GRAMMY WEEK REPORT : THE PASSAGES OF ROCK : THE NOTORIOUS : Goodness Gracious, It’s The Killer on Film : The ‘Killer’ Life on Film

When rock ‘n’ roll slammed into America in the ‘50s, the kids loved it, parents hated it and some wanted it banned. But now, closing in on 40, rock music permeates American society and has been exported and embraced throughout the world. Ironically, the record industry’s Grammy Awards were slow to fall under the spell. That too has changed. The passages of rock are charted in three stories:

* The notorious beginnings, seen through a movie about one of its wildest forefathers, Jerry Lee Lewis.

* An analysis of the Grammys and rock’s present respectability.

* A look at the cutting-edge artists who are pushing into the future.

Outside Bad Bob’s Vapors, a pair of inebriated good ol’ boys were brawling, bouncing off muddy pickup trucks as their fists slammed into each other’s midsections.

Inside the raucous nightspot, rock’s aging dark prince was holding court, wearing shiny boots, a leather jacket and bifocals.

Surveying this crowd of unswerving admirers, Jerry Lee Lewis offered a regal grin. “I remember when this place used to be a church,” he said, banging out a chord on his piano. And Bad Bob’s did buzz with an odd sort of worshipful expectancy, as if a flock of religious zealots had gathered to toast the return of their wayward leader.

Armed with a fan’s Memphis-style bouquet--a bottle of bourbon--Lewis offered a modest invocation. “Hank Williams wrote this next song,” he announced. “Hank Williams sang it. But Jerry Lee Lewis received a gold record for it in 1957.”

Jerry Lee swept into “You Win Again,” adding new lyrics with frequent references to “old Jerry Lee” and his favorite moniker, “The Killer.” But a new name began to crop up as the set wore on. In the middle of “Big Legged Woman,” a lascivious blues tune, Jerry Lee tried out new lyrics. “I bet you got something under that dress,” he crooned. “That’ll make Dennis Quaid wanna lay you down.”

Lewis paused to sip from one of the half a dozen shot glasses of bourbon fans had sent up to his piano. “I bet you’all know I got this movie coming out,” he informed the crowd. “And I’ll tell ya--Dennis Quaid is a drunkard.” The Killer cackled. “Nah, he don’t drink. I’m the one who does that!”

“Well, I took enough pills for the whole damn town,

Jerry Lee Lewis drank enough whiskey to lift any ship off the ground . . .

My life would make a damn good country song.”

Almost anything can happen when Jerry Lee Lewis takes the stage at Bad Bob’s Vapors. In 1975, a female fan sued Lewis for $100,000, claiming he’d “brutally and savagely” attacked her with a fiddle bow. (It’s testimony to Jerry Lee’s standing in his hometown that a judge fined him $25 for striking her--and the girl $15 for breaking the bow.)

But in all his appearances here, Jerry Lee has never been upstaged--not until this chilly winter evening. This was the night that a rival arrived. Late in his first set, a commotion erupted at the east end of the bandstand. A mob of fans, nearly all women, surrounded a man with wild blond locks and a wolfish grin. They snapped photos and thrust paper napkins at him for his autograph.

The Killer snuck a sideways glance in disbelief. It was Dennis Quaid, the movie star with the $2-million salary. He’s been in town making “Great Balls of Fire,” a film that aspires to capture Jerry Lee’s rise to stardom in all its exalted, unholy and ruinous splendor. Co-starring Winona Ryder, 17, as Lewis’ 13-year-old bride, Myra Gale Lewis, “Great Balls of Fire” recently completed a three-month shoot here and in London. It will hit the theaters this summer, distributed by Orion Pictures.

Though he’s counseled Quaid about his life and music off and on for the last year, it’s clear that Lewis remains unsure of how to assess the brash 34-year-old actor--as a fan or a tormentor. Playing Jerry Lee in a Hollywood movie is one thing. But stealing the Killer’s thunder right in the middle of Bad Bob’s is another matter. A matter of honor.

Competitive instincts aroused, Jerry Lee tried to regain his audience--first with humor, then with his pumping piano. But his jokes barely raised a few titters. A booming version of “Sweet Little Sixteen” was greeted with mere polite applause.

Jerry Lee frowned as he sipped his whiskey. It hardly mattered that Quaid had turned away from the celebrity seekers, staring raptly at Lewis as his hands spun across the keyboards. Here was The Killer, on his home turf, being upstaged.

As the flashbulbs kept popping, Lewis graciously gave ground. Offering Quaid a courtly bow, he said, “I was beginning to wonder where you were, boy!”

Quaid beamed. The audience relaxed. Jerry Lee leaned toward his mike, oozing good will. Striking the first chords of “Crazy Arms,” one of his signature songs, he proclaimed defiantly: “I’d like to dedicate this next song to . . . myself!”

Staring into a spotlight, Jerry Lee told a crowd years ago: “You’re lookin’ at a livin’ legend. And that really worries me. I always thought a legend was something dead.”

“In the eight years I’ve spent trying to make this film,” said “Great Balls of Fire” producer Adam Fields, “Jerry Lee had one of his wives die, a son die, he’s declared bankruptcy twice, been arrested all over the place and he’s been in and out of the hospital who knows how many times, once with a hole the size of a tennis ball in the middle of his stomach.”

At 33, the producer has spent most of his professional life shepherding the project. Fields still vividly recalls the night in 1980 when he first saw Lewis perform in the San Fernando Valley.

“I’d read a story about Jerry Lee hitting the comeback trail, so I went to see him at the Palomino,” he said, on the way to the set, where the film crew had built a painstakingly authentic replica of the historic Sun Studios, home of Lewis’ first hits in the late ‘50s. “I’m sure it was one of those nights where he’d been popping pills and it seemed as if he played for four hours straight. I was completely astonished.”

To Fields, Lewis represented a classic American tragedy. “Picture this poor country boy,” he said excitedly. “He gets discovered by the same guy who found Elvis, sets his piano on fire doing ‘The Steve Allen Show,’ has this crazy rivalry with Elvis, marries his 13-year-old cousin and causes a scandal, has another cousin named Jimmy Swaggart and finally goes from the top of the top--$10,000 a night at concert halls--to $100 a night in juke joints because he’s a scapegoat for what rock ‘n roll represented to parents in America, and then his baby son dies. . . . “

As he stopped to catch his breath, it was easy to imagine this florid account being pitched to studio executives. “You could never fictionalize that story--it’s all there in real life,” Fields said. “I just made the mistake of trying to make a movie out of it.”

By Fields’ account, it’s been an ordeal. Lewis was surrounded by what Fields called “a bunch of good ol’ boy managers-of-the-month” who’d offer to make a deal--and then disappear, replaced by a new manager “who’d want something completely different.”

In 1982, Fields discovered that ex-wife Myra Gale Lewis, now an Atlanta realtor, had written her own account of their marriage. According to Fields, he read the galleys and bought the film rights. “Then a week later she turned around and sold the rights to two other producers for more money!” Fields sensed that he could easily be muscled out. “That’s when I came up with my one smart idea,” he said. “I got options on the exclusive sync rights to ‘Great Balls of Fire’ and ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,’ Jerry Lee’s biggest hits.”

Fields displayed a satisfied smile. “Once I had the song rights, who could make the movie without me?” Myra Lewis honored her contract and in early 1983, Fields sold the movie to ABC Films, with Mickey Rourke attached as the star and Barry Levinson as director. While Levinson was off writing a script, the deal with ABC fell victim first to legal problems, then a change in ABC management.

Worse still, the film project couldn’t keep up with the bizarre pace of Jerry Lee’s real life. In 1983, Lewis’ fifth wife, Shawn, a 25-year-old former barmaid, died under mysterious circumstances. Lewis was never charged with any foul play, but press accounts--especially a Rolling Stone investigative piece and a Geraldo Rivera special called “Death of the Killer’s Wife”--detailed so much of Lewis’ sordid past that the incident left a dark cloud.

“Suddenly Jerry Lee was perceived as a very negative character,” Fields recalled. “Here I was out pitching this project, in a new era of women execs, and they all thought of Jerry Lee as a wife killer.”

As Fields wooed more Hollywood suitors, events took bizarre twists. Fields hired Terrence Malick (“Days of Heaven”), a legendarily elusive writer-director, to develop a new script. “I never saw him. We’d have meetings on the phone, but he’d never tell me where he was.”

At one point, Fields finally had a new buyer--Dino De Laurentiis, who took the project, with Mickey Rourke as star and Michael Cimino as director. “I couldn’t figure out why Dino kept complaining that Mickey wasn’t funny,” Fields said. “Until it turned out that Dino thought he’d bought the rights to ‘The Jerry Lewis Story.’ ”

After several more changes, Orion acquired the project last year, with Quaid assuming the starring role and Jim McBride stepping in as director and co-writer.

“I think last Thanksgiving was the first time Jerry Lee really got straight with me and said, ‘Am I gonna like this movie?’ ” Fields said. “And I told him, ‘Probably not.’

“Jerry Lee thought about that and then he said, ‘Elvis didn’t have a movie about him during his life, did he? So I guess that makes me more important than Elvis, doesn’t it?’ ”

His career at low ebb, Jerry Lee ran into Elvis in Las Vegas. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he sneered. “You’re just Col. Parker’s puppet.” “Well if I’m so dumb and you’re so smart,” Elvis retorted, “How come I’m playin’ the main room and you’re playin’ the lounge?”

“You really want to understand Jerry Lee?” Dennis Quaid asked, stripping off his clothes in his trailer at 2 a.m. His hair still in a wavy, flaxen pompadour, Quaid squeezed into a fresh pair of jeans, disappeared for a moment and returned with a bottle of bourbon and a well-thumbed Bible. Pouring his visitor a drink, he pulled a batch of dogeared photos out of the book.

“Jerry Lee’s old guitarist, Roland James, gave me these,” he said, holding the fuzzy pictures up to the light. They showed a quartet of honky-tonk musicians in a dingy juke joint. “This is Jerry Lee before he was famous,” Quaid said, pointing him out.

Quaid thumbed through the Bible until he found another picture. It looked identical to the others, except it was taken at a seedy Arkansas club after Lewis’ scandalous marriage derailed his career.

“It’s my favorite picture,” he said quietly. “I always keep it here in the Book of Job. It’s Jerry Lee’s book of the Bible. You know Job? He loved God. He was a rich cat. He had plenty of sheep and a great family and loads of money. He had everything.”

Quaid sipped his bourbon. “And God tested Job. He killed all his family. He afflicted him with boils, gave him all sorts of diseases. He lost all his wealth. And finally there he was, lying in the dust on the side of the road, reduced to being a beggar. And still he said, ‘I love the Lord, my God, with all my soul. I would never desert him.’

“So, after all those tests, the Lord restored Job’s wealth. And to me, that’s the story of Jerry Lee. He never gave up. He kept at it because he loved his music.”

Quaid stared at his pictures of rock’s dark prince-turned-pauper, struggling through a long night on the chitlin circuit, splitting $100 with his band, ducking well-aimed beer bottles, lost in the wilderness. “When you study someone as an actor or just try to get to know them as a human being,” he said. “It’s the little things that are really the big things.”

On his 41st birthday, The Killer was drinking in his living room with his bass player Butch Owens, when he pulled out a .357 Magnum and pointed it at Owens. “Look down the barrel of this,” he said. “I’m gonna shoot that Coca-Cola bottle over there or my name isn’t Jerry Lee Lewis.” Instead, Lewis shot Owens twice in the chest. (Owens survived).

Nestled in the hills of Hernando, Miss., Lewis’ house is a handsome country estate with horses in a back pasture, a half-finished front gate in the shape of double pianos and a white Eldorado in the driveway with the bumper-sticker “Christians Are Not Perfect--Just Forgiven.”

At 53, with half his stomach gone, The Killer’s pace is a step slower. Guiding a visitor around his house, he proudly pointed out an autographed picture of Jerry Lee with George and Barbara Bush. Down the hall was Jerry Lee’s first piano, a battered upright, its keys yellowed like smoker’s teeth, which his father gave him at age 13. Around the corner lay Lewis’ bedroom, which has--just as the legend goes--an iron barred gate, installed after IRS agents seized his possessions during a tax dispute.

Perched on a red couch in his living room, smoking a pipe, Lewis was soft-spoken and convivial, perhaps free at last from the whirling demons that unhinged his career, led him to booze and pills and upended six marriages.

It’s hard to divine whether The Killer has come to accept the unsettling, if wondrous notion that someone is making a film of his life--while he’s still alive. According to McBride, when Lewis first met with him about the movie, he brought a copy of the script filled with pages on which he had scrawled “Lies! Lies! Lies! “

In person, Jerry Lee is more circumspect. “I’ll admit, I didn’t much like the script at first,” he said, picking some flecks of chocolate off his Banlon shirt. “A lot was taken from my ex-wife Myra’s book, which I didn’t much care for. But as I got to studying it, I realized it was only a movie and movies can’t be perfect.” He smiled thinly. “Myra sees things in a little different light than I do.”

What matters to Jerry Lee is controlling his music. After much debate, it was decided that Lewis would perform the vast majority of songs on the sound track. “Dennis and I shouted quite a bit over that,” he said, stoking his pipe. “Dennis has done a fantastic job of making the acting work. But when it comes to him singing my songs. . . .”

Jerry Lee raised an eyebrow. “I did let him give it a try. He brought me his version of ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ to Las Vegas one night. And I told him, ‘Son, I’ve heard a lot of different takes on my music--and you do come awful close, closer than even my cousin Jimmy Swaggart. But my music means the world to me and I just don’t think you can really do it.’ ”

The Killer wagged his head. “I tried to make him feel better. I told him, ‘Listen, you’ll be great pantomiming the songs. Maybe you’ll win an Oscar!’ ”

Of course, if anyone could identify with Quaid’s stubborn fight to perform Jerry Lee’s material, it would be The Killer, who has over the years displayed the headstrong frenzy of a foaming pit bull. “I’ve thought about that question myself,” he admitted. “If I’ve been pushy, it’s because I believe I have a God-given talent to make my music. And if that’s stubborn, then I guess I’ll always be stubborn.”

Lewis somberly puffed on his pipe. He pointed to his wet bar. “I remember standing there when my son, Jerry Lee Jr., who was 19, was driving down the road out here and turned over his Jeep and died.

“I came close to questioning God then. I asked, ‘Lord, why did this happen to me?’ And I finally I said, ‘Jerry Lee, you’ve got no right to do that. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ I’ve been tested, but I’ve still got my music and now I’ve got this movie.”

Jerry Lee tapped his pipe in his hand. “You can look at it lots of different ways, but I think my blessings far outweigh my woe.”

Adam Fields doesn’t buy The Killer’s cozy lion-in-winter act. After putting eight years into “Great Balls of Fire,” the producer has come to realize no one has caused him more headaches than . . . Lewis. “Keeping Jerry Lee happy is a full-time job,” Fields said wearily, driving back from Lewis’ house one night. “Every day it’s something new. Whenever Jerry Lee thinks you need him, he holds you up for something.

“Here’s the latest,” he said with a groan. “We’re bringing in this top celebrity photographer, Tim White, to shoot (advertising photos) of Jerry Lee for the movie theaters. So what happens? Jerry Lee and Kerrie (his wife) would only agree to do it if Tim would shoot their Christmas cards too.”

According to Fields, Lewis has also backed out of recording sessions (until the producers kicked in more money) and even threatened to cancel this interview unless Fields caved in on other demands.

(Fields said Lewis has been paid “upwards of several hundred thousand dollars” for the rights to his life story and his participation in the sound-track recordings.)

“The hardest thing is distinguishing between what’s a Jerry Lee demand and what’s coming from his managers de jour. He’s still surrounded by these Col. Tom Parker types. I’ve had demands from three different managers, each wanting screen credits in the picture. We talked yesterday and he demanded more money before he’d appear in the video that we’re shooting for the first single from the album.”

Fields threw up his hands. “I told him, ‘Fine. Don’t be in your own video!’ I’m not so sure it matters who’s around him. I don’t think Jerry Lee would listen (even) if Michael Ovitz was his agent.”

(Lewis’ manager, Jerry Schilling, responded: “I did ask for a credit in the film as a consultant, but we’ve never asked for extra money outside of what we were owed in Jerry Lee’s contract. I think there’s a lot of grandstanding going on here. Adam just knows people love to hear colorful Jerry Lee stories, but since I’ve been working with him he’s been very dependable and cooperative.”)

No one can accuse Dennis Quaid of not probing his subject. He’s toured with The Killer, written a song for him, joined him on stage at Bad Bob’s and even tactfully let Jerry Lee dominate a press conference announcing the film (where it was widely rumored--and just as widely denied by all--that Lewis arrived at the event with a pistol).

Actors always boast about their devotion to authenticity, but many directors--in particular Jim McBride--find it overrated. “My feeling is that reality is just a starting point for this film,” he said on the set one night. “Shooting here in Memphis, we’ve got Jerry Lee around, Sam and Jud Phillips around, Myra, J. W. Brown . . . and they’ve all got a vested interest in how they’re going to be portrayed. So I told all the actors, ‘Please, stay away from the real people. You’ll get into a horrible mess.’ ”

McBride laughed. “And they all ignored me!”

Especially Quaid. “I told Dennis it would be a terrible mistake to hang around with Jerry Lee. He’s 53 now and he’s been to hell and back. Dennis is playing him at 22 and I wanted him to capture his innocence. But he didn’t pay the slightest attention to me. He went out on the road with Jerry Lee, hung out with him and turned into Jerry Lee!”

McBride sighed. “And he turned into a giant pain in the ass. If Jerry Lee didn’t like the movie, Dennis didn’t like the movie. If Jerry Lee thought we were doing it all wrong, so did Dennis. Suddenly he wanted to change this part of the script and that part of the script.”

Both men were cordial on the set, with McBride praising Quaid’s charismatic presence and dedication to his craft. But it was obvious their relationship was strained--partially because of the long months of grueling work and perhaps because of Quaid’s growing star power as well.

“Dennis is a very visceral actor--he doesn’t intellectualize his part, like a De Niro, who likes to talk about his character for hours on end,” McBride said. “In fact, it’s hard to discuss anything with Dennis for very long because he can’t sit still for 10 minutes. We’ve definitely had our problems. Dennis walked off the film in pre-production. We had a big screaming session over the story in Mike Medavoy’s office at Orion.”

McBride insists the worst is over. Still, he seemed troubled by how the rush of stardom has begun to rob Quaid of his spontaneity. “As an actor, Dennis has become a lot less charming,” McBride said. “It’s harder for him to touch that thing inside him that makes him so innocent, so boyish.”

Watching Quaid rehearse with the band one night at Sun studios, you could see what McBride meant. A photographer from Esquire was setting up a huge reflector screen, preparing to shoot the actor for a cover story. Quaid slouched at the piano, smoking cigarettes. The room was crowded with makeup assistants, friends, piano teachers, the film’s unit photographer, a publicist, a reporter and several Sun staffers and hanger-ons.

As the photographer’s strobe splashed the room with light, Quaid tickled the piano keys. “Being around me,” he said, grinning, “is a real multimedia experience.”

Boyish but guarded, hyperactive but a painstaking perfectionist, Quaid is an actor blessed with steely concentration and a restless energy. To outsiders--and many crew members--his barbed sense of focus made him seem aloof and a bit brusque.

“He’s really into this Jerry Lee Lewis thing,” said one crew member. “When he walks to his trailer, he’s Dennis Quaid. But when he walks to the set, he’s Jerry Lee.”

Away from the cameras, he was more playful, making fun of his celebrity treatment. Ducking into the Sun production booth for a pizza, Quaid spotted his visitor’s notebook. “I know exactly what you’re gonna do,” he barked good-naturedly. “Write down all the ingredients. ‘There was Dennis Quaid, eating a pepperoni and mushroom pizza!’ ”

Still, Quaid fielded all questions, even ones raised by McBride’s remarks about the perils of celebritydom. “No doubt about it,” Quaid said, grabbing a pizza slice. “You’re a spider in a glass jar. Listen--a painter can paint. A musician can play. But an actor observes life. And if life starts observing you, it diminishes you. And it definitely hurts the work.

“I see it happening to me. I did a story with USA Today and I thought they asked some pretty inane questions. You know, like ‘How does it feel to be mobbed on the streets?’ I thought the reporter was nuts.

“But three days later, when we were shooting an exterior scene, there were 300 people outside my trailer. Hey, I was mobbed.”

Right now Quaid has a seemingly precarious grip on stardom. He’s a $2-million-a-movie sex symbol who enjoys considerable critical acclaim. On the other hand, he’s never starred in a hit. In fact, most of his recent films (“DOA,” “Suspect” and “Everybody’s All-American”) have been disappointments or duds. Still, industry insiders bet he’s due for a breakthrough.

But don’t dwell on career talk--it bores him. “I’m trying to think of life moves, not career moves,” he said. “My career may go up and down, but it’s not gonna go away. You have to enjoy your life--that’s the important thing.”

Quaid drummed his hands on the pizza box. “I still have a lot of the little kid in me. I did lose it for a while, because I got so caught up early on, working on my career. But my dad’s death last year had a real effect on me. He was a little kid till the day he died.

“And having him gone has really changed me. I try not to take myself so seriously. The way I see it, art isn’t about being the suffering artist. It’s about joy, not pain. And the great moments in our work come in a moment. All of a sudden. And that’s what you have to enjoy. When you actually do it, not afterwards.”