In the fall of 1980, John and Yoko were finishing up their new album, 'Double Fantasy', and I headed to New York for John's first newspaper interview in five years. John raced into Yoko Ono's home office in the mammoth old Dakota building with a copy of Donna Summer's new single, The Wanderer. 'Listen!' he shouted to us as he put the 45 on the record player. 'She's doing Elvis!' I didn't know what he was talking about at first. The arrangement felt more like rock than the singer's usual electro-disco approach, but the opening vocal sure sounded like Donna Summer to me. Midway through the song, however, her voice shifted into the playful, hiccuping style Elvis had used on so many of his early recordings.

'See! See!' John shouted, pointing at the speakers.

One day in 1975, he took me to his son, Sean's playroom, where he kept one of his prized possessions, a vintage jukebox. Plugging it in, he punched one Elvis Presley record after another and bopped around playfully. As Elvis sang Don't Be Cruel in the background, John recalled his first and only meeting with our mutual rock hero. It was a story he relished sharing as much as he did his Beatles memories.

'It was probably 1965 and we had a break in L.A. during a tour. We went up to his house and we were terrified. I can't remember the first moment I saw him, but he looked great. We started singing some of his songs. That's what we always did when we met Chuck Berry or Carl Perkins or any of them'.

I asked if Elvis had known how big the Beatles were and if he had felt any hint of competition.

'Are you kidding?' John replied with a laugh.

'He knew damn well who we were -- from the word 'go'. He was terrified of us and the English movement because we were a threat to him. I heard he was so paranoid all afternoon that he kept practicing things to say to us, asking the guys around him if we were any good. It was like Ali wondering if he could handle Frazier. To us, he was a god. We'd like to beat his record and become the champion, but we would always give him credit. It always hurts and infuriates me when Mick Jagger puts Elvis down. Maybe he's jealous because Elvis was the original body man in rock and it's too near to Mick's game for him to admit that Elvis' movements were at least as good as his and that maybe Elvis could sing a damn sight better than he could'.

Excerpted from 'Corn Flakes with John Lennon (And Other Tales From a Rock 'n' Roll Life),' by Robert Hilburn. Copyright ©2009 by Robert Hilburn. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus.