CAPTURING JERRY LEE
“You’re seeing me after one coffee. Once my hair gets curled tomorrow and I have my quota of caffeine it will all come together.”
Christo Graham looks worried. I’ve just told him he isn’t my idea of Jerry Lee Lewis.
He flinches and his face, cute and boyish, wrinkles up a little. Now, was Lee ever cute and boyish? I think not.
“Wait till you see me and my piano set fire to the stage,” he grins. “You’ll see.”
I tell Graham I met Jerry Lee Lewis when he played the Imperial Room in Toronto and thought he was a heck of a musician, but an arrogant pain in the rump. Back then, he could still straddle a piano stool, force his legs into the air and play the keys with his feet. Impressive, no question. But offstage, in the dressing room he was puffed up like a twopenny balloon.
Graham is a whole lot nicer. But of course, he’s an actor. I know he can crank up the ego and let the piano keys fly with Lewis’s big hits, from “Great Balls of Fire” to a more sedate “Crazy Arms.”
“Let’s just say, I can connect with Jerry when I have to,” he shrugs. “Am I like him? In some ways yes, but in others decidedly not.”
Lewis was a badass boy. He fell afoul of cops, evangelists and plenty of women during his heyday in the 1950s. Married seven times, he was fond of young girls.
Graham knows the image. He’s had his hair bleached and frizzled to play Jerry Lee at Montreal’s Segal Centre and Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre.
“I’m not as wild as the guy I play on stage,” he shrugs.
“I grew up in Bishop’s Mills, Ont., and studied theatre and film at Bishops’ University in Lennoxville, Quebec. When I was a kid I was home schooled. I have three older brothers and all of them had turns playing instruments and being in school plays.
“At age 6, I had one line in a home school play. It just seemed obvious to me I was made for the stage. I never get nervous before a show. Well, maybe when I’m waiting backstage, but once I’m out there in the spotlight I’m in my comfort zone. It’s sitting here talking to you that makes me nervous.”
Graham’s made his own recordings since he was 13 and produced his own work in his bedroom, burning the discs and folding up the packaging.
“I like to not take myself too seriously,” he smiles. “I’ve played in small towns in bar bands with my brothers backing me up. I’ve always played what I wanted to play.”
Later, when Graham got his first gig playing Lewis, he found his address and wrote to him. He was amazed to actually get a reply and some autographed pictures.
“In ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ Lewis is younger, something of a hothead, crazy for women and full of ego. The show is based on a true incident when Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis played together at Sun Records on Dec. 5, 1956. Of course, it’s been massaged a little to make it into a show,” Graham says.
“Is it all true? I doubt it. I guess it’s been made more dramatic. I guess it’s about putting Vaseline on the camera’s lens.
“On TV, these guys were hot, sweaty youngsters. They shook
their legs. They shook just about everything that could shake. They battered borders in terms of what a male singer ought to look like. I mean, think of the ones that came before them.”
When Graham goes onstage, he says he isn’t Jerry Lee Lewis.
“I just let the music take over. I have to. It just comes out. But you know back then it was all about sex. I mean it didn’t get much more explicit than that.
“There is a part of me that can do that, you know. Maybe that’s the Jerry Lee part. Maybe that’s what I’m comfortable with.”
There’s something about the easy smile and rough good looks this kid uses to advantage. They make you see an embryo of the wild man, the guy who pounded out sexy tribal anthems on the piano and hollered his lyrics like the cries of some blond boy demon.
If he isn’t the wildest thing in this Aquarius’ “Million Dollar Quartet,” I’ll be surprised.