The Killer is dead. Long Live the Killer...
Never has a man so embodied the endless tug of war between Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.
The last of the titanic trio. He outlasted Chuck Berry and Little Richard, perhaps his only true peers. He always insisted on closing any show he played, and one time when Berry insisted otherwise, Jerry Lee Lewis set his piano on fire at the end of his set and came offstage and said to Berry...."follow that, n----r.."
Or so the story goes. Another story, told by Lewis himself, has him getting his ass kicked by Berry for insisting he (Lewis) was the true king of rock and roll.
You do not invent one of the great American art forms without having a wee bit of an ego. They remain our Three Flawed Kings.