Heartbreak Hotel - Legacy

Legacy

Presley would perform the song during most of his live shows between 1956 and 1977, performing it for the last time on May 29, 1977 at the Civic Center in Baltimore, Maryland. The song has been released on almost every Presley compilation album since 1956, and alternative takes have also surfaced on several compilation albums. "Heartbreak Hotel" was awarded by the Broadcast Music Incorporated in its Country music Awards. It was re-released in 1971 for the UK market where it charted at number ten. In 1979, following Presley's death, author Robert Matthew-Walker wrote "...Heartbreak Hotel became one of the legendary rock performances. For many people it is Elvis Presley, and it continues to excite and fascinate listeners. Heartbreak Hotel is a classic performance, yet when it is analyzed it appears so simple that one cannot recall a time when one did not know it." In 1995, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was re-released in 1996 to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its recording.

In a 1975 interview, John Lennon recalled his friend Don Beatty introducing him to Presley's music. Lennon said that his family rarely had the radio on, unlike other members of The Beatles who grew up under its influence. Beatty showed Lennon a picture of Presley that appeared along with the charts on the New Musical Express, and Lennon later heard "Heartbreak Hotel" on Radio Luxembourg. Lennon has said:

When I first heard "Heartbreak Hotel", I could hardly make out what was being said. It was just the experience of hearing it and having my hair stand on end. We'd never heard American voices singing like that. They always sung like Sinatra or enunciate very well. Suddenly, there's this hillbilly hiccuping on tape echo and all this bluesy stuff going on. And we didn't know what Elvis was singing about... It took us a long time to work what was going on. To us, it just sounded as a noise that was great

George Harrison credits Heartbreak Hotel with handing him a "rock n roll epiphany" when in 1956, at age 13, he overheard it being played at a neighbor's house while riding his bike. Thus, it was Heartbreak Hotel that turned Harrison from a relatively well-mannered schoolboy into a guitar-crazed truant who would audition for John Lennon's Quarrymen the following year.

The Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards stated in his 2010 autobiography, Life, that Heartbreak Hotel was one of the first rock and roll influences he had. Apart from Presley's impact on him, Richards was even more impressed by Scotty Moore's guitar playing, as well as the rest of the band:

Good records just get better with age. But the one that really turned me on, like an explosion one night, listening to Radio Luxembourg on my little radio when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, was "Heartbreak Hotel." That was the stunner. I’d never heard it before, or anything like it. I’d never heard of Elvis before. It was almost as if I’d been waiting for it to happen. When I woke up the next day I was a different guy.

Led Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant stated that the song "changed his life". He recalled hearing it for the first time when he was eight years old:

It was so animal, so sexual, the first musical arousal I ever had. You could see a twitch in everybody my age. All we knew about the guy was that he was cool, handsome and looked wild.

Critic Robert Cantwell wrote in his unpublished memoir Twigs of Folly:

The opening strains of "Heartbreak Hotel", which catapulted Presley's regional popularity into national hysteria, opened a fissure in the massive mile-thick wall of post-war regimentation, standardization, bureaucratization, and commercialization in American society and let come rushing through the rift a cataract from the immense waters of sheer, human pain and frustration that have been building up for ten decades behind it.

President Bill Clinton performed the song on saxophone during his appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show on June 3, 1992. In 2004 it was ranked number forty-five on Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included it in its unranked list 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll and in 2005, Uncut magazine ranked the first performance of "Heartbreak Hotel" in 1956 by Presley as the second greatest and most important cultural event of the rock and roll era. Paul McCartney, who participated in Uncut's poll stated, "It's the way sings it as if he is singing from the depths of hell. His phrasing, use of echo, it's all so beautiful. Musically, it's perfect."

Heartbreak Hotel, a film based on a mythical incident involving the kidnapping of Presley, was released theatrically in 1988. It starred David Keith as Elvis Presley, and was directed by Chris Columbus. In 1999, Elvis Presley Enterprises purchased a Wilson World Hotel branch and after several renovations, opened it and named the hotel after the song, located across the street from Presley's home, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee.