Sunday, October 30, 2022

RIP THE KILLER


I just heard the news this morning. The Killer is dead. Jerry Lee Lewis passed away on Friday after a bout of pneumonia. He was 87 years old. This one really fucking hurts. He was the last of the tier one original rockers. I have total respect for Lewis, not just as a rockabilly artist, not just for his singing, his piano playing, showmanship, or his ability to make any song sound like a Jerry Lee Lewis song. The one quality that he had that evaded a lot of the early rockers: he made mistakes and, this is important, owned them. He fucked up as many high profile rockers did, but he was honest enough to cop to them, right or wrong. You might disagree with some of the things he did, but you cannot accuse him of shrinking away from his actions. Most of them anyway.



All day today I was toying with doing a mammoth post but there's just too much to say. Jerry Lee Lewis has been on the top of my list of all-timers for decades. I guess the shit hasn't sunk in yet. Before I go to mourn one of the greatest rockers that ever lived, I should mention two books. I highly recommend Nick Tosches's 1982 Lewis biography Hellfire. It's probably the best biography I've ever read. Rick Bragg's 2014 authorized biography based on interviews with Lewis, Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, is good too. In addition to Lewis's version of the years covered by Tosches's book, it fills the gap between '82 and '14. Let's get on with it. Here's a few random songs. RIP The Killer.
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