It’s paTHETic

PBS is broadcasting the national Independence Day concert from the Mall in Washington right now, and they just brought Jerry Lee Lewis on the stage to play.  Seeing him, I was sickened and saddened to tears.  There was the man who virtually defined the Rock ’n’ Roll Wild Man, just sitting still at the piano, while he walked through two or three of his best-known hits—“Roll Over Beethoven” (yes, that’s a Chuck Berry song, but JLL had a hit with it too), “Whole Lotta Shakin’,” “Great Balls of Fire”—accompanied by a band a full generation his junior (they were only in their sixties).

And JLL just SAT there.  He SAT.

How the fuck can it be a JERRY LEE LEWIS show without him goddamn MOVING his ass around the stage?  Hell, he was smashing instruments onstage when Pete Townshend was still in short pants!

OK, yeah, JLL is seventy-three years old.  He’s seen just about every rockabilly contemporary he had into the grave, from Elvis to Carl Perkins to Warren Smith to Charlie Rich to Roy Orbison, in defiance of every probability you can think of.  But to see that OLD MAN . . . being dragged out on stage to try to play the music that was so new and different that he and maybe half a dozen others changed the face of American music with it . . . I could barely stop myself from sobbing at the sight, and I didn’t know whether I wanted more to cry from the pathos of watching him TRY to do it again, or from anger at the people who couldn’t be content to leave him in peace.

As Greil Marcus said about Howlin’ Wolf (a label-mate of JLL’s at Sun Records), his best recordings came on like mini-race riots, or more appropriately, juke-joint brawls (and what JLL didn’t know about THEM, you coulda written on the head of a very small pin).  His early singles were two and a half minutes of wild, exhilarating chaos, mixing R&B, swing, country boogie, and pure-dee caveman ethos onto a seven-inch vinyl disc.  And like Keith Moon, JLL wasn’t afraid to carry his excess on into his real-world life and then beyond.  (If any academic wanted to do it, there’s probably a paper in the similarities between the Weltanschauung of JLL and of The Who.)  NOBODY tried to film JLL only from the waist up; instead, when he appeared on the Steve Allen show, Allen and a couple of stage hands began throwing chairs and bottles across the stage during the performance, trying to re-create a bit of the the real, raw, bloody, broken-bottle-in-the-hand juke-joint experience for the audience.

And knowing all that . . . and remembering all that . . . to see the sad, tired, shell of the artist who used to be so wild he was justly nicknamed “Killer” sitting like a plaster statue on the stage, not moving except for his arms still hammering the keyboard, trying to make it sound like it was still 1956 . . . no.  Just no, goddamnit.  Fucking

Well, fuck that.  Fuck ALL of it.  Let’s remember Jerry Lee the way he OUGHT to be remembered . . . like this.