This is the Foreword I was asked to write for a Chuck Berry songbook to be published by Music Sales.
Chuck Berry
(1926-2017)
“He could play the guitar just like
ringing a bell.”
Chuck Berry did not invent the 12-bar
blues but the way he played it is the nearest thing there is to the foundation
stone of rock’n’roll. It is the primer for rock guitar players everywhere, the
first lesson in the first class on the first morning in the first school, and
while those who took it further than him wound up playing a more supercharged
version of it in arenas, Berry stayed true to the first principles he laid down,
even if it did become a chore towards the end and, for his audiences, less and
less engaging as the years rolled by.
As if this wasn’t enough, however,
Chuck Berry was also rock’n’roll’s first poet laureate. More than Elvis, Jerry
Lee Lewis, Little Richard or even Buddy Holly, he painted in his songs a lyrical
portrait of young America for those of us with the misfortune to live elsewhere.
Berry’s America was the promised land, a country of glitzy cars and endless
highways, of girls in tight dresses and lipstick, of driving along with no
particular place to go, and where they never stopped rocking till the moon went
down. The combination of his eloquent, witty lyrics and the incessant drive of his
signature guitar style was irresistible to British and American teenagers as
the black and white fifties morphed into the colourful, swinging sixties, and it
will remain so for an eternity.
The timing of his arrival meant that
Chuck Berry’s influence on the next generation of rock performers was
incalculable. Most of them were cadging the money to buy their first guitars
when ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ rose to number 16 in the British charts in 1958. In
the UK that generational charge was led by The Beatles and the Stones, and in
America by Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys. All four are immensely indebted to
Berry, and aren’t afraid to say so.
“If you tried to give rock’n’roll
another name you might call it Chuck Berry,” said John Lennon, while Keith
Richards went even further, telling the audience at Berry’s induction into the
Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in 1986: “I stole every lick of mine from Chuck
Berry.” Told of Berry’s death at the age of 90, Keith’s band mate Mick Jagger,
not known for his benevolence towards others in the same trade as himself,
said: “I want to thank him for the inspirational music he gave us. He lit up
our teenage dreams of being musicians and performers. His lyrics shone above
others and threw a strange light on the American dream. Chuck you were amazing
and your music is engraved on us forever.”
* * *
The son of church-going, upwardly-mobile parents, Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born – according to him – in St Louis, Missouri, on October 18, 1926, the fourth child in a family of six. Failing to distinguish himself at school, at 18 he was imprisoned for three years for armed robbery, the first of four jail sentences he would serve for assorted crimes, and before opting for a career in music worked on a car assembly plant, as a janitor and in a beauty salon. He got his first guitar as a teenager and sought inspiration not just from blues musicians like Tampa Red, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Carl Hogan of Louis Jordan’s Timpani Five but from the smooth phrasing of Nat ‘King’ Cole and the swing jazz of guitarist Charlie Christian. More important was his introduction to boogie-woogie piano player Johnny Johnson whose trio he joined in 1952, bringing to the group a cool, detached vocal style and an approach to the guitar that mixed country licks with the increasingly popular hillbilly and blues styles. He was also starting to write his own songs.
In Chicago in 1955 Berry met Muddy
Waters who suggested he contact Leonard and Philip Chess whose independent
label Chess Records specialised in urban blues. Leonard proposed that Berry
record a revision of ‘Ida Red’, a traditional country fiddle tune, that was re-titled
‘Maybelline’ with lyrics about an auto race between a Cadillac – a Coupe de
Ville, the details were crucial to the package – and a V8 Ford, all set to a toe-tapping
rock’n’roll beat captured in the studio by Berry on guitar, Johnson on piano, Willie
Dixon on bass, Jasper Thomas on drums and Jerome Green from Bo Diddley’s band
on maracas. It sold a million copies and the Chuck Berry Combo was on its way.
After a couple of minor hits the
following year with ‘Thirty Days’ and ‘No Money Down’, Berry hit a rich seam of
inventiveness during his third Chess session when ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘Too
Much Monkey Business’ and ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’ were recorded. Subsequent Berry
releases on Chess are a roll call of rock’n’roll classics: ‘School Days’ and ‘Rock
And Roll Music’ (1957); ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’, ‘Reelin’ And Rockin’’, ‘Johnny
B. Goode’, ‘Around And Around’, ‘Carol’ and ‘Memphis, Tennessee’ (1958);
‘Little Queenie’, ‘Back In The USA’ and ‘Let It Rock’ (1959); ‘Bye Bye Johnny’
(1960); ‘I’m Talking About You’ (1961); and ‘Nadine’, ‘You Never Can Tell’, ‘No
Particular Place To Go’ and ‘The Promised Land’ (1964), the gap between ’61 and
’64 explained by his second penal detention, this time for ‘transporting an
underage girl across state lines for immoral purposes’.
Those fans who left the dance floor
for a moment could consider the lyrics to these songs, how cleverly they rhymed
and how perfectly they dove-tailed with the music, each metre a lesson in precision
synchronicity. Berry was adept at using place names, girls’ names, makes of
cars and even household appliances. He told little stories in vignettes and
brought fine observational detail to verses that invariably climaxed with the song’s
title or a repeated phrase that lifted the spirit. “In Berry’s cities, real
people struggled and fretted and gave vent to ironic perceptions,” wrote
Michael Gray in an obituary published in the Guardian newspaper. “His songs release the power of romance, flying
with relish through a part of the American dream.”
It was all the more remarkable, then,
that Berry was the wrong side of 30 when he was writing and singing songs about
teenage romance, and that he was an African American whose music transcended
racial boundaries without relying on the outrageous and rather camp style of
performance characterised by Little Richard. With his trademark red Gibson
ES335, his slicked back hair and carefully trimmed moustache, Berry was ultra cool;
like trumpeter Miles Davis, actor Sydney Poitier and boxer Muhammad Ali the
personification of insouciant black power long before the term was coined.
In tandem with the hits that rolled off
the production line like new cars at an assembly plant, Berry developed his
stagecraft, the duck walking, the wide-legged stance and the wise cracking, and
a personality summed up in the lyrics to ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’, for whom ‘a
whole lotta good women [are] sheddin’ tears’. He was sharp suited, elegant and
flash, all qualities unlikely to endear him to the white establishment in an
era when racism was rife below the Mason-Dixon line, and the jail terms (another,
evidently, resulted from trying to date a white woman) were not the only reason why Berry
cultivated a side to his personality best described as disagreeable. Music
industry practice in the fifties dictated the sharing of writing credits – and
thus the publishing revenues – with DJs who played records on the air, and
while Berry accepted this at the time, albeit under duress, he came to realise
that as his songs became covered by the big selling British groups of the
sixties he was losing a fortune in royalties. Then there was the fact that his
biggest hit ‘My Ding-A-Ling’, his only number one (in 1972) on either side of
the Atlantic, was by common consent the worst record he ever made. A novelty
song with smutty overtones that melodically resembled ‘Little Brown Jug’, in
the UK it displeased morals campaigner Mary Whitehouse who tried unsuccessfully
to get it banned, an action that doubtless assisted its passage to the top. A travesty
of his best work, it sold bucket-loads so why should he worry? In truth, Berry’s
chart statistics always belied the influence and quality of his records. He
didn’t even compose ‘My Ding-A-Ling’ anyway, so the issue of royalties never
arose, though it is a strange and slightly troubling paradox that this superbly
gifted songwriter did not write his biggest hit.
Thus was conferred upon Chuck Berry a
reputation as ‘difficult’ that in the fullness of time and through his own transgressions
would morph into ‘unsavoury’. It was no secret that he dealt exclusively in
cash, and that if the cash was not forthcoming neither was the show. Many
stories are told of promoters dashing to his hotel with wads of notes to secure
his services, and only after the money was handed over would Berry leave his
hotel and drive to the concert hall, usually in a Mercedes Benz hired at the long
suffering promoter’s expense. Similarly, if he was engaged for one hour, then
on the sixty minute mark precisely Berry would leave the stage, not to return
for an encore unless further funds were proffered which they invariably were if
the promoter wanted to avoid a crowd disturbance that might result in costly damage
to fixtures and fittings. Berry rarely spoke to the bands hired to back him up,
let alone provide them with a set list or thank them for their services. Such ruthless
inflexibility all added to the Berry legend, as did his truculence in
interviews. He preferred to be addressed as Charles. “I will excuse you,” was
his standard reply to a question that he felt was in any way disrespectful. When
he came to London in 1987 to promote his autobiography it was reported that he
wouldn’t leave his hotel bed to be interviewed unless the PR girl from his book
publishing company joined him there.
* * *
Despite
the enormous influence he exerted upon it, the beat boom of the sixties was as
unkind to Chuck Berry as it was to his contemporaries from the first wave of
rock’n’roll. While many fell by the wayside, Elvis to insubstantial films and then
Las Vegas, Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran to fatal accidents, Jerry Lee Lewis to
infamy and Little Richard to religion, Berry battled on. Re-recordings of old
material on labels other than Chess failed to match the sparkle of the
originals, however, and attempts to update his image in tandem with the new
order, like the Live At The Fillmore album recorded with the Steve
Miller Band, proved less than satisfactory. Back at Chess in 1969, ‘Tulane’, a terrific
rocker in his trademark style, and a brace of respectable albums ought to have
re-established his reputation, but the reality was that like those same contemporaries
he was a ‘singles’ artist unable to prosper in the ‘albums’ world of
contemporary ‘adult’ rock, and his future would forever rely on his past. With
his friend Bo Diddley, he became a fixture on the revival circuit, always
welcome in the UK where Teddy Boys from the fifties, their quiffs and sideburns
greying now but still sporting Edwardian coats, bootlace ties and crepe-soled
shoes, could be relied upon to jive with their wives in the aisles and cheer
him to the rafters as he duck-walked across the stage, reliving memories of how
Johnny B. Goode sat beneath the tree by the railroad track and played guitar
just like ringing a bell.
Never work-shy, for much of the rest
of his life Berry maintained a concert schedule of up to 100 shows a year,
travelling solo, his red Gibson guitar his only companion, a white naval
officer’s peaked cap hiding his receding hairline. In 1979, the same year he
was jailed yet again, this time for tax evasion, he played at the White House
for President Jimmy Carter, and for his 60th birthday in 1987 he was
the subject of a documentary movie entitled Hail!
Hail! Rock’n’Roll for which he was backed by a band put through their paces
by Keith Richards and featuring guest appearances by Eric Clapton, Julian
Lennon and Linda Ronstadt among others. He settled in Ladue, Missouri, a few
miles west of St Louis, and one Wednesday each month performed at a restaurant
in the city. He bought a restaurant of his own in nearby Wentzville that became
known as Berry Park, but brought ignominy on himself again when it emerged that
a video camera had been installed in the ladies’ bathroom. A search of the
premises uncovered illegal drugs as well as footage from the camera. Subsequent
legal proceedings reportedly cost him over $1 million in lawyers’ fees, a
suspended jail sentence and what was left of his tattered reputation. Another
lawsuit in 2000, brought by his old piano player Johnny Johnson, claimed joint
authorship of over 50 songs but was dismissed when the judge decided too much
time had elapsed since they were written. Many thought Johnson’s claim was
valid.
Berry certainly knew how to make
enemies and Keith Richards, for one, had good reason to loathe the man as much
as he loved his music. Berry drove Richards to distraction by switching keys
without warning during the filming of Hail!
Hail! Rock’n’Roll but, since the Stones recorded six of his
songs and modelled plenty of their own on his style, maybe Berry felt he was entitled
to play fast and loose with a Rolling Stone. If you include tracks on their BBC
sessions recordings, The Beatles recorded eight Berry songs and unlike the
Stones managed to better a Berry original with a version of ‘Rock And Roll
Music’ on their 1964 album Beatles For
Sale. John Lennon, a great admirer, sang that particular track brilliantly,
powering his group through its verses in one of greatest interpretations of Chuck
Berry music ever recorded, as fine a tribute as you’ll find anywhere. Lennon
shared a stage with his hero at the Toronto Rock And Roll Revival festival in
1969. What, if anything, passed between them is not recorded.
But covers by The Beatles and Stones
are the tip of the iceberg of course. Put simply, everybody covered Chuck Berry. Right now some band somewhere in the
world is plugging in, tuning up and opening a night’s set with Chuck Berry
music: ‘I’m gonna write a little letter…’, ‘Deep down Louisiana…’, ‘Long
distance information…’, ‘Riding along in my automobile…’ or any of a dozen
more. And someone somewhere is listening to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’, rocking
again ‘in Boston, in Pittsburgh PA, deep in the heart of Texas, ’round the Frisco
Bay, all over St Louis and down in New Orleans’, names on a map in a dull
geography class until Chuck Berry transformed them into that mythical American paradise all those years ago.
Many years before he was born to run, Bruce Springsteen found himself in one of those bands hired to back up Chuck Berry
and had the temerity to ask the great man what music they were going to play.
“Chuck Berry music,” he replied scornfully. What he really meant was that if
you don’t know how to play Chuck Berry music you have no business hanging an
electric guitar around your neck.
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