Killer Image

For a Revealing Portrait, It Can Be Best to Let the Subject Do the Revealing.

- Barry Tanenbaum

THE KILLER WAS AN HOUR LATE, but most of the folks in the audience had had a few drinks and were in a good mood, so nobody minded.

The Killer is Jerry Lee Lewis—if you want the origin story of his nickname, it’s searchable—and on that night in 1975 he was past his rockabilly and rock-and-roll days and into his country music career. Photographer Henry Horenstein was at the Ramada Inn in East Boston on assignment for Country Music magazine to photograph Lewis between sets.

Things don’t go quite according to plan. “Jerry Lee finally arrives,” Horenstein says, “and he sings one song, and then halfway through the second song he stops and says, ‘You either come here to listen to me or you come to talk. You got a choice.’ And he walks out.”