Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story(72)

“Never sell, man,” said someone else. “It’s not commercial.”

“Naw, we’ll be with you here in a minute. . . . But look . . . Now listen, I’m telling you out of my heart, and I have studied the Bible a little bit . . .”

“Well, I have, too,” shot back Jerry Lee. “I’ve studied it through and through and through and through and through, and I know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“Jerry, Jerry, if you think that you can’t do good and be a rock-and-roll exponent . . .”

“You can do good, Mr. Phillips. Don’t get me wrong.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, listen. I mean, I say, ‘Do good . . .’”

“You can have a kind heart.”

“I don’t mean, I don’t mean just . . .”

“You can help people.”

“You can save souls!”

“No! NO! NO! NO!”

“You had it,” said that other voice. “You’ll never make it.”

“How can—how can the devil save souls? What are you talkin’ about?”

“Listen, listen . . .”

“Man, I got the devil in me. If I didn’t have, I’d be a Christian.”

“Well, you may have it . . .”

“Jesus!” Jerry Lee almost screamed, and thumped his heart. “Heal this man! He cast the devil out. The devil says, ‘Where can I go?’ He says, ‘Can I go into this swine down here?’ He says, ‘Yeah, go into him.’ Didn’t he go into him?”

“Jerry, the point I’m trying to make is, if you believe what you’re saying, you’ve got no alternative whatsoever, out of—listen!—out of . . .”

“Mr. Phillips, I don’t care. It ain’t what you believe. It’s what’s written in the Bible!”

“Well, wait a minute . . .”

“It’s what’s there, Mr. Phillips.”

“Naw, naw . . .”

“It ain’t what you believe, it’s just what’s there.”

“No, by gosh, if it’s not what you believe, then how do you interpret the Bible? Huh? How do you interpret the Bible if it’s not what you believe?

“Well, I mean, there’s some people, you just can’t tell ’em,” Jerry Lee mused.

“Let’s cut it, man!” moaned Billy Lee Riley.

“No, here’s the thing . . .”

“You can talk,” said Jerry Lee. “You can talk, and you can talk.” The faith Jerry Lee was raised in does not yield to argument, is not open to interpretation. There had been and would be many moments when he was at war with himself this way. This one just happened to have been captured on tape in the Sun studio, and would be proof that the conflict inside Jerry Lee was not a thing of books and movie scripts but a real, wounding thing. He knows he is not special this way, and that most human hearts are at war with themselves, but his battle was more public because fame simply insisted on it. But it is a matter of history that, sometime while the great city of Memphis had mostly gone to bed, the men in the cramped studio finished their whiskey and finally began to play a rock-and-roll song, which became not just another record but another musical landmark.

Jerry Lee, as always, played it the way he thought it sounded best, regardless of how some songwriter or lyricist said it should be played. When the bass player had a hard time following Jerry Lee’s piano lead, “he propped hisself on top of the piano, and he was just layin’ there, he was watchin’ my hands . . . followin’ my fingers. And he was right on it. The drummer was right on it.”

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain

Too much love drives a man insane

You broke my will, but what a thrill

Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!



“I never will forget seeing Sam Phillips lookin’ at me through that window with one finger in the air—number one.”


It was not the usual tandem of Janes and Van Eaton who played on that historic record, but a couple of session men who happened to be nearby when needed. “Only had a bass, piano, and drums—that’s all we had on it.” He did not even know the drummer’s name. “I knew Sidney Stokes,” the bass player up on top of his piano, “but I didn’t know him that well, either. And I don’t know what happened to them people. That’s the last time I ever seen ’em. That’s strange, isn’t it?” But it was the nature of the business, or so he would discover: people just fell away. Only the sound, stamped in that black wax, was forever.

Like “Shakin’,” the song had lyrics that could be seen as salacious, but only if you used your imagination. Sam Phillips did not release the song to the nation right away, with “Whole Lotta Shakin’” still holding strong. First, Jerry Lee went Hollywood—well, actually, he went back to New York—for his first movie role, as himself. Otis Blackwell, who wrote “Great Balls of Fire” after buying the catchy title from a New York songwriter called Jack Hammer, was putting together music for a low-budget rock-and-roll movie called Jamboree, a kind of tribute to disc jockeys that was slated to include the influential Alan Freed as himself, until he walked away because of a contract dispute. To replace him, the producers brought in disc jockeys from all over the country to introduce the music, and it was the music—not a thin plot based on two young singers in love—that people came to see.