The fundamental ground rules were: "no press to be invited, no pictures to be taken, no recordings to be made and no leaking of our plans in advance."
The meeting had been arranged by Presley's manager 'Colonel' Tom Parker, and was highly anticipated by The Beatles and Brian Epstein. As they arrived Presley took The Beatles into the enormous living room; Epstein and Parker stood aside to watch the meeting.
The encounter wasn't a great success, with a somewhat stilted atmosphere and little conversation at first. Eventually Elvis told them, "If you damn guys are gonna sit here and stare at me all night I'm gonna go to bed."