whose barn, what barn, my barn

In his autobiography Life, Keith Richards names Jerry Lee Lewis as one of his favorites, and an influence....


------------------- [excerpt, Life] ----------- Dimashio's was the ice cream parlor - coffee shop....There was a jukebox there, so it was a hang.  Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richad, apart from a load of schlock.  It was the one little bit of Americana in Dartford. -------------------


---------------- [excerpt 2] ------------- I didn't know Chuck Berry was black for two years after I first heard his music, and this obviously long before I saw the film that drove a thousand musicians -- Jazz on a Summer's Day....And for ages I didn't know Jerry Lee Lewis was white.





You didn't see their pictures if they had something in the top ten in America.  The only faces I knew were Elvis, Buddy Holly and Fats Domino. ...


-------------------- [excerpt 3] -------------- Jim Dickinson:  Keith and I hit it off right away, and waiting for Jagger and whoever else, [at 1969 Muscle Shoals recording session] we started jamming. 


They still to this day think I'm a country piano player.  I'm not sure why, because I can barely play country music. 


I had a couple of licks from Floyd Cramer's stuff.  But I think it was because of Gram Parsons.  They had just got to be buddies with Gram, and I think Keith was kind of fascinated by country music.  So we sat around that afternoon, playing Hank Williams songs and Jerry Lee Lewis songs, and they let me stay.


------------------- [excerpt 4] --------- Keith:  Stu [Ian Stewart, Stones organizer and piano player] was solid, formidable looking....He was detached, very dry, down-to-earth and full of incongruous phrases. 


Driving at speed, for example, would be "going at a vast rate of knots."


...He hated some of the rock-and-roll stuff I played.  He hated Jerry Lee Lewis for years -- "Oh, it's all just histrionics."








Eventually...he had to crumble and admit that Jerry Lee had one of the best left hands he'd ever heard.  Flamboyance and showmanship were not in Stu's bag.  You played in clubs, it had nothing to do with showing off.


--------------------- [excerpt 5] -------------- At the beginning





my love for "the Killer's" playing  diminished me in Stu's soul.  "Bloody fairy pounding away" comes to mind as a typical Stu response.  Then, about ten years later,





Stu came to me one night and said, "I must admit some redeeming factors in Jerry Lee Lewis."  Out of the blue!  And this between takes.  Now that's looming.


__________________________
{Life, by Keith Richards with James Fox.  Little, Brown and Company.  New York - Boston - London.  2010.}


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