ELVIS meets the BEATLES**
By Chris Hutchins and Peter Thompson
HOW did John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr ever get to America in the first place? How did Elvis Presley, a poor boy from the Tennessee backwoods, arrive in Hollywood? Full of previously unpublished detail, this book is a rare focus on the lives and careers of five of the most famous entertainers ever. It converges on the night the greatest summit in rock ‘n roll history took place and no one is better equipped to tell the story of that night than Chris Hutchins for not only was he the only writer there, he set the meeting up! When they first met in a Hamburg night club in 1962 John Lennon asked Hutchins if he ever thought he’d be able to meet the man they called ‘the King’. The writer from the NME said he would try and arrange it – one day . . . That day came in August 1965 when Hutchins - after cultivating a friendship with Presley’s legendary manager Colonel Tom Parker and by now on tour with the Beatles - took the group to Elvis’s home for a party. Collaborating with fellow author Peter Thompson, Hutchins has written this detailed and uncompromisingly frank account of what happened that night – and the strange events that followed. It’s packed with rock ‘n roll stories.
‘A fast, enjoyable read which captures the Beatles’ tours, is good on Presley and Lennon’s competing needs to be seen as the toughest kids on the block and also gets under the skin of Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, whom Hutchins knew’ – Q magazine.
ELVIS MEETS THE BEATLES is separately published under its UK paperback title, ELVIS & LENNON.