It’s a tale as old as time in the music industry: one man’s “silly song” is another man’s “rock ‘n’ roll revelation.” And for Elvis Presley, Glen Reeves, and the future members of The Beatles in the late 1950s, the silly song in question was Presley’s hit single, “Heartbreak Hotel”. Ironically, the song itself came from a story that was anything but silly.
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Tommy Durden first came up with the idea for “Heartbreak Hotel”, which he would co-write with Mae Boren Axton, after seeing a newspaper article about a man committing suicide and leaving a note that read, “I walk a lonely street.” Durden wanted to expand on this idea in the style of the blues. Axton contributed the idea of the Heartbreak Hotel existing somewhere on Lonely Street.
The rest of the song wrote itself—but not before a friend of Durden and Axton’s offered his two cents. According to Albert Goldman’s Elvis, fellow songwriter Glen Reeves visited Durden and Axton mid-writing session. Axton told Reeves their idea, to which he said the song “was the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.” Reeves left, and the two continued writing, neither one having any idea of the impact their song would make on rock ‘n’ roll forever.
Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” Was a Massive Influence for Many Rock ‘n’ Rollers
Elvis Presley released “Heartbreak Hotel” on January 27, 1956. The song was his first single on his new record label, RCA Victor, and songwriters Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden had their fingers crossed for a hit. And they certainly got their wish. “Heartbreak Hotel” peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100 and the Country and Western charts. The song also peaked at No. 5 on the Rhythm & Blues Records, making it a triple crossover success.
But it wasn’t just the States that ate up “Heartbreak Hotel”. Across the pond, young lads from Liverpool were listening to the warbly croon of the American rock ‘n’ roller’s voice with stars in their eyes. John Lennon and George Harrison, founding members of The Beatles, would later cite listening to “Heartbreak Hotel” for the first time as one of the more revelatory moments in their lives.
“It was just the experience of hearing it and having my hair stand on end,” Lennon later recalled. “We’d never heard American voices singing like that. They’d always sung like Sinatra or enunciated very well. Suddenly, there’s this hillbilly hiccuping on tape echo and all this bluesy background going on. We didn’t know what the hell Presley was singing about. To us, it just sounded like a noise that was great.”
This seed of inspiration blossomed into one of the biggest, most influential rock ‘n’ roll bands of all time—quite the impressive feat for a song that was written off as “silly” in its first few hours of existence.
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