Jerry Lee Lewis
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Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth once wrote that the reason concertgoers pay for tickets isn’t just for the music but to watch performers believing in themselves. If that’s true, the 20 bucks it takes to see Jerry Lee Lewis in the flesh might be the biggest bargain in rock ‘n’ roll. He defies the rules of grammar the rest of us take for granted; while some people occasionally refer to themselves in the third person, Jerry Lee has invented a form that can only be called third legend, singing his own name something like 36 times over the course of a recent Cubby Bear evening. He mostly treats his backing band as if they don’t exist (though guitarist Kenny Lovelace’s weird perm is hard to miss), reminding us that we came to see “rockin’ Jerry Lee from Memphis, Tennessee,” and later wondering, “Why the hell does everybody hafta pick on Jerry Lee?”
There are a number of concrete answers to that last question, and none of them has to do with his clearly inspired musicianship. The defiant piano playing, that still volcanic voice (after all these years), the true soul spilling over the painful slow songs, and the letchy growl that makes the fast ones boil over: these are the reasons why the Killer has gotten away with an egomania so deep and wide that even greedy infants tear themselves away from their mothers’ breasts to scold him. Married six times–number three was his 13-year-old cousin, and number four died under mysterious circumstances shortly before their divorce was final–Lewis has taken pride in living down to his image. Stories of his sins are so manifold I almost wish I still believed in good old-fashioned hell just so I’d know he’d finally get what he deserved.
