A Stray Cat Struts (11 page)

“Drugstore Rock and Roll” was an early favorite record. We covered it back in the four-sets-a-night club gigs on Long Island, and we all thought Janis was smoking hot in the picture on the back of her album. The picture was from 1956, and she looked like Elly May Clampett. We didn't have any girls who looked like that in our neighborhood.

These musicians were all gracious and thankful, telling me personally that their careers had gotten a shot in the arm after the Stray Cats brought rockabilly music back onto the radio to new, younger fans and into the mainstream, where we always thought it belonged. A few of the more obscure artists hadn't done gigs since the 1950s, so for them, the new interest in rockabilly was a real blessing.

This was something that has always been very important to me and one of the things I'm most proud of being a member of the Cats. The fact that just by playing this music we were able to help these original artists that we loved and were influenced by is still a source of pride. I still get off on it. I still dig this music, those records and images, so much. The excitement I get from those original records and photos never fades away. I can still listen to a Sun Records compilation anytime, anywhere and get off on it. It will always improve my mood. I can look at the blurry photos on the album sleeve with these slicked-up hepcats in cowboy suits and the rocking songbird gals in 1950s gear and get the same rush I did when we first discovered this music and look.

Rockabilly has that elusive musical secret: it swings … and it rocks. That sounds easy enough, but it is deceptively simple. The beat swings, but it also needs to be aggressive and at the same time danceable. It can't be too fast, but it can't drag. It's gotta flat-out send you. The original cats—Elvis, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Eddie Cochran, Carl Perkins, Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee, Little Richard—all loved hillbilly, bluegrass, jump blues, and rhythm and blues, and when mixed together in the musical pot, out came rockabilly. Sam Phillips, the owner/operator of Sun Studios in Memphis, was the mad genius chef for the whole movement. Elvis Presley captured his vision, put his own stamp on it, and changed the world.

These people were mythical figures to me. The idea that I've met, worked with, and count as friends a few of these original band members is very much still with me. Being friends with Dickie “Be-Bop” Harrell, the drummer from the original Blue Caps, is to me like being friends with Paul Bunyan. This cat is a real American folk hero. He played drums and did the screams on “Be-Bop-a-Lula.” There would be no Beatles or Stones without that record—just ask them.

Rockabilly should have an acoustic double bass, and in many ways, it's the one defining thing about the music. The slapping style of the double bass—Carl Perkins called it the “doghouse bass”—creates a percussive sound in between the notes that fills in the gaps. When done right, the drummer and bass player can create a big sound for the soloist to play over. Rockabilly is traditionally guitar based, and you can't be a great rockabilly band without a great guitar player. A certain twang is the desired sound, and the truly great ones expand on that.

I firmly believe that Lee Rocker and I are the best rhythm section in the history of rockabilly. We didn't get that way by accident; Lee and I spent a lot of our teenage years practicing with just the bass and drums. Being locked in with a bass player is the best feeling a drummer can ever achieve, and I've had many, many of those moments with Lee. Brian is surely the best guitar player anywhere, and together we invented our own style that combined these elements of rockabilly with the excitement of punk rock and the emotion of the blues. This music called to us. We were looking for a music that had all these things we liked and also had an image built in that we could add to and make our own. In rockabilly, we all found the outline for everything we wanted to do. It was a life-changing moment when I discovered I was hooked on this stuff.

Sadly, the Palomino is gone today. The Beverly Theatre was a very cool original art deco theater that hosted vaudeville in the past before becoming a movie theater, and then it was a venue for small gigs and plays. Maybe it held 750 people. I remember seeing a quite a few shows there. It's another example of one of those LA places that was once a grand landmark, but now it's just not there anymore. Like many buildings in LA, if it had lasted until today, it would be vintage and antique. In 1984, it was just plain old. There is no rule saying you have to have rock-and-roll taste and vision to own property in a good part of any town. I'd like to save the whales, live local music, and the rockabilly architecture that is slowly fading in LA. I've done my part for two out of three, but it's hard.

I decided to go to the Jerry Lee Lewis show that night on my own. I saw in the newspaper that he was playing. I was just going to turn up, buy a ticket, sit in the audience, and watch the show. I didn't know him or any of his band and management. I am now and have always been a huge fan. His early recordings on the Sun label hold up as some of the hardest-rocking stuff ever put down on tape. He was one of those early alchemists to come out of Memphis who were mixing up the flaming stew of rock and roll, blues, gospel, and country that had influenced me and every other rock and roller that I admired. He always kept the music rocking and on the verge of being out of control. All the way through the 1960s and 1970s, Jerry Lee continued making great records and doing high-energy live shows, where he was unpredictable onstage. He's a true eccentric, and his personal life is the stuff of legend. He continued flying the rockabilly flag, especially in Europe, where he was hero to both the teddy boys and the rockers, causing riots at the gigs. The classic film footage of teddy boys smashing up a concert hall and throwing all the chairs onto a pile on the stage is from a gig in Germany. His 1960s records
The Greatest Show on Earth
1 & 2, recorded at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, are two of the hardest-rocking live records I've ever heard. Even when he moved to a more country flavor, I think he was just calling it country to get through to a different audience; it's still really soulful and hard rocking.

On the way to the show, I decided to ask bespoke rock-and-roll tailor and big Jerry Lee fan Glenn Palmer to join me. Glenn had seen Jerry Lee a dozen times in England, really dug it, was usually holding a little powder, and was good company. We bought two regular tickets at the box office and were in our seats talking before the show started in the mostly filled theater. A few fans said hello, but nothing crazy. I was in an aisle seat when a middle-aged guy wearing cowboy boots, a satin baseball jacket, and big belt buckle, complete with mullet and moustache that suggested he was a bit more country than rock, walked up, leaned over, and spoke to me quietly. He introduced himself as the Killer's tour manager, told me that Jerry Lee wanted to meet me, and that he was there to escort me to the dressing room. Glenn and I looked at each other and shrugged. So I followed this guy to the front of the stage, up the stairs, behind the curtain, and to the dressing room. The Beverly was an old-time theater and had a hallway backstage with numerous small dressing rooms. The tour manager pointed to one and told me to go on in. I knocked and waited for an answer. I didn't get an answer, so I knocked again.

“Come on in—it ain't locked!” I heard the distinct sound of the Killer's drawl.

I opened the door into a very small typical dressing room with a dressing table against the wall and round lightbulbs around a mirror. The Killer sat in the one chair, and on his lap sat a very big, very young rockabilly girl dressed to the nines in a big skirt with petticoats, high heels, sporting a bleached-blond beehive hairdo, Marilyn Monroe makeup, the whole thing. Jerry Lee was puffing on a big Sherlock Holmes–looking meerschaum pipe and had his arm around the corn-fed, USDA-prime rockabilly girl. He was drinking something out of a red plastic cup. When I came in, he stood up to greet me and dumped her to the floor. I was still in shock from seeing her on his lap in the first place; now she was on the floor, looking very put out and unimpressed. Jerry Lee stepped over her and came toward me. I instinctively stepped back; the wall was right behind me, and I was a bit trapped.

“Well, lookee here, boy. We got a gen-u-ine, rock-a-billy Stray Cat,” he said loudly in that unmistakable Jerry Lee voice.

“Hi, Jerry Lee,” I answered, still trying to take it all in. I'd seen some rock-and-roll scenes before, but this one was just plain weird.

“Call me Killer, boy,” he insisted, edging even closer. There was nowhere to go in the room; the palms of my hands were against the wall.

“Mmm, I like your hair, boy,” he continued in a voice like a Southern sheriff right out of the movies, all while puffing on this crazy-looking pipe.

By this point in time, I was pretty much over being nervous around famous people, especially if they were close to my own age. I wouldn't have been intimidated by anyone in the Clash, and we had met huge rock stars like Robert Plant over the years. I still felt a bit awed by the original rock and rollers. There's something about those guys that's still larger than life to me. They seem much older in a historic way. Anyone who I saw on TV in black and white earns a different type of respect.

“Thanks, Killer,” I mumbled. “I use Nu-Nile on the sides and Murray's on the top, then put in a little Royal Crown to give the whole thing a shine,” I continued. “Didn't Elvis use Royal Crown hair slick? I read that somewhere.” I was standing there, babbling to Jerry Lee Lewis about hair grease, getting a little uncomfortable with the whole scene.

By this time, the full-figured rockabilly girl had gotten up off the floor and was sitting in the chair, filing her nails and looking very bored with us both. Jerry Lee was standing in front of me, half talking, half yelling about rockabilly music, Sun Records, Sam Phillips, and Elvis. I started to loosen up a little when he quickly reached past me and turned off the lights in the room. The next thing I heard was the girl screaming with a combination of horror, shock, and giggling glee and the Killer's demonic laugh. I felt around behind me in the pitch-darkness, found the doorknob, and squeezed my way out without ever opening the door too wide. I made my way back to the seats and watched the show.

Jerry Lee was an awesome, whirling, rocking hurricane, as always. He kicked the piano bench over on the last number and did everything he was supposed to do. After that night, I didn't have any contact with him for twelve years.

In 1996, I was living in my flat on Doheny Drive. A thousand things had happened in my life since the night I saw Jerry Lee Lewis play at the Beverly Theatre and had a bizarre meeting with him in his dressing room. I got a phone call from true pal Jerry Schilling. Jerry is a fantastic guy. He was an extremely close, inside friend and aide to Elvis Presley from the beginning but not the typical goon that seemed to surround the King. If you want a great read and some new insight into life in Memphis and LA with the King, check out Jerry's memoir,
Me and a Guy Named Elvis
. I think it's the best one. It's an honest, nonsensationalized view of life at Graceland and during the moviemaking years in Beverly Hills, where Jerry was a body double for Elvis on quite a few of those films. I had first met Jerry when he came with Priscilla Presley to a Cats show in Nashville in 1983. We've stayed pals since then. He's always shied away from capitalizing off his association with Elvis and wanted to be his own man, which is why he left the King's court and did some things on his own, including managing the Beach Boys in the 1970s and 1980s. I had been to visit him at his perfect midcentury house up on Sunset Plaza that Elvis had given him as a present in 1974.

At that point, he was managing Jerry Lee and was calling me to ask if I'd play drums for Jerry Lee on
The Tonight Show
. The host, Jay Leno, was a well-known car buff and aficionado of vintage stuff, and he knew and liked the Stray Cats. We had met him when he was doing standup comedy in New York City. I would run into him while driving my one rock star possession, my prized 1961 Chevrolet Corvette that I've somehow had since 1982, around town. He was always in a different amazing classic car and would always wave and give a honk. So when I turned up as Jerry Lee's drummer, it was a good little blast to see each other. Another good small-world moment was when true pal Jeffrey Baxter turned up as the bass player. Jeffrey is godfather to my son, and we have a long, strong friendship. He had produced a record for Carl Wilson from the Beach Boys when Jerry Schilling was managing him, so that's their connection. After a couple of run-throughs, we did a song called “Goose Bumps” that Jerry changed the arrangement for on the fly as we were doing it live on TV. I'm good at going with the rock-and-roll flow, so that part was not a big deal. There is a good cinematic opening to the performance, where the camera starts with a shot of a reflection of me in the shiny black finish of Jerry Lee's grand piano. I had the iconic Stray Cats logo on the bass drum head and that always looks supercool. After the show, we chatted a bit and took some pictures. I'm not sure Jerry Lee remembered me or knew who I was; it's hard to tell with him, but I played the drums well on his song, so all was cool.

A few months of normal life went by when I got a call from a strange woman who turned out to be Kerrie Lee Lewis, Jerry Lee's wife at the time. She explained to me that she was now Jerry Lee's manager, and he wanted me to join his touring band. I asked about Jerry Schilling and was told he was no longer involved. She told me the pay, and it was pretty good, and she said the gigs were mainly on weekends. She was insistent that the band did not drink or do drugs. This, I answered her, was okay by me. I had already been sober six years, so that part was no big deal. In fact, it was always easier and better at that point to deal with sober guys. Then she added that as long as Jerry Lee took his methadone once a day, everything was fine, and it had been for eleven years. I was a little surprised by this. I was never particularly a drug guy, but I knew that methadone was supposed to be a short-term help for withdrawal symptoms, not a long-term lifestyle choice. I needed the money, and it sounded easy enough and up my alley, yet even though I had done many gigs with other people, I hadn't really been on the road too much with anyone besides my own band. I called Jerry Schilling, and he told me, “It's a strange organization, but the checks won't bounce.” I already had firsthand experience to know that Jerry Lee was a real eccentric, and the whole hiring process had been weird. I figured another adventure was right around the corner.