Live at the Star Club, Hamburg

For the Beatles album, see Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962.

Live At The Star Club
Live album by Jerry Lee Lewis, backed by The Nashville Teens
Released	1964
Recorded	Star-Club, Hamburg, April 5, 1964
Genre	Rock & Roll
Label	German Philips

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Robert Christgau	(A)
Rolling Stone
Stylus Magazine	(favorable)

Live at the Star Club is a live recording of Jerry Lee Lewis backed by The Nashville Teens playing at the Star-Club, Hamburg, Germany, April 5, 1964. It is regarded by many music journalists as one of the wildest and greatest rock and roll concert albums ever. The album appears in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Sixteen songs were recorded over two sets, the first set comprising "Down The Line," "You Win Again," "High School Confidential," "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Great Balls of Fire," "What'd I Say (Parts 1 & 2), and "Mean Woman Blues." The second set featured "Good Golly Miss Molly," "Matchbox," "Money," "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," "Lewis Boogie," "Hound Dog," "Long Tall Sally" and "I'm On Fire." ." "Down The Line," omitted on the original LP due to a sound fault at the beginning, was included on later CD editions. The tapes for "You Win Again" and "I'm On Fire" are believed to have been lost.

Reception

Record Collector: "All but the first song from this set, recorded with the Nashville Teens, was issued on what's widely regarded as the wildest rock'n roll album of all time - Live At The Star-Club."

Rolling Stone (5 out of 5 stars): "'Live At The Star Club, Hamburg' is not an album, it's a crime scene: Jerry Lee Lewis slaughters his rivals in a thirteen-song set that feels like one long convulsion. Recorded April 5th, 1964, this is the earliest and most feral of Lewis' concert releases from his wilderness years ..."

Q: "This might be the most exciting performance ever recorded..."

Included in Mojo's "The 67 Lost Albums You Must Own!" - "[A]n unbelievably seismic document of rock 'n' roll so demonic and primal it can barely keep its stage suit on.... It's up there with James Brown's great live albums."

Amazon.com (editorial review): "One of the greatest live albums in rock & roll history."

Allmusic: "Words cannot describe -- cannot contain -- the performance captured on Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, an album that contains the very essence of rock & roll [...] Live at the Star Club is extraordinary -- the purest, hardest rock & roll ever committed to record [...] he sounds possessed, hitting the keys so hard it sounds like they'll break, and rocking harder than anybody had before or since. Compared to this, thrash metal sounds tame, the Stooges sound constrained, hardcore punk seems neutered, and the Sex Pistols sound like wimps. Rock & roll is about the fire in the performance, and nothing sounds as fiery as this; nothing hits as hard or sounds as loud, either. It is no stretch to call this the greatest live album ever, nor is it a stretch to call it the greatest rock & roll album ever recorded. Even so, words can't describe the music here — it truly has to be heard to be believed."

Robert Christgau: "...this legendary 37-minute performance is our last and clearest glimpse of Jerry Lee as a young world-beater. Not only has he bulled his way past the incest 'n' bigamy tour of 1958 and the drowning death of his son in 1962, he's some kind of hero in a Europe rediscovering '50s rock and roll via Beatlemania. Without cracking the charts or drawing crowds commensurate with his ego on the endless tour that is his life, he believes so profoundly in his pact with the devil that he remains unbowed. Here that faith is both made manifest and recorded for posterity, which otherwise never happened on the same night. Admirers attribute this ungodly miracle to one emotional resource or other, but I find Lewis so impenetrable psychologically that I hesitate to put a name on it. Instead I'll list a few technical attributes. Both performance and recording are very clean. Tempos are speedy, and the backing band—the Nashville Teens of 'Tobacco Road' renown—keep up manfully. 'Mean Woman Blues' and 'Money' are definitive. And the piano kills."

Track listing

Side one

1. "Mean Woman Blues" (Claude Demetrius) 4:01
2. "High School Confidential" (Hargrave, Lewis) 2:25
3. "Money (That's What I Want)" (Janie Bradford, Berry Gordy) 4:35
4. "Matchbox" (Carl Perkins) 2:46
5. "What'd I Say, Part 1" (Ray Charles) 2:18
6. "What'd I Say, Part 2" 3:08

Side two

1. "Great Balls of Fire" (Otis Blackwell, Jack Hammer) 1:48
2. "Good Golly, Miss Molly" (Bumps Blackwell, John Marascalco) 2:19
3. "Lewis' Boogie" (Lewis) 1:55
4. "Your Cheatin' Heart" (Hank Williams) 3:03
5. "Hound Dog" (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller) 2:28
6. "Long Tall Sally" (Enotris Johnson, Little Richard) 1:52
7. "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" (Sunny David, Dave Williams) 4:24

Personnel

Credits for Live at the Star Club, Hamburg adapted from Allmusic.

• Johnny Allen – guitar
• Robert "Bumps" Blackwell – composer
• Janie Bradford – composer
• Ingrid Buhring – photography
• Sunny David – composer
• Berry Gordy, Jr. – composer
• Barrie Jenkins – drums
• Ron Hargrave – composer
• Enotris Johnson – composer
• Bob Jones – mastering
• Jerry Leiber – composer

• Jerry Lee Lewis – composer, piano, vocals
• Little Richard – composer
• Sigfried Loch – producer
• John Marascalco – composer
• Pete Shannon Harris – bass
• Mike Stoller – composer
• Peter Van Raay – photography
• Richard Weize – photography, reissue producer
• Dave Williams – composer

Further reading

Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found (Continuum Books, 2009), by Joe Bonomo.

External links

• Live at the Star Club, Hamburg at Discogs