Hail, Hail, Chuck Berry!
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Artist:
"If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry."— John Lennon
"There's only one true king of rock 'n' roll. His name is Chuck Berry."— Stevie Wonder
"I stole every lick of mine from Chuck Berry."-- Keith Richards
It's a happy 81st birthday to Chuck Berry. He may not have invented rock and roll but he was certainly its poet laureate. Plus he created a music blueprint he rarely strayed from and in it defined what our music's about: a riveting intro, hip-shaking rhythm, a blazing guitar solo and lyrical themes of cars, escape, freedom, luxury and sex.
To those of us who grew up outside of America, his songs described a Camelot land of dreams. It's impossible to be a true rock and roll fan and not love Chuck Berry. Because without him so much of what followed wouldn't have. No Beach Boys. No Beatles. No Stones. Forget Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. And no Dylan, who definitely studied Chuck's poetry.
Chuck can sound deceptively simple. Every song seems to start the same, but Aerosmith's Joe Perry understands that it's a lot more complicated: "A lot of people have done Chuck Berry songs, but to get that feel is really hard."
You've all heard Chuck - he's the soundtrack when Travolta and Uma dance for the trophy in 'Pulp Fiction'. There's more poetry in that one song ("You Never Can Tell") than there is in some band's entire careers. Two examples of his flow? "With hurry home drops on her cheek that trickled from her eye"…. "She moves around like a wayward summer breeze"….
Chuck was in his 30s and 40s when he wrote his amazing odes, but somehow he understood the quintessence of teenage. Lyrics about trying to make it with girls, being a king of cool and the joy of hearing great music were mixed with Berryesque slang and shaken up in an atomic-age cocktail shaker. I love the way he used words like "motorvatin'," "coolerator," "calaboose," "botheration".
My own favourite song is "Nadine", a three verse travelogue in pursuit of the "future bride" who won't give him the time of day.
"I saw her from the corner when she turned and doubled back / And started walking toward a coffee coloured Cadillac / I was pushing through the crowd to get to where she's at / Campaign shouting like a Southern diplomat / Downtown searching for her, looking all around / Saw her getting in a yellow cab heading up town / I caught a loaded taxi, paid up everybody's tab / With a twenty dollar bill, told him catch that yellow cab.
My own Chuck Berry moment came in Paris in 1976 with my photographer friend Kate Simon. Strolling along a boulevard in mid-morning and coming towards us is Chuck Berry! With a statuesque blonde on his arm a good 6 inches taller than him. Kate calls out to him and asks to take a photo. He declines and asks if we speak French, because he's looking for a film projector he can rent and take back to his hotel room. Something about the hour, the blonde and his mission make it feel somewhat blue in hue. We happen to be outside a camera store so we all go in and Kate talks to the staff, while I'm thinking to myself, I'm standing with Chuck Berry! The blonde's expression never changes. They can't help him and as we leave there's another request for a photo which again he declines. But Kate gets ready anyway and 20 feet away he looks over his shoulder and casts her a lovely impish Chuck Berry smile.
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