Quote Of The Day By John Lennon: 'Nothing Really Affected Me Until I Heard Elvis. If There Hadn't Been An...'

As co-leader of the Beatles, John Lennon was one of the most important and globally-known figures in rock 'n' roll. But even the biggest stars have their forebears, and for Lennon, that predecessor was Elvis Presley.

Even though Lennon actually hated songwriting, the Liverpool native's first band turned into the Beatles, a musical and cultural phenomenon that became the biggest-selling rock group ever. As the wry and acerbic half of the group's main songwriting duo (with the gentler and softer Beatle, Paul McCartney), Lennon contributed to 20 No. 1 hits and was prominently featured on classics like "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "Come Together," and "Help!" After the breakup of the Beatles, Lennon embarked on dual journeys as an anti-war activist and solo artist, with those paths converging on songs such as "Give Peace a Chance" and "Imagine."

Lennon's fame even eclipsed that of his predecessor and hero, Presley, and when the two managed to meet, it was a revelatory moment for the Beatle. That's why John Lennon is the source of today's quote of the day.

"Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles."

On August 27, 1965, the Beatles had a free evening in the middle of an American concert tour, and they jumped at an opportunity arranged by their press officer Tony Barrow: to go hang out at Elvis Presley's Beverly Hills home for a while. At the Beatles' collective behest, no media was involved because they wanted the moment — in which they encountered one of their idols in an intimate setting — to be as personal and pure as possible. Cutting into some awkward lapses in the chit-chat, John Lennon unabashedly went for it, peppering Presley with questions about why he'd seemingly abandoned rock music to make slight ballads for his movie musicals.

Recorded for posterity in Jane Ellen Wayne's book "The Leading Men of MGM" (as Presley was as much a movie star as he was a musician), Lennon tried to unpack the profundity of coming face to face with the one person who'd so greatly changed his life.

Elvis Presley was among the first well-known figures in rock 'n' roll, a genre that mixed R&B, blues, and country into something new and exciting to the youth of the 1950s. A young John Lennon in particular found Presley to be so captivating and inspirational that he became a musician himself — positing that he'd never have given rock 'n' roll music, still a relative novelty, a shot if Presley hadn't paved the way.

In the immediate aftermath of meeting the influential character, Lennon was pleased and starstruck just to have been in the same room as the person who set him on his artistic trajectory. "You can't imagine what a thrill that was last night," he said in "The Leading Men of MGM." It confirmed for him that rock 'n' roll was the right path, and that following in Presley's footsteps had been worth it.

As lionized and mythologized as the assassinated Beatle is today, his quote reminds us that he was once just a regular person who took the proverbial torch from another pioneer. He then went as far as he could go with Presley's music, putting his own spin on rock as one of the main voices behind the Beatles and finding his passion in the arts. 

Lennon's quote illustrates the importance of reflection and gratitude. A person rarely, if ever, becomes successful in a vacuum or without at least the indirect impact of others who earlier plied their trade and established a foundation.

• "The thing the '60s did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility."

• "I don't mind people putting us down, because if everybody really liked us, it would be a bore. You've got to have people putting you down. It doesn't give any edge to it if everybody just falls flat on their face saying, 'You're great.'"

• "All art is pain expressing itself. I think all life is, everything we do, but particularly artists — that's why they're always vilified. They're always persecuted because they show pain; they can't help it. They express it in art and the way they live, and people don't like to see that reality that they're suffering."

• "There is nothing conceptually better than rock and roll. No group, be it Beatles, Dylan or Stones have ever improved on 'Whole Lot of Shaking' for my money."

• "We're trying to sell peace, like a product, you know, and sell it like people sell soap or soft drinks. And it's the only way to get people aware that peace is possible, and it isn't just inevitable to have violence."