'The King' Never Met the Queen

golding76 · ‎05-19-2012

Copied from "Guitar Man," online:

Did you know ?

ELVIS PRESLEY turned down a special invitation from Queen Elizabeth, even though he met three other European princesses and made a secret visit to London.

There could have been an iconic moment in history when The King met The Queen. On this day in 1962, Elvis Presley received a very special invitation from Her Majesty to come to the UK. As fans know, in the end the star only officially stepped foot on UK soil during a brief moment when his plane touched down to refuel at Prestwick Airport, South Ayrshire, in 1960 on his way home from military service in Germany. There are also rumours that he made another secret visit to London, but he certainly never met The Queen. Why? What happened?

It’s unlikely that The Queen actually picked up the phone herself, but the call was put through to Elvis’ management. And that is where the problem lay.

Apparently, Colonel Parker turned down the royal invitation flat. This will come as no surprise to Elvis fans because his Svengali-like manager only let him leave the country very rarely, and then only to perform in Canada. It seems extraordinary that the biggest star in the world did not actually tour the world, but the received wisdom is that Dutch national Parker was an illegal alien in the US and did not want to risk leaving the country and not be permitted to return. Therefore he made sure Elvis was never booked to appear overseas.

May be an image of 2 people and people standing

ECBG · ‎01-08-2011

We will never know what was going on in Elvis' time or his commitments.

I am sure he had his reasons.

insomniac2 · ‎02-20-2016

Well, the current movie certainly explains why!

ValuSkr · ‎03-15-2014

I wondered if the inverse was true - did Queen - the band - ever meet the King (Charles III). It seems they probably did, since Queen was a British group. But there's a story about Freddie Mercury refusing to meet with Prince Charles at Live Aid 1985. His bandmates, Brian May and Roger Taylor, met with Charles and Diana. Mercury saw them but apparently thought it was more important to meet with his friends backstage.