As a huge '50s rock and roll fanatic, I honestly don't know how to feel about the passing of Jerry Lee Lewis. His status as a rock and roll icon is undeniable; Elvis may have been the King, but rock and roll certainly wasn't a one man job. All the pioneers - Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Ike Turner, Bo Diddley, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Fats Domino, Carl Perkins, Bill Haley, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, The Everly Brothers and all the others - were just as iconic and important as each other in defining that era and generation of music in their own unique ways, and there is certainly no disputing the fact that Jerry Lee Lewis was one of a kind; a phenomenal and electrifying performer who mastered the art of rock and roll piano playing unlike any other. (The things Chuck Berry could do with his guitar Jerry Lee Lewis could do just as well with his piano). I love his music to pieces - at least his early work, not so much anything from after he left Sun Records - but, like a lot of people, I've always had mixed feelings about The Killer as a person. The infamous 1958 marriage to Myra Gale Brown, his 13 year old second cousin - the daughter of his cousin and bass player J.W. Brown - whom he married when he was 22, is impossible to stomach, even if you are able to separate the art from the artist like I can. If you watch the Great Balls Of Fire! biopic - starring Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis - based on Myra Gale Brown's memoir Great Balls Of Fire: The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis, it definitely gives a whole new disturbing and discomforting meaning to the song "High School Confidential". (Being married to your second cousin in general - let alone a 13 year old second cousin - is strange enough, but Jerry's seventh wife Judith Brown, whom he married in 2012, was the ex-wife of Myra's brother!). Not to mention, the sexually and physically abusive drug and alcohol addict he was, his Graceland arrest in 1976 for allegedly trying to shoot Elvis - who to me will always be the Mozart of rock and roll to Jerry Lee Lewis, the Salleri of rock and roll - and his big headed ego; claiming he was "The true king of rock and roll" who started the entire craze, which couldn't be further from the truth. But after the way he'd been given the cold shoulder and practically tossed aside by everyone, and reduced to an old country hippy after the uproar of his marriage, you probably can't blame him for that, even though the downfall of his career was his own doing. (Just think how big he could have been - probably even bigger than Elvis - had he not gone public with his marriage when he came to England in 1958). Nevertheless, if you were to create a playlist of the greatest rock and roll songs of the 1950s - or indeed in general - there's no question that "Great Balls Of Fire" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" would be on it. You could have a glam rock playlist without Gary Glitter, or an R&B playlist without R. Kelly, but a rock and roll playlist without Jerry Lee Lewis is like a sandwich without butter. Also, if you were to take him off, you'd also have to take off Chuck Berry, the man who many people consider to be the inventor of rock and roll - as John Lennon once said: "If you were to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry" - who was arrested for allegedly having sex with a 14 year old girl. Why him and Jerry Lee Lewis weren't cell mates baffles me. Could it have been a race thing? If Jerry Lee Lewis was black and Chuck Berry was white would Jerry Lee Lewis have been arrested instead? Would Chuck Berry have still been arrested even if he was married to that 14 year old? (Not to mention, Jerry wasn't even officially divorced from his second wife Jane Mitchum when he married Myra; and in case you don't know, it's illegal to be married to two people at once, so why he wasn't arrested for that is even more strange). Mind you, while the race thing is debatable, R. Kelly's career and popularity never faced the same amount of the damage in the '90s after his marriage to Aaliyah (though, of course, it would later come back to haunt him). Surely it would have been different had they been around and married in the '50s like Jerry and Myra. The way I see it, the tragedy of this is not the passing of an icon or a legend, but - as he was the last of his peers of original rock and roll pioneers standing - the passing of one of the greatest eras of music and youth culture. So to conclude, I won't say rest in peace, I'll just say, LONG LIVE ROCK AND ROLL.
"I worry about whether I'm going to heaven or hell". - Jerry Lee Lewis
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