The second coolest person the Beatle has ever met – just behind his wife Nancy
Paul McCartney has recalled meeting Elvis Presley, calling him one of the coolest people he’s ever had the fortune to meet.
McCartney has previously declared Presley as one of the chief inspirations behind the band’s classic album ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.
Speaking on The Adam Buxton Podcast, McCartney was quizzed on who he thought the coolest person he ever met was. “My wife, I hope she’s going to listen to this,” he said. “She is very cool!”
He then added: “I have met Elvis Presley, who was darn cool. This was pre-Las Vegas and the rhinestone suits. This was when he was in Beverly Hills, so he was really cool!”
McCartney said if he “had to choose” a number one coolest person he met, he’d “have to go with my wife Nancy,” with Elvis coming in a close second.
Going on to discuss The Beatles’ meeting with Presley in more detail, McCartney said that upon meeting him the band sat in his house in silence, before Presley said: “If you guys are just gonna sit there and stare at me, I’m gonna go to bed.”
McCartney added that the band were inspired by Presley’s move to “send his gold-plated Cadillac out on tour” without himself. “He didn’t go with it, he just sent it out!”
“And people would flock to see Elvis’ Cadillac. And then it would go to the next tour and those people would flock.”
It led the Fab Four to say: “That is brilliant! Only Elvis could have thought of that. What we should do is we should make a killer record and that can do the touring for us,” with McCartney adding that this idea was “what Sgt Pepper was all about”.
Paul McCartney released his new solo album ‘McCartney III’ earlier this month, the third in his trilogy of self-titled albums dating back to 1970.
Reviewing ‘McCartney III’, NME wrote: “If future archaeologists take this three-album series as a significant marker of his solo half-century, they’ll conclude that Paul McCartney never stopped liberating.”
Adam Buxton, meanwhile, recently talked to his childhood friend and comedy partner Joe Cornish for an edition of NME‘s Friends Like These video series. Watch their interview above.
