Paul Simon thinks Elvis Presley wasted his "great talent" after 1957.
The 84-year-old music star was a huge fan of Elvis during his younger years, but he believes the King of Rock and Roll squandered his talent after 1957, as he started to make teen-focused pop songs, like many other artists of that era.
He told Alchemy with Anthony Mason: "My early favourites were Elvis. Then came Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, the Everly Brothers. Those were the people I really loved."
Paul said the period between 1954 and 1957 had the biggest influence on his own sound.
He said: "When I first started to listen … as I look back and I do look back, for me the big years that influenced the sound that I still go for occasionally, it's like '54 to '57. And after that, I still like things, but I didn't derive anything from them. I didn't take any sounds from stuff … as I was concerned, really by '57, I'd lost interest in Elvis Presley."
Paul explained that it was Elvis's early recordings for Sun Records that truly captivated him.
He said: "Once he went into the army, all that stuff that he recorded, the first group of songs that he made on Sun Records — That's All Right, Mama, Mystery Train, Good Rockin' Tonight, Blue Moon of Kentucky. They were not made for teenagers. They were made for the audience that listened at that point and bought records and they were older than teenagers."
Ultimately, Paul viewed Elvis' later career as a missed opportunity.
He said: "As I say, I liked [Elvis] up to [the year 1957]. And after that, when, you know, the material that he picked, and the movies, and everything was just, to me, an incredible waste of a great talent."
Meanwhile, Priscilla Presley previously described Elvis as "a good husband" - despite being unfaithful.
The 80-year-old star was married to Elvis between 1967 and 1973, and despite his cheating, Priscilla still has fond memories of their time together.
During an appearance on the Today show, she recalled: "I'm reading the mail, and the things that I was reading I really disapproved of and didn't like.
"They would go and meet Elvis at the house on weekends when he went, and it was another life. Now, he would come home great and wonderful. He was still a good husband but it was just too many of us."
