> We forget Elvis because the Beatles came up [..]
This is how everyone perceives it, but is it true?
The Beatles were active from 1960 until their break-up in 1970 while Elvis worked from 1953 until his death in 1977. His international hit "In the Ghetto" was released in 1969, a time when the Beatles were already divided and their break-up was imminent. In reality the Beatles and Elvis were very much contemporaries.
And as an aside: It always amused me that Tarentino got that right in the "Beatles people vs Elvis people" scene. Beatles and Stones are compared all the time because they are perceived to be from the same generation. Except for the Tarentino scene I have never heard a comparison like that between the Beatles and Elvis - it is always just Elvis before, Beatles after.
In case you were wondering, this is from a deleted scene in Pulp Fiction:
> Mia Wallace: "There are only two kinds of people in the world, Beatles people and Elvis people. Now Beatles people can like Elvis and Elvis people can like the Beatles, but nobody likes them both equally. Somewhere you have to make a choice. And that choice, tells you who you are."
But even today, the field of "Elvis impersonators" is a thing, many of them people who weren't even alive when Elvis died. People may respect the Beatles more as artists, and I know some of the Elvis craze is meant ironically, but Elvis-fandom basically created cosplay before cosplay.
there's a wider range of elvis impersonators, and people can love dressing up like him for whatever reason. it's easier to do that when it's a single person.
there are beatle groups - some just focus on music, some do the theatrical angle (suits/accents/etc). there's not as many partially because it's hard to be just a 'ringo' on your own - you need the group (I guess that goes just as well for real life, not just the imitators!)
Another Elvis contemporary that blew my mind was Johnny Cash, mainly because my main interest in Johnny Cash to that point was his cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt". That's a bit of a leap of musical generations.
The Beatles absolutely replaced Elvis as "The Biggest Thing in America" in the early 60s. Yes he had successes and large shows after that, but there is also something that he lost while he was making all those stupid movies.
Elvis lost relevance with youth culture, gained weight and became a parody of himself. He was a one-trick pony (a white artist making the style of black music acceptable for a primarily white audience in a segregationist culture,) but inevitably rock as a genre and American culture as a whole evolved beyond his capabilities.
The Beatles, meanwhile, were constantly evolving and their style changed with the times, so they were able to stick around a bit longer.
This is how everyone perceives it, but is it true? The Beatles were active from 1960 until their break-up in 1970 while Elvis worked from 1953 until his death in 1977. His international hit "In the Ghetto" was released in 1969, a time when the Beatles were already divided and their break-up was imminent. In reality the Beatles and Elvis were very much contemporaries.
And as an aside: It always amused me that Tarentino got that right in the "Beatles people vs Elvis people" scene. Beatles and Stones are compared all the time because they are perceived to be from the same generation. Except for the Tarentino scene I have never heard a comparison like that between the Beatles and Elvis - it is always just Elvis before, Beatles after.