Rock & Roll: Chuck Berry offers both the sweet and the sour
St. Louis Post-Dispatch July 3, 2005
Chuck Berry has done so much for rock ‘n’ roll – so much for music, for art, for America, the world, the universe – that nothing in his demeanor, nor anything he’s done in his personal life can diminish it.
And that’s saying something.
Berry is a textbook case of why it’s important to love the art but not necessarily the artist. When people behave badly, they let you down. Great art never does.
For the past half-century, Chuck Berry has been giving the world unassailably great works of art.
“Maybelline,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “School Day,” “Rock & Roll Music,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Johnny B. Goode”: Those are only a handful of titles from what one of the St. Louis native’s best-of collections rightly termed “Chuck Berry’s Golden Decade.”
There are more: “Back in the U.S.A.,” “Nadine,” “No Particular Place to Go,” “You Never Can Tell.” And on and on.
Berry’s songs helped to define an emerging culture that gave birth to and was driven forward by rock ‘n’ roll. It was loud, traveled on four wheels with the top down and didn’t mind if it left tire tracks all over the staid mores of high society.
Or as Berry poetically put it, “Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”
“If you tried to give rock ‘n’ roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry,’” John Lennon once said. If such praise seems extravagant today, at the time it was self-evident.
Rare was the garage band that didn’t cut its teeth on Chuck Berry songs. The Beatles recorded their share of them, while the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards admitted that every guitar lick he knows was stolen from Berry. And how many touring acts over the years have kept a reserve of Berry songs – which are, as Lennon more or less stated, the lingua franca of rock ‘n’ roll – for when they’ve exhausted their own repertoire?
Perhaps that doesn’t happen as much now as it once did, which is too bad. For to those of a certain age, those songs – with their clarion guitar introductions, motorvatin’ rhythms and lyrics so precise and finely honed, you’d swear they were cut with a diamond – are simply a fact of life, a part of the landscape. It’s impossible to imagine a world without them.
Berry’s work is that important and his legacy that strong. What a shame, then, that he has so completely squandered the goodwill that legacy accords him. For years, Berry toured the world in a mercenary fashion, collecting his performance fees upfront, playing with woefully under-rehearsed (or wholly unrehearsed) pickup bands and blowing back out of town before audiences – so eager to see a legend and so baffled by the reality of it – could determine exactly what just took place.
In the film “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll!” – which turned out much better than anyone who attended the 1986 concerts-turned-fiascoes had any reason to expect – Bruce Springsteen tells the story of being a young musician whose band backed Berry in the early ‘70s. Berry showed up five minutes before showtime, collected his money, unpacked his guitar onstage and only acknowledged the band when they asked him what songs they were going to do. “We’re going to do some Chuck Berry songs,” was the reply. And then he was off, the band scrambling to catch up.
Most people would regard that story as damning, but Berry seems to take it as a point of pride. He transcribed the clip from the movie and used it as the introduction to his 1987 autobiography.
Last month, actor Dan Aykroyd told a story on “Late Show With David Letterman” about hiring Berry to play at the opening of the Hard Rock Café in Dallas. Berry arrived alone, demanded his fee in cash – in a paper bag, Aykroyd noted – and sat down for a pre-show meal. Aykroyd introduced himself as one of the proprietors, expressed his love of Berry’s music and said it was an honor to have him at the club. According to Aykroyd, Berry looked up at him. “(Expletive deleted) off and die,” he said.
There have been enough incidents like that over the years to make even the staunchest rock ‘n’ roll fan feel that it is not art but mere commerce that drives Chuck Berry. Indeed, it couldn’t be much plainer. He may be the father of rock ‘n’ roll, but too often he has acted like its deadbeat dad.
There have been other types of transgressions as well. Berry has been imprisoned three times – for robbery at age 18, for violating the Mann Act at 35, and for tax evasion at 52. There was the exceedingly unpleasant business of lawsuits filed over alleged videotaping in the women’s restroom of Berry’s Southern Air restaurant in Wentzville. And there was the question – brought up too late for the courts to get involved, it turned out – of exactly how much the late Johnnie Johnson may or may not have contributed to the songs that made Berry rich and famous.
Many have attributed the bitterness and cynicism with which he conducts his affairs to the effects of the outlandish racism to Berry experienced over the years, and there is some weight to that argument. After all, Berry did do much to break down color barriers at concert venues and on radio playlists. What is his music, after all, but a seamless combination of white hillbilly music and black blues/R&B?
But Berry puts down that notion in his autobiography, saying any such interpretation of his actions or intentions implies that he is not in control of them himself – perhaps a more insulting assumption than any.
No, Berry is what he is, and that won’t do any more in America, where we demand heroes that are flawless and wind up disappointed every time.
Better to accept moments of greatness and take them for what they are. Berry has had countless such moments, and if you catch him on the right night – say, in Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room (which, of course, is named in honor of his famous stage move, the duck walk), where he plays month in and month out with a band that knows his every move – you can maybe see him have another one.
I say, Hail! Hail! Chuck Berry, flaws and all.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch July 3, 2005
Chuck Berry has done so much for rock ‘n’ roll – so much for music, for art, for America, the world, the universe – that nothing in his demeanor, nor anything he’s done in his personal life can diminish it.
And that’s saying something.
Berry is a textbook case of why it’s important to love the art but not necessarily the artist. When people behave badly, they let you down. Great art never does.
For the past half-century, Chuck Berry has been giving the world unassailably great works of art.
“Maybelline,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “School Day,” “Rock & Roll Music,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Johnny B. Goode”: Those are only a handful of titles from what one of the St. Louis native’s best-of collections rightly termed “Chuck Berry’s Golden Decade.”
There are more: “Back in the U.S.A.,” “Nadine,” “No Particular Place to Go,” “You Never Can Tell.” And on and on.
Berry’s songs helped to define an emerging culture that gave birth to and was driven forward by rock ‘n’ roll. It was loud, traveled on four wheels with the top down and didn’t mind if it left tire tracks all over the staid mores of high society.
Or as Berry poetically put it, “Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”
“If you tried to give rock ‘n’ roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry,’” John Lennon once said. If such praise seems extravagant today, at the time it was self-evident.
Rare was the garage band that didn’t cut its teeth on Chuck Berry songs. The Beatles recorded their share of them, while the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards admitted that every guitar lick he knows was stolen from Berry. And how many touring acts over the years have kept a reserve of Berry songs – which are, as Lennon more or less stated, the lingua franca of rock ‘n’ roll – for when they’ve exhausted their own repertoire?
Perhaps that doesn’t happen as much now as it once did, which is too bad. For to those of a certain age, those songs – with their clarion guitar introductions, motorvatin’ rhythms and lyrics so precise and finely honed, you’d swear they were cut with a diamond – are simply a fact of life, a part of the landscape. It’s impossible to imagine a world without them.
Berry’s work is that important and his legacy that strong. What a shame, then, that he has so completely squandered the goodwill that legacy accords him. For years, Berry toured the world in a mercenary fashion, collecting his performance fees upfront, playing with woefully under-rehearsed (or wholly unrehearsed) pickup bands and blowing back out of town before audiences – so eager to see a legend and so baffled by the reality of it – could determine exactly what just took place.
In the film “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll!” – which turned out much better than anyone who attended the 1986 concerts-turned-fiascoes had any reason to expect – Bruce Springsteen tells the story of being a young musician whose band backed Berry in the early ‘70s. Berry showed up five minutes before showtime, collected his money, unpacked his guitar onstage and only acknowledged the band when they asked him what songs they were going to do. “We’re going to do some Chuck Berry songs,” was the reply. And then he was off, the band scrambling to catch up.
Most people would regard that story as damning, but Berry seems to take it as a point of pride. He transcribed the clip from the movie and used it as the introduction to his 1987 autobiography.
Last month, actor Dan Aykroyd told a story on “Late Show With David Letterman” about hiring Berry to play at the opening of the Hard Rock Café in Dallas. Berry arrived alone, demanded his fee in cash – in a paper bag, Aykroyd noted – and sat down for a pre-show meal. Aykroyd introduced himself as one of the proprietors, expressed his love of Berry’s music and said it was an honor to have him at the club. According to Aykroyd, Berry looked up at him. “(Expletive deleted) off and die,” he said.
There have been enough incidents like that over the years to make even the staunchest rock ‘n’ roll fan feel that it is not art but mere commerce that drives Chuck Berry. Indeed, it couldn’t be much plainer. He may be the father of rock ‘n’ roll, but too often he has acted like its deadbeat dad.
There have been other types of transgressions as well. Berry has been imprisoned three times – for robbery at age 18, for violating the Mann Act at 35, and for tax evasion at 52. There was the exceedingly unpleasant business of lawsuits filed over alleged videotaping in the women’s restroom of Berry’s Southern Air restaurant in Wentzville. And there was the question – brought up too late for the courts to get involved, it turned out – of exactly how much the late Johnnie Johnson may or may not have contributed to the songs that made Berry rich and famous.
Many have attributed the bitterness and cynicism with which he conducts his affairs to the effects of the outlandish racism to Berry experienced over the years, and there is some weight to that argument. After all, Berry did do much to break down color barriers at concert venues and on radio playlists. What is his music, after all, but a seamless combination of white hillbilly music and black blues/R&B?
But Berry puts down that notion in his autobiography, saying any such interpretation of his actions or intentions implies that he is not in control of them himself – perhaps a more insulting assumption than any.
No, Berry is what he is, and that won’t do any more in America, where we demand heroes that are flawless and wind up disappointed every time.
Better to accept moments of greatness and take them for what they are. Berry has had countless such moments, and if you catch him on the right night – say, in Blueberry Hill’s Duck Room (which, of course, is named in honor of his famous stage move, the duck walk), where he plays month in and month out with a band that knows his every move – you can maybe see him have another one.
I say, Hail! Hail! Chuck Berry, flaws and all.