Infamous Scandals

by Anne Williams

‘Am I a powder puff now, doctor?’ he asked.

  ‘No sir, you’ve been very brave,’ was the doctor’s reply.

  PART TWO: Pop Stars and Celebrities

  Jerry Lee Lewis

  Jerry Lee Lewis was one of the great pioneers of rock ’n’ roll, and is considered a leading figure in the history of rock. However, his career faltered when, in 1958, it was revealed that his third wife, whom he had recently married, was only 13 years old. What made it even worse was the fact that she was distantly related to him, being his second cousin twice removed. So negative was the publicity surrounding this that the star had to cancel his British tour and returned home in disgrace.

  ‘Playing for the devil’

  Jerry Lee Lewis was born on 29 September 1935 to a poor Southern family in the town of Ferriday, Louisiana. His parents, Elmo and Mamie Lewis, were both farmers. As a boy Jerry Lee showed a natural flair for music and played piano with his cousins, Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart. Swaggart later became an evangelical religious leader, whose own sex scandal hit the headlines in later years.

  Jerry Lee showed such talent that his parents bought him a piano, apparently mortgaging their farm to do so. As he grew up, he continued to absorb influences from all around him, which came out in his piano playing. He had a cousin, Carl McVoy, who was a talented pianist and he also visited a black juke joint in the neighborhood, Haney’s Big House, where he learnt a number of different piano styles. Listening to the radio as well, he began to mix all these sounds together, adapting it to his own style, which encompassed boogie woogie, gospel, country and rhythm and blues.

  By the time Jerry Lee reached adulthood, he was playing the piano professionally. His mother, worried about the possible bad influence of the entertainment industry on her son, enrolled him into a religious university in Texas, but at a concert there, he began to play My God is Real in a boogie woogie style, resulting in his expulsion. He later said that he always knew he was ‘playing for the devil’, rather than for God.

  Having given up any idea of making religious music, Lewis set out for a life on the road, playing at clubs around the south, and making his first recording in 1954. He then went to Nashville and tried to make an impact on the country music scene, but met with little enthusiasm from producers there. One of them told him he should take up guitar instead of playing piano, whereupon he apparently replied, ‘You can take your guitar and ram it up your ass.’

  Not surprisingly, his aggressive, erratic behaviour did not make him very popular among the smooth executives of the Nashville music industry, and it was not until Sam Phillips of the legendary Sun label discovered him, that Lewis’s career really took off. Legend has it that when Elvis Presley heard him play, he remarked, ‘If I could play the piano like that, I’d quit singing’.

  The under-age bride

  Lewis initially began working for Phillips as a session musician, playing on hits by Carl Perkins and other artists. Then, billed as ‘Jerry Lee Lewis and his Pumping Piano’, he began to tour the country as an artist in his own right. He soon found an audience for his exciting stage shows, which combined all the Pentecostal fervour of his church upbringing with his commitment to ‘playing for the devil’. He soon had a hit record, Great Balls of Fire, which became a rock ’n’ roll classic. His piano style was imitated by many musicians, and came to be known as ‘piano rock’. In live performances, he would often stand up at the piano, and was known for antics such as sitting on the instrument, kicking it and banging it with his foot. In later years, artists such as Billy Joel and Elton John would copy this style, to great effect, and this manic behaviour at the keyboard became one of the staple crowd pleasers of rock shows.

  Jerry Lee Lewis’s personal life was, throughout his early career, dogged by scandal. He married his second wife before the divorce from his first wife became final, but the scandal that really rocked his career was to do with his third wife, Myra Gale Brown. Brown, a distant relative, was just 13 years old when Jerry Lee married her. This was more or less accepted in America at the time, where very young brides were common enough in the South; but in Britain, where the scandal broke, that was not the case. When it was discovered just how young Lewis’s ‘child bride’ really was, the press were outraged, and Lewis became so unpopular in the media that his British tour was cancelled after just three shows, to the disappointment of many of his fans.

  the shunned musician

  On his return to the United States, Lewis found himself shunned by people who had previously accepted his marriage, and felt himself to have been betrayed. He was not invited to play on TV music shows, such as the Dick Clark Show, the most important teenage pop show on television at the time, and was angered when Sam Phillips of Sun Records released a single, The Return of Jerry Lee, poking fun at his troubles. One of his few remaining allies in the music business was Alan Freed, the pioneering rock ’n’ roll DJ, but Freed had a scandal of his own looming, and was kicked off the air for allegedly accepting bribes to play records.

  During the 1960s, Lewis went back to record for Phillips, and had a hit with a cover of the Ray Charles classic, What’d I Say. However, by 1963 his contract with Sun was over, and although he continued to record and tour, especially in Europe, he failed to make a comback in the United States.

  Playing with guns

  During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jerry Lee Lewis reinvented himself as a country singer and had more success, but by now his behaviour was beginning to veer seriously out of control. His wife Myra divorced him in 1970, and from then on his mental and physical health began to deteriorate. His older son was killed in a car accident, and then another son drowned in a swimming pool. He began to drink heavily, so much so that he developed severe stomach ulcers and nearly died from a perforated stomach. He was known to play with guns, and on one occasion, injured his bass player, Butch Owens, while shooting at empty bottles.

  Today, in his 70s, Jerry Lee Lewis continues to tour, and by all accounts, his performances have lost little of their passion and intensity over the years. His importance as one of the great exponents of rock ’n’ roll has been recognised, and it seems that, for many, this has blotted out the scandal of his marriage to an under-age girl during the 1950s. However, the scandal certainly cast a shadow over Lewis’s career for a long time, even though today he has taken his place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside great pioneers of rock ’n’ roll such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Elvis Presley.

  Chuck Berry

  As one of the founding fathers of rock ’n’ roll, Chuck Berry is revered by music fans all over the world. There were many scandals surrounding him during his long career, and these are often reported as mischievous pranks, as befits a rock star. However, some of his antics revealed an extremely unpleasant streak in his nature, especially in his sexual relationships with women.

  Teenage joy rider

  Chuck Berry was born to a relatively well-to-do black family. His father worked as a contractor and was deacon of a Baptist church, while his mother was a successful head teacher. The third child in a family of six, he grew up in St Louis, Missouri, in a middle-class area called The Ville. He was a choir boy in the church and a bass singer in his high school glee club. Berry excelled at music as a boy and his music teacher, realising the special talent he had, urged him to take up the guitar. He taught himself how to play and gave his first public performance while he was still in high school. However, even at this early stage in his career, he got into trouble.

  In 1944 Berry was arrested for armed robbery, having stolen a car and ridden to Kansas City, Missouri. He was convicted of the crime and sent to a reformatory institution near Jefferson, Missouri, and it was here that he sang with a gospel group. He was released in 1947 on his 21st birthday.

  On his release, Berry married Themetta ‘Toddy’ Suggs and began work in an automobile factory. He also attended night school and learned how to be a hairdresser, playing in local groups in his spare time to supplement his wages. Berry fou
nd work in night clubs and having been spotted for his talent was asked to play with a band called the Johnnie Johnson Trio. Although already an experienced blues player, Berry began experimenting with country music, or ‘hillbilly’ as it was called at the time. He found that black people attending the clubs enjoyed the sounds, which were new to them, and that it also drew a crowd of whites. He became known as the ‘black hillbilly’ and also began to sing material by a range of black singers, from the smooth sounds of Nat King Cole to the down-home blues of Muddy Waters, mixing up the styles as he went.

  Under-age prostitution

  In 1955 Berry secured a recording contract with Chess Records in Chicago, who were impressed by the unusual style of his songs. That year he recorded an old country and western song, ‘Ida Red’, retitling it ‘Maybelline’. It was a number one hit for him on the black charts and also reached the pop charts. His next hit was ‘Roll over Beethoven’, after which he began to tour relentlessly, joining white stars such as Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers, thus breaking down racial barriers in the musical world for the first time. From 1957 to 1959 he wrote many of his major hits, in an extraordinary rush of creativity. These included such classics such as ‘Johnny B. Goode’ and ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’.

  However, off stage Berry was running into trouble again. This time, his criminal activity was to do with a young girl he had become involved with, Janice Escalanti. After Berry fired her from her job as a hat check girl in his club, Escalanti went to the police and told them that Berry had met her when she was only 14 years old, during a trip to Juárez, Mexico. She recounted how he had introduced her to a life of prostitution. Berry was accused of transporting her across state lines for the purpose of prostitution, which was a crime under the Mann Act, a federal statute. He was brought to court and convicted of the crime, receiving a prison sentence of three years and a fine of $10,000. Berry did not served the full term of his sentence, and was realeased after less than two years.

  Cynical money maker

  After his release in 1963, Berry went back to touring and playing, having written more songs while in jail. These were difficult years for him, since he had quarrelled with his family and alienated many of his former friends. On the other hand, his career was flourishing, and he was making successful chart records again. During this period he had six hit singles in the charts, including, ‘You Never Can Tell’ and ‘Nadine’. In 1972 he had a major hit with the double-entendre song, ‘My Ding-A-Ling’. This song reached the number one spot, and from then on Berry became a stalwart of the rock ’n’ roll revival circuit.

  As many recount, by this time his attitude towards playing rock ’n’ roll had become completely cynical, and he concentrated on making as much money as he could, without being very concerned about the quality of his performances. He often hired back-up bands and refused to rehearse with them before the shows, leading to a steep decline in the quality of his performances. This disappointed many of his fans, both young and old. In addition, Berry was known for his bad temper and arrogant behaviour towards other musicians. One of his former backing musicians, Bruce Springsteen, recounts how Berry never gave the band a set list before the show, or thanked them for playing afterwards. Even so, such was Berry’s musical reputation that when he appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, Springsteen agreed to back him once again.

  Tax evasion

  Although Berry’s career as a musical innovator was over by the 1970s, he was still making large amounts of money on the revival circuit. The Internal Revenue Service was convinced that he was evading tax and prosecuted him for the crime. He pleaded guilty to the charge and was convicted. His sentence was four months’ imprisonment, and 1000 hours of community service, which in his case consisted of doing benefit concerts. By now he had become one of the ‘bad boys’ of rock ’n’ roll, but in some quarters this only enhanced his reputation.

  Much as Berry was disliked by those who came across him in the show-business world, his fans still adored him. However, his reputation took something of a battering when in 1990 he was sued by over 50 women. The women alleged that he had installed a video camera in the ladies’ room of his restaurant, The Southern Air, so that he could watch them as they used the toilets, believing that they were doing so in private. Berry denied that he had indulged in this distasteful voyeurism, but offered to settle the matter out of court, which is thought to have cost him over a million dollars. In the same year his house was raided and the police found a cache of home-made pornographic videos, including one in which, according to some reports, he was depicted urinating on a young woman in a bathtub.

  Gunpoint hitchhiker

  In his later years Berry’s erratic behaviour became legendary. There was one story circulating that, on one occasion, when his car broke down, he hitchhiked a lift so that he could get home. He persuaded the driver of the car to give him a lift by pointing a gun at him. Berry himself recounted this story in his autobiography, published in 1987. Unusually for a rock star, Berry actually wrote the autobiography himself, instead of employing a ghost writer, and showed some skill as a literary writer.

  Despite his many faults as a human being, Berry is still regarded as a great musician, and today he continues to be admired as a pioneer of rock ’n’ roll. Only two years after the restaurant debacle, he performed at President Bill Clinton’s inaugural celebration. Along with Jerry Lee Lewis and other stellar performers in the rock world, he has survived many scandals and is set to remain one of the legendary performers of 20th-century popular music.

  Michael Jackson

  After years of controversy and speculation about his personal life, Michael Jackson’s status as an international pop icon was seriously undermined when, during the 1990s, allegations of child molestation were brought against him. Up until that point, his erratic behaviour, his increasingly strange appearance as the result of cosmetic surgery, and his odd family life had been viewed as the foibles of a superstar; but the claim that he had actually sexually abused children at his home shocked the United States and the rest of the world.

  the jackson family

  Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, and from the age of five sang the lead with his brothers in the family group the Jackson 5, which formed in 1964. In the early years the five brothers – Jackie, Jermaine, Tito, Marlon and Michael – played the local clubs and bars, but as their talent grew so did their venues.

  In 1968 the group was granted an audition with Berry Gordy, who was in control of Motown Records. Gordy was so impressed with their music that he signed them up and the Jackson 5 moved to California. Their first four singles were ‘I Want You Back’, ‘ABC’, ‘The Love You Sav’e and ‘I’ll Be There’, all of which made number one in the United States.

  In 1971, Michael Jackson decied to begin a solo career and had several hits before appearing with Diana Ross in the film The Wiz. It was on the set of this film that Jackson met music producer Quincy Jones. Jones proved the ideal producer for Jackson, and their 1979 album Off The Wall yielded many hit singles, such as ‘Don’t Stop (Till You Get Enough)’ and ‘Rock With You’. This was followed by the groundbreaking Thriller in 1981, six of whose nine tracks were hit singles, including the title track, ‘Billie Jean’, and ‘Beat It’.

  Jackson then signed a multi-million dollar advertising deal with Pepsi Cola and went on to make three more successful albums Bad, Dangerous, and History. From 1985, when he co-wrote ‘We Are the World’ with Lionel Ritchie for the United States for Africa charity, he attempted to introduce serious social and ecological concerns into his music, but from then on, his sincerity was called into question by his increasingly bizarre private life.

  Alien superhuman being

  Michael Jackson had plenty of reasons to be emotionally disturbed, having never lived a normal family life and not given the opportunity to be a child. From the age of six, as lead singer of the Jackson 5, he had been managed by his tyrannical father, Joe, who was later alleged to have terrorised him and t
he rest of his children, with beatings and punishments. As a result, Michael, who was highly sensitive and gifted, became very withdrawn, to the point, in later years, of becoming a recluse.

  Not only was his personal life highly unusual, but there were concerns about his appearance. Over the years, Jackson’s skin colour had changed from brown to white and there were rumours that he was bleaching his skin. Critics claimed that this was setting a bad example to his black fans all over the world and that he was providing a poor role model to many black children and teenagers, to whom he was an idol. Interestingly, Jackson himself seemed to feel he did not belong to any ethnic group, but was in some sense superhuman, writing lyrics that stressed the unimportance of colour. The video of Thriller shows Jackson acting the role of a werewolf, presaging his later fascination with adopting fantasy roles.

  Jackson’s apparent vision of himself as a kind of alien superhuman being gave rise to a great deal of controversy, especially over his skin lightening treatments, which some critics felt was an attempt to disguise his physical characteristics as an African-American. However, it was also argued that Jackson was attempting to liberate himself, both in his image and his music, from the constraints of race and culture, by presenting himself first and foremost as a human being. To this degree he has been a positive role model for racially mixed and culturally displaced young people in today’s world. When questioned about his skin, Jackson denied that he had had any skin lightening treatments, saying that the colour change was due to a skin disease, vitiligo. He also announced that he had hardly had any cosmetic surgery at all, blaming the changes in his facial characteristics on puberty and diet, which seems extremely unlikely.