His eyes still had that crazed sparkle about them. His hair looked as untamed as ever (and real, too). Even saddled with a cane, his swagger as he walked out on stage in a blade-silvery jacket suggested he's still a man who doesn't care what you think of him.
It wasn't until Jerry Lee Lewis manically rolled his fingers across the piano ivories and howled out a shivering "woooh!" that the 2,500 fans on hand Saturday night at Treasure Island Resort & Casino could confirm it: The last of rock 'n' roll's earliest Mount Rushmore-level pioneers had truly entered the building.
Lewis, 82, seemingly came back from the dead for this gig. Seriously, the show — only his second one of 2018 — just didn't seem possible. It'd been over a decade since The Killer last performed in the area, and he famously had a few tempestuous decades before that.
Especially after both Chuck Berry and Fats Domino passed away last year, most Minnesota fans had figured the time to see last-man-standing Lewis had long since passed. (Only a Little Richard gig might compare at this point.)
There Lewis was, though, walking out on stage Saturday after a four-song introductory set by his MVP band, with his same guitar player of the past five decades, Kenny Lovelace. He also brought along renowned session drummer Kenny Aronoff, who had performed outside Treasure Island just last month with John Fogerty.
Simply seeing ol' Jerry Lee again may have been the show's biggest thrill. But there was more to it than just living-museum excitement — not a lot, but enough.
Not counting that introduction by the band, Lewis' performance clocked in at just over 30 minutes. The brevity was disappointing, of course, but not surprising.
The show was also light on hits. He played "Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lot of Shakin' Goin' On" — delivered back-to-back as the finale, and mighty feisty in each case — but not "High School Confidential," "Breathless," "Chantilly Lace" or (perhaps for good reason) his version of Berry's "Sweet Sixteen."
