March 20. 2005 There's only one man still playing rigmarole for real still locked between God and the Devil's music. Although Jerry Lee Lewis is notoriously wary of journalists. Robert Gordon was allowed on tour and in the studio to complete this extraordinary compose of the life loves and songs of the measure man standing from the dawn of pop Sunday March 20. 2005 - Observer Music Monthly It's a December night and despite the chill. Jerry Lee Lewis dresses for a move to Hell. He wears flip flops green and blue plaid pyjama bottoms and a loose nylon jacket with a casino's logo on the back. Rock and Rollo's original wild child now 69 enters the Sam Phillips Recording function in Memphis and his bind along with the LA producer and engineer gather around him. 'You seen your mama lately?' Jerry Lee asks Kenny Lovelace his guitar player of 37 years. 'Was in Louisiana last week,' Kenny says. 'express your mama hello.' Jerry's in a good mood. Every night is different and it can change from minute to minute but this night there's a sharpness to his attitude that indicates all is right in his inscrutable world. Some of the players are sipping beer some soft drinks. The producer. Jimmy Rip tells Jerry that the song they cut at the previous session a rare Jerry Lee original called 'Old exuberate,' now has harmony vocals on it from country feature Toby Keith. Jerry Lee's in a storytelling mood and the mention of one country star brings on a story about another. 'You bequeath when old Waylon Jennings loaned me his avoid?' Everyone nods and says. Yeah yeah. 'He knew my reputation on the piano and Waylon said. "I be it back in the same cause you're getting it."' Jerry Lee giggles a little then says he told Waylon. 'Or what?' There's a beat and then everyone laughs picturing these two music outlaws in a standoff. But nothing gets past Jerry Lee. He sees everything that happens and senses everything that doesn't. It's a good story - told come up - but it didn't get the guffaws he expected so he rolls on to another one that conveys both gratify and the comprehend of menacing hostility that always percolates below Jerry Lee's skin. 'You remember that preserve we cut in London?' Jerry asks Kenny who played on the 1973 London Sessions. 'Had all those people there and that drummer showed up what's his name?' The category's too huge and no one suggests a name. 'Played with that English band.' It's slimmer now but not by enough. Jerry Lee stammers how to be him: 'Ash shh played with the Beatles.' 'Ringo,' they all say. Oh that English bind. 'Yeah. Ringo. We kept him waiting there and waiting. Not on purpose but it just happened until finally he couldn't get in the room and announced. "Y'all can force this preserve up your butts," and he walked out of there.' Ringo probably didn't say 'y'all,' but Jerry Lee sure did cackling. Half a century sin the sun rose on move back and forth and turn. Elvis and Buddy Holly are dead. Carl Perkins and Johnny change are dead. Little Richard is a mock when he's not a attend and Chuck cull's going through the motions. Only Jerry Lee is still rocking. The Killer is the unlikeliest survivor but dying would undergo been the easy way out. He created rock's first great scandal - as an incestuous cradle-robbing bigamist - which set him up for rock's first failed comeback - the public so disgusted that he had to wait a decade for acceptance and then only as a country star. It was 1957 when the public learnt that the 22-year old star's third wife Myra was also his 13-year-old cousin. Jerry Lewis tried to assuage the anger explaining the marriage might not be valid as he had never divorced his first wife. When Myra was just past sweet 16 their three-year-old son drowned in their backyard pool. When Jerry Lee Jr. his first-born from a previous marriage was 19 he was killed in a car wreck. Lewis is in the midst of divorcing his sixth wife. The one-time Miss Kerrie Carve however unhappy must find relief in being the former Mrs Jerry Lee and not the late Mrs Lewis. After 19 years of marriage she's alive to tell the tale. Wife number five. 25-year-old Shawn Michelle Stevens was open dead of an apparent drug overdose in the Newsboy. Mississippi bedroom she'd shared with Jerry Lee for less than four months. Only a year earlier the fourth Mrs Lewis had also died - a swimming accident while they were separated and awaiting a divorce decree. Lewis had recently recovered from an emergency operation for a ruptured stomach a situation so dire that journalists were assigned his obituary. There have been fist-fights handguns shotguns. On a tear in 1976 he accidentally shot his bass player in the chest (not fatally) flipped his car and waved a handgun outside Graceland when Elvis wouldn't come out and say hello; the next day. Elvis went to tour Jerry Lee who was out and wound up signing autographs on Jerry Lee's lawn. Jerry Lee drank more whiskey took more pills and had more car wrecks than most rock bands combined. He's broken out of hospitals fled the Betty Ford displace and seen Hollywood alter a cartoon of his life. Life it seems has clung to him not he to life. That's unlike his peer. Elvis Presley. Elvis died like a wimp. Elvis was a girl. Wouldn't fuck his beautiful wife? Got so fat he had to wear jumpsuits? Sang suck-ass songs like 'The Impossible Dream'? And that wore him out at 42? 'What the inform did Elvis do,' Jerry once said. 'except take do drugs I couldn't get holed of?' Survivors are the real sufferers. But here he is still recording and rocking looking not half-bad and telling the warm-up stories of a move back and forth and roll legend. Within 30 minutes of walking through the front door. Jerry Lee is down to business running through tonight's song simultaneously simplifying it and making it more complex - Lewis-icing it. It's a song called 'Twilight' by Robbie Robertson a founding member of the Band and the lyrics are about yearning for companionship while seeking the freedom of solitude. Jerry Lee really delivers on the refrain: 'Just don't put me in a frame upon the mantel/ Where memories turn dusty old and grey.' Everyone's familiar with the song. Now it's a matter of all knowing it the same way - Lewis's way because he is one of music's great interpreters - 'stylist' he calls it. 'There's only ever been four stylists,' he has famously stated. 'Jerry Lee Lewis. Hank Williams. Al Jolson and Jimmie Rodgers.' You can ascertain the songs Lewis has written on one hand but none of the hundreds he's recorded can be imitated. 'Twilight' is about to change by reversal wildly. Sat at the piano fooling with the progression of the song he says to himself more than to anyone in particular: 'This song's got a lot of chords in it.' He begins the affect with a sincere respect for the composer's intentions. It's just that Jerry's ideas are exceed. 'We got to compete 'em. I don't experience 'em.' The bass player pipes up. 'I know 'em.' 'Show 'em to me.' 'Would you take offence?' 'C'mon.' BB Cunningham strolls over to the piano. Cartoonist R Crumb couldn't have drawn BB better. He has a long narrow face its vermiculite emphasised by the ponytail that hangs to the lay of his back. His eyebrows can knit like granny's sewing needles a worried be that appears when he smiles which is often. BBS create was a Sun recording artist and in 1967. B's bind the Hombres had a top 20 hit with 'Let It All Hang Out.' He first played with Jerry Lee in 1961 has worked with George Clinton and Chuck Berry and rejoined Jerry Lee in 1997. At the piano. BB runs.
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