"... 'but fuck Elvis.' In Lewis’s analysis of the situation, he had been condemned even though nobody seemed to mind that Elvis had started dating Priscilla Ann Beaulieu, in Germany, when she, too, was underage. When someone mentioned that Priscilla had been fourteen, and not Elvis’s cousin, Lewis grew angry. 'Stop right there,” he said. “He was not married to her. I was married, because I was an honest, God-fearing man.'"
From "Jerry Lee Lewis’s Life of Rock and Roll and Disrepute/A thrilling performer with a volatile persona, Lewis always knew he was playing the devil’s music" (The New Yorker).
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24 comments:
If you believe the "lunatic conspiracy theories" circulating on the web, the Pelosis are much, much worse. Right now, the dominant narrative is that Paul Pelosi is so desensitized to human suffering that he picked up a mentally ill, homeless gay man to abuse and humiliate. Getting whacked in the head is karma coming back and biting Paul Pelosi in the ass.
He was not married to her. I was married, because I was an honest, God-fearing man.
I think that's what his big hit song 'It's Hip To Be Square' was kind of about.
Public image matters. Elvis came across as a sweet family man. Lewis was an angry wild freak.
Lewis was married seven times, sometimes right after (or even right before) a previous divorce. He didn't respect the institution of marriage. He killed it, gutted it, and wore its skin. He was 22 when he married his 13-year-old cousin, and that was his third marriage. Myra later said he abused her through their whole marriage. Public opinion had him pegged.
There is the "rock star and underage girl" phenomenon. See here.
There is the "southern man and underage girl" phenomenon. Judge Roy Moore. Songwriter Jimmy Webb was originally from Texas, and he was dating the woman he eventually married when she was very young.
I was somehow taught to believe that getting married goes hand in hand with settling down so I still don't quite grasp the idea of a successful rock musician getting married at all.
Dying from a drug overdose or getting out of the business entirely, now that I get.
The quote in the post title is — I assumed it was obvious — about Lewis's marriage to his 13-year-old cousin.
Judge Roy Moore - did not marry an "Underage girl". It is NOT a 'Southern' thing to marry 13 year girls.
Subsitute "Jewish" for "Southern" and maybe people will realize how bigoted and hatefilled such remarks are.
Lewis was born back in the 30s and came of age at a time when you had to get married. If he'd been born in the 50s, he would've shacked up with his girlfriends and had children out of wedlock.
Look at Brando. Got married to three women in the late 50s and early 60s because he got them pregnant. Audience then wouldn't have accepted a movie star with illegitimate kids. By the late 60s, he just bought his girlfriends a house and kept the illegimate kids out of the spotlight. IRC, he had 10 kids, 3 of them legitimate.
Age of consent was 14 in Georgia until 1995, and still is in a bunch of mainstreamish countries, if my Bing search perusal is right. Google search is more prudish.
Kings get to do what they want.
Spiros said...
"Right now, the dominant narrative is that Paul Pelosi is so desensitized to human suffering that he picked up a mentally ill, homeless gay man to abuse and humiliate."
When did this ever become "the dominant narrative?" Where on earth do you get your information?
"The quote in the post title is — I assumed it was obvious — about Lewis's marriage to his 13-year-old cousin."
Thanks for explaining. I thought it was Lewis's gay marriage to Elvis.
"The Devil's music." That would be the tritone, 666, so wonderfully used in "West Side Story."
I remember Jerry Lee on Bandstand, kicking away the piano bench and infusing me, a thousand of miles away, with joy.
He was an artist. I don't care if he married a sheep or cut off his ear.
Apparently, the "arc of history" bends from condemnation to acceptance and back to condemnation. If Jerry Lee were starting out today he wouldn't get very far. Not even if he had Dennis Quaid's naughty boy grin.
Maybe that is what PEDJT should have said:
"I don't mean to disrespect Paul Pelosi, but fuck Paul Pelosi."
It would be interesting to see MoDo's reaction to that.
John Stop fascism, vote republican Henry
Well, now he fears God. What God's opinion is about the marriage(s) is his to sort out. Though if the abuse is true I suspect he's finding out what it's like to not be the one with the power.
Maybe 14 year olds looked different back then. A 14 year old Brooke Shields was tarted up to look like an adult in Wanda Nevada.
Here's a picture of his wife Myra when she was 14.
https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2020/114/34583551_385771f2-2daa-47de-ab54-7ea022817d32.jpeg
John Hinckley did not respond to several messages. Ms. Foster don't ever talk about it.
Spiros said...
If you believe the "lunatic conspiracy theories" circulating on the web, the Pelosis are much, much worse. Right now, the dominant narrative is that Paul Pelosi is so desensitized to human suffering that he picked up a mentally ill, homeless gay man to abuse and humiliate. Getting whacked in the head is karma coming back and biting Paul Pelosi in the ass.
I am unsure whether putting lunatic conspiracy theories in quotes means that you believe the Paul Pelosi lies are somehow truthful and dominant, but even the new "Chief Twit," (but you can call him Elmo for grins) pulled his Q-Anon-sourced retweet on the subject.
Elvis did marry Priscilla though, and he waited until she was 21, almost 22, to marry her, so what is JLL going on about? Maybe Lewis was just one of those defensive, ornery, spite-filled old men when he gave the interview.
Jerry Lee Lewis is the Ty Cobb of Rock and Roll.
I think Jerry Lee was just a highly intelligent and musically-gifted badass. His cousins are equally crazy, Mickey and Jimmy, although I think Swaggart is probably borderline sociopath.
He reminds me of Chuck Berry. There's an old session of Chuck with a very young set of Beatles in the studio. Chuck is unrelenting giving them shit, I mean all the way through, demanding to know why they can't play it better, how come they don't play it this way or that. And the whole time, the Beatles were deferring to the older Berry, almost wanting to ingratiate. Berry had a rawboned street outlook on things, from hard experience. You could tell that he resented the Beatles' easy fame a little bit.
(Eaglebeak)
The other thing about Jerry Lee's marriage to his cousin was that he was still married to his previous wife. Elvis got married once, and it was to Priscilla, and she was 21 when they married (although 14 when they started up together).
Elvis ran around with a lot of women, but Jerry Lee married a lot of women, including his fourth wife, who died mysteriously (see Richard Ben Cramer's article in Rolling Stone https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/the-strange-and-mysterious-death-of-mrs-jerry-lee-lewis-179980/).
If you want to listen to some great duets by Elvis and Jerry Lee, sung in 1956, listen to the Million-Dollar Quartet album--the authentic one, not the one produced for a Broadway show.
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