Suzi Quatro reveals exactly why she snubbed Elvis Presley

9 January 2025, 11:51

Elvis Presley changed Suzi Quatro's life, but she turned down the chance of a meeting.

Cliff Richard has attracted plenty of attention over the years for his anecdote about the time he turned down the opportunity to get a photo with his all-time hero Elvis Presley.

Now another star who previously revealed that she once snubbed a chance to meet and greet the King of Rock and Roll has explained exactly why she turned him down.

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Quatro told BBC Essex that her life changed forever when she first saw Elvis on the TV aged just five, and that he personally invited her to visit him at his Memphis home in 1974.

"I was on tour and the phone rang in my hotel room and it was Elvis' people," she said.

"I thought 'well this is a joke', but all of a sudden he came on the line and, well, you could've knocked me over with a feather."

"[He said] I'd like to invite you to Graceland while you're in town and I replied, 'I'm very busy'.

"It wasn't because I was scared, I just wasn't quite ready to meet him yet.

"I think I wasn't supposed to meet him, instead he was a spiritual thing on my shoulder during my whole career."

Quatro said of Elvis: "He was the original rock and roller where people looked at him and thought, 'What's he doing?'.

"He brought that electric, dangerous element to the music industry."

She previously told Gold of her first experience of seeing The King on The Ed Sullivan Show: "Elvis Presley came on, and the elder sister started to scream.

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"I was only five-and-a-half, so I’m looking at it, thinking, 'What’s the matter with you? Why are you screaming?'

"She was five years older than me, so just the age to be screaming.

"And then I looked at the TV, and I went in – like I made it into the TV – and my first lightbulb moment was: 'I’m going to do that.'"