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HIS FATHER MORTGAGED THE FAMILY FARM FOR $300 TO BUY HIM A SECONDHAND PIANO. HE WAS EXPELLED FROM BIBLE COLLEGE FOR PLAYING A BOOGIE-WOOGIE VERSION OF “MY GOD IS REAL” AT CHAPEL. AT 22, HE WAS THE BIGGEST ROCK & ROLL STAR IN AMERICA — BIGGER THAN ELVIS, BIGGER THAN ANYONE. AT 23, HE WAS BLACKLISTED FROM EVERY RADIO STATION IN THE COUNTRY FOR MARRYING HIS 13-YEAR-OLD COUSIN. AND HE STILL HAD 64 MORE YEARS LEFT TO LIVE. He wasn’t supposed to make it. He was Jerry Lee Lewis from Ferriday, Louisiana — a sleepy farm town of 2,500 people near the Mississippi River. The son of Elmo and Mamie Lewis, who scraped a living off a small plot of land. His father, Elmo, sold moonshine on the side and was briefly imprisoned for it. They were Pentecostals who sang hymns at the Assembly of God church every Sunday and prayed their wild boy would be a preacher. He had two cousins his age, both growing up in the same Ferriday dust: Mickey Gilley, who would become a country star, and Jimmy Swaggart, who would become a televangelist seen by millions. The three boys snuck across the tracks together to listen to Black blues musicians at a juke joint called Haney’s Big House — the kind of place their parents would have whipped them for entering. When Jerry Lee was 8 years old, he walked up to a relative’s piano and picked out “Silent Night” by ear, having never taken a lesson. His father saw it. Recognizing his son’s innate talent, Elmo eventually mortgaged the family home for $300 and bought a rebuilt upright piano for his son to play. By 15, he was playing revival meetings. By 17, his mother had enrolled him at Southwest Bible Institute in Texas to make sure he sang only for the Lord. When Lewis daringly played a boogie-woogie rendition of “My God Is Real” at a church assembly, his association with the school ended the same night. Then came 1956. He and his father loaded 33 dozen eggs into a truck, drove to Memphis, and sold them to pay for the gas. He auditioned at Sun Records. By 1957, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” was on every radio in America. By early 1958, “Great Balls of Fire” had sold five million copies. He kicked over piano benches. He stood on the keys. He was bigger than Elvis — and Elvis was already drafted into the Army. Then came May 1958. He flew to London for his first British tour. A reporter at Heathrow asked who the young woman next to him was. He answered honestly: his wife, Myra. His third wife. His 13-year-old first cousin once removed. The British press destroyed him in 24 hours. American radio dropped him within a week. His $10,000-a-night fee collapsed to $250. He spent the next decade playing roadhouses for whoever would still have him. Then came the seventies. He reinvented himself as a country singer and scored 17 Top 10 country hits — but the bills came too. Two sons gone: Steve Allen Lewis drowned in a swimming pool at age 3. Jerry Lee Lewis Jr. died in a car accident at 19. Two more wives gone — one drowned in a pool, one found dead of an overdose. The IRS came for his house. The cousin-televangelist came for his soul on television. He looked the wreckage of his own life dead in the eye and said: “No.” He kept playing. He told audiences across America: “They told me I was finished. I’m just getting started.” Some men chase the spotlight until it kills them. The ones who matter learn to play the piano even when the world has burned everything around it. What Jerry Lee said the night they finally inducted him into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2022 — three weeks before he died at 87, with Jimmy Swaggart at the funeral — tells you everything about who he really was.

Jerry Lee Lewis: The Piano, the Fire, and the Long Road Back Jerry Lee Lewis was born in Ferriday, Louisiana,…

HE WAS 17 YEARS OLD WHEN HE GOT AN ART STUDENT PREGNANT AND WATCHED HER GIVE THEIR DAUGHTER UP FOR ADOPTION BECAUSE HE WAS TOO BROKE TO RAISE HER. HE WAS 18 WHEN HE WAS DIGGING GRAVES AT HIGHGATE CEMETERY FOR RENT MONEY. AND AT 55 YEARS OLD, AT THE PEAK OF EVERYTHING, A SURGEON TOLD HIM HE HAD CANCER IN THE ONLY PART OF HIS BODY THAT MATTERED — HIS THROAT. He wasn’t supposed to make it. He was Roderick David Stewart, born in 1945 at 507 Archway Road in Highgate, North London. The youngest of five children of a Scottish builder from Leith and an English mother from Holloway. The kid born during World War II air raids, raised on Al Jolson records and football matches in the street. He had an undistinguished record at Highgate Primary School and failed the eleven-plus exam. The system had written him off before he turned twelve. By 15, he’d left school. By 16, he was working as a silk-screen printer, a newspaper boy, and a fence erector. By 17, he was digging graves at Highgate Cemetery — the same cemetery where his parents would one day be buried. Then came 1963. He met an art student named Susannah at a political demonstration. A year-long romance. A pregnancy. “She was put up for adoption when I was 17 or 18, I think. I was absolutely stone broke.” His first daughter, Sarah, went into foster care, then to a children’s home, then was finally adopted at age five by a couple who told her nothing about who her real father was. He would not properly know her for forty more years. By 1964, he was busking outside Twickenham railway station with a harmonica when blues singer Long John Baldry walked past, heard him, and pulled him into a band. By 1968, he was the voice of the Jeff Beck Group. By 1969, he’d joined the Faces and recorded his first solo album the same year. By 1971, “Maggie May” was number one in America, Britain, Canada and Australia simultaneously — a feat almost no artist had pulled off before. Rolling Stone named him Rock Star of the Year. Then came the eighties. Spandex. Blonde hair. “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Tabloids in every country he toured. Three marriages. Eight children by five different women. And underneath the headlines — a man who had given his first daughter away and could not undo it. Then came May 2000. He was 55. His voice — the raspy growl that built an empire — started cracking on stage. Doctors found a tumor on his thyroid. He once worked as a gravedigger before finding fame as a musician. Now he was facing the possibility that the throat that pulled him out of the cemetery was about to put him back in it. Surgery saved his life. But the nerve damage left his voice in pieces. He had to learn to sing again from scratch — at 55, after thirty years of stadiums. Then came 2007. His daughter Sarah’s adoptive mother died. Sarah called him. He picked up. They started over. He told audiences across America: “They told me I was finished. I’m just getting started.” Some men chase the spotlight until it kills them. The ones who matter learn to sing again after the world tries to take their voice. What Rod Stewart said the night he was knighted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 2016 — with Sarah standing in the audience, finally calling him “Dad” — tells you everything about who he really was.

Rod Stewart: The Voice That Refused to Disappear Roderick David Stewart was not born into a life that looked destined…

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