Paul McCartney Finally Met His Greatest Idol in 1965 — Then Elvis Presley Asked Him for Help With the One Instrument He’d Once Hated Playing

By the summer of 1965, The Beatles had become a global phenomenon powerful enough to challenge virtually every star who had come before them.

But when Paul McCartney finally walked into Elvis Presley’s Los Angeles home, he wasn’t thinking about rivalry.

He was meeting one of his greatest heroes.

And in a wonderfully unexpected reversal, Elvis was the one looking to McCartney for advice.

Presley was trying to learn bass at the time. McCartney, who had once resented being pushed into playing the instrument for The Beatles, suddenly found himself showing the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll a few things.

For Paul, it was a surreal moment that revealed just how dramatically his relationship with the bass had changed.

McCartney Hadn’t Always Wanted to Be the Bass Player

McCartney discussed the encounter during a 1994 interview conducted by Tony Bacon for Bass Magazine, later preserved in the MusicRadar archive.

Looking back on his early Beatles years, Paul admitted that being assigned bass wasn’t initially something he celebrated.

He joked that he had been “lumbered with the bass.”

But resentment gradually turned into pride.

McCartney began recognizing how much influence the instrument gave him over the band’s music.

“Once you realised the control you had over the band, you were in control,” he recalled. “They can’t go anywhere, man. Ha! Power!”

As his confidence grew, McCartney started paying greater attention to other bassists and identifying himself more strongly with the instrument.

That change in attitude produced an unforgettable moment when The Beatles finally met Presley.

Elvis Was Trying to Learn Bass

The long-awaited meeting took place in the summer of 1965, when The Beatles visited Presley’s Los Angeles home.

McCartney discovered that Elvis had been trying to learn bass.

Suddenly, Paul had the perfect conversation starter.

“When we met Elvis, he was trying to learn bass,” McCartney remembered.

His joking reaction was essentially that Elvis should sit down and let him show him a few things.

For a musician who had once felt burdened by the instrument, finding himself giving bass pointers to one of his greatest idols represented quite a transformation.

And according to McCartney, their shared interest helped the two musicians connect.

‘Suddenly He Was a Mate’

McCartney later expanded on the encounter in The Beatles Anthology.

Being able to talk about bass broke through some of the awkwardness surrounding such an enormous meeting.

“Suddenly he was a mate,” Paul recalled.

McCartney remembered Presley as talkative, friendly and slightly shy — characteristics that actually matched the image The Beatles had hoped their hero might have.

The encounter had taken years of anticipation.

The young musicians from Liverpool had idolized Elvis long before they became international stars themselves, and people around The Beatles had repeatedly tried to arrange a meeting.

Eventually, Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, invited the group to Elvis’s Bel Air home.

But putting some of the world’s most famous musicians together in one room didn’t automatically create magic.

The Meeting Was Awkward at First

According to the account, the evening initially felt somewhat stilted.

John Lennon would later remember the encounter less enthusiastically than McCartney did.

Paul, however, appears to have genuinely enjoyed himself.

The shared interest in bass gave him and Elvis something tangible to discuss, while the evening reportedly developed into a spontaneous jam session.

The extraordinary temporary combination of Elvis and The Beatles even played “I Feel Fine.”

For McCartney, the experience remained unforgettable.

“It was one of the great meetings of my life,” he later said.

The Beatles Were Meeting the Man Who Had Inspired Them

By 1965, the relationship between Elvis and The Beatles had an unavoidable irony.

The Beatles had grown up admiring Presley.

Now their own extraordinary success was helping reshape popular music and threatening to eclipse the generation of stars that had inspired them.

McCartney believed Presley may have felt some of that pressure.

“I think at that time he may have felt a little bit threatened,” Paul recalled, while stressing that Elvis never said anything directly and that The Beatles sensed no hostility during the meeting.

McCartney actually regretted the idea that The Beatles’ rise might push Presley aside.

“We wanted to co-exist with him,” he explained.

After all, Elvis remained something much more important to them than a commercial rival.

“He was our greatest idol.”

Paul and Elvis Never Met Again

Despite the enormous significance McCartney attached to that evening, it would be the only time he ever met Presley.

Their careers continued on separate paths as musical styles changed throughout the remainder of the 1960s.

But the image left behind by that single encounter is remarkable.

Paul McCartney had started his Beatles career reluctant to become the group’s bassist.

He eventually discovered that the instrument gave him enormous musical control, embraced his identity as a bass player and developed a distinctive style of his own.

And somewhere along that journey, he found himself sitting with the man The Beatles had once looked up to from thousands of miles away.

Elvis Presley wanted to learn bass — and Paul McCartney suddenly had something he could teach his hero.