The Immortals - The Greatest Artists of All Time: 24) Jerry Lee Lewis

I'd be curious to know how many pianos Jerry Lee Lewis went through in his lifetime. Whoever was responsible for keeping the piano in tune and making sure it didn't fall apart at Sun Studio must have wept every time he showed up to play. You think of the piano as a conservative, staid instrument, and in the last twenty years it has almost disappeared from rock & roll. But the way he played, it was just so percussive. You can hear the hammers slamming against the strings. If he were growing up now, they would probably just paralyze him with Ritalin and eliminate sugar from his diet. As it was, he turned the piano into an orchestra. He had these profound bass lines and amazing lead parts, all in perfect time. Apparently he just had too much adrenaline. I don't know what switch got flipped in his brain when he was born that compelled him to play so fast and so hard, but I'm glad it got flipped.

Nowadays, white music and black music mix pretty freely and happily. Back then, there was no precedent for a white musician to sound like that. Even more remarkable, Jerry Lee grew up in a conservative Christian environment. There's a perhaps apocryphal story that when he and his cousin, the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, were children, they went to a roadhouse and listened through the window to some amazing R&B band. Jimmy Swaggart supposedly said, "This is the devil's music! We have to leave!" But Jerry Lee just stood there transfixed and couldn't tear himself away. He was an evangelist for the devil's music.

If you listen to his records, they sound more punk rock than just about anything any contemporary punk band is doing. His records sound faster than they actually are, and they sound louder than they actually are. If you listen to them on a crummy little stereo on low volume, they still sound like they're exploding out of the speakers.

Whether it's Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard or Gene Vincent, these guys were dripping anarchy and sex. Their records all have a sense of abandonment, like they had given up all hope of commercial success or ever being respected, so they just wanted to play crazy music and get laid. That's what stuns me, the way Jerry Lee Lewis gave himself over to that libidinous energy as no white musician had ever done.

With most contemporary artists, being sexy is a matter of wanting to sell records. I consider Jerry Lee to be more in the tradition of Iggy and the Stooges or Black Flag. They had the same chaos without consequences. I also hear Jerry Lee in Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" or the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." or Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

If I had a daughter, I wouldn't let her date a musician, because most of them are just too dumb. In Jerry Lee's case, if he were coming over for dinner, I would literally lock her up. The story of him marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin is unbearably sad. Elvis had just been drafted, Jerry Lee was about to tour England for the first time, and the scandal broke. He was never able to ascend to the throne that was rightfully his. And the piano faded because it was too big and too hard to mike. The beauty of the electric guitar is that it's small, portable, loud and easy to mike.

"Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On" are the iconic singles. But if you really want to understand Jerry Lee Lewis, find some videotape performance of him doing "Great Balls of Fire." It's pure, narcotic rock & roll excitement -- and those moments have been few and far between.

[From Issue 946 — April 15, 2004]

Next: Fats Domino by Dr. John