![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/The-song-Elvis-Presley-and-Frank-Sinatra-agreed-was-The-Beatles-masterpiece-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x85.jpeg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Bent Rej \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Sun 7 December 2025 19:30, UK <\/p>\n
As smooth as buttered silk and powerful enough to propel a feather to the peak of Everest, the rare collision of Elvis Presley<\/a> covering The Beatles feels like witnessing a blizzard storm over the sands of the Sahara. <\/p>\n They are not only giants of pop culture, but they are also the foundation of the whole bloody thing. And given the seismic size of their talents, the world is a better place for that brilliant buttressing. But before them both, there was Frank Sinatra. <\/p>\n It was December 30th, 1942. The world was in the dark depths of war, but a flicker of hope could be found in a corner of Manhattan. Or at least that\u2019s how a clutch of frenzied youth viewed Ol\u2019 Blue Eyes. <\/p>\n Before he even emerged from the wings, the \u2018My Way\u2019 singer heard the presentiment of an ear-splitting future. \u201cThe sound that greeted me was absolutely deafening. It was a tremendous roar. 5000 kids, stamping, yelling, screaming, applauding. I was scared stiff. I couldn\u2019t move a muscle,\u201d he later recalled. He declined to mention the potent smell of urine caused by over-excited fans refusing toilet breaks.<\/p>\n This scene was unprecedented in pop. There was barely such a thing as a solo artist at that point. But new alternatives were blossoming during a period where many were questioning where everything went wrong, and the press had begun peddling the notion that a new star was emerging from the ensemble of Harry James\u2019 band.<\/p>\n All this excitement culminated in a fateful solo concert at the Paramount as 1942 came to a close. Radio personality Jack Benny was present as an older fellow somewhat out of the loop, and he recalled, \u201cI thought the goddamned building was going to cave in.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI never heard such a commotion,\u201d he continued. \u201cAll this for a fellow I never heard of.\u201d But the youth had, and that was the crux of the matter: Frank Sinatra was their own.<\/a> The whole gamut of culture was now their own, too. No longer would youngsters have to occupy their recreational time with art angled towards rich adults. The birth of \u2018cool\u2019 was upon us. <\/p>\n And \u2018cool\u2019 was proving a big, fat hit. In fact, when Frank himself would reflect on the matter, he put his finger on the cause of his rampant fandom, telling Jeremy Arnold, \u201cPerfectly simple: It was the war years, and there was a great loneliness, and I was the boy in every corner drugstore, the boy who\u2019d gone off drafted to the war. That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n When he played the Paramount two years later, the crowd was even bigger, and the infamous Frank Sinatra Riot unfurled as thousands of fans tried to force their way into the venue. This incident is perhaps the defining moment in the formulation of modern pop culture. The reports in the paper the next day were split down the middle: old folks bemused about how the hell someone could riot over a singer, and youngsters wondering who the hell wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Almost exactly ten years later, the second chapter in pop culture\u2019s cyclical story would tell a very similar tale. Elvis Presley was the new kid on the block, threatening to take Sinatra\u2019s crown with something new. Once again, this newness seemed revolutionary and was thusly met with an equal mix of biblical adoration and liturgical condemnation.<\/p>\n This pop culture vs conservatism-driven dichotomy is perfectly elucidated in the FBI vaults. As one letter from a former Army Intelligence Service officer, who had \u2018spied\u2019 on an Elvis concert, to FBI director J Edgar Hoover stated in 1956: \u201c[Elvis is] a definite danger to the security of the United States\u201d. <\/p>\n Continuing: \u201c[His] actions and motions were such as to arouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. One eye-witness described his actions as \u2018sexual self-gratification on stage,\u2019 \u2013 another as \u2018a strip-tease with clothes on\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Before troublingly positing: \u201cIt is known by psychologists, psychiatrists, and priests that teenaged girls from the age of eleven,\u201d which doesn\u2019t even make them teenagers, evidencing the officer\u2019s unscrupulous approach to facts, \u201cand boys in their adolescence are easily aroused to sexual indulgence and perversion by certain types of motions and hysteria, \u2013 the type that was exhibited at the Presley show. There is also gossip of the Presley Fan Clubs that degenerate into sex orgies.\u201d<\/p>\n It comically concluded: \u201cFrom eye-witness reports about Presley, I would judge that he may possibly be a drug addict and a sexual pervert.\u201d<\/p>\n While that decree might seem ludicrous in retrospect, embittered by seeing his status as the leading star of pop culture take a kneeslide, Sinatra seemed to agree with it. \u201cHis kind of music is deplorable, a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac,\u201d he once said. \u201cIt fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people\u201d.<\/p>\n He thought the new King\u2019s bedevilling music would not only derail the prominence of the crooners, but the whole morality of the world. Why wouldn\u2019t he? The recurring pattern of pop culture is thus: a new movement emerges as a liberating force that battles against conservatism until the mechanism of capitalism absorbs it, and the cutting-edge stars of yesteryear become the commercialised status quo, battling against the next rupture in turn.<\/p>\n After all, the crux of conservatism can always be surmised as thus: why would you want things to change, even for the better, when the current situation suits you?<\/p>\n That would be evidenced, once again, almost exactly a decade later, when The Beatles touched down on American soil, and things began to sour between them and their bequiffed \u2018Hound Dog\u2019 hero very quickly. <\/p>\n \u200b\u200bOnce again, lodged in the FBI vault<\/a> is a 663-page report on \u201cPresley, Elvis A\u201d, within which we learn that the \u2018King of Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll\u2019 thought The Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. He was also \u201cof the opinion that The Beatles laid the groundwork for many of the problems we are having with young people by their filthy, unkempt appearances and suggestive music.\u201d<\/p>\n Sinatra, as is perhaps obvious at this stage, had a similar opinion. In a public press release which included the iconic line \u201ctired of kid singers wearing mops of hair\u201d, the crooner seemed to pit his more wholesome, mature, and sophisticated music against the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll that he once proclaimed was peddled by \u201ccretinous goons\u201d. He allegedly even went so far as to instruct the mob to pay The Mama\u2019s and The Papa\u2019s a visit.<\/p>\n The worry that Sinatra and Elvis shared about the unprecedented arrival of booming psychedelia and bloody Beatlemania was obvious. No matter how sizable their influence may have been, neither of them wanted to be assigned to history\u2019s footnotes as The Beatles mounted culture\u2019s crow\u2019s nest and searched for newness once more. <\/p>\n But by 1989, that\u2019s where Bob Dylan put them. \u201c[Elvis is] a relic of the past,\u201d the original vagabond \u2013 not a nickname either of them would happily abide by \u2013 said, \u201c[Frank] is on the way to becoming a relic.\u201d<\/p>\n However, their bitterness about The Beatles only tells half of the story. After all, they managed to seize the zeitgeist once themselves in the first place because they, similarly, had talents that awed the masses. So, while it might have been done with a begrudged grimace, both men did peruse the Fab Four\u2019s profoundly popular back catalogue, and each proclaimed that one gem stood out from the pile of assorted hits.<\/p>\n What was Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley\u2019s favourite Beatles song?<\/p>\n Reflecting on the George Harrison-written ditty, \u2018Something\u2019, Sinatra would assert, \u201cIt\u2019s one of the best love songs I believe to be written in 50 or 100 years, and it never says \u2018I love you\u2019 in the song, but it really is one of the finest.\u201d <\/p>\n Compliments were rare from Sinatra by any measure, but especially when it came to The Beatles. However, with the track becoming a fixture in his set, he had no option but to heap praise upon it. Although he did, ironically, make it clear that he was certainly no student of their work by inadvertently stripping Harrison of his songwriter credit when he performed it. \u201cI think Frank Sinatra used to introduce \u2018Something\u2019 as his favourite Lennon-McCartney<\/a> song. Thanks, Frank,\u201d Paul McCartney recalled.<\/p>\n![\"Frank](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Frank-Sinatra-Singer-Actor-Can-Can-Walter-Lang-1960-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>Frank Sinatra during his foray into acting. (Credits: Far Out \/ 20th Century-Fox)<\/p>\n![\"Elvis](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Elvis-Presley-Singer-Actor-1968-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>The late, great Elvis Presley in his prime. (Credits: Far Out \/ MGM)<\/p>\n