Everyone Loves You When You're Dead. Neil Strauss
Читать онлайн книгу.
PAGE: Something like that.
PLANT: We were there longer than anybody had been known to in living history. He wanted to know who these people were who sold more tickets than he did quicker. He’d met Elton John and he thought all English people were like him, so we got around it. We had a good time, didn’t we?
PAGE: He was very funny.
PLANT: He was very sharp, too. Forget the legends and all that crap. He was as bright as you like. Although I loathed that period when he came out of the army. I felt he’d betrayed us, like when your heroes get old and you don’t like them anymore because they’re not hip.
Is there anyone you’ve ever been scared to meet?
PLANT: Jerry Lee Lewis, and maybe—what’s that bloke that sings in Guns N’ Roses?
PAGE: (Laughs.)
There’s a knock at the door.
PLANT: Who’s that at the door? Is it the fifty-year-old middle-aged hooker I ordered?
[Continued . . .]
After much hemming, hawing, and postponing, Jerry Lee Lewis—not just one of the originators of rock and roll but perhaps its first real punk—agreed to get on the phone just before traveling to New York for his first show there in a decade. It was an odd interview, however, either because he was wary of the press (which had bashed him after his 1957 marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin, the deaths of two of his wives and two children, and his arrest for being drunk and brandishing a pistol outside Graceland) or because he had a hearing problem—or, most likely, for both reasons.
When I read your interviews, you seem to talk as if rock and Christianity are opposed to each other. Do you feel that way?
JERRY LEE LEWIS: I don’t quite understand what you mean.
Often, you talk about rock as if it’s a darker side to your persona.
LEWIS: Oh yeah, well I understand where you’re coming from. That still remains to be seen. I don’t want to lead kids in the wrong direction. I’m just trying to get it straightened out the best way I can. I believe that God will show me the way when the time is right. If he don’t, I’m a loser. And I don’t like losing.
Did you ever think of becoming a minister like Al Green or Little Richard?
LEWIS: Yes, I have. I think about it quite often.
And what do you think about it?
LEWIS: Well, I think that I either should do it or shut up about it.
So I guess you’re shutting up about it?
LEWIS: It’s something you don’t play around with. If I go in that direction, I’ll stay in that direction.
When you hear modern rock bands, do you feel you have a connection to the music?
LEWIS: These kids and these people are so hungry for the truth.
But when you listen to it, do you still hear your sound in it or do you feel like it’s gone off on its own tangent?
LEWIS: I started it. You know, it was Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard. We kinda kicked it off. And I would imagine we’d be held responsible for how it sounds today.
Did your Killer! book come out in the United States?
LEWIS: I think God gives us enough sense to work our own problems out (laughs).
Did your Killer! book come out in the United States?
LEWIS: Pardon?
You did an autobiography, right?
LEWIS: Yeah.
Did that come out in the United States?
LEWIS: It was written in Ireland. I went over to Ireland. The biography, is that what you’re talking about? It’s a good book and it will be released in the United States here in the next couple of months.
What publisher?
LEWIS: It’s the only book that’s the truth. I finally got the truth down for the first time. All these other books just distorted everything and wrote things that ain’t even true at all. Not even true at all.
Do you know who published it?
LEWIS: No, I really don’t. People in England.
The so-called scandal that people say hurt your career when you announced your marriage in England . . .
LEWIS: Yeah.
Do you think that same thing would hurt a musician’s career today?
LEWIS: No. Well, it’s just one of those things. I really don’t know how to explain that. That would be hard to explain. It did happen.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of R. Kelly—the big R&B star. He married his fifteen-year-old protégée and his career keeps going fine.
LEWIS: Yeah, well, I’ll tell ya. It would be . . . Excuse me, my wife’s trying to get me off the phone. Come to the show. We’ll finish the discussion then. They’re coming in the door on me. Would you like to say a word to her?25
Sure.
LEWIS: Well, it was nice talking with ya, and I’ll turn you over to her. God bless ya! See you in New York.
KERRIE LEWIS: Hello?
So are you coming to New York with Jerry?
KERRIE: Oh yeah, I’ll be there. What did you ask? He’s making faces and things. I’m fixing to knock him out. That’s what I’m fixing to do. (To Jerry: ) You’re not bothering me. Sit down! . . . I’m not going over there. . . . Okay, I love you too. I’m coming to the house in a minute. . . . I’m still mad at you, and you’re gonna get it. (To me:) Sorry.
Are there any new things going on in Jerry Lee’s career that I should mention in the article?
KERRIE: Well, there’s hundreds of things. But do y’all really write about good things?
We write about good things.
KERRIE: Nobody cares that I’m sixty years old, that I work out on a HealthRider every day, that I’m the best I’ve ever been. But, you know, they taped a video at the Ryman [Auditorium] in Nashville where he did four encores and he probably moved from his head to his toes every limb and muscle, so they knew he didn’t have arthritis—or whatever the disease is with the hands or the shaking. He was perfect! The kids are taking music lessons. We got Lee learning on his daddy’s piano and Derek learning on a James Burton signature guitar, so the kids are rolling right along.
I think at this point it would be more of a surprise to read all these good things.
KERRIE: