YouTube Gold: Jerry Lee Lewis Gets Wild

No surprise there

It’s safe to say that Jerry Lee Lewis was unlike anyone else in rock and roll history and in a lot of ways that’s probably a good thing.

The stories about Lewis are endless. On one tour in the UK, Chuck Berry was going to close and that didn't go over well with Lewis, who said he always closed.

But the people with the tour wouldn’t yield, so Lewis went on before Berry and on his last song lit his piano on fire. He played as it burned with his trademark furious energy and stalked off stage, telling Berry, follow that.

They booed Chuck Berry off the stage.

Nobody followed the Killer.

There is a documentary on Netflix about Lewis called Jerry Lee Lewis - Trouble In Mind. In that we learn of his struggles with religion, with alcohol and marriage, and that he once shot his bass player. He said he had been aiming for a coke can. He also said that at one point, he “drank tequila to sober up.”

Let that sink in for a minute.

In this video from 1964, seven years after the world learned that he had married his 13-year-old first cousin once removed, a marriage that derailed a career that had just gone off like a rocket, you get the full Jerry Lee Lewis treatment as he sings Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On. He was the original Wild Man of rock and roll.