I first met him in 1963, put on to the Beatles by an Oxford friend who came from Liverpool, the journalist Gillian Reynolds (now The Daily Telegraph’s radio critic). They wore boots, she said, and their appearance inspired frenzy. “They look beat up and depraved in the nicest possible way.” I was writing a column in the London Evening Standard called – horrors! – “Disc Date”. But I had a fringe and red boots which was a good start. When they went to the US for The Ed Sullivan Show, I suggested to my editor I go, too. He was scathing. Take rock’n’roll to America? “Coals to Newcastle?” But I went.
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Elvis was, by all accounts, a pretty moderate fellow but he could sing and, above all, he could move. His movements came from imitating the bumps and grinds of burlesque strippers but in photographs they were a stance that was wild, free and fearless. That was how he looked in penny-pinching England where you wore clothes until they wore out. His was the torch the Beatles carried.
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