Mick Jagger once scoffed at Elvis Presley for playing in Sin City while talking about dropping the rock star life. “I don’t want to be a rock star all my life. I couldn’t bear to be like Elvis Presley and sing in Las Vegas with all those housewives and old ladies coming in with their handbags. It’s really sick,” the then-29-year-old Jagger said.
In the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Elvis had a concert residency in Las Vegas for seven years, performing hundreds of shows at the International Hotel. He serenaded his thriving Vegas fanbase in over six hundred sold-out performances that occurred nearly every day, twice a night.
Jagger never met Elvis
During an interview with Paul Du Noyer for MOJO Magazine, Jagger admitted he deliberately never met Elvis. “I never met Elvis because John Lennon once told me he was a real disappointment,” he said. “I said I’d take his advice, because I’d already had it with Chuck Berry, and I didn’t want it to happen again with Elvis.”
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He eventually owned up to regretting his decision, saying he could have met the King of Rock and Roll before his tragic death. “Though now, of course, I wish I had met Elvis. You never think, ‘Oh, he’s gonna die soon; I’d better hurry up and meet him.’ Because in those days, he wasn’t very old. If nothing else, you’d still be able to talk about it, wouldn’t you?” he explained.
Jagger’s production company had an Elvis biopic in the works
Despite the seeming animosity between both legends, Jagger’s production company reportedly teamed up with 20th Century Fox to make a biopic of Elvis. “He was a unique artist — an original in an area of imitators,” Jagger allegedly claimed of Elvis.
The yet-to-be-released film Last Train To Memphis was based on Peter Guralnick’s biography of the late star, which sought to explore “Elvis’ lifelong passion for music, his compelling affection for his family, his intimate relationships, and the mystical faith Presley had in his music.”