Hail, Hail Chuck Berry Oct. 18, 2006:
The man who invented Rock & Roll turns 80.
(New: Oct. 26, 2006.
Video links updated, Mar. 2009)
On this page -- some Chuck Berry notes, plus: -
"Too Much Monkey Business": inspiring Dylan ("Goin' to the pearl hop,
Lookin' at the middle der" ????) -
A few great videos: duckwalking,
Newport Jazz, scrapping with Keith Richards -
Chuck & Me
Chuck's guitar
became the basis of classic rock & roll guitar riffs for many
years. He was the first -- and for a long time -- virtually the
only guitarist to develop this relatively new instrument to this
even newer music.
His guitar
playing was unique and striking enough that
a recent discussion on Charlie Gillett's (BBC) listener forum about
the greatest African guitarists compared Berry to the superb, late
Congolese guitarist Franco. (Scroll down to the item posted
Oct. 9, 9:25am)
But, equivalent
in importance to his guitar and rhythm was his word artistry.
"The first rock poet" is a common description of Chuck, but
that
misses the sense of wonder, joy, literacy and "what-the-hell-this-sounds-right" freedom Berry brought to a
musical era and genre that had little of any of those qualities.
Motorvatin' & the Brown-Eyed Handsome Man His first recording ("Maybellene") in 1955 came out at the
very beginning of the new musical era. Even within the context
of what turned out to a revolution in popular music, it was
clear from the very first line ("As I was motorvatin'
over the hill") that here was a unique voice and sound.
What
other 50's rock & roller could broach, even indirectly, racial &
social issues ("Arrested on charges of unemployment..." from
"Brown Eyed Handsome Man": "brown eyed" being as close as
anyone could come to a racial identification)? Who else could
call out to his girl by "campaign shouting like a southern
diplomat"? ("Nadine"). Heck, who else could be flying on a plane
while "workin' on a steak a la carty"? (From the fabulous,
driving "Promised Land")?
His singles over the next couple of years
generally represented the hip, street-wise Chuck. "You Can't Catch
Me", "Thirty Days", "No Money Down" (Chuck loved cars:
this was his ultimate vehicle), "Too Much
Monkey Business", and "Roll Over Beethoven". They all made the top 10 in the R&B charts,
but after Maybellene, the only one to make the pop charts was
"Beethoven".
That determined
Chuck's next direction. While he certainly had soul,
rhythm, and smarts, he also had a real head for money -- as did
Leonard Chess, the owner of his record company. The "brown-eyed
handsome man" took a back seat, and Chuck became the ultimate
chronicler of rock & roll music & teen life.
School Days
... & Prison Days His next songs
all hit the top 10, and remain, 50 years later, true rock and
generational classics. "School Days" ("Drop the coin right
into the slot / You've gotta hear something that's really hot...
Hail, hail rock & roll, Deliver me from the days of old"); "Rock
& Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen", Johnny B. Goode")
-- became huge pop hits.
The early 60's
found Chuck doing time in prison. It wasn't the first time, and
it wouldn't be the last. During that time, the original rock &
roll rhythm seemed to fade away, but he got out just in time for a
revival in interest in his music, courtesy of the Beatles,
Rolling Stones and others, and he had a few more hits.
1970's The early 70's
marked Chuck's last wide popular impact. "Rock & Roll Revivals"
(including the
legendary concert at Toronto's Varsity Stadium with John
Lennon, Eric Clapton, The Doors, Little Richard, Gene Vincent,
Jerry Lee Lewis and more). Improbably, Berry received
his only gold record for the silly (to be polite), "My
Ding-a-Ling" in 1972. It was taken from the album, the
London Chuck Berry Sessions. Three songs (one side of the
record) were recorded live at a concert in Coventry. They remain
a superb snapshot of the kind of excitement he could deliver.
The early songs
during the concert had the audience drowning out Berry's
voice by
singing his songs louder than he was. He introduced "Reelin' &
Rockin" -- the "raunchy" version ("I looked at my watch / It was
a quarter to ten / She looked at me / And said, "Chuck do it
again") -- by saying "I might be able to sing this one". He closed
out with "Bye Bye Johnny" -- the follow-up to "Johnny B. Goode" --
but the audience wanted the original. The instant he finished the first verse, the crowd took over,
as one, singing the chorus to "Johnny B. Goode".
"Now
bye..." Chuck started on the chorus of "Bye Bye Johnny", but he was
stopped: "Go Johnny go, go!"the crowd sang back to him...
"Look at
'em... Look at 'em!" Chuck cried in amazement. "Go Johnny go, go", the
crowd kept going Chuck: "Look at them!" Crowd: "Go Johnny go!"
"Sing... sing children!" ... "Go Johnny go!";
"Oh yeah!"... "...Johnny B. Goode" the crowd's chorus finished.
Chuck had
no choice, but to switch to the original. He didn't miss a
beat: "He used to
carry his guitar in a gunny sack..."
The song ends
with the audience in a frenzy, and the promoters pleading for
quiet. "Please... please! He's already overrun 15 minutes... The Pink Floyd [sic] is coming on...", but the audience keeps
clapping and calling for more. "Hail, hail" indeed.
The Beach Boys
took the tune of Chuck's "Sweet Little Sixteen" note for note as
the basis of their first hit, "Surfin' USA", but Bob Dylan took
the entire essence of Chuck's 1956 "Too Much Monkey Business", as the
inspiration for his first electric single, "Subterranean Homesick
Blues"
"Monkey
Business" is a classic -- Berry's delight in language is clear,
and his verbal brilliance and cadence are at their peak: concise, vivid, and powerful.
(The "Ahhh!" at the end of each verse captures perfectly the dismissive disgust at the hassles of life).
However,
Chuck's song stays in my memory most clearly because of
The Kinks' recording of the song -- specifically the Japanese
pressing of the double The History of the Kinks, which I
bought in Japan in 1972. Japanese record companies in those days
usually printed English lyrics on foreign rock albums, whether
or not the original included them, and obviously, whether or
not the transcriber had any familiarity with English.
The original.
Runnin' to-and-fro
Hard workin' at the mill.
Never fail in the mail
Yet come a rotten bill! Ahhh!
Chorus:
Too much monkey business
Too much monkey business
Too much monkey business
For me to be involved in!
Salesman talkin' to
me, tryin' to run me up a creek.
Says you can buy it
Go on try it
You can pay me next week Ahhh!
chorus
Blonde haired, good
lookin'
Tryin' to get me hooked.
Want me to marry, get a home
Settle down, write a book! Ahhh!
chorus
Same thing every
day
Gettin' up, goin' to school
No need'a me complainin'
My objections overruled! Ahhh!
chorus
Pay phone. Somethin'
wrong
Dime gone. Will mail
I oughta sue the operator
For telling me a tale! Ahhh!
chorus
Been to Yokohama
Been fightin' in the war
Army bunk, army chow
Army clothes, army car! Ahhh!
chorus
Workin' in the
fillin' station
Too many tasks
Wipe the windows, check the tires
Check the oil - dollar gas! - Ahhh!
Too much monkey
business
Too much monkey business
Too much monkey business
Don't want your botheration
Get away, leave me!
As printed with the
Kinks' recording:
Goin' to the pearl hop
Lookin' at the middle der
Filled up the middle
He ain't comin' round the bend.
Chorus: Too much
monkey business
Too much monkey business
Too much monkey business
To make a big bap with you.
Seven o'clock devil
tried to
Love me up to greet you
Goodbye, too cold to try
You can pay me next week
chorus
Hi ther, good
lookin,
Tried to get me into a game
I could get it wholesale
Down by the brook
chorus
Same thing every
day
Gettin' up, goin' to school.
What a thing we complain'
Objection over ruled
chorus
Leopold says
nothin's wrong
I'm goin' to the wheel man
Out threw the operator
<words erased on page> me a tale.
chorus
Pretty Yokohama
baby
Fightin' in the war
I'm a truck. I'm a chou
I'm a clother. I'm a car.
chorus
Workin' in the
fillin' station
Come in a check up
Window check, the oil check
The cars out of gas
Lip-synching, dancing-legs Chuck
Two videos, introduced by
DJ Alan Freed. (Aside: Freed was the man who "invented" the term rock & roll.
He
took an old blues expression, put it on white radio by
changing its meaning from sex to music. He "earned" royalties
for supposedly co-writing Berry's first hit, "Maybellene", and
later was the biggest catch in the payola scandal)
"You Can't
Catch Me": the song was recorded in 1955. Chuck
duck walks, and shows off a whole lot of other moves as he acts out the whole song
(his car has wings), right
down to smooching with "my baby" (his guitar substituted for the
girl). This clip is from DJ Alan Freed's movie, Rock,Rock,
Rock
"Really live"
at Newport Jazz Festival... more Dylan connections
It's rare to
find "real" live film of early rockers. Most of the footage, is
TV lip-sync'd scenes (e.g. American Bandstand), sanitized (Ed
Sullivan), or utterly artificial (the 50's rock movies).
This clip
however is of Chuck playing live at the
1958 Newport Jazz Festival, taken from the movie Jazz on a Summer's Day.
It isn't exactly a rock & roll band behind him, but that doesn't
stop him, or some dancers. The music may be
off somewhat, given the setting and unfamiliarity between Chuck
and the band, but the energy of the night is clear.
Chuck's set
apparently had something in common with a later famous Newport
performance. The reaction to Dylan's electric set at the 1965
Newport Folk Festival is legendary, but according to one of
Berry's biographers, Bruce Pegg in Brown Eyed Handsome Man:
The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry, Chuck caused his own
controversy.
The legendary
producer John Hammond had booked artists like Berry, Joe Turner,
Big Maybelle, Ray Charles and others, on the bill to show the links between
jazz, blues and rock. He should have known better. Jazz
cognoscenti were just as purist as the 1965 folkies.
Variety
reported that "some of the jazz fans were appalled" (although
Chuck was a huge hit with the "younger set" -- clear from the
film
clip), but Hammond later wrote that a riot nearly broke out. Police were called, and several people were "hauled away" to
Newport jail.
Mid-60's TV:
Chuck A Go-Go Chuck on
Hullaballoo, playing
"Go, Johnny Go...", and the go-go dancers are go-go'ing like
they don't go anymore. A bit of nice duck walking too. (That's
Trini Lopez introducing him).
1986: He may
be 60, but don't mess with Chuck
Chuck gets more worked up in some classic
scenes with Keith
Richards on the set of Hail Rock & Roll -- the movie
made for Berry's 60th birthday. Richards was one of the movers
behind the movie and its centrepiece concert, but nobody
tells Chuck what to do -- not even a Rolling Stone. There's a
clip (now removed from YouTube) with the two of them shouting at
each other. Then.... Some stops
and starts (and lectures)
They finally get it going
I met Chuck
Berry twice -- both very brief moments.
In January of 1970, following a Berry concert at
Convocation Hall in Toronto, a friend and I were hitchhiking
home. A car pulled over, and as I hopped in, the driver had to move his guitar
case to make room for us. However, it was when I noticed the
sideburns that I realized I was getting a ride home from my very
first music idol.
Now Chuck has a
reputation of being a man of few words, and he was just that.
Pleasant, but reserved. And although I used to hitchhike around
town often in those days, this turned out to be the shortest
ride I ever had -- from Wellesley and Queen's Park to his hotel
(Park Plaza). Google Maps describes
the route
as 0.7 km (about 55 seconds). Thank goodness he
spun his car around in a complete 360 degree spin in the snow at the top of
the circle (whether on purpose or not, I had no idea)... it gave
me a few extra moments with the Great Chuck Berry.
The next year,
I saw him again in Hamilton. This time, before the show, another
friend and I ran into him. He was looking for a cigarette
(luckily for this occasion, I smoked in those days). He was again
pretty reserved, but he had been having another of his
not-infrequent clashes with the night's promoter. My friend
still has the butt of the cigarette Chuck lit for her.
Well, perhaps he
didn't invent Rock & Roll, but but he may as well have.