When
Vintage Rock caught up with Jerry Lee Lewis three years ago it marked the end of a prolific two-decade run for the iconic rock’n’roller.
This latter-life purple patch included critically-acclaimed studio albums and one last hurrah on these shores at his sell-out show at the London Palladium in 2015 in celebration of his 80th birthday – just shy of 60 years since he’d first crossed Sun Studios’ threshold to try his luck.
Jerry Lee was incredibly active in the last two decades of his life. Vintage Rock was a huge fan of 2006’s Last Man Standing, an album of duets that found him back in the charts. It was a set buoyed by the likes of Little Richard, Mick Jagger, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and – Jerry Lee’s personal favourite – asparkling cover of What Made Milwaukee Famous with Rod Stewart. And, what’s more, it was his highest-charting US album to date, making No.26. His 2010 LP, Mean Old Man, attracted yet more star turns (and also made the US Top 40), while 2014’s Rock’n’Roll Time, was an intimate affair with the big names instead supporting on guitar and backing vocals (only Jerry Lee could push Keith Richards, Robbie Robertson, Neil Young and Nils Lofgren to the back of the stage). The album was well-received thanks to some wonderfully breezy covers ranging from Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash to Kris Kristofferson and Lynyrd Skynyrd. In 2013, he opened his own joint on Beale Street in Memphis – Jerry Lee Lewis’ Cafe & Honky Tonk – where he brought in the new year from behind his piano to a sell-out crowd. Towards the end of his life, while the ferocity had subsided and the pianos were decidedly safer than in previous decades, the wild man of rock’n’roll was still at large behind those bright blue eyes. And with such an incredible musical legacy, the Ferriday Fireball is sure to be forever ablaze…