Parenting & Family Quote by Robin Trower

There is something almost stubbornly plain about Robin Trower admitting he was "very impressed with Elvis" as a little kid, and that plainness is the point. Trower is a guitarist’s guitarist, a name associated with tone, craft, and the long afterlife of blues-rock. Elvis, by contrast, is the mass-cultural detonation: charisma first, technique second, history everywhere. By reaching back to Elvis, Trower quietly frames his origin story not as a tale of precocious virtuosity but as a moment of being bowled over by sheer presence.

The intent reads less like name-dropping and more like lineage mapping. Elvis is an early, widely shared reference point - a safe confession that also carries real weight. For a British musician born in 1945, Elvis wasn’t just an artist; he was the import that made rock and roll feel like a new language arriving through the radio and TV. Saying "impressed" keeps it modest, but it smuggles in awe: the kid doesn’t yet have critical categories, only the visceral recognition that something has shifted.

The subtext is about permission. Elvis represents the doorway where working-class kids could imagine themselves onstage, loud, desired, unignorable. Trower’s later work is more inward and atmospheric than Elvis’s showmanship, but the spark is the same: sound as identity. The quote lands because it refuses the myth of the solitary genius and admits the most human truth about musicianship - it starts with being stunned by someone else.