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Chuck Berry: Mr. Rock N'Roll
Portrays the personal life and musical career of Chuck Berry and discusses his influence on the development of rock and roll
- GenresMusic
128 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1982
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January 21, 2018
Good book! Fans of Berry's autobiography will want to read it, because it's written from an outsider's viewpoint, with a nice balance of well-deserved fanfare vs. objective reporting on his wonderful, complex and sometimes bizarre personality. For example, author Krista Reese did not sugarcoat the paranoiac tendencies of the "first poet of rock'n'roll", which were absent from the autobiography, and make for fascinating reading (as do the tales of Berry's tough contract negotiation tactics.)
Research seemed pretty thorough. I really enjoyed reading about the UK Melody Maker interviews with Chuck after his first release from prison. The rundown of all the rock'n'roll movies he appeared in was quite helpful. So was the tabulation by year of the number of industry gold records awarded to all rock/pop artists, and the discography at the end of the book. No index, unfortunately. I was very glad she included perspectives of some industry folks who worked with Chuck Berry, including promoter Richard Nader and director Sid Levin.
There are almost 50 photos included, in both color and black & white (mostly grayscale.) The most exciting of the grayscale b&w pictures are the two large, almost surreal, sensory-overloading stage shots from pp. 100-103, of the white-suited guitarist and his combo, exploding in dazzling rays from an apparently mirrored set! There are only a few high-contrast b&w shots, two of which were put to brilliant use by replication into fantastic grids of 6 to 8 images, pop-art style.
This was published after the nostalgia boom hit big time with American Graffiti, Happy Days, etc, and the book suffers a little for it. Some of the pictures and graphics felt puzzling or gratuitous: The photos of dances on pages 9 and 34-35 have some other acts besides Chuck's on the bandstand for some reason, and it's unclear why a there's a picture of a denim-jeaned biker's butt appears later. To boot, slightly corny silhouettes of a swinging bobby-sox-era couple (frozen in various dance poses, and measuring about 2" tall) are in the lower corners of almost 80 pages. Too bad they weren't at least arranged for a flip-book motion picture effect.
Research seemed pretty thorough. I really enjoyed reading about the UK Melody Maker interviews with Chuck after his first release from prison. The rundown of all the rock'n'roll movies he appeared in was quite helpful. So was the tabulation by year of the number of industry gold records awarded to all rock/pop artists, and the discography at the end of the book. No index, unfortunately. I was very glad she included perspectives of some industry folks who worked with Chuck Berry, including promoter Richard Nader and director Sid Levin.
There are almost 50 photos included, in both color and black & white (mostly grayscale.) The most exciting of the grayscale b&w pictures are the two large, almost surreal, sensory-overloading stage shots from pp. 100-103, of the white-suited guitarist and his combo, exploding in dazzling rays from an apparently mirrored set! There are only a few high-contrast b&w shots, two of which were put to brilliant use by replication into fantastic grids of 6 to 8 images, pop-art style.
This was published after the nostalgia boom hit big time with American Graffiti, Happy Days, etc, and the book suffers a little for it. Some of the pictures and graphics felt puzzling or gratuitous: The photos of dances on pages 9 and 34-35 have some other acts besides Chuck's on the bandstand for some reason, and it's unclear why a there's a picture of a denim-jeaned biker's butt appears later. To boot, slightly corny silhouettes of a swinging bobby-sox-era couple (frozen in various dance poses, and measuring about 2" tall) are in the lower corners of almost 80 pages. Too bad they weren't at least arranged for a flip-book motion picture effect.
Displaying 1 of 1 review