Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story(147)
Agents would say that the old piano was in “horrible condition” and without value.
The IRS set an auction date, but Kerrie was able to get a restraining order to delay it, and they bought back some of the items that were taken when Jerry Lee declared bankruptcy. The old Starck upright was returned.
After a year in exile, they came home. Jerry Lee missed his people, missed the river, missed it all. After decades of bitter enmity with the IRS, in July 1994 he agreed to pay some $560,000 of a $4.1 million tax bill, fourteen cents on the dollar. To earn the money, he would play music and open the Nesbit ranch to guided tours. “You have to do what you have to do,” said Kerrie, as she opened the house to fans.
He had not recorded in years, and his live shows had dwindled, but someone forgot to tell Jerry Lee that he was finished, if anyone had the nerve. He played another European tour in ’94, including a show in Arnhem, Holland, where he seemed, again, immune to all that life had thrown at him—that he had encouraged it to throw—and gave the fans their due. He was a little stooped now, and there was gray in his hair. Kenny Lovelace, still playing four feet behind him, helped him off with his jacket; Kenny’s ball of curls was graying now, too. But they played “Johnny B. Goode” like it was going out of style; Jerry Lee played all over the piano, and even yodeled a little, as if he was still needling Chuck from an ocean away. He did tell the Arnhem crowd he was glad to be in Amsterdam, but they cheered like crazy anyway.
In Memphis, in December, he was hospitalized after choking on some food.
He was fifty-nine.
“When I can’t play no more,” he says now, of that time, “then it will be over.”
Jerry Lee had only one place to go: back into his own fame. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences awarded Jerry Lee Lewis his second Grammy, this time a Lifetime Achievement Award. He went back on tour, no longer leaping onto the piano but still playing the hell out of it sitting down, as most mortal men have been forced to do it.
In 1995, he released a new album called Young Blood. It would not reach the charts, would not spark a comeback, though besides the soundtrack it was his most sustained work since the Elektra days. It was a mono album recorded with modern-day methods, and it seemed misplaced amid the country music of the time, the way a slightly dusty bottle of Early Times would be out of place in a bar that served fruit-scented vodkas and designer beer. He did Huey Smith’s “High Blood Pressure,” and the old country song “Poison Love,” and classics from Jimmie Rodgers (“Miss the Mississippi and You”) and Mr. Williams (“I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive”), and reviewers said they liked the way his voice had aged, but some of the songs were pieced together mechanically, and the whole seemed to lack his spontaneity, his spirit.
In 1996, on February 24, at the Sports Arena in Goldston, North Carolina, he took the stage, ready to raise hell, and didn’t leave it until he had barreled through “Meat Man,” “Over the Rainbow,” “Memphis, Tennessee,” “When I Take My Vacation in Heaven,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Lucille,” “Mean Woman Blues,” “Mr. Sandman,” “What’d I Say,” “To Make Love Sweeter for You,” Hank Williams’s “You Win Again,” “Room Full of Roses,” a medley of “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” “You Belong to Me,” “White Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” a snatch of “Peter Cottontail,” “Mexicali Rose,” “Seasons of My Heart,” “Johnny B. Goode,” “Sweet Georgia Brown,” “Thirty-Nine and Holding,” a few bars of the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream” and the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night,” Al Jolson’s “My Mammy” and “April Showers,” “Boogie Woogie Country Man,” one verse of Johnny Horton’s “Honky Tonk Man,” “She Even Woke Me Up to Say Goodbye,” a medley of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “I’ll Meet You in the Morning,” and “On the Jericho Road,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “The Last Letter,” “Hi-Heel Sneakers,” “Money,” “Lady of Spain,” “Who’s Gonna Play This Old Piano,” “Lewis Boogie,” “Crazy Arms,” “Goodnight Irene,” Jimmie Rodgers’s “In the Jailhouse Now,” Harry Belafonte’s “Jamaica Farewell,” “Chantilly Lace,” a few improvised lyrics (“You’re from the center of Alabama/I’m the center of attention”), “In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town,” “Bye Bye Love,” a medley of “Trouble in Mind” and “Georgia on My Mind,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” two lines of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “I Wish I Was Eighteen Again,” and an encore of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” 160 minutes later.
In 1998, after a long but fractious marriage, Kerrie filed her initial complaint for a divorce, citing irreconcilable differences, alleging that he had been unfaithful—he suspected the same of her—and that he had hidden financial assets from her. It was the most benign complaint he had ever encountered, but the divorce would take years to finalize. Court records were sealed, but the Commercial Appeal reported that Kerrie received a $250,000 lump sum, $30,000 a year for five years, and $20,000 for child support for Lee, by then a teenager.