The Beatles legend Paul McCartney has shared his thoughts on his favorite Elvis Presley songs – and one that left him in tears after stripping away years of fame

The Beatles and Elvis Presley stand as titanic figures in the panorama of 20th-century music.

Their records sold by the millions, and they forever altered the landscape of music with pioneering studio techniques and unforgettable flair. Elvis, particularly, was a colossal inspiration for The Beatles, bewitching each member of the Fab Four including Paul McCartney who found the King’s sound and style utterly magnetic.

For Paul, this inspiration wove its way throughout his career, intertwining with his own musical fabric in a deeply personal manner. In a heartfelt exchange on npr’s Fresh Air, the Beatle singled out three tracks that have etched themselves into his memory.

Among them “Heartbreak Hotel”, Elvis’s 1956 sensation, which skyrocketed him to fame and marked his first Billboard Top 100 number one hit while also crossing the million sales mark. Paul described his encounter with the track as “electrifying”.

The Beatles and Elvis Presley were among the biggest stars of the 1960s ( 
Image:
2019 Getty Images)
Paul reminisced during the interview: “You hear on the radio Elvis Presley’s Heartbreak Hotel. It was like, ‘Oh my God, what is that? ‘ Now that we know it so well, you think, ‘Oh, it’s Elvis singing Heartbreak Hotel.’ There will be listeners who can remember that moment when you heard that.”

Another Elvis track that the 82 year old holds dear is “All Shook Up”. In a conversation with Taylor Swift for Rolling Stone, Paul reminisced about how the song once helped him alleviate a headache during his teenage years, reports the Liverpool Echo.

He shared: “I remember once, a friend of mine from Liverpool, we were teenagers, and we were going to a fairground. This girl was so beautiful. Everyone was following her-it was like a magical scene.”

The musician from Liverpool soon found himself suffering from a severe headache, so he “put on the Elvis song All Shook Up,” and by the end of the tune, his headache had disappeared. He described the entire experience as “powerful”.

In an interview with guitar writer Tony Bacon published on Reverb, Paul discussed Elvis’s “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You”, revealing that the song moved him to tears when he listened to it as an adult. “I suddenly realised the last time I listened to this thoroughly was before The Beatles, before all that happened to me, and it just stripped it all away. It actually got me crying, pow. Really did it to me”, he confessed.

“It was like I was a kid playing snooker again and listening,” he added. His children were amazed at how well he remembered the lyrics, joining in as he passionately sang, “Hold me close, hold me tight.”