Let's ask Mr Zimmerman, for one:
"If it wasn't for Elvis and Hank Williams, I wouldn't be doing what I do today." - Bob Dylan
"When I first heard Elvis' voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody; and nobody was going to be my boss...Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail." - Bob Dylan
"The highlight of my career? That's easy, Elvis recording one of my songs." - Bob Dylan
"I broke down....One of the very few times. I went over my whole life. I went over my whole childhood. I didn't talk to anyone for a week after Elvis died." - Bob Dylan
Read about any of the rock era's luminaries, from Buddy Holly to the Beatles to Elton John to Bruce Springsteen to Barry White to U2 to...etc, etc, etc...and you'll perhaps begin to appreciate the truth of the matter.
A few to get you started:
"Before Elvis, there was nothing." - John Lennon
"Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been an Elvis, there wouldn't have been the Beatles." - John Lennon
"My crushing ambition in life was to be as big as Elvis Presley." - John Lennon
"There's only one person in the United States that we have ever wanted to meet.... not that he wanted to meet us. And we met him last night. We can't tell you how we felt. We just idolized him so much. When we first came to town, these guys like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and all these people wanted to come over and hang around with us at night simply because we had all the women, all the chicks. We don't want to meet those people. They don't really like us. We don't really admire or like them. The only person that we wanted to meet in the United States of America was Elvis Presley. We can't tell you what a thrill that was last night." - John Lennon
"No-one but no-one is his equal or ever will be. He was, and is supreme." - Mick Jagger
"Elvis is my religion. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias right now" - Bruce Springsteen
"...it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear, and somehow we all dreamed it." - Bruce Springsteen
"He had more talent in his toenail than most, if not all, of todays so called stars." - Bruce Springsteen
"On stage he encompassed everything..he was laughing at the world and he was laughing at himself, but at the same time he was dead serious" - Bruce Springsteen
"He was as big as the whole country itself, as big as the whole dream. He just embodied the essence of it and he was in mortal combat with the thing. Nothing will ever take the place of that guy." - Bruce Springsteen
"Elvis is the best ever, the most original. He started the ball rolling for us all. He deserves the recognition." - Jim Morrison
"You have no idea how great he is, really you don't. You have no comprehension - it's absolutely impossible. I can't tell you why he's so great, but he is. He's sensational." - Phil Spector
"I'd always been such a huge fan of Elvis. We met him after one of his gigs in Las Vegas. we discovered this great, great guy, just a magnificent guy" - Jimmy Page
"A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man's music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis." - Jackie Wilson
"Elvis is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century. He introduced the beat to everything, music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution - the 60s comes from it." - Leonard Bernstein
"Elvis had an influence on everybody with his musical approach. He broke the ice for all of us." - Al Green
"Elvis was the king. No doubt about it. People like myself, Mick Jagger and all the others only followed in his footsteps." - Rod Stewart
"This boy had everything. He had the looks, the moves, the manager, and the talent. And he didn’t look like Mr Ed like a lot of the rest of us did. In the way he looked, way he talked, way he acted - he really was different." - Carl Perkins
"I wasn't just a fan, I was his brother. He said I was good and I said he was good; we never argued about that. Elvis was a hard worker, dedicated, and God loved him. Last time I saw him was at Graceland. We sang "Old Blind Barnabus" together, a gospel song. I love him and hope to see him in heaven. There'll never be another like that soul brother." - James Brown
"He taught white America how to get down" - James Brown
"He was the firstest with the mostest." - Roy Orbison
"I saw Elvis live in '54. It was at the Big D Jamboree in Dallas and the first thing, he came out and spit on the stage…it affected me exactly the same way as when I first saw that David Lynch film. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it to." - Roy Orbison
"I hope that nobody will ever forget how he influenced us all..he isn't just a historical phenomenon but rather something very lasting." - Roy Orbison
"That’s my idol, Elvis Presley. If you went to my house, you'd see pictures all over of Elvis. He's just the greatest entertainer that ever lived. And I think it's because he had such presence. When Elvis walked into a room, Elvis Presley was in the f***ing room. I don't give a f*** who was in the room with him, Bogart, Marilyn Monroe. - Eddie Murphy
"Elvis was the greatest entertainer of all time" - Eddie Murphy
"He had total love in his eyes when he performed. He was the total androgenous beauty. I would practice Elvis in front of the mirror when I was twelve or thirteen years old." - kd lang
"It was Elvis that got me interested in music. I've been an Elvis fan since I was a kid. Ask anyone. If it hadn't been for Elvis, I don't know where popular music would be. He was the one that started it all off, and he was definitely the start of it for me." - Elton John
"The first concert I attended was an Elvis concert when I was eleven. Even at that age he made me realize the tremendous effect a performer could have on an audience." - Cher
"He helped to kill off the influence of me and my contemporaries, but I respect him for that. Because music always has to progress, and no-one could have opened the door to the future like he did." - Bing Crosby
"The things he did during his career,the things he created are really something important" - Bing Crosby
"What he did was a part of history." - Bing Crosby
"I'm just a singer, but Elvis was the embodiment of the whole American culture. Life just wouldn't have been the same without him." - Frank Sinatra
"Without Elvis none of us could have made it" - Buddy Holly
"Elvis is the greatest blues singer in the world today" - Joe Cocker
"Elvis is my man" - Janis Joplin
"There is no way to measure his impact on society or the void that he leaves. He will always be the king of rock 'n' roll" - Pat Boone
"It was Elvis that got me hooked on beat music. When I heard "Heartbreak Hotel" I thought: this is it" - Paul McCartney
"Every time I felt low, I just put on an Elvis record and I'd feel great" - Paul McCartney
"I doubt very much if the Beatles would have happened if it was not for Elvis. God bless you Elvis." - Paul McCartney
"There will never be another beautiful Elvis; Elvis was truly a Force of History."- Paul McCartney
"He inspired me to be a performer, he is a legend, the King." - Robbie Williams
"I owe Elvis my career, and the entire music business owes him it's lifeline." - Cliff Richard
"Elvis was God-given, there's no other explanation. A Messiah comes around every few thousand years, and Elvis was it this time." - Little Richard
"He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music." - Little Richard
"Elvis was one of the very finest performers ever, whether they were black, red, brown, white or yellow. We were very good friends; I loved Elvis and he loved me. He was a handsome young man, and he was a humble young man." - Little Richard
"There just ain't no words to describe him. Elvis was the greatest who ever was, is or ever will be." - Chuck Berry
"Black didn't have the airwaves. Elvis had. He delivered what he obtained beautifully." - Chuck Berry
"The first time I met him I was blown away, I just looked at him and said, damn son, you about the best looking thing I ever did see, kinda wish I was a girl right now, Elvis." - Jerry Reed
"When I first heard Elvis perform "Bridge Over Trouble Water" It was unbelievable,and I thought to myself, how the hell can I compete with that?" - Paul Simon
"The first time I heard his music, back in '54 or '55, I was in a car and I heard the announcer say, "Here's a guy who, when he appears on stage in the South, the girls scream and rush the stage". Then he played 'That's All Right, Mama'. I thought his name was about the weirdest I'd ever heard. I thought for sure he was a black guy. Later on I grew my hair like him, imitated his stage act - once I went all over New York looking for a lavender shirt like the one he wore on one of his albums. I felt wonderful when he sang 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', even though it was a touch on the dramatic side - but so was the song." - Paul Simon
"Elvis was the reason I picked up the guitar" - Paul Simon
"Elvis was a major hero of mine. I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something." - David Bowie
"Nobody can compare me to Elvis, he was and is the greatest performer ever." - Garth Brooks
"I had always wanted to be like Elvis, to be a rock'n'roll star, but I couldn't sing so I joined a mod band instead." - Roger Daltry
"I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis" - Lester Bangs
"I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra's. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness." - B.B. King
"I liked Elvis a lot. I saw him as a fellow Mississippian and I was impressed by his sincerity. I thought he was honorable when he came to play The Goodwill Revue, a yearly benefit in our hometown for needy black kids. When Elvis appeared he was already a big, big star, Remember this was the fifties, so for a young white boy to show up at an all-black function took guts. I believe he was showing his roots. After the show, he made a point of posing for pictures with me, treating me like royalty. He'd tell people I was one of his influences." - BB King
"I don't think there is a musician today that hasn't been affected by Elvis' music. His definitive years - 1954-57 - can only be described as rock's cornerstone. He was the original cool." - Brian Setzer
"He was white, but he sang black. It wasn't socially acceptable for white kids to buy black records at the time. Elvis filled a void." - Chet Atkins
"I didn't like Elvis Presley before I went to work with him. I mean, I didn't know him. I just didn't like his music. I was into black music mostly and jazz so when I went to work for him on the first rehearsal I told my ex-wife, I don't think I'm going to do this gig, but I'm going to go down and check it out..see what's going on.' I came home that night and said, 'you gotta come down and hear this guy tomorrow night.' She said, 'you’re kidding.' I said, 'no, you got to come down and hear him.' She came down the next night to the rehearsal and she walked away a fan. It was that immediate. When I walked in and I heard him I said, 'Oh-oh, I believe that I've been missing something here!'" - Jerry Scheff (Elvis' bass player from 1969 to 1977)
"Elvis' music has been my greatest inspiration" - Bono (U2)
"Elvis Presley is like the 'Big Bang' of Rock 'n' Roll. It all came from there and what you had in Elvis Presley is a very interesting moment because, really, to be pretentious about it for a minute, you had two cultures colliding there. You had a kind of white, European culture and an African culture coming together - the rhythm, okay, of black music and the melody chord progressions of white music - just all came together in that kind of spastic dance of his. That was the moment. That's really it. Out of all that came the Beatles and the Stones, but you can't underestimate what happened. It does get back to Elvis." - Bono of U2
"Discount the commercial rubbish he had done often during his career. I just like to think of his trailblazing glorious best, when he sang black in white style and taught the world something about true originality" - Eric Clapton
"I saw a cousin of mine when I was young. She was dancing to ''Hound Dog' and I had never seen her get up and be moved so much by anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that." - David Bowie
"I'm an Elvis disciple. The man was incredible - heaven and hell wrapped up in one body" - Mojo Nixon
"For me, Elvis Presley was the biggest influence, but there also was Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. I think we became friendly because we had similar backgrounds, being from working class families." - Tom Jones
"We were both at Paramount Studios – he was doing a film and I was recording a song for a movie. He heard I was there and apparently asked if he could come and say hello. I couldn't believe it. Just six months before I was skint and listening to Elvis records at home. When he came over he said, 'How the hell do you sing like that?' I told him he was partly to blame." - Tom Jones
"It was a Wednesday night in May 1960 that changed my life. I went to bed, sank into my bunk, when all of a sudden out of the bleak stone-block nowhere down the hall from some other inmate's radio I started to hear this song. I'd heard it before, I don't know, twenty-five, thirty times, but it never hit me like it did that night. It was, of all people, Elvis Presley! The song? "It's Now or Never". It became my personal message, meant only for me. "Stop wasting your time, Barry," it said. "When you get out you better change your ways. It's Now or Never!" - Barry White
"I'll tell you what it was: Elvis put some grease in rock & roll - some cooking grease, music like bacon drippin's. He was as funky as a white boy could be, and that freaked out some people, and made a lot more people love him." - George Clinton (Parliament/ Funkadelic)
“People don't realize what they had till it's gone. Like President Kennedy - nobody like him. Like The Beatles, there will never be anything like them. Like my man, Elvis Presley - I was the Elvis of boxing.'' - Muhammed Ali
"I was a real little toddler when I first heard 'Hound dog'. I learned to play drums listening to him - beating on tin cans to his records. I'm sure his measurable effect on culture and music was even greater in England than in the States. People there are still really, really fanatical about Elvis. The news came over like a ton of bricks. I was driving back from the mountains and I had the radio on. They were playing an Elvis medley and I thought "Great". And then they came back with the news." - Mick Fleetwood
"Elvis Presley's talent brightened millions of lives. He widened the horizons of my world certainly.... Elvis Presley more than made me feel good, he enriched my life and made it better." - Stephen King
"As a musicologist — and I consider myself one — there was always a great deal of respect for Elvis, especially during his Sun sessions. As a black people, we all knew that...My heroes came before him. My heroes were probably his heroes." - Chuck D
"The man loved all kinds of music, and he consistently acknowledged his indebtedness to black musicians." - David Earl Jackson (reporter for the Tri-State Defender)
"Everybody playing music today owes Elvis a debt...I've listened to his music, and I'm definitely a fan." - Jakob Dylan
"When I was 13, I saw him perform live and I suddenly understood what sex is all about. I was screaming at the top of my lungs." - Raquel Welch
"He was good. He never had to take a back seat to anybody. I thought "Don't Be Cruel" was one of the greatest songs I ever heard." - Jerry Lee Lewis
"So what it boils down to was Elvis produced his own records. He came to the session, picked the songs, and if something in the arrangement was changed, he was the one to change it. Everything was worked out spontaneously. Nothing was really rehearsed. Many of the important decisions normally made previous to a recording session were made during the session. What it was was a look to the future. Today everybody makes records this way. Back then Elvis was the only one. He was the forerunner of everything that's record production these days. Consciously or unconsciously, everyone imitated him. People started doing what Elvis did." - Bones Howe, recording engineer
"A lot has been written and said about why he was so great, but I think the best way to appreciate his greatness is just to go back and play some of the old records...Time has a way of being very unkind to old records, but Elvis' keep getting better and better." - Huey Lewis
"There was something just bordering on rudeness about Elvis. He never actually did anything rude, but he always seemed as if he was just going to. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate him eleven." - Sammy Davis Jr.
"No one sang so many different kinds of music as well as he sang them at such a high level for such a long time -- rock, gospel, country, standards...Can you imagine Bruce Springsteen or Bono or Michael Stipe winning a Grammy for singing gospel music?" - Greg Drew, a New York City-based voice coach
"As a little girl -- 6, 7, 8 years old, I would credit it with being some of the first music that really made me want to be a singer...I remember my parents had some records, and they had 'Heartbreak Hotel' and some of the best stuff he did, some of the early rock 'n' roll. I was just hypnotized by his voice. I thought he was incredible. At 6, 7 years old, you don't realize that these aren't current records. I was just in love with him. Even at that young of age, his voice just mesmerized me. From him, to then discovering Patsy Cline and then Linda Ronstadt, I was always drawn to voices that were just so-o-o-o passionate." - Trisha Yearwood
"His music is still important to me. I've come to appreciate him more and more as the years go on." - Jon Bon Jovi
"He used to give me impromptu karate lessons. Interesting guy, I really liked him. He had a good sense of humor. I felt sorry that he was the king of his own little world but he wasn't allowed to live outside that world. I felt sorry for someone who is that big that they can't go grocery shopping....When I was a kid I combed my hair like him, when I was like 8 years old. He was my first brush with rebellion. I saw him on TV, I saw my parents gag and go, 'What was that?' The next day I was combing my hair pretty heavy." - Alice Cooper
"Elvis Presley was an explorer of vast new landscapes of dream and illusion. He was a man who refused to be told that the best of his dreams would not come true, who refused to be defined by anyone else’s conceptions. This is the goal of democracy, the journey on which every prospective American hero sets out. That Elvis made so much of the journey on his own is reason enough to remember him with the honor and love we reserve for the bravest among us. Such men made the only maps we can trust." - Dave Marsh
"Unless you understand that Elvis was more than anything a spiritual leader of our generation - there is really no way to assess his importance, much less the meaning of the music he created...Uniting opposites, of course, is the essence of religion...he obliterated distinctions between musical forms, between races (for a moment at least)." - Dave Marsh
"...if any individual of our time can be said to have changed the world, Elvis Presley is the one. In his wake more than music is different. Nothing and no one looks or sounds the same. His music was the most liberating event of our era because it taught us new possibilities of feeling and perception, new modes of action and appearance, and because it reminded us not only of his greatness, but of our own potential." - Greil Marcus
"Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique, irreplaceable. More than twenty years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture. His following was immense. And he was a symbol to people the world over of the vitality, rebelliousness and good humor of this country." - President Jimmy Carter
"It's always been my dream to come to Madison Square Garden and be the warm-up act for Elvis." - Al Gore
"You know, Bush is always comparing me to Elvis in sort of unflattering ways. I don't think Bush would have liked Elvis very much, and that's just another thing that's wrong with him." - Bill Clinton
"Elvis Presley was the first and the best. He is my favorite of all time." - Bill Clinton
But, hey, look...some people actually agreed with those like many on DU who understate or dismiss Elvis' influence and talent:
"He can't last. I tell you flatly, he can't last" - Jackie Gleason
"He never contributed a damn thing to music" - Bing Crosby
"The fact that someone with so little ability became the most popular singer in history says something significant about our cultural standards" - Steve Allen
"His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac...It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people." - Frank Sinatra
Of course, all four -- along with Ed Sullivan (who said he wouldn't let his daughter cross the street to see Elvis, until he saw the massive ratings for Elvis' controversial second appearance on Milton Berle's show and subsequent turn on Steve Allen's show) -- changed their tunes after they met the guy...
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