1964, Germany
Live at the Star Club is a badly mixed recording of Jerry Lee Lewis on his uppers in every sense: his career has flatlined and his performance sounds like a 40-minute advert for the alarmingly invigorating properties of amphetamines. Songs start at an astonishing pace and frequently speed up; his backing band, Britain’s Nashville Teens, just about cling on by the skin of their teeth. It should be a disaster. Instead, it’s almost indecently exciting, capturing the feral essence of rock’n’roll like nothing else. “It’s not an album,” gawped Rolling Stone’s review, “it’s a crime scene.” They had a point.
