grew up when Paul McCartney did, all roads seemed to lead back to Elvis Presley.
There had been countless artists who came out before Presley started shaking his ass, but when people got a load of him on television, there was no point in anyone trying to compete with what he could do. The world had officially found the first rock and roll superstar, but that didn’t mean that Macca had to think that every single thing ‘The King’ made turned to gold or anything.
In fact, Presley is one of the few bona fide rock and roll stars who have a fair amount of shit in their catalogue as well. There’s no doubting that the man could perform nearly anything that someone threw at him, but there were plenty of times where the soundtracks that he made for a few of his movies managed to sound absolutely awful compared to the more aggressive stuff in his catalogue, like ‘Hound Dog’ or ‘Jailhouse Rock’.
But the reality is that Presley was much more interested in embodying songs rather than writing them. Sure, there would be a handful of tunes that resonated with him whenever he performed them, but there was also a fair amount of songwriters in the background making sure they had the scientific middle ground between what the rock and roll fans wanted and the ballad lovers wanted. McCartney also handled that balance pretty well, but his heroes were always the ones who were in the background.
Playing with the rest of the Fab Four night after night in Hamburg wasn’t going to be easy, so after wearing out their Presley tunes, they all went back to the music that they started with, whether that was John Lennon following in the footsteps of Chuck Berry or George Harrison channelling his inner version of Carl Perkins. McCartney may have had Little Richard covered whenever he played, but Perkins did manage to open his eyes to what the guitar could do in a rock and roll context.
While Berry had made his entire sound out of the right guitar licks, Perkins had a way of making a statement out of only a few notes. His licks weren’t always the trickiest things to play by any stretch, but when McCartney heard the original version of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, he knew that there was no sense in trying to go back to what Presley was trying to sell everyone when he played it.
Perkins may not have had the same presence that Presley did when he sang, but all the swagger that he needed was the way that he hit the guitar in that intro, with McCartney recalling to Perkins, “We had heard Elvis had done that, but the thing I always loved about it was your intro. It’s much hipper, your beginning. I did it in a club, and the guitar player knew your version and he got so mad at the band because they did the Elvis version.”
It probably didn’t hurt to have one of the greatest figures in rock and roll history cover his song, but a lot of the shine went out of the song when Presley wrapped his voice around it. He was a fantastic singer and could do practically anything with his voice, but whereas his version of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ was all about getting down to business and making the catchiest tune possible, Perkins wasn’t afraid to take his time a bit more and get a better groove going before giving the people what they wanted.
McCartney may have been more interested in making the perfect pop song whenever he sang, but hearing Perkins meant listening a little bit more. It didn’t hit you immediately, but when you take your time and let the audience slowly follow you, there’s a better chance of letting the song unfold a little bit more.
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