Liberace was a miracle. You talk about who he was and what he did, and then you look at who he inspired, from Elton John to Cher to Michael Jackson to Bette Midler. There are so many people that came to see him. Elvis was there, watching his shows.
In Malaysia, where Western culture was extremely influential, I'd grown up listening to Elvis and the Beatles and watching American movies. People wanted to be like Americans. In contrast, when I got here, I saw prosperous middle-class American college students wanting to somehow join the Third World.
It was Elvis who really got me hooked on beat music. When I heard 'Heartbreak Hotel' I thought, this is it.
In the '50s, listening to Elvis and others on the radio in Bombay - it didn't feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me.
Every performer who ever performed in rock and roll or even close to it is lying if they tell you that they weren't influenced in some way or another by Elvis Presley. He turned the world around.
Anyone who's got a guitar, you like to pick it up. I can play a couple of songs, some '50s rock and roll, a bit of Elvis. That's it, really - I'm not a musician, I'm not a singer.
I know I'm not going to sing like Aretha Franklin or Elvis Presley or any of those people.
To some extent, the idea that rock 'n roll used to have this sort of free antediluvian identity, frolicking in the 1950s with Elvis or something, is totally wrong. It's insane. Elvis' relationship with Colonel Parker, his manager, was one of the most possibly corrupt, certainly lucrative, and intense business partnerships ever in rock n' roll.
Iconic artists are never straight ahead. Michael Jackson loved Elvis and Burt Bacharach, and uniquely blended both of them into what he did.
My house is a bit like a teenager's bedroom. The kind of pictures you have hanging up on your wall say a lot about you. I've got ones of Evel Knievel, Elvis and Starsky and Hutch, signed by David Soul.