Suspicious Minds: Elvis Presley vs. Jerry Lee Lewis

Elvis Presley was the man to beat when Jerry Lee Lewis made the drive from small-town Louisiana to Memphis in 1956. The piano punisher had come for the King of Rock’s crown and was determined to show him up at every turn. Jerry Lee scored a deal on Elvis’ onetime label, employed the same management, and even some of the same songwriters. The pair duked it out in the charts in the late ‘50s, but the image conscious Elvis remained a much bigger crossover star than Jerry Lee, who relished his role as an uncompromising bad boy. When Elvis received his draft notice, Jerry Lee seemed poised to take over as rock’s leading voice. Then it all came crashing down as his troubling private life became public. Exiled from the rock ’n’ roll spotlight, Jerry Lee spent much of the ‘60s playing honky tonk dives and slowly rebuilding his musical career. Meanwhile, Elvis effectively abdicated his throne, trading electrifying singles for well-paying yet vapid films. Both men emerged from the wilderness by the end of the decade, spurring each other’s musical efforts. There was a begrudging respect between them, but Jerry Lee’s aggression sometimes got the best of him — like the time he showed up at Presley’s Graceland estate late one night with a gun. They didn’t call him “The Killer” for nothing.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rivals is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Rivals, the show about music beefs and
feuds and long simmering resentments between musicians. I'm Steve and

(00:21):
I'm Jordan's and today we're throwing it back old school
to what maybe the primordial rock rivalry. We're taking it
back to the dawn of Sun Records. In the feud
between Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis the King versus
the Killer, I can't wait. Elvis Presley is known as
the king of rock and roll, but Jerry Lee Lewis
is the king of rock and roll wildman. I like.
I feel like if Jerry Lee started his career today,

(00:42):
he would be canceled in about five minutes. You know.
His story is filled with scandals involving drugs, boos, guns,
underage cousins, two dead wives including one he might have murdered,
one bass player that he accidentally shot in the chest,
and many other unmentionables. Compared to Jerry Lee, even with
his own foibles, l this looks like an angel, which
might be why Jerry Lee literally tried to kill Elvius

(01:04):
at one point, which will get into in this episode.
There's so much crazy rock and roll lord to parse here.
I can't wait to get into it. So without further ado,
let's get into this mess. It all begins with Elvis,
as so many rock and roll tales. Do you know
the story little boy from Tupelo, Mississippi boring in a
two room shotgun shock? It's like a Chuck Berry lyric.

(01:27):
He was a shy kid. He gave his first musical
performance at a singing contest in his elementary school at
age ten, and he was dressed as a cowboy. He
stood on a stool to reach the mic, and the
best part is he only came in fifth place, which
I mean, I want to talk to those other four
people who like for the rest of their lives, were like, yeah,
you know, I beat Elvis in a singing contest, right,
Like how wild would that be? When I'm gonna have
times a day. They slipp that into the conversation like

(01:49):
where are those people today? What are they doing? Please
get in touch, Please get in touch. We'd love to
hear from you. Soon after this, he got a guitar
for Christmas, which bummed him out because he wanted a
bike or a gun. Typical Misissippi kid. He learned it
and started bringing it to school to sing hillbilly music
during lunchtime. And he was seen as kind of a
loaner and teased as being a mama's boy and even
called trashy for playing this kind of wild hillbilly music.

(02:12):
And uh, one of his classmates was the younger brother
of a musician named Mississippi Slim who had a radio
show on a local Tupelo station, And he would take
Elvis down to the station and Slim would give him
guitar pointers, and that became one of his early musical influences.
The Presley Is also lived in a predominantly black neighborhood
where he absorbed those musical influence as well. So you've
got this hillbilly music played by you know, Memphis Slim

(02:35):
or Ernest tub or Hank Snow mixed with the blues
music that he heard in his neighborhood he loved, like
Rosetta Tharpe for example, and the gospel that he knew
from Pentecostal churches. This all blended into the very unique,
you know, musical gumbo that became Elvis's sound. Yeah, Elvis,
to me, in many ways, it was like a modern
man before his time. You know, he loved music and
he'd listened to anything. You know, it didn't matter where

(02:55):
it came from. If he liked it, he liked it.
You know, there was the R and B and hillbilly
music of Wars, But like you said, he was also
into gospel music, and he loved blues, and he was
into like crooner's like Dean Martin and Perry Como as well,
and even like the oppera singer, Mario Lanza, he was
a big fan of him as well. And I feel
like Elvis generally had like really good taste and in
a way I wonder like if his greatest talent was

(03:16):
as a curator, you know, like he had a gift
for being able to recognize what was good and synthesize
it into like one thing that he did in a
very unique way. If you look at Elvis's early life,
I feel like it takes like a really crucial turn
when he turns thirteen. That's when his family moves to Memphis,
which is, you know, of course, one of the great
American music cities of all time. And this is around
the time that like Elvis is hanging out in local

(03:36):
juke joints and watching live music and he actually got
to know BB King a little bit at this time,
Like this was this was like when BB King was
also really young and before he was famous. Alvis also
started playing music around like the public housing complex where
he lived, so he's starting to like dabble in performance.
But he was basically like a loaner at this time.
Like he had longside burns. He had like relatively long

(03:58):
hair for the time, and he slicked at back kind
of looked like a truck driver at the time. And
he was like a real sort of iconic class at
his school. He didn't sing publicly until three that's when
he entered a talent show at his high school. And
he would later say that, like, you know, I wasn't
popular in school, but then I entered in this talent show,
and when I came on stage, I heard people kind
of rumbling and whispering and so forth, because nobody even

(04:20):
knew I could sing. And it was amazing how popular
I became in school after that. And yeah, I can
just picture this. It's like the scene in the biopic
about Elvis, like where he starts to become the King.
It all begins at this moment. But the scene that
I would have always assumed that would have been in
a biopic is actually a myth. You know, everyone knows this,
this story of Elvis going to Sam Phillips's Son Records

(04:40):
in in August and ninety three too. You know, the
myth is that he went to cut two songs as
a birthday present for his mom, which that was sort
of the story that was put around, which is, you know,
very much in the Elvis image would be in this
like Sweet Mama's Boy, But in fact he showed up
just you know, because he was an ambitious guy. I mean,
the author Peter Grolnick, who the you know, definitive Elvis

(05:02):
memoir Last Train in Memphis. Uh And and there's a
part two called Careless Love he talks about there was
a much cheaper recording machine down the road at like
a general store. So if Elvis just wanted to make
a song, you know, record for his mother for a birthday,
he could have done it much cheaper and easier down
the street. So he definitely had his sights on being
discovered when he showed up to two Sun Records and
the receptionists trying to get a gauge on what kind

(05:24):
of musician he was and asked him who he sounded like,
and I love his reply. He said, I don't sound
like nobody, which is a hell of an intro, and
you know, very true. Sam Phillips wasn't in that day
the guy who ran the company. But the receptionist like
what she heard and left the note for Phillips saying
to hold onto this guy. So for a few months,
Phillips wasn't really sure what to do with Elvis. There

(05:44):
are a few failed auditions that he went on with
other groups. He was working as a trucker for a time,
and some musicians the audition for basically told him to
stick to his tay job. They really weren't into his
sound at all. Sam offered him a few songs to sing.
It didn't really click with his vocal style until Elvis
and the sort of ad hawk band that Philips put
together just started jamming and screwing around in between takes,

(06:07):
and they started messing around on a song called bats
all Right, Mama, and Sam Phillips knew a good thing
when he heard it, and that became Elvis's first hit
and the ad Hawk band that that Sam put Together
was with Bill Black and Scotty Moore, which became you know,
the iconic Elvis backing band. So Elvis is on his
way right now to fame and fortune and we all
know the story after that. Jerry Lee Lewis, he's not

(06:28):
yet famous at this point, but he's basically moving like
on a parallel track to Elvis now. Jerry Lee Lewis,
he was born in Faraday, Louisiana, in ninety five, the
same year as Elvis. Elvis was born in January of
that year. Jerry Lee was born in September, so but
like nine months or so separates them at that time,
so very close in age. Like Elvis, Jerley was born
into poverty. He was raised in the Christian faith, and

(06:51):
he was drawn to music at an early age. Actually
his parents mortgaged their house to buy Jerry Lee a piano.
And like Elvis, Jerry Lee grew up singing gospel music.
And while they had a similar Christian background, I feel
like their take on Christianity was much different. Like if
you listened to like the gospel records that Elvis made,
they're very much like sort of talking about the afterlife

(07:11):
in this very sort of like peaceful and tranquil kind
of way. It's looking at like the Holy Spirit as
being like a way to sort of save you and
to deliver you from darkness, whereas like Jerry Lee definitely
was like of the fire and brimstone variety of Christianity,
like where he was very focused on sin and hell
and the devil and where you know, desire is intense,

(07:34):
and like the punishment for desire is intense. And you
can see how these contrasting views of spirituality we're gonna
like define these guys as they move forward. You know,
Jerry would actually like talk later in life about how
he wanted to be a preacher at one point. And
his cousin, of course is Jimmy Swagger, which I don't
know if people still remember Jimmy Swagger, but like in
the nineteen eighties, he was a very famous televangelist and

(07:56):
he actually ended up getting busted in the red light
district in New Orleans for messing around with ten dollar prostitutes.
Jimmy Swagger and Jerry Lee, I think they both dealt
with the devil, shall we say, Jordan's yeah, that's a
that's a good way to put it. So Anyway, Jerry Lee,
you know, he's getting his first exposure as a performer,
playing the piano in church. But by the time, you know,

(08:17):
he's around fifteen or so, he's starting to get into
trouble because he's playing like rock and roll versions essentially
of hymns. And this is also around the time that
he earned his nickname The Killer, which is like one
of the coolest nicknames I think in rock and roll,
Like King of rock and Roll, that's a pretty cool nickname.
But like the Killer to me is like untouchable, and
it's somewhat ironic given his you know, eventual life because again,

(08:40):
like he was at one point accused of like killing
one of his wives. But he insists that, like he
was called the Killer not because he was murdering people,
but because he was such a good musician. Like there's
a quote in the just Fantastic Nicktasha's Jerry Lee Lewis
biography hell Fire, where Jerry Lee actually says that he
hates that nickname, but he said has been stuck with
it ever since he was a kid. And he said,

(09:02):
I don't think they mean to kill it like I
kill people. I think they mean it musically speaking, and uh,
that's my Jerry Lewis impression. I kind of made him
sound more Cajun probably than he actually is. But anyway,
you get the point. It was pretty good, pretty good.
I mean, yeah, it's it's really fascinating, like he said,
like how he really leaned into this sort of darker
side and it comes through in his music. Elvis and

(09:23):
Jerry that they had similar musical influences growing up in
their teenage years, and in nineteen fifty four, when Elvis's
was just career was just starting to take off with Sun,
Jerry Lee was playing nightly you know, honky tonks in
on the banks of the Mississippi, and uh, as he
would say years later, he kept hearing the name Sam
Phillips and Sun Records and particularly his Alvis career continued

(09:44):
to rise through fifty five and fifty six, and in
fifty six, when Elvis left Sun Records for a major
label deal at at our ci A, Jerry Lee Lewis thinking,
you know, being the enterprising, uh piano punisher that we know, thought,
you know what, Sam Phillips might be looking for a replacement.
So he his dad drive from Louisiana to Memphis and
go straight to Sun Records, and his associates more or

(10:06):
less tell Jerry Lee to kind of lay off the
rock and roll. I said, you know, Elvis has got
that tied up. Why don't you do something else? So,
you know, you tell that to Jerry Lee right away.
You know, it's like waving a red flag in front
of a bull. Elvis is now the man to beat,
and so he says, you know what, I don't think
so I think I can beat this guy. Um, And
he's talking to the receptionist at the Sun Records studio saying,

(10:27):
you know what, we we got all the rock and
roll we need, you need a new sound. He said, no,
I'm a hit. They all say that, son, Well, I'm
not all. I'm different, which again, this guy has got
confidence to spare. So for a few months, Jerry Lee
was a little more than just like a session man
for Sam Phillips, and he played I didn't realize that
he played on the Carl Perkins song Matchbox and songs
by Billy Lee Riley. But this all leads to his

(10:50):
first meeting with Elvis, which has been memorialized as the
famous Million Dollar Quartet session. Yeah, and you know it's
interesting looking back on this because we have all seen
that photo. It's Elvis, it's j. D. Lewis, and it's
Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash was there, but like was
he in the photograph? I don't remember. I don't think
he was in the photograph, or if he was, he
was like photoshop Dan, but I don't think he was

(11:11):
in that picture. So, like Jerry Lee Lewis really like
was not famous at this point, you know, like those
other guys were already established stars. But Jerry Lee, like
you said, he was the session musician, and he had,
you know, a lot of confidence, but he hadn't really
had like his big hits yet. So like just being
in the company of these guys and being photographed with them,
I mean that, you know, is a great way to

(11:31):
elevate yourself, you know, to put yourself in the company
these guys. I mean, you look at that photo down
it's like the fifties version of like the Traveling Willbury's.
Essentially this is an incredible thing, and they actually ended
up like recording this session, Like Elvis sett at the
piano and he was playing you know, some of his
favorite gospel songs like Piece in the Valley and also
plays like a show tune called he Belonged to My Heart.
You know. Again, Like, I don't think anything like incredibly

(11:53):
musically momentous came out of this session, but just the
fact that these guys were all in the same room
together and again captured a moment really before Jerry Lee
Lewis was a star. It really was just like history
in the making. And I think it elevated Jerry le
Lewis in a way that would like kind of put
him on his way shortly when he started having like
his big hits. So, as you were saying, Elvis was
actually on piano for most of this session, and then

(12:15):
as soon as he steps up for a minute, Jerry
immediately slides in and starts bashing out versions of like
when the Saints go Marching in and other songs, and
Elvis is impressed and he's like, well, wrong, man's been
sitting here at this piano and Jerry Lee is much
less humble. That was my slight Elvis impression. Jerry Lee
was like, I dig it. I appreciate that, Thank you,
thank you, And Jerry le He's like, yeah, man, I've

(12:36):
been waiting to tell you all along. Scoot over. He
tells Elvis to scoot over on the pianos stool. It's
safe to say that Elvis got a kick out of
this guy. I mean, at this point, he's, you know,
one of the biggest stars in the country and I
have this kind of you know, rascally guy. Tell him
scoot over on the piano stool. He likes this, He's
got spunk. So Elvis extends his hand and you know,

(12:56):
they kind of have a proper introduction, and Elvis invites
him to head over to it to his house. And
Sam Phillips had called the newspaper reporter that day. He's
very good at, you know, knowing a publicity moment when
he sees one. And ELVISO was a reporter about Jerry
Lee's as that boy can go. I think he's a
great future ahead of him. He has a different style
and the way he plays piano just gets inside me.

(13:16):
So this coast sign from Elvis right off the bat,
it's definitely a huge boon to Jerry Lee's career. So
Jerry Lee ends up becoming a star in seven with
the release of a whole lot of shaping going on,
ends up being a huge hit. It spends twenty nine
weeks on the Pop chart, peaking at number three. It
also tops the country in Western and R and B charts,
and it really puts Jerry Lee on his way. And

(13:37):
you can see, like if you look at his early
career that he's basically following like the Elvis Presley template
for success. Like he's on Elvis's label of course, Sun Records.
He used Elvis's former manager as his booking agent, who
like booked Jerry Lee into like a lot of the
same venues in the South that Elvis played when he
was building up his career, and you know, you listen
a whole lot of shaking going on, and it's definitely
in the same style that Elvis was doing at that time.

(14:00):
Again that mix of like hillbilly and R and B music,
although again there's I think a certain edge to Jerry
Lee that like Elvis never really had. But it's interesting
because like Elvis of course was the first to the door,
so like he was always going to be the most controversial,
and because Elvis was the trailblazer in a way, it
kind of made it easier for Jerry Lee Lewis like
to follow in his wake. Like there's there's that example

(14:22):
of Jerry Lee Lewis playing the Steve Allen Show uh
in July of nineteen seven, and this was a year
after Elvis did that show, and of course that was
an infamous performance, like where Steve Allen like made fun
of Elvis for the song hound Dog, and I think
like he made him sing that song to an actual dog.
Just the idea of like, you know, rock and roll

(14:42):
is this fat and like, we're gonna make fun of
this guy, make, you know, try to make him look
like a fool on television. Well, Jerry le Lewis goes
on and he doesn't get the same treatment. He doesn't
have to sing to a dog, which is great for
Jerry Lee Lewis. And we've seen other examples of this
in this series where you have again the Trailblazer and
then you have the person kind of follows in their
wake that benefits from, you know, not having to do

(15:04):
with like a lot of the same problems that the
trail boyz er had to deal with. And Jerry Lee
becomes sons biggest seller and Sam Phillips dotes on him
accordingly to the exclusion of the rest of the artists,
and he starts getting resented by the rest of the
sun Stable. But you know it's a good reason. Great
Balls of Fire goes the number two on the Billboard
Single Charts. In night another appearance on Steve Allen on

(15:25):
American Bandstand, Yeah, Breathless, which was another top ten record,
And this was written by Otis Blackwell, who had written
two of Elvis's biggest hits, Don't Be Cruel and All
Shook Up May seventeen ninety eight, is declared Jerry Lee
Lewis day and Elvis had a similar honor a short
time before. I mean, you could definitely see that, you know,
he's following in Elvis's footsteps, absolutely, And you know, I

(15:46):
was just thinking about like other examples of this dynamic
that we've talked about on this show, Like you could
say that, like Elvis was like the Beatles and Jerry
Lee was like the Rolling Stones. Elvis was Nirvana, and
Jerry Lee Lewis was Pearl Jam. You know, Elvis was
Whitney hughes Din, Jerry Lewis was Mariah Carey, Elvis was
the Backstreet Boys, Jerry Lee Lewis was in Sync. You know,
we could do this all day long, just drawing parallels

(16:08):
here and I think one thing that we've seen in
this dynamic in the past is that like the person
who goes second is often like the bad boy alternative
to like again the trailblazer who went first. You know,
like the one who comes second tends to be edgier
and bolder, and they also like tend to talk more
smack in the press about the trailblazer, you know, in

(16:29):
this situation, you know, like if Elvis was bothered that
this guy, Jerry Lee Lewis was kind of like, you
know in a way kind of like sucking up some
of his energy, Like he didn't show it in the press,
like he was always like pretty magnanimous. Like around the
time that like Elvis put out Teddy Bear and that
song was someone overshadowed by the success of whole lot
of shaking going on. Someone asked Elvis about Jerry Lee
Lewis and and Alvis said, you know, there's plenty of

(16:50):
room for all of us. And you know, we've talked
about this before that like even before Jerry Lee was big,
he would you know, say nice things about Jerry Lee
and the press and just talking about how talented he was.
And you have to pay attention to this guy because
he's a great musician. Jerry Lee, on the other hand,
was not magnanimous at all about Elvis. You know, he
would never miss an opportunity basically to say that he
was the actual king of rock and roll and that

(17:11):
he was way more talented than Elvis ever was. Now
what's crazy to me is that, like, you actually interviewed
Jerry Lee Lewis, didn't you. I did, And you know,
I gotta say I was. This was a few years ago.
I was terrified because I had heard all these stories
about how he would start interviews by just like throwing
a pistol down on the table, like that was how
he would like, Oh, that was his opening opening gambit.

(17:33):
But like interviewing, like it's like interviewing like a like
a serial killer or something like I'd be terrified of
Jerry Lee Lewis. Yeah, I felt like Jodie Foster going
to interview Hannibal Lecter, like kind of being led in.
It was. It was very Yeah, it was. It was
pretty freaky, but I mean it was awesome. It was.
It was, although I will say it was one of
those interviews that I kind of wish I had, like
a real live like subtitles going because he's got that
like Cajun grawl that is just sort of like like

(17:56):
hardened into this, like gravelly. It was kind of hard
to understand my point, but he was, you know, he
was something. And yeah, even what would it have been,
it would have been sixty years later he was still
talking about Elvis. He said, Elvis was not rock and roll.
He was rockabilly. And that's a lot different from rock
and roll. Oh baby, a lot of shaking going on. Now,
that's rock and roll. Elvis won the Jackson and a

(18:18):
few of those people they were rockabilly, but I was
rock and roll, and you just can't beat rock and roll.
And he he spoke about this again and again he
hates the term rockabilly, considers it something that was sort
of imposed on these country boys by by the outside world.
But yeah, but the whole time when he was talking
to me, it would just be peppered with these little
digs at Elvis. He was saying like, oh, yeah, Elvis

(18:39):
always took my advice. Little did he know I wasn't
always given him great advice. And he just kind of
laughed conspiratorially. Yeah, it was seeing their relationship even though
it was a long gun still seems to sort of
continue to this day in his eyes. And uh, yeah
it was. It was funny and really interesting just to
sort of see that dynamic play in front of me. Now,
it didn't gerually tell you about the time that and

(19:00):
Elvis went dreg racing. Yeah, he told me this great
story about how they both had the same car, which
again I think is very telling. I have no doubt
in my mind that Elvis bought something and then Jerry
Lee went out and bought the same thing. But anyway
to Cadillac Eldorados. They saw each other coming and Elvis
apparently pulled into his lane so that they were heading
on a collision course. And they were playing a game
at Chicken. So Elvis Jerry Lewis are playing a game

(19:22):
at Chicken in Memphis in two Cadillac Eldorados. According to him,
Elvis broke first, uh, and then he jumped out of
the car. Jerry Lee jumped out of his and Elvis
started screaming at him, I'm gonna sue you, and Jerry
Lee said, suit me, sue me for what he said,
mean woman blues. I guess um Elvis had sung the
song Mean Woman Blues in some one of the movies

(19:42):
he did around that it might have been King Creole.
I forget which which movie was, and then Jerry Lee
covered it later and Jerry Ley said, no, no, man,
I had no idea even even saying that song. I
just ain't by by the way I rewrote it. I
did it all. I made it my own. What are
you talking about? So? Um, you know, I think that
Jerry Lee, that's the thing about on second you can
always be the underdog. And every time that you like

(20:03):
triumph over, you know, the main guy, the goliath, you
you look even cooler. And still sixty years later, I
think Jerry Lee sees himself as being the uh, the
the underdog, and it shows just how much he loved
being in Elvis's metaphorical rear view mirror and um in
later years, it's it sort of makes the other person
sound like this resentful lunatic when telling the story, but uh, yeah,

(20:26):
it was. It was definitely. It was a fascinating way
to spend an afternoon with Jerry Lee talking about playing
a game and chicken with Elvis. So getting back to
the fifties, you know, in nineteen fifty seven, that's a
big year for jerry Lee Lewis. That's a breakout year
where he starts to become a big rock star getting
into Night. It looks at first like it's gonna be
an even better year for him, in part because this

(20:47):
is the year that Elvis got drafted into the army.
So Jerry Lee basically like has the Southern bad boy
lane all to himself now. So when times get good
for jerry Lee Lewis, Jerry Lee does what he always
does and he self destructs in spectacular fashion. And it
happens on when Jerry Lee arrives at Heathrow Airport in

(21:09):
London to begin a concert to her Now, Jerry Lee
happens to be accompanied by a young girl, and reporters
ask like who is this? Is this perhaps your younger sister,
or like the friend of a younger sister or something,
and Jerry Lee says, no, this is my wife. And
Jerry Lee says that she's fifteen years old, which is
pretty gross by itself, but it turns out that she's

(21:31):
actually thirteen years old and also Jerry Lee's second cousin.
Now this would be like a terrible scandal just on
its own. I think. But it also turns out that
Jerry Lee was still married when he married his cousin,
So it turns out that I guess he was like
an accidental big amist for like a period of time,
like when he's married to multiple women. What blows me

(21:53):
away about this is that, like Jerry Lee didn't seem
to know that like people would react badly to this.
You know, he didn't try to hide it at all,
That's what I mean. Like he was openly talking about
this girl. He like paraded her in front of cameras.
You know, it'd be like if R. Kelly was like
openly a sleeves bag like in the media, Like if

(22:15):
he wasn't trying to conceal that he was with young
girls all the time. And it just leads me to
believe that like, yeah, Jerry Lee just didn't know that
this was wrong, you know, Like he thought, well, there's
nothing wrong with me marrying my cousin, there's nothing wrong
with me being with a thirteen year old girl. However, uh,
the rest of the world did not agree, and Jerry
Lee faced a terrible backlash. Almost immediately, he was blacklisted

(22:36):
from the radio. Dick Clark banned him from American Bandstand
he made He went from making ten thousand dollars a
night to two fifty dollars a night, you know, basically,
like he was canceled big time again, Like this would
have been a time like where Elvis he could have
taken a shot at Jerry Lee here very easily. Jerry
Lee was down for the count. But like when someone

(22:58):
asked him about this controversy, see, you know again, like
when he was in the army, he was stationed in
Germany at the time, Elvis said, he's a great artist.
I'd rather not talk about his marriage except that if
he really loves her, I guess it's all right. Like
I guess we should admire Elvis's restraint here, but like
maybe he actually should have been a little more judgmental.
But I think we're gonna find out shortly why Elvis

(23:21):
maybe didn't judge Jerry Lee too harshly for marrying an
underage girl, right exactly. I mean, Elvis didn't have the
same kind of spectacular fall from grace, but he had
his own slide after his discharge from the army in
the early sixties. And this was you know, the famous
sort of rock and roll bleak period. It was after
the you know, the famous crash that killed Buddy Holly
and the Big Bopper and Richie Vallens and uh, Jay

(23:43):
Lee Lewis is canceled, and Chuck Berry had some legal issues,
and I think Little Richard had disavowed rock and roll
and went to the church. At this point, it was
a bleak time, filled with you know, Fabian and Frankie
Avalon and those kind of teen idol figures, and Uh, Elvis,
his songs that he's putting out are more or less
like sound track fodder for these really rather horrible movies

(24:03):
that he's making. Songs like fun and Alcapolco and Kissing Cousins.
It was just a little close to home. Uh do
the clams spin out? Um? In later years. I love
how Jerry Lee Lewis lays the sort of dearth of
rock and roll in this period squarely at the feet
of Elvis, because he would say in later years, Elvis
let the Bobbies take it, Bobby Vitten, Bobby Darren, all

(24:24):
the Bobbies, and they turned it into this like sugary,
saccharine mess. I always think that was funny. Cherry Lee
blamed him purely for that. Um, but yeah, it concided
coincided in this general late fifties backlash against rock and
roll and then the period before the early sixties British invasion.
But like what you were saying earlier, there was a
certain sense of Elvis not wanting to kick Jerry Lee

(24:45):
because there was the sense of, almost by the grace
of God, go I from Elvis because when he was
in Germany he met a teenager named Priscilla who was
I believe fourteen at the time, and uh, and they
started seeing each other casually at first, I should say. Yeah,
Elvis was twenty four when he met Priscilla. And there

(25:05):
was a real effort by like Elvis's wranglers, like including
like Colonel Tom Parker and like the guys in the
Memphis Mafia, you know Memphis Mafia of course, being like
that circle of friends that always surrounded Elvis and and
took care of everything for him. You know, they looked
at Jerry Lewis and they're like, oh my god, Elvis's
dating fourteen year old girl. We can't let this get out.

(25:25):
So there was a lot of effort made to like
basically like make this as like innocent as it could
be you know, basically pursuing you know, a fourteen year
old girl when you are twenty four year old man.
So like I guess the early dates, like we're chaperone,
and like when she moved to Memphis, like she lived
in a separate house from Elvis, she actually lived with
Elvis's mom and dad, and then she was going to

(25:46):
like a Catholic girls school at the time. Um and
Elvis and Priscilla actually didn't get married until nineteen seven,
when she was twenty one, So they did it above board,
I guess. And you know, it is funny to me
because you know, we've talked about how like Elvis was
first and Jerry Lee was second, and like early on
jerry Lee kind of followed the path that Elvis took
to success. But I feel like in this respect, like

(26:08):
jerry Lee was the trailblazer and Elvis followed him, and
like I was basically like used Jerry Lee as an
example of what not to do. It's like, well, if
I'm going to date underage girl, I have to keep
it secret at least from the media. And it worked.
I mean, he was able to get away with it.
I think it's funny that, like Jerry Lee like knew
about this the entire time, and he referred to Priscilla
as a live in litleita. So I just wonder like

(26:32):
he must have been like pretty irritated that, like Elvis
got away with this thing that like ruined his career.
And I don't know how much of this was Colonel Tom,
but Elvious seemed a lot more image conscious and good
at manipulating that than Jerry Lee Lee did. I think
Jerry Lee always took the path of like this is me,
take it or leave it, this is who I am.
But Elvis I think was more concerned with with how
things presented, and obviously that you know, served very well.

(26:55):
I mean you think of the famous like comeback concert
after he was released from the Army, when he's singing
with Frank Sinatra, Like he knew how to move over
into that lane and become the all around entertainer and
graduate from being young, wild rock and roll to something
that you could make a bunch of movies. I mean,
you can't imagine Jerry Lee making you know, King Creole
or something like that, and like or clam Bake Jerry

(27:18):
laund or Viva Las Vegas, like dancing with the and Margaret.
But what's amazing to me though about Jerry Lee is that, like,
you know, he has this terrible scandal that like for
all intens of purposes, like should have just like blacklisted
him forever. But he actually did have a comeback in
the nineteen sixties. Yeah, at the end of the sixties
he became more of a country artist. He made a

(27:39):
lot of in roads in Nashville on the label Smash
and Uh in nineteen six and he scored some huge
hits like Another Place, Another Time, What made Milwaukee famous,
made a loser out of me, She still comes around
the left of me. And to Make Love Sweeter for
You was his first number one in the country charts
since Great Balls of Fire a decade earlier. Yeah, I
just want to do a quick shout out to to
like this class a live album that Jerry Lee put

(28:01):
out in nineteen sixty four called Live at the Star Club.
I don't know if you've heard this. It's like an
incredible record is recorded in Hamburg, Germany with this band
called the Nashville Teens, and it's like one of the
most like energetic and like chaotic live records like I've
ever heard, like you feel like you're in the room
when Cherry Lee is playing, and whenever I put it on,
I just pictured like really drunk Germans getting into fist

(28:24):
fights in the audience. Well, like Jerry Lee is just
bashing out like mean women blues and like what I'd say,
and all these great songs, And it really is like
a fitting contrast, like with Elvis for most of the sixties,
because like Elvis wasn't touring at all at that time,
he was just making movies, and like Jerry Lee, you know, meanwhile,
I was like out on the road, like rocking his
ass off, and like when you listen to Live at

(28:45):
the Star Club, it sounds like he's playing for his
life because like in a way he is. You know,
it's like he had to, you know, kind of play
his heart out or else, you know, he would have
just drifted into oblivion. We're gonna take a quick break
to get a word from our sponsor before we get
to more rivals. So he finds his way back to

(29:11):
the top of the charts in November Night with to
Make Love Sweeter for You. Uh, this should be his
great moment. You know, he's back after years in the wilderness,
but This is when Elvis awoke the hip swiveling beast within.
It's been suggested that Elvis's famous NBC TV special in
Late Night was sort of prodded along by by Jerry

(29:31):
Lee Lewis. He saw Jerry Lee back on the top
of the charts, and and that was sort of what
made him think, Okay, you know what, I got us
screwing around in these crappy movies and actually get back
to doing what people love me for, which is rocking
out in It's crazy to think, but Elvis hadn't had
a top ten hit in five years at that point,
and this TV special was Initially I think it was
a lot smaller. I think it was supposed to be

(29:52):
in a dendem to, like another movie. It was like
part of a movie deal, and it was just a
small thing. But then it became this huge, big budget extravaganza,
which is, you know, one of the most beloved Elvis
pieces of film ever. I mean, just when he opens
and stares down the camera singing trouble and then segueing
into guitar Man. I mean, it's it's what he does best.

(30:13):
I think it's it's maybe my favorite. Yeah, I think
It's my favorite moment of Elvis on film, just that
opening shot when he's just staring down the camera lens
and you're right, I mean it's crazy. I think that
he hadn't performed live in more than seven years, and
with that in mind, it's really nuts. How good he sounded.
I mean both physically and vocally. He looks perfect. He's
in this like great leather get up. That kind of

(30:35):
is a cool way to harken back to how he was,
you know in the fifties. Is twentysomething guy who drove
kids wild on ed Sullivan. But he just ruled the
stage with the supreme confidence. It is great. It is
the moment that the King returned for his crown. It
was the highest rated TV special of the year. It
provided a huge shot in the arm to Elvis's music career,
and as a direct resolve of the production, he decided

(30:58):
to start refocusing on music and the memph sound that
he originally loved, and within weeks he recorded Suspicious Minds,
which reached number one, that year's first number one. And
I think nearly ten years, you know, and I have
to say that the Elvis of like this period, like
in the late sixties and even into the early seventies
is like my favorite Elvis period. You know, like he
looked and he sounded great, but he had like a

(31:18):
more mature outlook that showed that he could grow out
of his teenatal image. And he mentioned suspicious minds. That's
a great song. You have sounds like in the ghetto.
You have that record Elvis Country, which is great, just
putting out tons of like wonderful music. Again, I feel
like Jerry Lee signifies the wildness of rock and roll
better than Elvis. But Elvis ultimately, to me, is like
the greater singer and like the overall better artist. To

(31:39):
get back to my earlier point, I think Elvis's greatest
talent ultimately was being able to bring together all these
different kinds of music in a way that really hadn't
been done before, and he made it like makes sense,
you know, like you listened to the records that he made,
you know, after that Comeback Special in the late sixties
and early seventies, and like he's recording songs by James
Taylor and the b GS. He's making estan rock records.

(32:01):
He's getting into that like Tony Joe White style swamp
rock you know, he's doing easy listening ballads. There's like
R and B. He's like all over the map, and
it works because it's Elvis, and you feel like he's
just able to synthesize all these things into one sort
of really attractive package. I feel like the operatic background
of Elvis isn't appreciated enough. I mean, I think of
those clips of like really I think towards the end

(32:23):
of his life, probably a few months before he died,
those shows where he's singing, He's at the piano, singing
unchained melody and he hits that high note and it's
just I mean, he sounds like Caruso or something. I mean,
it is this you're right, and you hear the opera
influence through that and then doing a version of the him.
How great thou art? I think in the same era
of shows, it's just unbelievable to hear that voice. I mean,

(32:46):
that's something that you know, you think of the hip swiveling,
you think of the rock and roll stuff, but just
the power of that is really something special, and he
uses it really well in this era. I agree. It's
one of my favorite Elvis eras this is around the
time when He's doing a series of shows at the
International Hotel in Las Vegas, which is really some of

(33:07):
his best shows, I think, and in a move that
was either passive aggressive or a genuine act of friendly
you know, Sun Records Brotherhood that can't tell which. Presley
tracked Jerry Lee Lewis down to some hotel in Columbus,
Ohio and invited him to see the Vegas show at
the International, which Jerry Lee accepted. So Jerry Lee goes
to seeing Elvis's show at the International Hotel and Elvis

(33:30):
is a really great thing. He introduces him to the crowd.
He has, you know, Jerry Lee stand up in the
middle and uh, and the crowd gives him a big
standing ovation, which is, you know, I think, very sweet.
The next year, Jerry Lee will be playing the International
with his own band, but he's playing the lounge while
Elvis is playing the main room. You could tell what
this gall Jerry Lee. Years later, he's talking to his

(33:50):
biographer Rick Bragg, and Uh, he was saying, Yeah, I
was playing the lounge, but I mean the lounge was big.
I mean the main room would see like three thousand
p bowl, but the room I was in was like
so I was hitting Elvis tip for tat, So you
can tell even that this point years later, he was
annoyed by that. Yeah, it was a big lounge. I
like that as like his defense. It was a large lounge.

(34:13):
Ye it was, you know, it was almost the lounge
was almost as large as the big room. Yeah, I'm
sure that was true. And of course Jerry Lee had
to take shots at Elvis's show at the time. He said,
like he had this big band with horns and violin
stuff like that, and I don't think it ever came
off that good. He was trying to prove something that
didn't really need proven. And this has continued in Natasha's
book hell Fire, where he actually writes about I guess

(34:36):
how there was this confrontation supposedly between Jerry Lee and
Elvis at this time, like where Jerry Lee confronted Elvis
about how he felt like he wasn't really staying true
to his rock and roll roots. Like in the book
it says, you don't know what you're doing, You're just
Colonel Parker's puppet. And then Elvis shoots back, and this
is like one of the few times like when you
feel like Elvis actually like fights back against Jerry Lee.
He says, well, if I'm so dumb and you're so smart,

(34:59):
how is it that I'm playing the main room and
you're playing the lounge, which the very big lounge. Yeah,
Elvis didn't know how big this lounge was, but he's
taking a shot at Jerry for doing that. And you know,
I guess like Jerry Lee also had an issue with
Colonel Tom Parker, like in the anecdote, like accuses Elvis
of being Colonel Tom Parker's puppet. Apparently there was like
another incident like where Jerry Lee was like hanging out

(35:20):
in Elvis's dressing room and like Colonel Tom Parker like
kicked Jerry Lee out, and like Jerry Lee was like,
I wouldn't let no loudmouth old man tell me who
I can have a drink with. So yeah, again, I
feel like this is like an instance again like where
I think Elvis was genuinely trying to be nice to
Jerry Lee Lewis and and Jerry Lee just couldn't really
appreciate it. Yeah, I mean there was some other small

(35:41):
petty incidents between them in the seventies, was mostly Jerry
Lee as the guilty party. He would talk about him
on the press about betraying rock and roll in their
early sixties. He had a great quote, there's very few
great talents left. You got Elvis Pressley, Chuck Berry, Charlie Rich,
bb King. I'm not saying I'm one of them. I'm
saying I'm the main on, which is great. And he

(36:03):
records a cover of Billy Swan's I Can Help, and
he's launching into his piano solo, and he goes on
the mic and says, think about it, Elvis right in
the piano break. I mean, he loves taunting Elvis, and
Elvis meanwhile, I guess the only way that he kind
of played along was I guess, um, Jerry Lee got
his own lear Jet, and so I was responded by
getting a bow and seven oh seven jet, which I'm

(36:25):
fairly certain and significantly larger than a lear Jet. So
they moved on from competing over El Dorado's and now
they're moving on to to having a pissing match with jets,
which is uh, which is great. I think you can
like see the plane at Graceland. I think it's across
the street, and like the TCB taking care of business
is like written on like the back fin of the plane.

(36:45):
It looks very badass and it yeah, definitely larger than
a lear Jet. And this goes down in the ninety six,
the nation's bicentennial year, and this was a tough one
for Jerry Lee. He was arrested for accidentally shooting his drummer,
which is quite a sidebar you there. Yeah, it was
an accident. Shortan we have to emphasize that it was
an accident for legal reason, makes it okay. Yeah, we

(37:06):
were emphasized that it was an accident. Uh. And this
was also the year that Jerry Lee took Elvis up
on his offer to visit grace Land and he got
arrested for it. And now this is probably the single
most mythical moment between these two. It went down in
the early morning hours of November twenty three, ninety six.
It was actually his second attempt to enter grace Land
that week, the same time the previous evening, he rolled

(37:29):
up in his Rolls Royce, only to be told by
the gate guard that Elvis was asleep. So Jerry Lee
very politely thanked the guy and drove off, but later
crashed his Rolls Royce and was cited for driving not
only under the influence, but without a license. And then
so the next day he returns and there are really
two versions of what happened next you Elvis his version
and Jerry Lee's version. Yeah, So the Elvis version is

(37:51):
that Jerry Lee rolls up to Grace Land at like
three in the morning, and uh, this time, he's driving
a new Lincoln Continent. I'm not supposed to be driving.
Did he like buy the car that earlier that day?
I mean, I don't know if he already had this
car or if he bought a new car after crashing
the Rolls Royce. But anyway, he has a Lincoln Continental

(38:11):
and he's very drunk at the time, and he's very angry,
and he happens to be armed with a thirty eight
derringer and he's waving it around basically, and he's screaming
and he's saying that he like, I want to see Elvis. Now.
The Memphis Mafia guys, you know, they're lounging about. They're
probably playing poker or something, eating corn chips, you know,
whatever it is that the Memphis Mafia guys do. They

(38:33):
see this and they're like, we can't let this maniac
near Elvis, so they decided to call the cops, and uh,
during all the commotion, Elvis actually wakes up and he
calls down and he says, what does that goddamn guy want?
All I want to do is sleep. I don't want
to talk to that crazy son of a bitch. Elvis
tells his guard to quote lock his butt up and

(38:53):
throw away the goddamn key, and then he basically like
gets a bowl of popcorn and starts watching the drama
unfold on his close circuit TV. Now, Jerry Lee, this
is the second time he's been turned away, so he's
like really angry that he's been rebuked. So he gets
behind the wheel of his car again. He's drunk as hell,
he's armed with a thirty eight, and he starts ramming

(39:14):
the gate with his brand new Lincoln Continental. And apparently, like,
you know, I don't know what he was gonna do
if he got inside Graceland. You know again, like I
said this earlier that he like literally tried to kill Elvis.
I don't know if he was actually gonna shoot Elvis,
but like he was obviously not in the right mind
at this time, but he didn't end up hurting Elvis.
He only hurt himself because he tried to throw an

(39:38):
empty champagne bottle through his car window. Unfortunately, the car
window I think was closed, so he broke the window
with this empty champagne bottle and he got like a
bunch of glass in his face and you know, cuts
and all that stuff. So that is the Elvis version
of this story. Now, Jerry Lee like he was basically saying, like,
hey man, I was just playing around, right, I mean,

(39:58):
like he was trying to down play the seriousness of
this incident. Yeah, he basically was saying that he was.
He was coming from a club and you know what,
the club owner had something to do with local law
enforcement and gifted him this gun, and it was it
was a good, nice gun. He was. He appreciated having it,
and he put it on the dashboard of his car
so that if he got pulled over something and they
found it on him, he wouldn't be arrested for carrying

(40:20):
a concealed weapon. It wasn't concealed. It was right on
top of the car. And so he pulled up, you know,
totally logical, Great, Jerry Lee Lewis logic right there. He
pulls up to Elvis's mansion, the grace Land talks to
the gate guy. The guy at the gate sees the
gun is what You're gonna kill Elvis, and Jerry Lee
just totally just to RaSE the guys, that joke is like, yeah,
that's right, I'm gonna kill kill Elvis. That's exactly what

(40:41):
I'm here to do. Uh. And according to Jerry Lee,
it was just a joke that got out of hand.
All he wanted to do was to see his friend.
And he would say go on record saying that he
was really hurt that Elvis, uh, you know, allowed him
to to be locked up. He was he was charged
with carrying a pistol and public drunkenness and um, it

(41:02):
really hurt his feelings. And uh, I believe that was
the last time they ever saw each other. And they
didn't see each other the last time they ever interacted. Yep.
I think Jerry Lee ended up getting cited for like
carrying a pistol in public drunkenness and released on a
twitter and fifty dollar bond. You have to love Memphis
like I love that. That's all that happened to Jerry Lee.
That's all that's all he had to pay it out

(41:22):
of jail. But yeah, you know, Jerry Lee and Elvis
they never saw each other again because, sadly, as we
all know, on August sixteenth, nine seventy seven, Elvis Presley
passed away at the age of forty two. Quick aside
about this. You know, Elvis uh and Jerry Lee Lewis
were both customers of the infamous doctor Nick, who like
was the doctor Like I think he eventually lost his

(41:43):
license because he was like over prescribing drugs to Elvis,
you know, and obviously contributed to his death. But I
think you like continued to hook Jerry Lee Lewis up
with drugs like after that happened. Like if you read
stories about Jerry Lee Lewis in the early eighties, he
was like literally like taking like a hypodermic needle and
like injecting drugs into his stomach because he had like
stomach issues at the time, and apparently that didn't really

(42:05):
help his stomach. It just made his stomach issues worse,
which you never would have predicted that that would happen
that you know, drunk asked Jerry Lee Lewis shoving needles
into his stomach would be a bad thing, But at
the time when Elvis died, someone asked Jerry Lewis what
he thought about it, and Jerry Leuie Lewis was, let's
say again like he didn't have great relations with the press.
You know, this goes back to the fifties. He's showing
off his underage bride to the press. You know, flash

(42:27):
forward now to the death of Elvis. You would think
that he would offer, you know, solemn words of tribute
or condolences to his family. No, Jerry Lee doesn't do that.
What he says, instaid is that I was glad that
Elvis died. Just another one out of the way. I mean, Elvis,
this Elvis. That all we hear about is Elvis. What
the ship did Elvis do except take dope? I couldn't

(42:49):
get hold of. Uh. Look, we've only got one left
to live. We don't have the promise of the next breath.
I know what I am. I'm a romp and stomp
and piano player and son of a bitch, A mean
son of a bitch, but a great son of a bitch,
a good person. I don't know about that. Jerry Lee
never heard nobody unless they got in my way. And uh,

(43:10):
I'm sure that he was like out of his mind
drunk when he gave this quote. At least I hope
he was like not in his right mind when he
gave it. But like he said something later that I
think is actually like pretty telling of like both his
own worldview and I think a fairly accurate summation of Elvis.
You know, he said, I got a mean streak in me.
Elvis did too, he hit his I didn't hide mind,

(43:31):
I gotta laid open sometimes. And you know, whatever you
want to say about Jerry Lee Lewis, I mean, I
think he is maybe like a legitimately evil guy, Like
in a lot of ways, he's not dishonest. You know,
he's upfront with his demons, and uh, you know that's true.
I think for better or worse, Yeah, I think that
Elvis got away with stuff because he played the good
southern mama's boy, and Jerry Lee was just always unapologetically

(43:54):
you know, as he named one of his albums, I
mean old man, And uh, you know I like that that.
Sam Phillips sort of judged how these two guys felt
about each other had a great quote where he said,
for two monumental people, you know you're gonna have a
little jealousy, which is really good if it doesn't go
beyond the bounds of reasonable taste. Elvis Presley, every time
he had the chance to listen to Jerry Lee, he did.
Every time Jerry had a chance to listen to Elvis,

(44:16):
he did. It wasn't just camaraderie, it was total respect
for each other as great musicians. Where do they rank
in the pantheon of music? Uh? Let Jerry Lee have
a line? Uh after me was Elvis and uh coming
from Jerry Lee. That's high praise all right hand. We'll
be right back with more rivals. We've not reached the

(44:43):
part of our episode where we give the pro side
of each part of the rivalry. Let's talk about Elvis
Presley first. This might be an insane argument to make,
but I kind of feel like at this point Elvis
is maybe like a little bit underrated. I think think
the worst thing to happen to his legacy was being
dubbed the King of rock and roll because it always
compels people to take him down a peg. I mean,

(45:05):
it's true, Elvis is just one part of a scene
in like that early fifties rock and roll world that
includes Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and of course
Mr Jerry Lee Lewis, and all those artists are kings
of rock and roll. What I would say about Elvis though,
is that I think his music was the broadest out
of all those icons, Like he drew on a wider
range of influences, and I think he was able to
synthesize just an incredible amount of music in a way

(45:27):
that hadn't really been done before. Yeah, I agree with
all those other people you mentioned. I almost think I
would listen to of the Chuck Berrys, Little Richards, Buddy Holly's,
Jerry Lee Lewis is. I think I would listen to
Elvis's last in that list, just because I find the
other so much more fiery and just compelling. But as
a figure, I am absolutely and completely captivated by Elvis.

(45:48):
I've getten to Graceland, I've watched many docks and books
about him, and I'm still it's the same way I
fell with the Beatles too. It's this spell, it's this
this phenomenon that I still ruggle to make sense of,
how this this whole industry around him, and the cultural
impact and just even just the economics of it all
was just all by this one guy. That was the

(46:11):
craziest part of going the Grace Land too, because you
go there and you know, it's like seeing the Mona
Lisa or something. It's a lots smaller than you you
built it up in your mind, and the human scale
of it is really fascinating. So just to think about
how one guy could have such an oversized impact like
that is just is so so so interesting to me.
But like I said, musical talent, I don't think this

(46:32):
is a really you know, groundbreaking argument. I think that
Jerry Lee out ranks him in that department. But vocally, yeah,
I think that his his musical style really ran the
gamut from you know, rock and roll growl that some
of the gospel stuff that he did in later years,
I think it was amazing. As his country records, I
definitely think he had a wider musical pal than Jerry Lee.

(46:52):
So if we go over to the Jerry Lee Lewis side,
you know, so much of our show is talking about
like crazy people in rock bands, but Jerry le Lewis
to me is like the original rock and roll maniac,
and I think he might be crazier than anyone else
in rock history. I mean, like the passage of time
hasn't really dulled the dangerous edge of his music or
his persona. Like I think again, if he did any

(47:14):
of the things that he did in the fifties now,
like he'd probably be canceled even quicker than he was
in the nineteen fifties. And uh, I still feel like today,
like there's no one that can hold a candle to him,
just as far as being an incredible character. Like you know,
we talked about Marilyn Manson in a recent episode, but
like so much of him is like constructed. There's nothing
constructed about Jerry Lee Lewis. If anything, there's probably lots

(47:35):
of terrible things that we don't know about him. He's
like a like a sinister onion, you know, like with
just layers of evil upon evil. But it gives him,
I think, an edge, uh. And but it gives him,
I think, an edge that just makes him totally unique
in rock history. And that's in addition to his music,
which I think today even now is still great and
it's still a loud and it's still rackus and like

(47:57):
if you like again edgy, dangerous rock and roll jerythe
Lewis is always going to be at the top of
that list. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean Jerry Lee was
a better pure musician than Elvis, and they both knew it.
Elvis once said that if he could play piano like
Jerry Lee, he would quit singing. I think musically, Jerry
contributed more to the genre than than Elvis did. I
think he's truer to the spirit of rock and roll.
I mean, the sex, the drugs, the guns, the insanity.

(48:19):
I mean, even though Elvis maybe the sort of rock
star archetype, I'm hard pressed to name someone who lived
the more rock and roll life than Jerry Lee Lewis.
So if you look at these guys together, I mean, look,
as we've talked about in this episode, they pushed and
they prodded each other like for for decades, you know.
And and in a way this is someone reductive, but
you could say that it was a battle between God
and Satan, you know, for the soul of rock and roll.

(48:41):
And uh they also you know, were and of course
when they both ended up dating teenagers, they were kind
enough to look the other way. So, you know, even
though they were battling, they were nice when it came
to their underage brides give the final word to Jerry
Lee again, Elvis was the greatest, but I'm the best. Okay, Well,
this is the part the episode that where we would
normally like why I guess I would normally say, like

(49:03):
a terrible pun and then we would say, like, we're
gonna be back next week with more beefs and feuds
and long swimming resentments. And actually we did record that
part of this episode when we originally like like did
this uh this thing, but like we found out after
we record this episode that like I Heart Radio is
not going to be picking up our option, so like
we are no longer on the network, which means like

(49:25):
for you, like you don't really care what network we're on,
but it means that, like I don't know where the
show goes from here at best at the moment, we
are going on hiatus. There have been discussions that we
might end up on another network, in which case we'll
be back soon and everything will proceed as normal. But uh,
it's also possible that this is like the last episode
of Rivals ever, which is like a surprise and a disappointment.

(49:48):
But I think the moral of the story here is
that you don't make fun of David geffin I think
the long arm of David Geffen has taken us out
Jordan's so, you know, I I'm I'm sorry to say it.
You know, hopefully we'll be back, but you know, if
we're not, it's been a pleasure doing this with you,
and uh, you know, I hope everyone enjoyed the show
while it lasted. I just got to say, man, I

(50:10):
knew I shouldn't have criticized the boys of Sound. That
really probably it. It is Don Henley and David geff
and they finally made up and uh they were like,
let's conspire to take out this medium popular music podcast
so that we can feel something again. Yeah, I think
that's what happened. Again. It's disappointing, but life goes on again.

(50:31):
We may be back, but we may not be back.
I don't know. This is like a cliffhanger that we're
leaving you on. So if we are back, I look
forward to talking to you guys again about these summering
resentments and beefs and feuds soon. If this is our
last episode, thank you for your support. You know, we
had an outpouring of very nice comments on Twitter when
when I said that we were being dropped by our

(50:53):
heart and I really appreciate that, and uh, I know
Jordan's I'm sure you appreciate it too, So thank you
all for listening, maybe for the last time, but you know,
maybe not we'll see you know. I mean sort of
sad that this is audio and not videos, so we
can't do any like montages to that Green Day song
or in My Life or something. But yeah, I mean
I feel like Captain von Trapp at the end of
the Sound of Music, you know, like Rival's listeners, like

(51:15):
maybe not be seeing you again for perhaps quite a
long time. But I just want to say thank you
to everyone who listened, tweeted at us, left nice reviews.
I mean, we read them, and I can't tell you
how much it means to us both. And you know,
you get into music at a certain age because it
makes you feel less alone, it makes you feel connected,
and just the chance to do that with all of
you through the show was just so extremely special. And
I also got to say, if you're a music fan

(51:36):
and you get a chance to talk to Stephen Hyden,
it's a joy. If you're a music journalist and you
get a chance to talk to Stephen Hyden. It's an
education and a privilege, you know. I mean for anyone listening,
I don't care how many books you've read. I don't
care how many documentaries you've seen. Hell, you could have
interviewed the artist themselves. Steven still knows more about them
just off the dome. I mean, his wealth of knowledge
and his fingertips is deep, vast and a inspiring. It

(51:58):
was my first time doing a pod cast and really
my first time on Mike since I had did a
radio show in college. And you know, writers tend to
be silent, shy types, and at least in my case,
and if you're doing something with Stephen Hyden, I don't
care what it is, he will make you better at it.
So I just want to thank him as well. That
is incredible and incredibly sweet. George. I feel like that
is not really true to the spirit of the show.

(52:18):
I feel like we should be ending this on like
a feud between you and I. So I'm just gonna
say that your episode outlines way too long, and I'm
I'm gonna be throwing a shoe at you the next
time I see you in person. So so look out
for the Jordan runtub versus Stephen Hyden feud. It's gonna
get ugly once this episode ends, so look forward to that.

(52:42):
So on that note, I think it's time to wrap up,
so thank you again for listening, maybe for the last time.
We'll find out soon. Take care. Thanks everyone, and Stephen
you hear from My Lawyer. Rivals is a production of
I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Shaan Tytone and

(53:03):
Noel Brown. Supervising producers are Taylor Chicogne and Tristan McNeil.
The producer is Joel hat Stat. I'm Jordan run Tug.
I'm Stephen Hyden. If you like what you heard, please
subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcast for
My heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.