S/D Jerry Lee Lewis

That Vulture article is really well-written, thanks for the link. (It’s helpful that it summarizes the core details of the Rolling Stone piece… I tried reading that a few days ago, but it’s incredibly long.)

Yes, same.

Still trying to locate the Jo Carol Pierce song about him.

Just sent some messages to some of my regexes in Texas.

thanks

rollingstone.com doesn't paywall me and I don't have a subscription, not sure what's up with that

I think Bob Mehr's remembrance probably nails it - he saw Lewis perform many times but only met him once when Lewis was already about 80 and stuck in bed thanks to a back ailment. From that interview alone, Lewis came off as the "purest artist and most frightening person" Mehr had ever encountered.

I'm not sure if it's the nature of culture or just an instinctive fallacy to engage in an artist's work mostly as a reflection of their character, but I've always been wary of that, whether it ends up in some kind of hero worship or unforgiving demonization. There's a great line by Jimmy Stewart's character in Anatomy of a Murder where he says "I've had to learn that people aren't just good or just bad - people are many things," and that's especially true for artists since they tend to be more complex and interesting than your average person, which is probably why they end up dedicating their lives to creative work.

Lewis was always scary, and he's not a guy I'd hesitate to find guilty if I was on the jury for one of his many offenses. But he's a fascinating guy - that's not a quality that hinges on upstanding character - and a lot of his most compelling work probably comes out of that. Here's a guy who knows he's got a gift for rock n' roll and delivers on it even though he truly believes it's the devil's music and could very well damn him for eternity. Meanwhile, his best country records are probably the ones where he convincingly portrays a shit who knows his demons and believes he's too weak to escape them despite the damage it's doing to himself, his marriage/relationship, etc. It's terrible we can find those things in his personal life, but I don't think those are great records for voyeuristic value. They bring to mind the things Rainer Werner Fassbinder used to say about great movies, particularly Douglas Sirk's work, and how they make you ask "what’s really going on with me and my life?" and how they leave you with a better understanding of what the world's like and what it's doing to you.

"I've had to learn that people aren't just good or just bad - people are many things"

At the end of Joe Posnanski's chapter on Tris Speaker in The Baseball 100, he quotes Buck O'Neil: "People aren't one thing."

WIthout Jerry how would we have had that magical scene in Top Gun

We mark the life of Lewis, who died Oct. 28, by listening to archival interviews with his sister, pianist/singer Linda Gail Lewis, and with Myra Lewis Williams, who married Jerry Lee when she was 13.

How country music allowed Jerry Lee Lewis to vary his wild-man persona
November 8, 20222:06 PM ET
Heard on Fresh Air
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KEN TUCKER