July 6, 20111

Things weren’t going all that well for Jerry Lee Lewis on April 5, 1964, when he recorded the greatest live rock & roll album of all time.

Although there were still hardcore fans who felt that Jerry Lee, and not Elvis Presley, was the real king of rock & roll, they were well in the minority that day, and it was a pretty greasy minority at that. Jerry Lee was having a harder time drawing crowds than he had just a few years earlier— apparently, American parents frowned on their kids publicly supporting a leering, caterwauling cracker nicknamed “the Killer.”

Jerry Lee wasn’t for the timid. Even when he sang ballads, you sensed the illegal blade in his pocket, and you knew he was more than willing to...um…whip it out if need be. His early TV appearances had the feel of a wild hog being released into a Young Republicans fraternity mixer…

…and his decision to marry his 13 year-old cousin (Lewis memorably defended himself by insisting she was 15) in 1958 pretty much scuttled any chances of an ongoing residence at the top of the charts, regardless of how electrifying a performer he might be. Surely, if anyone was meant to pill, drink, shout, and fuck himself to death at a young age, it was this guy, and Middle America couldn’t quite warm to that concept during the Eisenhower administration.

Here’s the equation then: Elvis ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches and loved his mama. Jerry Lee drank white lightning and banged his underage cousin. You do the math.

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Anyway, by the time Jerry Lee mounted the stage at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany on that early-April evening, he hadn’t had an American hit single in over 6 years, and TV wouldn’t touch him with a rolled up copy of the Mann Act. He was, in effect, persona non grata just when he had reached his creative peak, and, as you might imagine, he was none too pleased by the development.

It’s a long fall from Bryl-Creem and American Bandstand to a beer-soaked club in the seediest section of Germany’s seediest city. But an ornery Jerry Lee was, and probably still is, an enthused Jerry Lee, and the Star-Club was just the type of environment where a crowd would feed on his sparks.

The irony of his playing a gig at the very place where the Beatles had honed their chops - they cranked out rockers at the Star-Club for many grueling months as a prelude to Beatlemania - couldn’t have been lost on the Killer. Those fucking Limeys, who had just won over America via “The Ed Sullivan Show” two months earlier, were nothing but a dazzling set of nails in the lid of Jerry Lee’s career coffin. But at least the Star-Club crowd, which was brimming with beefy, drunken sailors and a cross-section of rentable female flesh, would be on his side for the night.

They also, it should be noted, had plenty of these things:

Benzedrine inhalers. I’ve mentioned Benzedrine inhalers in a couple other Beatles-related Wall of Paul pieces. They were supposed to be an over-the-counter way to combat asthma attacks, and some people surely used them for that very purpose. But bands and club-goers in Hamburg figured out that you could soak the cotton contained within the inhaler in tea or lemon juice, then guzzle down a pure kick of first-class amphetamine.

So that’s what they did…and, just to be polite, so did the Beatles and Jerry Lee Lewis whenever they played the Reeperbahn. The rock & roll they then pounded out was that much harder, faster, and plain old intense due to the pharmaceuticals, and it was possible to play for hours before collapsing in a sweat-drenched heap.

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There’s no proof that Jerry Lee was on Benzedrine during the performance that makes up “Live at the Star-Club, Hamburg.” But by now it’s accepted wisdom that he was loaded to the gills. He literally growls, yelps, and purrs while banging the hell out of the tunes as if the end of the world is nigh. This is balls-out, full-speed-ahead rock & roll, from beginning to end, like nothing you’ve ever heard this side of a (really, really good) late-1970s punk show.

Lewis’ temporary British backing band, the Nashville Teens (they’d later have a hit of their own with a song called “Tobacco Road”), said they were just trying to keep up with the onslaught, that following Jerry Lee into the banshee wilderness was a genuinely nerve-racking task. But they plow ahead every bit as maniacally as the Killer does on “Live at the Star-Club.”

Throughout the album, Mick Dunford (guitar), Pete Harris (bass), and, especially, Dave Maine (drums) sound like they’re rhythmically driving in fence posts behind an escaped lunatic: whump-crunch-whump-crunch-whump-crunch. Nothing else the Teens recorded even approaches this for sheer ferocity. You could argue that nothing anybody’s recorded does, certainly nothing by any of Jerry Lee’s Sun Records peers.

I mean, I love Carl Perkins, but they would’ve had to drag his corpse off the stage after this!

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Listen, for instance, to the album’s very first track, in which Jerry Lee bitch-slaps then takes ownership of a second-tier Elvis song called “Mean Woman Blues.” Forget opening numbers— I’ve never heard a live record that ends at this level of excitement. Listen, in particular, to how Lewis lowers the volume for a short stretch, baiting the crowd for all he’s worth, before pounding out a frenzy that truly sounds like it might be the end of his piano. He does this over and over again during the album, and it’s electrifying each and every time.

“Mean Woman Blues”

That’s fucking unbelievable! For all the fun that’s obviously being had, you can also imagine that most of the participants, including the roaring crowd, would have had even more of a blast had people actually started getting hurt. And maybe they did get hurt.

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Originally, and for a couple decades thereafter, “Live at the Star-Club, Hamburg” was available only in Germany, possibly because the country was already used to getting carpet-bombed via a combination of American and British know-how. Germany was also one of the few countries to see the 45 rpm release of two Little Richard tunes Jerry Lee gleefully demolishes on the album— “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly Miss Molly.”

Brace yourself. It’s understandable, I suppose, that the American record-buying public, which wanted nothing more alarming than for the Beatles to hold its collective hand, would be deemed an inappropriate target for something this incendiary.

Here’s the A-side.

“Long Tall Sally”

And here’s the flip.

“Good Golly Miss Molly”

See what I mean? If you can imagine Little Richard sitting there with his jaw hanging open, there’s some rocking going on. It’s a wonder the vinyl didn’t melt while people played this thing.

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Of course, no Jerry Lee Lewis performance is complete without “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and, even though we’ve already watched video of him plowing through the tune, this version, which closes “Live at the Star-Club, Hamburg,” is a whole different creature. The final stretch on this one may well rank with the Stooges “1970” as the single most ridiculous freak-out I’ve ever heard on a rock & roll record— and the Stooges were doubling up on speed and acid! I don’t even want to think about Jerry Lee on acid…

“Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On”

Let’s hear the Beatles do that! No word on whether Jerry Lee threw his head back and started speaking in tongues when he was done. But I sure like to think he did.

DOWNLOAD: “Live at the Star-Club, Hamburg” by Jerry Lee Lewis (1964), every mind-boggling, rampaging redneck second of it. Play it so loud it pisses somebody off. Then drink a half bottle of bourbon and play it louder. If the pissed off guy comes back, punch his sorry ass and crank it louder.

Paul Tatara