Interview with Sarah Stahly and Bill Brand of VH1

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, June 9, 1997

And I think there is some of that at each stage of my life. The last week - last month I was in England, when I lived in England was June of 1970, and that's when the Beatles broke up. So every time I hear "Let It Be" - every time I hear "Let It Be," I remember those endless lines of people who lined up to see the last movie that the Beatles made right when they announced they were breaking up.

Q. Now, the Beatles landed in America I guess the year you went to Georgetown.

The President. '64.

Q. Yes, yes.

The President. My senior year in high school.

Q. Do you remember that?

The President. Oh, yes.

Q. I mean, were you really into the Beatles?

The President. Oh, absolutely. I remember when they came in. I remember going over to a friend of mine's house and playing some Beatles records. I remember when they went on the Ed Sullivan Show. I remember - I was interested to see them on the Ed Sullivan Show because you know when Elvis Presley went on the Ed Sullivan Show they could only show him from the waist up because they thought he was too lewd for the times.

Q. What's the difference between - was it a hard transition between Elvis and Beatles and Motown?

The President. Not for me, but I've always had very eclectic interests in music. And most people didn't choose, that I knew. I felt a real special relationship to Elvis Presley because he was from Mississippi; he was a poor white kid; he sang with a lot a soul. He was sort of my roots - "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Hound Dog" and "Don't Be Cruel" and "Love Me Tender," that was sort of the beginning of the awakening of America to rock and roll.

And then when the Beatles came, I just thought they were so - they were full of energy, but they were also brilliant. I mean, you go back and listen to Sergeant Pepper's album today - they were brilliant. I still think "Eleanor Rigby" is one of the most powerful songs I ever heard. They were just brilliant.

Q. You were talking about your mom, Virginia, and her love for music and how she loved rock and roll. Did that have - I mean, it must have made a huge difference not only in your life but in Roger's life now that he's gone into music.

The President. Huge. Yes. I mean, we both felt encouraged to like music and to be involved in it. And our mother had a lot to do with it. But it was something that lifted us up. We had some hard times, and we could always get out of them if we had enough good music playing.

Q. Did you ever consider going into music?

The President. I did. When I was 15 or 16, I thought about it a lot. I even thought about going to Europe to study, because in France you could study classical saxophone and actually develop a career that would be both classical and jazz and all that. And that's very rare. Wynton Marsalis is the only world-class musician in my lifetime, I think, who was preeminent in classical and preeminent in jazz music.

But I made a very - I decided not to do it for two reasons. One is, I didn't know if I'd like the lifestyle. I didn't want to get my days and nights mixed up. And back then the idea of somebody like Kenny G., who has become a good friend of mine - he's a marvelous person - the idea of someone like him actually making a living just doing concerts and records was - it seemed so remote. And I didn't want to have to just do clubs and stay up all night and sleep all day. All the saxophone players I knew did that. Even the ones that made a lot of jazz records basically had their days and nights mixed up, as far as I was concerned. And I just didn't want to do it.