Here’s why Mick Jagger met Jerry Lee Lewis in Memphis
Why was Mick Jagger in Memphis last week? And why did he meet Jerry Lee Lewis at Sun Studio on Sept. 12, in what could be described as a summit of rock ’n’ roll royalty?
The man behind Jerry Lee in a much-retweeted photograph of the two music legends at Sun provides a clue to the answer.
That man is Peter Guralnick, author of the definitive two-volume biography of Elvis Presley and — more to the point, in this case — the 2015 biography, “Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘N’ Roll.”
According to multiple sources, Jagger, Guralnick and others — including millionaire producer/investor Steve Bing — were in Memphis essentially doing reconnaissance for a planned movie adaptation of Guralnick’s Phillips biography, set to star Leonardo DiCaprio. As first reported two years ago, Jagger and DiCaprio are producers on the project.
Long active in the movie business, initially as an actor, the 75-year-old Jagger in recent years has increased his involvement in film and television, while still remaining committed to his longtime rock band, the Rolling Stones.
Jagger was a producer on the HBO Martin Scorsesedeveloped rock drama “Vinyl,” and his production company also purchased rights to “Last Train to Memphis,” the first book in Guralnick’s Elvis diptych.
While that project seems to have stalled, last week’s activity suggests the Sam Phillips biopic is very much viable. In addition to meeting with the 82-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis at Sun, Jagger — who had come to Memphis from London specifically for this visit — and other representatives of the project toured Sam Phillips’ post-Sun studio, the Sam Phillips Recording Service on Madison Avenue, where they met with Sam Phillips’ son, music producer Jerry Phillips.
Accompanying the group was Bing, 53, a Jagger friend and veteran movie producer (“The Polar Express”) who has worked with the rock star on several projects (including the Stones music documentary “Shine a Light”) and is among the announced producers of the Phillips biopic.
Bing also is a friend and lifelong fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, and he helped produce and finance the Killer’s three most recent studio albums — star-studded affairs that featured such guests as Jagger, Keith Richards, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.
Among those flabbergasted by Jagger’s surprise appearance at the Sam Phillips Recording Service were the members of the Drive-By Truckers, the acclaimed Alabama-rooted rock band currently recording a new album at the studio with Memphis producer Matt Ross-Spang.
“If he had stayed around longer we would have covered ‘You’re So Vain’ just to have him come in on the backup vocals,” joked Truckers co-founder Patterson Hood, referencing the Carly Simon No. 1 hit from 1972 that featured Jagger on growly harmony.
In addition to being a reunion of old friends, rockand-roll pioneers and road warriors, the meeting of Jagger and Jerry Lee Lewis at Sun was arranged as much for talismanic significance as for purposes of research. Lewis, of course, became famous and recorded many of his greatest records at Sun, the studio founded by Sam Phillips that counts Elvis, Johnny Cash, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison on its legendary roster.
Jagger’s activities were about as hush-hush as Rolling Stones-related news can be, at least until Jagger himself tweeted a photograph of himself standing in the doorway of Sun to his 2.13 million followers. Other social-media photos followed, revealing the participation of Bing and twice-Oscar-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten, a biopic specialist whose credits include “The Theory of Everything,” with Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking, “Darkest Hour,” with Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, and the upcoming “Bohemian Rhapsody,” with Rami Malek as Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury.