Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story

by Nick Tosches

Book Overview

The life of Jerry Lee Lewis is one of the most dramatic and tormented in rock 'n' roll history. Hellfire is a wild, riveting, and beautifully written biography that received universal acclaim on its original publication and remains one of the most remarkable biographies ever written.
Born in Louisiana to a family legacy of great courage and greater wildness, Jerry Lee was torn throughout his life between a demanding Pentecostal God and the Devil...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802135668
• ISBN13: 9780802135667
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A haunted, unsettling tale of a great artist

Out of the many biographries I've read, outside of Marilyn Monroe's life, this was one of the most unsettling stories I have yet to read. The book takes us back to the roots of the Lewis family, the depression era, and gives a highly personalized look into this man's life. I believe this to be an excellently written work, very stylized, enthrawling and informative. I feel that Jerry Lee was victimized by the press. His rival, Elvis, seemed to have gotten away with much as everyone turned a blind eye. After all, Elvis brought home a 14 year old girl from Germany and horded her away for a few years like a big fat surprise mushroom for 'some day.' How unsavory was that? I think much could have been done to protect Jerry from the sufferings he had to endure, including the IRS cleaning him out, and as Nick puts it, 'left him like a wolf in a burnt out woods.' Where were the accountants and the attorneys and what bar were they sitting in? It seemed the Lewis family had one tradgety after another, as Elmo Lewis was run over by a drunk driver at the age of nine (Jerry's older brother) and later the grievious event of losing his son Steve Allen to the swimming pool. The photo of his tombstone with the little lamb atop is a heartbreaking, chilling scene, and it emitts a lonely sadness that certainly will touch even the most coldest of readers. The story tells of all the struggles Jerry Lee had with trying do what was right, or what others 'thought' right, but in the end, he did do the right thing. He played his music. The struggles headed off the 'y' path of right and wrong toward his sheer persistance playing trashy clubs and cutting records until his big day came. The story leaves room at the end for many questions...what became of Myra after they divorced? What happened to Jerry Lee after the night we leave this wonderful yarn, as he glazes out the window of his empty house? I think there should be a follow-up novel, because the story is not over! This was a very interesting and entertaining read about one of century's great piano playing talents and I highly recommend it as a very gripping tale you won't want to put down, and just enough pages it can be read in 2 nights!!Loved it!

King of Rock and Roll

Who's gonna play this old piano after the killer's gone? Answer: Nobody! This is a great monument of the life of Jerry Lee Lewis. The real King of Rock and Roll. Nick writes a brilliant expose of Jerry Lee. The most interesting person in rock and roll. Pure hillbilly roots that take you to the foundations of rock and roll and the rise and fall of the golden boy. Jerry Lee Lewis! Jerry Lee has led one of the most interesting lives. Did you know he is first cousins with Jimmy Swaggart? I didnt. His whole life has been a battle between good and evil. I have a feeling when all is said and done you will see the killer in Glory. We could all use a horse to KO every now and then.

Truth is stranger than fiction, tosches talks that truth

This is a great book of literature, a book I have actually bought several times to give to fiction writers, especially a writer I know who writes about lives and loves in Louisiana. Tosches is not a fact meister, an assembler of minute bits of information. (Although starting out with wondering and truly fictive chapters in the original version of his Country Music, Tosches launched the change of investigation that discovered the facts about who Emmett Miller was and where he is buried). Instead, Tosches finds the kind of truth that is found in great jazz, in beat poetry. and thrilling novels where even fictions are truer than the most irrefutable facts. This is what he after here, not uncovering every jot and biddle of JLL's 67 years of life. In this regard he has a heroic figure, JLL, the greatest artist produced by Rockabilly, the truest synthesis of all that is good and wild and meaniful about southern white Ameica's synthesis of blues, jazz, tin-pan alley, and country represented in JLL's long time declaration that the three masters are Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Williams, and Al Jolson! Tosches captures the drive, the heat, the darkness, and the resonance with the reality of America's story of a culture warped by racism, sexism, greed, and of truths that have been covered over by common place facts. Just like JLL on a good night, the prose here rips through the story in a way that will wake you up and get you moving, get you thinking. This is a book for writers, for music lovers, and for those like me who believe JLL is one of the greats. How can it be that no one else has written a serious biography of JLL? Are they all afraid of JLL and Tosches?

Tosches does not ignore the mysterious deaths of the 2 wives

An "amen" to any words of praise that have already been spoken about this amazing book. What I would like to point out is that the reason the deaths of wife #3, Jaren Pate, and wife #4, Shawn Stevens, are not covered in the book is that they took place 3 or 4 years after the publication of Hellfire. However, Tosches does discuss both deaths in Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock n Roll, and quite chillingly at that. ("Your sister's dead", Jerry Lee said to Denise Stevens the day after Shawn's bruised and bloodied corpse was discovered, "and she was a bad girl"). Come now, you don't think Tosches could keep silent about the Killer's Killings, do you?

Tour-de-force prose fires up an already wild life story.

This was the book that established Nick Tosches as the absolute benchmark writer on American popular culture.The story is gripping in its bare bones, but what really enthralls is Tosches' flamboyant, baroque prose that both parodies and celebrates the wild energy of the southern religious fervour that was Lewis's deepest inspiration and source of greatest torment. The whole thing may be too rich for some tastes, and in lesser hands would likely have emerged as overripe and trite, but Tosches' awe at the man and love for the music is obvious. Like all of the author's work, it is also extremely funny. "Dino" and "Country" are also highly recommended.