Long before the gold records and the sold-out shows, Elvis Presley was just a young man in Memphis trying to figure out his future. And for a while there, that future looked like a steady job as an electrician.
His father, Vernon, was a practical man. He had worked hard his whole life, often for very little, and he wanted his boy to have something safe to fall back on. A trade. A paycheck you could count on.
So when young Elvis started spending more and more time with that guitar, Vernon sat him down and gave him some fatherly advice.
It was short. It was blunt. And it’s the kind of thing a lot of us heard from our own fathers.
Elvis in 1972, talking with the film crew during “Elvis on Tour”
This is Elvis during that very 1972 sit-down with the film crew. Watch him talk about his early days in that easy, joking way, and imagine him sharing the line you’re about to read.
Here’s what Vernon told him, word for word.
“Make up your mind about either being an electrician or playing guitar. I never saw a guitar player that was worth a damn.”
Read that again and let it sink in.
The father of the most famous guitar-slinging singer who ever lived once told his son that guitar players were worth nothing. And he wasn’t trying to be cruel. He truly believed he was steering his boy toward a sensible life.
What makes it so sweet is how warmly Elvis repeated it years later. By then he was at the very top of the world, and he could look back and laugh. His dad had been wrong in the biggest way a dad could be, and both of them knew it.
The interview happened in July of 1972 on the MGM lot, while the crew was putting together the documentary “Elvis on Tour.” Only a few short bits of that long conversation ever made it into the finished film, which is part of why this little memory feels like such a treat.
It’s a reminder that even legends started out as somebody’s kid, getting advice that didn’t quite pan out.
Vernon meant well. He just had no idea that the skinny boy with the guitar was about to prove him more wrong than any father in history.