The Boss and the Killer team up for this morning’s CarTune, the classic “Pink Cadillac.”
Bruce Springsteen originally wrote “Pink Cadillac” as an acoustic number in 1982. However, it wasn’t recorded in earnest until the Born in the USA sessions, only to be bumped from the album in favor of “I’m Goin’ Down.” It was the B side of the hit single, “Dancin’ in the Dark,” but didn’t find its way onto an album until the 1998 box set, Tracks. For years, Springsteen treated “Pink Cadillac” as a novelty tune in his live concert set, despite the clever and limber lyrics:
Well they tempt you man with silver
and they tempt you sir with gold
And they tempt you with the pleasures
that the flesh does surely hold
They say Eve tempted Adam with an apple
but man I ain’t going for that
I know it was her pink Cadillac
Maybe Springsteen held the song at arm’s length all those years because he knows his musical etymology so well: “pink Cadillac” is old-school blues slang for genitalia. But really, the lyrics are so smartly crafted that naughty bits never come to mind.
Jerry Lee Lewis has never suffered any such inhibitions. He included “Cadillac” on his 2006 duet album, Last Man Standing, with Springsteen assisting on the vocals. The official video, which made regular rotation on the country music channels, is an animation that manages to capture the manic swagger of the Killer in his youth. It’s a great time—check it out.
I love it! If you only buy one record by the Killer, make it “Live at the Star Club”. It is really, truly awesome. But I’m not the only one impressed:
Milo Miles raved in Rolling Stone that “‘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 Magazine commented “This might be the most exciting performance ever recorded…”… “[A]n unbelievably seismic document of rock ‘n’ roll so demonic and primal it can barely keep its stage suit on….”
All Music said of the album: “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.”
Right on! That’s exactly how I feel about Jerry Lee, too.
being a war baby (the big ‘un) Jerry Lee was the high priest of my formative teen years playing the background music to racing my hot rod on two land blacktop in northern NY state. He is the MAN!
Yes, Bruce used to do a little skit with this song in his live show, sort of a used car salesman preacher thing. I love this Jerry Lee version.