Chuck Berry a flawed man, but a marvellous musician
Despite the racism, the credit-stealing, the multiple stints in jail, financial challenges and some unsavoury rumours about his sexual proclivities, Berry persevered, even touring when well into his 80s.
Chuck Berry died this week in his 91st year. Respectful obituaries, mostly I suspect pre-written, were published the world over. Tributes were sought from those whom he influenced or maybe just wellworn quotations dusted off.
Berry always enjoyed the admiration of his peers.
On the Million Dollar Quartet recordings you can hear Elvis, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis wax lyrical about their great contemporary.
John Lennon famously said, ‘‘if you tried to give rock’n’roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry’’.
Bob Dylan called Berry ‘‘the Shakespeare of rock’n’roll’’. High praise indeed from a Nobel laureate.
The impact of Berry’s death on the wider culture has been far more muted. Consider the outpourings last year when David Bowie, then Prince died. A nonagenarian does not attract that kind of grief or attention, if only because of evident longevity.
Not the least of Berry’s achievements was survival. Not for him the early checkouts of Hank Williams or Buddy Holly. Nor did he succumb to middle-age excess like Elvis or Roy Orbison.
Despite the racism, the creditstealing, the multiple stints in jail, financial challenges and some unsavoury rumours about his sexual proclivities, Berry persevered, even touring when well into his 80s.
There was a contradiction between Berry the artist and Berry the man. On stage the former was charm itself, albeit with an understated sexuality that got more overt with the passing years.
Berry was a storyteller and a poet, his witty narratives concerned with the minutia of teenage life in the 1950s and early 1960s: high school, sex, young love, fast cars and, above all, the new music itself.
When his 60th birthday approached and acolyte Keith Richards sought to celebrate with a special, star-studded gig, the name given to the film which documented the occasion was Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock’n’roll. The latter part of this title appropriated a line from the last, climactic verse of Berry’s classic song School Days: ‘‘Hail, hail, rock’n’roll/deliver me from the days of old/long live rock’n’roll/the beat of the drum is loud and bold/rock rock rock’n’roll/the feelin’ is there body and soul’’.
Even without accompanying context or the benefit of Berry’s beautifully modulated voice, the verse is a statement on the liberating possibilities of the genre, an antidote not only to strictures of the classroom but all the dull, conservative attitudes of ‘‘the days of old’’.
When you listen with the addition of Berry’s trademark, ground-breaking guitar work, the complete sound comes close to a declaration of war.
Not that the musician himself would necessarily see it that way. Like most popular American artists, Berry claimed to be disinterested in messages, politics or art itself.
Writing about everyday teenage life was a means to a fiscal end.
Berry had more reason to complain about his country than most yet was capable of writing a celebratory piece of pop nationalism like Back in the USA, with its concluding refrain ‘‘Anything you want we got it right here in the USA’’.
Among those things that failed to get a mention in the song were segregation, disc jockeys who claimed to co-write your music on the strength of playing it once or twice on the radio and judges who persisted in calling you ‘‘nigra’’ from the bench.
If Jerry Lee Lewis could get away with marrying his 13-yearold cousin, Berry had no such luck after taking a 14-year-old Apache girl across state lines in 1959
The Mann Act was a way that uppity – or successful – ‘‘nigras’’ could be kept in their place: even on appeal Berry served a year and a half in prison. Such injustices left their mark on Berry the man, fuelling an already substantial temper. He became suspicious of promoters, demanding payment up front and his live performances suffered because he relied on pickup bands while touring.
There’s also the sneaking suspicion that he failed to give pianist Johnnie Johnson, his onetime mentor and long-term collaborator, sufficient credit.
Worse things still can be alleged about Berry if we chose to believe stories about the installation of surveillance cameras in the toilets of one of his restaurants.
The manner in which he did or not play with his ding-a-ling in later years threatened to detract from the art. Chuck Berry’s musical legacy is nevertheless beyond reproach.