Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story(104)

He would always blame Sam Phillips for failing to promote his music, for failing to pay him what he feels he was owed—a million dollars or more, he believes, though it would be nearly impossible to prove such a thing today. “Sun Records owes me a lot of money,” he says even today, long after the Sun catalog was sold off. “I mean, chunks of money. They were sending me some pretty good money there for a while, but they . . . they ain’t sent nothin’ in a long time.” But the teeth of that particular resentment have grown dull and flat with age, and it doesn’t hurt so much. “I had some good times, with ol’ Sam, with Mister Phillips. Him and Jud, we had some times.” Most of his Sun recordings were eventually released, after the company was sold, in a seemingly endless parade of box sets and compilations. Phillips would take his own place in the halls of rock-and-roll fame—sinking his teeth into it from the moment Elvis walked into his studio, assured of it when he signed Jerry Lee.

When asked about his place in it all—in the development of Jerry Lee Lewis—he would not demur. “I just believe I was the one person who could do that,” he said.

Jerry Lee does not believe that. But in a way Phillips did what he’d promised—made him rich for a while, long enough to fill the driveways with Cadillacs and keep his promises to his mama and daddy that he would be a star—and for that his onetime ward is grateful. Sam made him a star, yes, but a shooting one, and failed to do all he could, Jerry Lee believes, to hold him up in the sky where he belonged. “I would have had more hit records. I know it.” People can argue whether Jerry Lee did what he had to do, but it is Jerry Lee’s star and Jerry Lee’s sky, and he will decide his place in it. “I always knew I was gonna be a star,” he says, “but I never figured on the rest of it.” And he never wanted to understand it, this business beyond the stage. “Money hasn’t ever been my God, so to speak. But boy, I tell you, these people, when it comes right down to the dollar bill, that’s their goal in life—making money. . . . I never got into stuff like that. I just didn’t. I figured that if they owed me money, they would pay me.”

In one of the constant refrains of his rock-and-roll life, he would play in the coming year a small club in Germany, and for his performance there—called one of the greatest live albums of all time—he would also go unpaid. But for the people who truly love early rock and roll, there was no way to put a price on it, anyway.


He returned to England in March of ’64 for a Granada Television special called Don’t Knock the Rock, to run through his biggest hits and “I’m on Fire,” his first single for Smash. His golden hair was darker, longer, by now, and he was maybe a little heavier, the skinny kid now disappeared into a grown man in a somber dark suit. But from the first line of the first song, from the first ringing, crashing notes of a piano being beaten to death with absolute elation, it was clear this was Jerry Lee in his element. Seated at a piano perched atop a rickety-looking pedestal, he launched into “Great Balls of Fire” as the pedestal descended; when it reached the ground, he was swarmed by hyperventilating fans. At one point they mobbed the piano, and they reached out to touch his hair, his clothes. He stood on the piano, took off his jacket to screams, then pulled off his tie. “I would throw it out there,” he told them, “but there’s too many of you and I ain’t got but one.” The TV cameras scrambled throughout the show, shooting the performance—and the crowd’s reaction—as if it were some kind of news event.

“What happened with Myra,” he says, “it didn’t stop the women from screaming. They still come out, and they screamed more.”

But that made-for-television performance was nothing compared to what happened in a nightclub in Hamburg, Germany, a few weeks later. The scene was a hole-in-the-wall called the Star-Club, lately famous for its role as a proving ground for a Liverpool quartet who were just now taking America by storm. “I went in behind the Beatles,” he says of the legendary performance he gave there on April 5. But the Beatles didn’t leave the place trembling, as he did. Live at the Star Club, the resulting live album, was one of the grittiest, most spectacularly genuine pieces of recorded music ever made. “Oh, man,” Jerry Lee says now, “that was a big monster record.”

To a roaring greeting from the crowd, he opened with a growl and a flourish:

Mmmmmmmmm, I got a woman mean as she can be



It is nearly impossible to describe what followed without the music itself as a backdrop. Some critics have called Live at the Star Club raggedly recorded, but most would say that did not amount to even a little bitty damn. His music and voice are commanding, certain, but still wild. The piano sounds like it is actually breaking at times, like he is playing more with a tack hammer than flesh and blood. His blues has gut and bottom to it, just plain ol’ nastiness, and the single country song is plainly sung by someone who has lived it. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” has been called perhaps his most soulful and passionate Hank Williams performance ever, given even greater emotion by his piano break, more Haney’s Big House than Grand Ole Opry—a thing he had been doing to his country songs since his mama was feeding him cocoa and vanilla wafers. In just fourteen songs—he played more, but at least two weren’t properly captured by the recording—he covered miles of ground, from a scorching “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” to “Hound Dog” and “Down the Line.” He did all his big hits from before the fall, except “Breathless,” then closed with a “Whole Lotta Shakin’” that sounds commanding and almost valedictory. The entire thing feels live, as if you yourself have made the trip across the ocean and through the streets of Hamburg to sweat and drink and be wrestled to the floor by Jerry Lee Lewis.