“He had an amazing way of synthesising what was going on and bringing it down to the essentials.”

The Beat Boom was unimaginable without Chuck Berry. Ask Keith Richards - Pat Gilbert did.

IN THE late ’50s Chuck Berry was a million-selling R&B star, but it’s unlikely that the music world would revere him quite so vociferously today if it wasn’t for the devotional awe of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. When those two acts committed their first Berry songs to tape in summer 1963 – the Fabs with Roll Over Beethoven for With The Beatles and the Stones with Come On, their debut 7-inch – Chuck was a disgraced has-been, serving a 20-month prison sentence for transporting a 14-year-old Apache girl across state lines. Yet within six months of his release in October ’63, white teenagers across America were gyrating to Brit Invasion covers of his peerless old compositions. For Keith Richards, who famously formed the soon-to-be Stones with Mick Jagger after bonding over an imported

Berry LP, the guitarist’s records possessed a magical perfection. “Chuck’s an amazing piece of work,” he told MOJO in 2015. “Some of those lyrics, the ease of delivery, that’s the coolest thing in the world to me. I think he had an amazing way of synthesising what was going on and bringing it down to the bare essentials. There’s very little going on in Chuck Berry’s records, but what is going on is in the right place and the right times.” Although the Brit Invasion restored his credibility and bank balance (if not his own hit-making potential), the fiercely proud Berry wasn’t always appreciative of his apostles’ respect. His first meeting – a two-song jam with John Lennon on the Mike Douglas Show in February 1972 – was a veritable love-in, but not so his encounters with Richards, whom Berry booted off the stage in LA in ’72, punched in the face in New York in ’81, and rowed with while filming 1987’s Chuck-fêting concert film, Hail! Hail! Rock’n’Roll. “I think you’ll find Chuck is Number 1 for being cantankerous,” chuckled Richards. “He’s also a big mood-switcher. When we were rehearsing that movie it was almost like he was trying to fuck it up. There’s a lot of stuff inside that he’s always kept locked up. But I love the fucker.” The Beatles’ and Stones’ touching official tributes to Berry acknowledged that his influence on rock music was immeasurable. “To us he was a magician making music that was exotic yet normal at the same time,” said Paul McCartney. “We learnt so many things from him which led us into a dream world of rock’n’roll music." For Keith Richards, it was simpler. “One of my big lights has gone out,” he tweeted.