Heartbreak Hotel told Durden, "Everybody in the world has someone who cares. Let's put a Heartbreak Hotel at the end of this lonely street". They were interrupted by the arrival of Glenn Reeves, a local performer who had previously worked with Axton. The duo asked Reeves to help with the song, but after hearing the title he remarked that it was "the silliest thing I've ever heard", and left them to finish it themselves. The song was written within an hour, and Durden recorded it onto Axton's tape recorder. Reeves returned, and after hearing the song he was asked to provide a
Heartbreak Hotel a "rock n roll epiphany" when in 1956, at age 13, he overheard it while riding his bike at a neighbor's house. Some have said that "Heartbreak Hotel" turned that well-mannered schoolboy into a guitar-crazed truant who would audition for John Lennon's Quarrymen the following year. The Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards wrote in his 2010 autobiography that "Heartbreak Hotel" had a huge effect on him. Beyond Presley's singing itself, it was the total effect of his sound and his silence that so totally affected Richards: Led Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant stated that the song "changed his life." He