“Honey don’t walk out – I’m too drunk to follow.” – Tom Petty
Written on October 31, 2022, and later recovered from the files:
Jack Kerouac, from his position as a marginalized, criticized, and rejected American prophet, wrote about the “big American night, redder and darker all the time.” He noted that the night was “closing in,” and concluded that “there is no home.” In his song “The Waiting,” Tom Petty sings, or screams, at least four times, “Don’t let them get to you,” and, “Don’t let it get to you.” The prophetic shout of American rock and roll came to early and lasting perfection in one of Petty’s greatest heroes, Jerry Lee Lewis, “The Killer,” the best of them all.
Lewis was as much theologian as he was piano player. In interviews, you can hear him talking as much, or more, about religion than he does about music. With his huge yellow sunglasses, gigantic cigar, and powder-blue tuxedo, Lewis looks like a combination of Hunter S. Thompson, Liberace, and Mount Rushmore. This was a rock and roll artist who used the words “sanctification” and “salvation” without irony.
Lewis also said, “If they believe everything they read or heard about me I’d be locked up in the penitentiary for life.” But he also called himself a sinner. The man had a human honesty, an authenticity, that’s riveting in interviews. He was a great American talker who could talk as well as he played the piano, whenever his mood was right.
His well-earned reputation as a wild man who would crash a Cadillac into Elvis’s front gate while holding a champagne bottle in one hand and a pistol in the other is well-deserved. Lewis is called “The Killer” because he could “kill” any audience with his music. But there are also people who swore you could get killed in his presence simply because he was so wildly out of control at times.
Lewis also said, “I can sing all of ’em,” meaning the many kinds of music he favored, from gospel and country to different kinds of blues. After Lewis’ transition to country singer in the 1960s, and his switch back to rock music later, he stated, “It took me twelve years to make that come-back.” When asked what music he played best, or most importantly, Lewis seriously and angrily answered, “Rock and roll.”
Rock was gospel, country, and blues all made louder and rolled into a single sound that broke down many barriers, starting with the color barrier. Lewis, an American pioneer like Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Johnny Appleseed: and Frederick Douglass. As a child, Jerry Lee used to cross the tracks: literally. He spent endless amounts of time in the black juke joints learning it all from black musicians. “Learning it all” meant learning the music; but it also meant learning about life.
Yet it all came back to the songs. As singer and piano player, Lewis was more than just great. He was also a vessel for the prophetic American religion. The ultimate purpose for prophecy is not to predict the end of the world, but to give comfort, sustenance, and joy to the people during bad times. Authentic prophecy says: these times are bad. But it doesn’t stop there. It goes on to say: you can get through this. (And always beware the wolves in sheep’s clothing who are false prophets.)
At the end of the Book of Revelation, Jesus says, “I’ll be there soon.” Lewis’s fertile, ripped American voice and his wild, brilliant piano playing look like some other, uncanny force playing and exploding through him, as if he were wildly out of control while also remaining perfectly in control. Lewis is the man always in control even though he doesn’t look it – barely. Lewis the musician has been moved unto another level where the spirit does, truly, move.
Lewis was also an American actor at his piano. Watching his best, or even his worst, performances, studying his expressions and gestures, the way he moves and thinks, you can artistically feel a range of representation almost Shakespearean, and Chaucerian. At, and around, the piano, Lewis becomes iconic, ironic storyteller, laughing clown, intense crooner, jumping pill-taker, drunk preacher, evil mayor, angry teacher, happy professor, roaring fighter, angelic devil, Mark Twain, and every kind of lover you can imagine, from the most broken-hearted to the most elated.
Lewis shakes his audience and is shaken in return. Then, he would step off the stage to do all of this in private as well, until he stepped back onto the stage again. There was no American performer as at home on the boards as Jerry Lee. He sung as a talker and lived his life like Beethoven reincarnated as piano man from the Deep South, USA style.
He also said, “I call everybody Killer,” bestowing his own multivocal nickname upon the human race. Lewis’ sense of comic timing was connected to his acting abilities. Even at his most enraged, he might break out into an honest smile and laugh at any time. As an elderly and ill old man, his humor and good spirits were beyond amazing. He proved that if you spend your life somehow doing what you love, life will love you right back. He almost died many times. And he lived good and hard right up until the end at 87.
Ultimately, Jerry Lee Lewis is an American religious figure on the margins, like Mary Baker Eddy; and a moaning, lost, ever-joyful prophet, like Jack Kerouac, who influenced almost every great English-language rock singer and band of the 1960s and 1970s, from the Beatles to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen (Cohen worked with Phil Spector in the ’70s and more than deserves the term “rock singer” as well as folk singer and country singer) and the Rolling Stones, Grace Slick, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin (who once got into a booze-fueled physical altercation with The Killer backstage which she appears to have won, proving that The Killer wasn’t really a killer), Led Zeppelin, The Band, The Who, the Grateful Dead, Neil Young and Patti Smith, David Bowie and Tom Petty, who all loved and were influenced by Kerouac’s life and work, just like they all loved and were influenced by Jerry Lee.
Jack and Jerry Lee even resembled each other – somehow – physically, even though they didn’t look alike. On the Road and “Great Balls of Fire” both came out in 1957.
The world has now lost The Killer, but his spirit is still here with us. You can study him on the internet for hours on end and still not get to the end. Lewis laid down and enacted his own kind of American law. A good man, he will be far better remembered in the American pantheon than all our current technocrat businessmen who fancy themselves some type of rock star right now.
literally stories 
Dale
Lewis was authentic. You can tell authentic people from the fake. No need to make a list of qualities.
I bet he was pure hell to be around. That’s okay. Authentic people are a summation of hundreds of artists, criminals, snakeoil salesmen, Jim Casey, Paul Bunyan and freakshow attractions. Lewis existed because he was needed and there won’t be another. I am glad he came around.
Great essay
Leila
LikeLiked by 1 person
Leila
This is a great point about authentic people. They are bound to have innumerable sides to their personalities, and “the good” will always come with “the bad,” too, because that’s what humans are. Someone (or something) gave humans that thing Jerry Lee called “free will.” Without the choice/s, we wouldn’t be us: and we wouldn’t grow, change, or evolve, either.
Thank you as always!
Dale
LikeLike
Hi Dale,
Brilliant essay but it saddens me.
Talent has instigated talent throughout the years and that is quite the cast list that you have within your writing.
However, I wonder if it will (Or more likely has) reached saturation point? We can only hope that there will be more individuals who are inspired by the greats and they go on to be greats themselves. But how many of todays artists can we think will have that longevity??
Not only that, I hate to think that those brilliant song-writers and musicians will mainly inspire some AI logarithm that some talentless prick will use!!!!
This is a brilliant reminder of not just Mr Lewis, but the musicians that have been inspired by him.
Excellent!
Hugh
LikeLike
Hi Hugh
You are so right, we are in a scary, generic, corporate time when it seems like the very flavor and spirit of humanity itself is being eroded away, changed into a robotic lifelessness. And I do believe that’s exactly what’s happening right now. It’s happening in the mainstream culture. One has to step outside the mainstream now to find anything good, almost 100%.
Things are bound to get a lot worse before they get better. On the other hand, it gives everyone who cares something to fight for, something to believe in.
This society is NOT sustainable. It will collapse (and in many ways has already collapsed).
The big question will be whether we can eventually learn our lesson and create something better again out of the ashes.
I think the best that can be said at this point is that that question remains unanswered for now.
Thanks for publishing this piece!
Dale
LikeLike
Fascinating. You have a real knack for these biographies, Dale. I always appreciate the cross-references. Never thought of comparing Lewis to Boone, but it works. My piano teacher told me the Killer once said he never played a wrong note, because if he played it, it couldn’t be wrong.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi David
That’s a perfect quote from the Killer and it sums him up perfectly.
I always knew who Jerry Lee was, of course, but when I found out who he REALLY was (mostly through interviews and live performances on you tube) it was truly a revelation that will not be forgotten by me as long as I can remember.
Dale
LikeLiked by 1 person
When Lewis died there was a fair bit of obituary talk of him as Misogynist, all-round Bastard, a man to be posthumously cancelled etc. But as you say, it all comes back to the song. (And God knows the Bible’s full of bastards.) Your depicting him as an “actor at his piano” is sublime. Ditto, in another key, his looking like a “combination of Hunter S Thompson, Liberace, and Mount Rushmore.” Jack & Jerry ingeniously linked. In short, stupendous.
Geraint
LikeLike
Geraint
I believe in democracy because, like Churchill said, it’s a horrible form of government that’s better than all the others.
But not pointing out its weak spots does no one any favors.
And one of its weakest, most deplorable spots currently is that it always wants to drag everyone down into the mud with it. It’s too eager to point out the flaws of the great while totally ignoring their contributions. And it doesn’t understand that those who achieve great things are bound to have great flaws, too.
If it weren’t so, we wouldn’t be humans. It would mean that a few among us are able to achieve great things, while also remaining morally perfect, as well.
The Buddha, Jesus and Mary, Lao Tzu are probably in that category.
An American rock and roll singer surely is not. Nor should he be.
Thanks as always for truly brilliant reading and thought-provoking commentary!
Dale
LikeLike
Hi Dale
Great intro with Jack K and Tom P! It’s fascinating how you make these connections between writers and musicians. You make it clear that it’s not just music with the rock N rollers it’s also the fact that they are outstanding writers too and influenced by writers. I’ve been wanting to get into “The beat gen” writers. “On The Road.”
Jerry L. Lewis sounds dangerous especially with a name like “The Killer,” never knew that. Religious too. Wild story about him at Elvis’ gate!
The black musicians are the roots of rock N roll going back to people like Robert Johnson. The white bands have sought out these black musicians and have learned–and covered a lot of their songs.
It is a shame that these artists are sort of disappearing from the landscape of Americana even though they helped to create it. What is Americana now?
These people had a soul. Now there are counterfeits. People use computers to replace entire bands, because they can steal everything.
After reading this excellent essay. I’m going to check out Jerry’s music.
Christopher
LikeLike
Hi Christopher
It was during covid that I really began to study Jerry Lee on you tube.
I had always heard his name, of course, before, from people like Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Jerry Garcia.
Some of his very greatest live performances on you tube are from the 1970s and 1980s.
He was very much considered a “has-been” at that point by the culture at large.
And he played only in small venues, some so small that they were no larger than supper clubs, etc. Sometimes dozens, not even hundreds, of people.
And yet his performances are truly some of the greatest he ever gave, again and again and again.
He knew the world at large considered him a has-been, a loser, a dinosaur, a man from a different era.
But he knew in his heart that he was just as alive and just as good then (or better) than he had been when he was all the rage.
His performances from the 1950s cannot be matched for INTENSITY. He did things then that no one else would do until Roger Daltrey and Robert Plant came along in the late ’60s and 1970s.
But for depth and nuance, the 1970s and 1980s, I think, were Jerry Lee’s greatest years. He was at his best during the time that he was least popular.
We’re supposed to get a bunch of snow up here tonight! Hope you’re keeping warm over there in Indiana.
Dale
LikeLike
I read a bio of Sam Phillips of Sun Records where Elvis and Jerry Lee got started. In some ways Phillips preferred Jerry Lee who made every song his own regardless of whom was best known for the song and could do any song.
If you only remember Great Balls Of Fire and and Whole Lot Of Shakin’ Goin’ On, I suggest you try
Down The Line
Breathless
End Of The Road
It’ll Be Me
You Win Again (Hank cover)
and some of his collaborations.
Keith Richards mentions in this biography meeting Jerry Lee somewhere in the Carribbean. A joint production was suggested, but Keith didn’t want to give Jerry Lee total control which the Killer demanded. They are both of Welch ancestry which made them kindred.
LikeLike
Doug
Thanks for the list of songs and the extra info on The Killer. Too many people only know him by those two songs you mentioned, and he’s worth so much more than that. I believe that, in the long run, The Killer will become just as legendary as his idol, Hank Williams, is now.
Dale
PS
Like I said in the comment to CJA, I think some of his greatest performances are live ones in the 1970s and 1980s. Many and many more of these all available currently on you tube. There’s a concert from 1983 in Austin, TX, that shows him at his best (again, one of many). His intensity in this performance can’t be beat and he never misses a beat. His eyes hidden by gigantic sunglasses all the while. He calls himself at least a dozen different names during the show, from “The Killer” to “Jerry LL” to “Jerry Lee” to “Poor Killer” and plain old “Jerry Lee Lewis” (among others).
LikeLike
As always I adore the enthusiasm and expertise you bring to these essays. I’m a huge Kerouac fan (or at least was) and I love how you prefaced and summarised this with mentions of the King of the Beats. Your almost final point on the causal chains leading from The Beats is one that fascinates me also, be it in agreement or disagreement with what came before, the hippy movement embodying the free spiritedness of the Beat Generation, to the punks retaliating against the peace and love of the hippies, into the cosmetically adorned New Romantics contrasting to the beautiful ugliness of the punks, and so on, and so on.
Thank you again for such a thought-provoking piece.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Paul
I sent a couple of comments your way earlier this week, but they all got bounced back to me. Finally got my computer issues figured out.
Anyway, I’m glad we have this mutual interest in Kerouac. Along with his pal William S. Burroughs, I really believe Jack is a major figure in American literature, even akin to someone like Mark Twain, Melville, or Whitman. It’s also interesting how so many of Bob Dylan’s titles are Kerouac references in whole or in part, and not just from the ’60s either; also throughout Dylan’s whole career.
Thanks for your thoughtful commentary!
Dale
LikeLike
Very lively and well written in action packed Kerouac style! I like that part about “authenticity.” Indeed, Jerry Lee Lewis had a manic, intense charisma and energy, always on the road again. Indeed, like Kerouac, a great American talker, on the frontier always breaking limits. He came from very humble beginnings as well. Jerry Lee also reminds me of Little Richard and James Brown, all had the same kind of wild energy.
LikeLike
Harrison
Thanks for the awesome response to this essay. Your words are inspirational. I also love your comparison of “The Killer” to Little Richard and James Brown. Brilliant connections. I think Chuck Berry can also be added to the mix. He, too, was explosive with that wild energy you mention. Thanks again!
Dale
LikeLike
…testing…
LikeLike
test success…
LikeLike
Irene Adler
Thank you for this and for everything you do! Your energy is as intimidating (in a good way) as it is inspiring.
D
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you,
But I am a bit more of an “Irene Idler”
LikeLike