Chuck
Berry: The Autobiography – Chuck Berry (1987)
I am not a fan of biographies for
the most part. They tend to tell an
individual’s story through rose-tinted glasses, and are usually meant as a
quick cash grab to take advantage of notoriety of some sort of project the
subject of the book is involved in. My
issue with most autobiographies is that the subject of the book very rarely
actually writes the book. What happens is
a ghost-writer is brought into interview the book’s subject. Sometimes they talk for days, discussing
different events to include in the book, but a lot of the time the ghostwriter
has maybe 6-8 hours of recorded interview with which to cobble together an “autobiography.” Because of this, they usually suck hard and I
avoid them. Sometimes though, a
particular autobiography piques my interest.
In reading about one of my favorite
O.G. Rock n’ Roll heroes, Chuck Berry, I found that he had written his own
autobiography, and thanks to the amazing M.D. Anderson Library at the
University of Houston, I managed to check out a copy. Chuck Berry is currently still kicking around,
having released a blues album last year with his children as the band. He is an octogenarian, and has lived through
the fits and starts of rock n roll, through the worldwide fanfare for it all
the way to its current day death throes.
It is amazing to think that in 2017, as I write this review, three of
the main original heartbeats of Rock n’ Roll are still alive, in varying
degrees of health. The great Howler
himself, Little Richard, is 80+ years old, and in failing health. The Killer, Jerry Lee Lewis, still performs
regularly slamming the hell out of those piano keys. It is an awesome thing that all three of
these cats survived the rock n roll life.
I have been drawn to the music of
Chuck Berry, and to the man himself, since I can remember. His compositions are classics, and many of
them have been Rock n’ Roll standards since they were first released. His stage-presence, charisma, and wild guitar
skills made him seem like the ultimate rocker.
I had seen the great, if contentious, concert film that was put together
in 1976 called Hail! Hail! Rock n’ Roll!
(It is awesome and you should check it out if you care anything at all
about the history of rock music) Because
of all this I was immediately drawn into this book. It really felt like I was visiting an old
uncle and being regaled with the tales of his musical and personal life. In fact, I could hear Chuck’s voice in my
head as if it was a book-on-tape as I read.
There are parts of Chuck’s life that
I did not know about and those make up the first third of the book. His childhood, parents, friends, schooling,
and everything that helped make him into such a rock star are covered, and in
quite embarrassing detail sometimes.
Chuck describes the racial tensions of being a black musician from St.
Louis asked to play “mixed” shows down in Dixie. Everything from segregated hotels to roped
off sections for whites only at the concerts, to having to sneak into an alley
to grab food from a restaurant kitchen window to the incongruities between
official segregation policies and the goodhearted and welcoming nature of
southern people is covered. If anything,
Chuck has always been a cold-blooded realist, learning from every experience
and trying to better himself at all turns.
Only in one chapter does Chuck
discuss the songs that have made him a legend.
He details the construction and writing of these tracks and it is a very
cool window into how a musician’s mind works as he creates his art. Throughout the book he details other, less
savory aspects of his life, such as his romantic affairs, his trouble with the
law at various times in his life, and the three separate incarcerations he
endured. Life comes with its ups and
downs and Chuck does discuss these things.
He never became a drug addict, or an alcoholic. This may have helped keep him in shape for
performing for the past 60 years.
Sometimes reading the words of one
of your heroes can really deflate the admiration. This was not the case with this book. Chuck is Chuck is Chuck, and the world is
better for having had him in it. His
seminal and auto-biographical composition, Johnny B. Goode, is included in the
Voyager golden records sent along with the spacecraft on a journey outside of
our Solar System. Chuck Berry’s music
could, conceivably, travel for millennia before some star-traveling
civilization discovers it, and plays the record within. It would be an amazing thing to have people
rocking out to a tune that came to being due to Chuck Berry hearing his mother
tell him countless times that “someday your name will be in lights.” Hail! Hail! Rock n’ Roll indeed!
*****
*****
(Chuck Berry was one of the first poetic lyricists in rock music, and influenced nearly everyone that came after, with all the heavyweights of the genre naming him as their idol, and rightfully so. The Autobiography contains a few of Chuck's poems, and this one I particularly like:
Those who don't know and do not know they don't know, are awful, avoid them.
Those who don't know but know they don't know, are awkward, assist them.
Those who know but do not know that they know, are asleep, awaken them.
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