Richard: The Colonel said okay and he called Brian Epstein to get it set up. We were living in Perugia way in Bel Air at the time. It had a big parking area out in front and big black, tall gates so you couldn’t see through into the yard. We knew that they were coming over because the Colonel called and said that they would be over that night but it had to be top secret and hush hush. We couldn’t tell anybody, nobody was to know about it, the press, nobody. We agreed that we wouldn’t say anything.
We hired some off-duty Bel Air security officers to come up and help us with security, we had the gates shut, and the security officers were out by the gates.
We heard the limousines coming, so we went outside and opened the gates. Two big black limos drove in and we shut the gates. The Colonel was in one limo and the Beatles were in the other. They all got out and went inside.
Elvis didn’t come out, he was sitting in the den with his feet propped up on the coffee table watching the TV and smoking a cigar. We took the Beatles in to the den and they were just standing there looking at Elvis, not saying anything. Elvis kind of looked around at them, and then looked back at the TV without saying anything. He finally said, “Well, I tell you what fellas, if you ain’t going to say nothing, I’m just gonna get my ass up and go to bed”. So Elvis made like he was going to get up and they all said “No, No, No.” and that kind of broke the ice.
Paul and John were the first ones to go over and sit on the couch and start talking to Elvis. I think Ringo and George headed for the bar. They all started talking back and forth and they got to talking about how Elvis influenced their lives and what a big influence he was on their singing and everything, and how he more or less inspired them to sing at the start. Elvis said, “Well, some of the songs you guys have recorded I’ve liked myself. They are pretty damn good and I might just record them myself one day.” He did record several of their songs some years later too. They were talking about Elvis’ music and their music. One of the Beatles, I think it was John, or it may have been Paul, asked Elvis if he had any instruments in the house. Elvis said he had and so we went and broke out some instruments. We had a guitar, some drums and bass, things like that. Elvis and the Beatles sat around and jammed for almost two hours! Elvis sung some of their songs with them, and they sang some of Elvis’ songs with him. If any of us who worked for Elvis had insight, instead of hindsight, we would have recorded that and we’d have been multi-millionaires, but we didn’t think to do it.