![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/George-Harrison-Sitar-1960s-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Apple Corps LTD)<\/p>\n
Sun 14 December 2025 12:44, UK <\/p>\n
For George Harrison<\/a>, his life changed forever once his eyes were opened to the power of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll.<\/p>\n The discovery proved to be a seismic event, which set the wheels in motion for The Fab Four to exist. It took hearing rock \u2018n\u2019 roll on the radio for Harrison to realise that he could follow this pursuit, and for him, the journey can be traced back to one particular song.<\/p>\n The track in question is the seminal \u2018Heartbreak Hotel\u2019, released by Elvis Presley in 1956. While \u2018Heartbreak Hotel\u2019 didn\u2019t mark the invention of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, it did bring it to the masses, ensuring that teenagers from Liverpool, like Harrison, were aware of its existence. It was no longer a niche musical interest that people had to consciously seek out, but part of the mainstream and impossible to avoid.<\/p>\n While Presley never made any public appearances in the UK, this only added to his mystique and made him feel like an alien that had been dropped down on Earth to give rock \u2018n\u2019 roll to the people. Similarly to Beatlesmania in the US years later, across Britain in the late \u201950s, Elvis hysteria swept up the youth of the nation, and \u2018Heartbreak Hotel\u2019 was the initial catalyst for the craze.<\/p>\n Harrison wasn\u2019t alone in being mesmerised by \u2018Heartbreak Hotel\u2019, which also changed the lives of The Rolling Stones\u2019 Keith Richards, and Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant<\/a>, who once stated, \u201cIt was so animal, so sexual, the first musical arousal I ever had. You could see a twitch in everybody my age. All we knew about the guy was that he was cool, handsome and looked wild.\u201d<\/p>\n For Harrison, his first exposure to Elvis was purely accidental and the case of being in the perfect place at the ideal time. Harrison, who called this moment his \u201cepiphany\u201d, once recalled, \u201cWhen I was about 12 or 13 riding my bike and I heard \u2018Heartbreak Hotel\u2019 coming out of somebody\u2019s house.\u201d<\/p>\n On another occasion, he said of the song: \u201cIt had an incredible impact on me just because I\u2019d never heard anything like it. I mean, coming from Liverpool, we didn\u2019t really hear the very early Sun Records. The first record I remember hearing was probably the big hit by the time it got across the Atlantic. It was \u2018Heartbreak Hotel\u2019 \u2013 \u2018Heartburn Motel\u2019 as Elvis called it.\u201d<\/p>\n From that moment onwards, Harrison knew that he wanted to devote his life to the church of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll. Less than a decade later from hearing \u2018Heartbreak Hotel\u2019, his band would deplace Presley at the top of the musical mountain, and the man who was once his hero was envious of his success.<\/p>\n