Mick Jagger has revealed that he regrets never meeting Elvis Presley because John Lennon advised him against it.
The Rolling Stones frontman shared the comments during a new interview on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast, and said that he never met the king of rock and roll because he followed the advice of John Lennon.
Lennon and the rest of his Beatles bandmates famously met Presley only once in 1965, when they visited his home in Los Angeles in a meeting set up by NME writer Chris Hutchins.
However, Lennon apparently came away from the meeting with it not having met his expectations, and would later go on to advise Jagger to hold back on meeting Presley and instead hold onto the image he had of the singer.
“I remember John telling me, ‘You should never meet your heroes. I would never meet Elvis, Mick, if I were you,’” Jagger said during the Conan O’Brien interview. “And so I didn’t. I took John’s advice.”
“It was really stupid of me, really. I’d love to have met Elvis,” he added, also sharing that Lennon gave him that same piece of advice on more than one occasion. “Maybe my Elvis version would have been different…”
While Lennon seemingly came away from the meeting with his expectations not met, the same view is not shared by his bandmate Paul McCartney – who has shared multiple times what that moment meant to him.
Earlier this year, McCartney looked back at the interaction again and said that he found Elvis to be “really great” and “a very handsome guy”.
“He wasn’t a disappointment at all,” he said during an interview on BBC Radio 2’s Tracks Of My Years in May.
He also added that it was a “great evening” meeting the ‘Jailhouse Rock’ singer and shared that Presley “played a bit of bass”, saying: “He had a bass there and he was talking about the bass so we could talk, sort of, bass talk. He was great, very personable, very nice.”
McCartney has previously declared Presley as one of the chief inspirations behind the band’s classic album ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’.
In 2012, a previously-unreleased interview with The Beatles came to light too, which saw them reveal what they really thought about Elvis. In the audio, which dates back to 1965, McCartney is heard saying: “Since when I was 16, I’ve loved his records. We used to do a lot of his songs until we started doing our own … but I don’t like the new stuff half as much – we told him that last night.”
Lennon was also heard discussing Presley’s shift towards acting and said: “We were asking him about just making movies, and not making any [personal] appearances. I think he enjoys making movies so much … We couldn’t stand not doing personal appearances – we get bored quickly.”
When asked if a joint Elvis and The Beatles record could ever happen, Lennon replied: “None of us have ever liked those albums where they put two people together. I’d hate an album like that.”
Jagger’s latest interview comes on the heels of The Rolling Stones releasing their 25th album, ‘Foreign Tongues‘, last week – which featured collaborations with Paul McCartney, The Cure’s Robert Smith, Steve Winwood and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, as well as further posthumous appearances from Charlie Watts.
NME gave the album three-and-a-half stars, in a review which described it as “fresh and refined” and proving that “there’s plenty more left in the tank.”
Speaking to NME as part of a recent In Conversation interview, Jagger opened up about the “easy” experience working with McCartney, the collab with Robert Smith, his love of Sam Fender, and whether or not they have more music planned. Read it in full here, or watch it above.
