Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story(117)
Much has been written about how the divorce from Myra tugged him into a dark place, became the catalyst for some kind of decline, some escalation in his drinking or drug use that somehow tipped the balance he had found that allowed him to record, perform, and party. If people think that, he says, they were not paying attention for about two decades. It did not cripple him or stifle his creativity or sap his energy. His marriage to Myra had been so long in trouble that this end was inevitable; he behaved little differently in the wide-open days after the marriage than in the wide-open days before its slow death. It might seem right to say it knocked him to his knees, but that is not what happened, not what took his wind in the years to come. He is impatient when people tell him he should have felt something he did not. “Don’t no woman rule me,” he says again, what he always says when he is done talking about a woman or her hold on him. He is not saying he did not miss her at times—they were married a long time—only that he moved on. In the narrative of his breakup with Myra, the role of tortured, jilted spouse is not one he is willing to take on.
He took his happiness, as always, in the music—in a rocked-up version of the chestnut “Sweet Georgia Brown,” recorded since its inception in 1925 by everybody from Bing Crosby to the Beatles. It remains one of his favorite records—“one of the best things we ever done”—and in this case he gives much of the credit to Kenny Lovelace. “He did that fiddle break on that thing—it’s somethin’ else, isn’t it? I mean, you can never capture that again, like that. Oh man! What a record! It’s so far above—so far ahead of anybody’s thinkin’ in the music business that they could never comprehend the meaning of it. It had the flavor of everything.” Onstage he turned the song into a celebration, hands flying, fingers stabbing, his face, in those days at least, joyous. If you don’t like it, he likes to tell the audience, “you need to get yourself checked,” ’cause you might already be dead.
He could do anything, it seemed, except live the way people said he ought to, but even despite his foibles, he somehow soared. Pearry Lee Green, who’d almost gotten kicked out of Bible college when Jerry Lee rocked Waxahachie, never gave up his conviction that his piano-playing friend was born to bring people to the Lord. In 1970, he was at a conference of ministers called the Full Gospel Businessmen’s International in Sydney, Australia, when he learned that Jerry Lee was in town. Jerry Lee was drinking that night, but he asked Pearry Lee to sit on the piano bench with him in front of a well-lubricated, rowdy auditorium crowd of three thousand people. “You’re going to be surprised,” he told the crowd, “but I was going to be a preacher.” He told the crowd of the “singspiration” and how the organized church refused to accept his gift. Then he sang a hymn, an old one from his childhood. The rowdy crowd grew quiet.
“I’m going to tell you something, he had every kid in that place crying,” said Pearry Lee. “I don’t think in my life I’ve ever seen that many young people with tears in their eyes. Jerry Lee’s voice just melted their hearts. If I’d been preaching, I’d have given an invitation for salvation.”
Photographic Insert 2
The finale of his triumphant appearance in Granada TV’s Don’t Knock the Rock, March 19, 1964.
ITV/Rex/REX USA
In May 1963, he did a weeklong stint at the Star-Club, a raucous joint on the infamous Reeperbahn where the Beatles had lately cut their teeth.
On April 5 of the following year, he returned to record one of the greatest live albums of all time.
Pierre Pennone; K&K Center of Beat/Retna Ltd
In the studio for Smash, 1965.
Robert Prokop
A Chicago live date captured for the cover of the Smash album
Memphis Beat. Robert Prokop
The wild man reborn as a seasoned country star.
REX/Dezo Hoffman
“No, never shall my soul be satisfied!” As Iago in Catch My Soul, 1968.
Backstage at the London Palladium, 1972.
Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns/Getty Images
At the London Rock and Roll Show, the first concert ever held in Wembley Stadium, 1972.
Chris Foster/REX USA
Bananafish Garden, Brooklyn, New York, 1973.
Bob Gruen
“Where’s Daddy at? Is he still cussin’?” With Elmo in Texas, 1970s.
Raeanne Rubenstein
After pulling into the gates of Graceland, early morning, November 23, 1976.
Memphis Commercial Appeal
In his private plane, 1970s.
Raeanne Rubenstein
Onstage with Linda Gail.
Raeanne Rubenstein
With Mick Fleetwood and Keith Richards for Salute!, a Dick Clark TV special, July 1983.
Richard E. Aaron/Redferns/Getty Images
The boys of Ferriday, Louisiana: with Mickey Gilley (left) and Jimmy Lee Swaggart.
? Christopher R. Harris
With his fourth wife, Jaren Pate, in 1978.
Memphis Press-Scimitar
At his wedding to Shawn Stephens, June 7, 1983.
Globe-Photos/lmageCollect.com