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CREEMEDIA

Fireballs From The Flophouse

HELLFIRE: THE JERRY LEE LEWIS STORY

by Nick Tosches (Dell)

JERRY LEE LEWIS ROCKS!

by Robert Palmer

(Delilah)

Bill Holdship

by

Albert Goldman would have had a field day with a Jerry Lee Lewis biography. Lewis is one of the most genuinely “insane” characters rock ’n’ roll has ever produced, and his life includes many elements that could substantiate Goldman’s theory of most rock stars being crazed, strung-out degenerates: drugs, alcoholism, guns, violence, “uncivilized” sexual mores,

“incest,” bigamy and general social anarchy.

On the other hand, it’s precisely this “insanity” that has been one of Jerry Lee’s most endearing features, not to mention a major part of his muse. The man has always appeared to be in on some sort of cosmic joke. Maybe it’s the knowledge that everything is pretty much bullshit, so you better make as much of it as you can; the whole “what-does -this-reallymatter-because-I-could-dietomorrow” philosophy. I’ve always felt that much of Jerry Lee’s “insanity” has to do with the special knowledge that everyone is basically insane, so if you know you’re insane and follow it, it’s cool because you’re one step ahead of most everyone else. The greatest rock ’n’ roll always seemed to involve this attitude to an extent, although it’s lost part of its magic over the years since it’s not something that can be manufactured. It’s the same attitude that could be seen in Elvis’s sneer and Lennon’s smirk, but whereas these examples were implicit, Jerry Lee seemed to be the first to make it explicit.

Of course, everything in the Killer’s life has been pretty explicit. While the other early rockers were somewhat subliminal in their forms of rebellion, Jerry Lee was destroying and burning his instrument onstage at a time when Townshend and Hendrix were probably learning their first guitar chords. And whereas Elvis kept his personal demons and habits hidden behind the locked gates of Gracelarid for over two decades (including his live-in liaison with the teenaged Priscilla, the same type of scandal that caused Lewis’s first downfall), Jerry Lee’s have always been the subject of newspaper headlines. My favorite example of the distinction between the two men came from a nurse I once knew who worked for many years at a Memphis hospital. “When Elvis would check out,” she explained, “he’d buy a new room for the hospital. When Jerry Lee would check out, he’d leave a room totally destroyed!”

Fortunately, both Tosches and Palmer have enough love for and understanding of rock music and popular culture to present Jerry Lee Lewis as he deserves to be presented—the purest spiritual symbol of rock ’n’ roll the world has left and one of the greatest, wildest performers of all time. (Checkout the recently reissued Live At The Star Club LP from 1964 on Sun import. It sounds so vital and fresh it could have been recorded yesterday.) A legend in his own time, he jammed with Presley, shared shows with Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry, made John Lennon’s all-time favorite record, and was as much at home doing a show with the Doors in 1968 as he is at the Grand Ole Opry today.

One of the best anecdotes in Tosches’s book involves the first time Jerry Lee was allowed to play the Opry in 1973. After vowing not to swear onstage and promising to play only country songs, the Killer proceeded to play nothing but rock, with the exception of one Hank Williams tune, exclaiming “I am a rock ’n’ rollin’, country-andWestern, rhythm-’n’-blues Singin’ mothafucker!” Tosches claims the audience reaction was the wildest it had been since Hank Williams made his Opry debut in 1949. And last but not least, Jerry Lee is one of the few rock stars who’s actually performed Shakespeare, playing lago in a rock version of Othello. (“That Shakespeare was really somethin’. I wonder what he woulda thought of my records.”)

Hellfire is a great rock biography, one nobody interested in Lewis or rock history should be without. Tosches (familiar to CREEM readers for his Unsung Heroes Of Rock columns) has always been an excellent stylist, and in this book he often presents his material as it might appear from Jerry Lee’s point of view. Tosches did his research well, presenting more facts than one probably needs to know about the Killer, and clearing up a few general misconceptions as well, i.e., Lewis was still married to only one wife, not two, at the time of his third marriage to Myra Gale.

What’s most striking about Tosches’ book is that it reveals what a hard life Lewis has lived. He’s had more than his share of tragedies, he’s seen the dark underside more than once, and has spent the greater part of his life battling the spiritual torment created by the conflicting elements of redemption and damnation. Tosches is especially at his best when he describes how the Pentecostal faith, with its dual heavenly (or hellish) visions and earthly abandon, played a key role in determining Lewis’s life, as well as its effect on the shape of rock ’n’ roll in general.

My brother and I met Jerry Lee once. We followed his limousine to a motel, talking to him in the parking lot. Although he looked like he might slug us at first, he was very cordial, showing genuine concern when we told him we’d loved him since we were kids. “Well, I’m glad you had the chance to grow up,” he said, adding, “You boys be careful now, y’hear?” (Robert Palmer writes in his book that Lewis believes rock ’n’ roll has doomed him to hell arid he’s leading his fans in the same direction.) What I still recall the most are his eyes—those blank, mad eyes that looked like they’d seen one too many ghosts.

In Hellfire, Nick Tosches effectively describes where a lot of those ghosts came from.

Palmer’s Jerry Lee Lewis Rocks! is more a critical essay than it is a biography, but the book does include some anecdotes and facts not included in Hellfire, many of which are presented as excerpts from interviews Palmer did with Lewis. Best is the incident in which Lewis stood up to a Miami Mafia club owner who rented a beat-up, second hand piano for the Killer’s gig. Jerry Lee kicked the piano from the stage, out the door, across the parking lot and into a lake. He walked back, blew cigar smoke in the mobster’s face, and said, “Now, get me a goddamn piano!” Palmer also describes a marathon rock ’n’ roll recording session from the late 70’s which included an unreleased “epic ‘Meat Man’ with impromptu verses on Sex, Death and Henry Kissinger,” and his description of a 1979 Lewis performance in New York City (“Give my regards to Broadway and tell ’em they can kiss my ass!”) is~breathtaking, fully capturing the Killer’s essence and power. The photographs are also wonderful throughout the book.

Palmer mainly treats Lewis from a socio-cultural prespective, first discussing what Jerry Lee meant to him as an “aspiring punk” teenager, and then building a strong case for Jerry Lee as the first “revolutionary” rock star, having as much social and political impact as later “consciously revolutionary” acts like the Beatles, the Stones and the Clash. According to Palmer, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” was “about as revolutionary as you could get in 1957...REALLY ROCKING OUT the way Jerry Lee Lewis did on ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ and still does every time he sits down at a piano, is the most profoundly revolutionary statement an artist can make in the rock ’ n’ roll idiom. It bypasses language, obliterates social conditioning, fulfills a basic human need for rhythmic movement, arouses primal hungers, and suggests how one can go about gratifying them.” It’s an excellent argument/essay, and helps to clarify the purity of the original rockers. After all, they just did it. They had no “outlaw/rebel” rock ’n’ roll tradition to follow or mimic. (Speaking of political, Jerry Lee appeared on an HBO TV special last year, performing the old spiritual “I’ll Fly Away” with his cousin Mickey Gilley. Near the end, he inserted the line: “We just got a brand new President voted in/And we may all fly away, Mr. Reagan.” That’s as to the point on the horrors of Reaganism as any major rock artist’s been in the last year.)

Finally, Palmer wraps it all up in a brilliant epilogueithat compares rock to a spiritual cult or “ecstatic religion.” The final paragraph is so good it could actually serve as the Killer’s epitaph when he’s no longer around to play that old piano anymore: “I’ve seen people devoured, eaten alive by rock ’n’ roll and the rock ’n’ roll life. And I know people who have been healed by rock, people with their wounds deep in their spirits who were decisively transformed and lifted up by it. Maybe Jerry Lee Lewis and Sam Phillips were both right; maybe rock ’n’ roll can save souls as well as destroy them.” Didn’t Lou Reed write a song about that once?

The only complaint I have about either of these books is that both went to press before Jerry Lee suffered his near-fatal stomach ailment last summer. Hopefully, . both authors will eventually update their books because, taken together, these two volumes comprise the definitive Jerry Lee Lewis story.

POSTSCRIPT: Don’t confuse either of these books with the dreadful Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin’ On by Robert Cain (Dial Press)-. Cain’s book is totally worthless, and should be avoided at all costs.