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Chuck Berry: An American Life
Chuck Berry was an innovative musician who shaped elements of rhythm and blues into rock and roll, but he was also a complex, troubled man who was variously imprisoned for armed robbery, a sexual offence and tax evasion. This biography explores these aspects of his personality, placing them in the context of the racism and toxic masculinity of his St Louis upbringing.
Hardcover
First published November 8, 2022
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About the author
R.J. Smith
22 books20 followersR. J. Smith has been a senior editor at Los Angeles magazine, a contributor to Blender, a columnist for The Village Voice, a staff writer for Spin, and has written for GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and Men’s Vogue. His first book, The Great Black Way, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and recipient of a California Book Award. He lives in Los Angeles.
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April 24, 2023
I think the assumption one should make when talking about rock music is that any man discussed in it is a monster unless proven otherwise.
- Andrew Hickey, music historian
**
I really did not care for RJ Smith’s showoff style – I guess it was kind of appropriate, an aggravating writer whose subject is a brilliant nasty man. Here he is on one of Chuck’s lesser known masterpieces, "Nadine":
It begins with a pat of hickory guitar, a contented little understatement that launches great consternation, Louis Satterfield’s electric bass rationalises the rhythm, and no longer are the drummer and the bassist mashing threes against fours; this becomes an organised sleazy motion, a fast, twisting hullygully tune – Satterfield hitting on the one and three, Berry scratching eighth notes on the two and four, with horns flickering all kinds of messages like the heavy eyelashes at the Club My-O-My.
It's not all like that, but now and again, it is just like that. And he likes to quote peripheral acquaintances (since Chuck had no personal friends at all, this is stated many times) saying such stunningly banal things it can give a reader whiplash.
THE SECOND ROCK AND ROLL RECORD
They used to try to find the first rock & roll record. It must have started at some definable point, right? Well, there ain’t no such thing, but this used to be a music geek question, like trying to find the source of the Nile in the 19th century. But the first rock & roll hit is more easily discovered. It looks like “Shake Rattle and Roll” by Bill Haley in 1954, but very shortly after that in 1955 Chuck was there with "Maybelline", along with Bill Haley again ("Rock Around the Clock") and Little Richard ("Tutti Frutti"). He was right there and he was absolutely crucial.
Before Chuck Berry bands were fronted by singers or singer-pianists and they had saxophones all over the place blasting away. You couldn’t find an electric guitar anywhere. It’s hard to imagine rock without the luminous centrality of the phallic electric guitar but Elvis did without one and Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino were all pianists. Chuck invented the idea of the guitar hero. He also invented the amazing idea that popular song lyrics might be witty, smart and documentary.
They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale
The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale
But when Pierre found work, the little money comin' worked out well
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell
When you compare Chuck with the other Founding Fathers mentioned above, he towers over them. He wrote maybe twenty great songs, all with beautiful lyrics; and numberless are the cover versions of his songs over the decades, learning his songs was for guitarists like learning the alphabet. (All this as well as being tall, handsome and charismatic.)
But he stopped, as indeed many great songwriters do. They have their golden decade and they stop - Ray Davies and John Sebastian did the same. I would have liked some insight about this and one other thing from RJ Smith but none was forthcoming. The other thing was : all those covers of Chuck Berry songs were by white artists. Black musicians didn’t go anywhere near his stuff. Why would that be?
CHUCK’S METHOD
Playing hundreds of shows a year (into his eighties) this is how it went. He would issue his contract to the club owner. They were to find his backing band for the evening. They were to pay him in cash, before the performance. He would turn up alone in a rented car carrying only his guitar and a briefcase for the cash, which when received, he counted, twice. He met the band maybe half an hour before the show. He never rehearsed. He would point at the drummer and say “play Memphis” – after 30 seconds of that, point at the keyboard player and bark out one of his other titles. He would give them a basilisk stare then leave. He would arrive on stage at the hour stipulated in the contact, on the dot. When onstage he would charm the crowd, only play hits, sometimes change keys half way through a song to mess with the band. (There was no set list. They just had to guess which song he was starting.) He would stop playing after 45 or 60 minutes, whichever the contact said. If they wanted an encore that was extra – cash upfront again. But mostly he would just leave in his rented car.
I’VE LOOKED AT PLAGIARISM FROM BOTH SIDES NOW
1) OF CHUCK BERRY
Chuck released “Sweet Little Sixteen” in January 1958 and it was a big No 2 hit. Five years later the Beach Boys released their first big one “Surfin’ USA”. It had the exact same tune as Chuck’s song but on the label it said Brian Wilson wrote all of it. Chuck sued and now it says it’s by Berry/Wilson.
2) BY CHUCK BERRY
In 1972 Chuck released the appalling “My Ding-a-Ling” and it was his biggest hit, number one in the USA and the UK, to the terminal embarrassment of Chuck Berry fans. It was credited to Chuck but it was in fact by Dave Bartholomew, Fats Domino’s writing partner. Dave had recorded it (same tune, 90% same lyrics) in 1952. Eventually, Dave sued Chuck, but he left it too long, I don’t know why, and the judge threw out the case. But Chuck’s lawyers would have been able to point out that Dave got the tune from the 1869 drinking song “Little Brown Jug”, well-known enough to have been recorded by Glen Miller.
Brian Wilson shrugged – who cares? Chuck Berry shrugged – who cares?
NASTY
Calling Chuck Berry nasty might seem harsh if you’re not familiar with the Toilet Video scandal (amongst others). Readers of this book will get all the gross details, however, and might conclude that describing Chuck as nasty is fairly restrained. This review is no place to discuss that aspect of Chuck Berry.
It was what you call a complicated life.
- Andrew Hickey, music historian
**
I really did not care for RJ Smith’s showoff style – I guess it was kind of appropriate, an aggravating writer whose subject is a brilliant nasty man. Here he is on one of Chuck’s lesser known masterpieces, "Nadine":
It begins with a pat of hickory guitar, a contented little understatement that launches great consternation, Louis Satterfield’s electric bass rationalises the rhythm, and no longer are the drummer and the bassist mashing threes against fours; this becomes an organised sleazy motion, a fast, twisting hullygully tune – Satterfield hitting on the one and three, Berry scratching eighth notes on the two and four, with horns flickering all kinds of messages like the heavy eyelashes at the Club My-O-My.
It's not all like that, but now and again, it is just like that. And he likes to quote peripheral acquaintances (since Chuck had no personal friends at all, this is stated many times) saying such stunningly banal things it can give a reader whiplash.
THE SECOND ROCK AND ROLL RECORD
They used to try to find the first rock & roll record. It must have started at some definable point, right? Well, there ain’t no such thing, but this used to be a music geek question, like trying to find the source of the Nile in the 19th century. But the first rock & roll hit is more easily discovered. It looks like “Shake Rattle and Roll” by Bill Haley in 1954, but very shortly after that in 1955 Chuck was there with "Maybelline", along with Bill Haley again ("Rock Around the Clock") and Little Richard ("Tutti Frutti"). He was right there and he was absolutely crucial.
Before Chuck Berry bands were fronted by singers or singer-pianists and they had saxophones all over the place blasting away. You couldn’t find an electric guitar anywhere. It’s hard to imagine rock without the luminous centrality of the phallic electric guitar but Elvis did without one and Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Fats Domino were all pianists. Chuck invented the idea of the guitar hero. He also invented the amazing idea that popular song lyrics might be witty, smart and documentary.
They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale
The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale
But when Pierre found work, the little money comin' worked out well
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell
When you compare Chuck with the other Founding Fathers mentioned above, he towers over them. He wrote maybe twenty great songs, all with beautiful lyrics; and numberless are the cover versions of his songs over the decades, learning his songs was for guitarists like learning the alphabet. (All this as well as being tall, handsome and charismatic.)
But he stopped, as indeed many great songwriters do. They have their golden decade and they stop - Ray Davies and John Sebastian did the same. I would have liked some insight about this and one other thing from RJ Smith but none was forthcoming. The other thing was : all those covers of Chuck Berry songs were by white artists. Black musicians didn’t go anywhere near his stuff. Why would that be?
CHUCK’S METHOD
Playing hundreds of shows a year (into his eighties) this is how it went. He would issue his contract to the club owner. They were to find his backing band for the evening. They were to pay him in cash, before the performance. He would turn up alone in a rented car carrying only his guitar and a briefcase for the cash, which when received, he counted, twice. He met the band maybe half an hour before the show. He never rehearsed. He would point at the drummer and say “play Memphis” – after 30 seconds of that, point at the keyboard player and bark out one of his other titles. He would give them a basilisk stare then leave. He would arrive on stage at the hour stipulated in the contact, on the dot. When onstage he would charm the crowd, only play hits, sometimes change keys half way through a song to mess with the band. (There was no set list. They just had to guess which song he was starting.) He would stop playing after 45 or 60 minutes, whichever the contact said. If they wanted an encore that was extra – cash upfront again. But mostly he would just leave in his rented car.
I’VE LOOKED AT PLAGIARISM FROM BOTH SIDES NOW
1) OF CHUCK BERRY
Chuck released “Sweet Little Sixteen” in January 1958 and it was a big No 2 hit. Five years later the Beach Boys released their first big one “Surfin’ USA”. It had the exact same tune as Chuck’s song but on the label it said Brian Wilson wrote all of it. Chuck sued and now it says it’s by Berry/Wilson.
2) BY CHUCK BERRY
In 1972 Chuck released the appalling “My Ding-a-Ling” and it was his biggest hit, number one in the USA and the UK, to the terminal embarrassment of Chuck Berry fans. It was credited to Chuck but it was in fact by Dave Bartholomew, Fats Domino’s writing partner. Dave had recorded it (same tune, 90% same lyrics) in 1952. Eventually, Dave sued Chuck, but he left it too long, I don’t know why, and the judge threw out the case. But Chuck’s lawyers would have been able to point out that Dave got the tune from the 1869 drinking song “Little Brown Jug”, well-known enough to have been recorded by Glen Miller.
Brian Wilson shrugged – who cares? Chuck Berry shrugged – who cares?
NASTY
Calling Chuck Berry nasty might seem harsh if you’re not familiar with the Toilet Video scandal (amongst others). Readers of this book will get all the gross details, however, and might conclude that describing Chuck as nasty is fairly restrained. This review is no place to discuss that aspect of Chuck Berry.
It was what you call a complicated life.
December 27, 2022
Just to get this out of the way first, I had some trepidations when I started this biography. As a native St. Louisan, I feel reflexively defensive about Chuck Berry and his complicated legacy, which in many ways mirrors the city that spawned him (us). As with most native St. Louisans, there aren't too many degrees of separation between us. Decades before I got to interview Chuck Berry in person, I heard story after story from people who met him or knew him or had minor dealings with him. My own mom, a public schoolteacher who moonlighted as a waitress for extra money, served him and one of his very young blond dates on a couple of occasions. She said he was polite and friendly and a good tipper. A perfect gentleman--who was fucking an apparent teenager.
Berry is definitely the most charismatic person I have ever met and probably the most significant person I have ever interviewed, and I didn't get much time with him--maybe 20 minutes or a half-hour, and I wasn't allowed to use a tape recorder, which both amused and irritated me, since I'm a stickler for quoting people precisely, and, to put it mildly, Chuck Berry resists paraphrase. He had the most peculiar and poetic way of phrasing things, a sort of ur-Country Grammar lexicon that is impossible to replicate. Some of his gnomic locutions reminded me of my late grandmother's sayings; others seemed unique to him. After our interview, I literally ran to my office and transcribed my notes right away, so I would be able to capture as much of that sui generis voice as possible. I could still hear his voice ringing like a bell in my brain, and I could still feel the grasp of his enormous hand, the force of his singular star power. Most celebrities (especially septuagenarian celebrities, as he was at the time) seem smaller and more ordinary in real life. Not Chuck Berry, though: even eating chicken wings in a goofy captain's cap, he was majestic, mysterious, suffused with dark energy disguised as mere genius.
I knew before I started Smith's comprehensive and unstintingly honest but enormously sympathetic biography that his would need to be an unauthorized biography. Berry was protective of his privacy and his legacy, and his family no doubt feels that Berry's own biography is definitive. But as fantastic as Berry's autobiography is (for one thing, it replicates his voice exactly, which makes sense since he actually wrote it), it conceals as much or more than it reveals. This is going to sound like a strange comparison, but in many ways Smith's great challenge is similar to the one faced by Jan Swafford in writing about Johannes Brahms, another genius perv who wore mask over mask over mask and drenched every meaningful extramusical statement in irony. With a subject as complex and contradictory as Berry or Brahms, how can the biographer tell if you have found his "true" self and not another mask? More likely the "true" self is this multitudinous assemblage of lies, myths, delusions, and unconscious compulsions, but it takes a biographer as talented as Swafford or Smith to present the subject in all its irreducible complexity. It helps that they're both very good at writing about music qua music, which is, after all, the language Berry and Brahms spoke best.
Despite my pledge to use the library rather than buy more books, I ended up ordering a copy of Chuck Berry: An American Life after I finished the library book. I don't write about pop music anymore, so I won't use this as a research source the way I refer to my Swafford bios or my music encyclopedias, but I want to have this in my collection, and I want to be able to press it into the hands of the next blowhard fool who says something ignorant and dismissive about the man who gave my city, nation, and world so many priceless gifts.
In the event that anyone wants to read my short interview with Berry, I cut-and-pasted it below, since it's old enough to be getting unsearchable, at least in the existing RFT archives:
Riverfront Times, October 17, 2001
Somewhere around the middle of the long, long list of things that make Radar Station sad, somewhere between kitten torture and the demise of the bustle in ladies' skirt fashions, is the fact that St. Louis rock icon Chuck Berry doesn't get the respect he deserves in his own hometown. Sure, he's got a bronze star on Delmar, his monthly gigs at the Blueberry Hill Duck Room always sell out, and Gov. Bob Holden and Mayor Francis Slay are scheduled to present him with "proclamations of his greatness" at his big birthday bash at the Pageant on Oct. 18. These honors notwithstanding, when your garden-variety St. Louis hipster utters Berry's name, it's likely to lead to a crack about coprophilia and underage girls, not a serious discussion about his astonishing musical legacy.
It's partly his own fault. Anyone who's seen Berry in concert recently is painfully aware that he phones in his performances more often than not, seldom bothering to rehearse with his pickup bands or even tune his guitar. No one held a gun to his head when he outfitted his employee bathrooms with hidden video cameras. No one forced him to record the staggeringly stupid novelty jingle "My Ding-a-Ling." But what does it say about the kitten-torturing, bustle-slighting world we live in that this infantile paean to Berry's illustrious pee-pee remains his all-time biggest hit, bigger than "Roll Over Beethoven," "Little Queenie," "Maybellene," "Nadine (Is It You?)" and "No Particular Place to Go"? What does it say about us that we'd rather make poop jokes than talk about the poetic brilliance of lyrics such as "with hurry-home drops on her cheeks" or "as I was motorvatin' over the hill" or "campaign-shouting like a Southern diplomat"? Indeed, we're mindless sheep, too busy playing with our own ding-a-lings to appreciate the legend who duck-walks among us.
In the end, of course, it doesn't matter whether we make dumb gibes or issue proclamations. Berry's legacy is right there on his records: those slithery, wild, scabrous guitar licks; those groin-grinding jump rhythms, that heady elixir of honky-tonk and R&B -- the very essence of rock & roll, in all of its primitive, spastic, id-centered glory. Without Berry's quicksilver genius, rock music as we know it would not, could not exist.
Radar Station had the singular pleasure of interviewing the brown-eyed handsome man in person last week, when he met with us at Blueberry Hill. At nearly three-quarters of a century, Berry looks dapper and alert. Wearing a black windbreaker and his signature captain's hat, he sits at the head of the table, in front of an uneaten basket of hot wings and a glass of what looks like orange juice. He urges us to move closer -- not because he's trying to get fresh with us but because he's a little hard of hearing. Radar Station (who suddenly feels too cute to be 9,460,800 minutes over 17) finds his gallantry irresistible, if absurd. He fixes his cloudy black eyes on our face and, when asked how he'd like to be remembered, politely informs us that he doesn't care. "People's opinions can't be altered," he observes cheerfully. "Realizing this, I've found much pleasure and peace." Asked to name his favorite song, he says, "It's just like kids -- how can you say you love your boy more than your girl, your angel more than your brat?"
Berry doesn't seem to mind being interviewed, but he doesn't like to indulge in freeform reminiscence: "A guy came in, some college student. He set down a hand tape-recorder, and he said, 'Chuck, I've been waiting for this moment for six years. Go ahead and talk.' I said, 'Well, then, we're done now. You ask the questions -- I'll answer anything you ask, but I'm not just going to talk. You can even ask me what kind of underclothes I'm wearing, and I'll tell you.'" Radar Station, a helpless literalist, takes the bait and asks him. "Good ones," he responds with a wide, sly grin. "Briefs today, but I own a variety."
Having established this important information, we ask whether he has any comment on the lawsuit his longtime pianist Johnnie Johnson filed recently, wherein Johnson claims that he deserves co-writing credit on most of Berry's classic songs. "It's not Johnnie that's doing this," Berry says sadly. "I've known him 40 years. Someone inspired him to go along with him and seek their desire to try for an easy dollar. At the Pageant's grand opening, I talked to him for 20 minutes in the dressing room. At that time, I didn't know [about the lawsuit]. If I would have known, I would have popped the question: 'Hey, baby! What's up with that?' But he never said a mumbling word."
Berry, who intends to keep rocking for the next 20 years, isn't holding grudges. Besides playing out regularly, he's recording a new album, which has been on the back burner since 1978. He claims he's written nine new songs, but he doesn't want to estimate a release date. "I thought last March, but I might as well not predict anymore. It will take the application of time, will and effort," he says. Berry's daughter and son, among others, will probably back him up. "I have to let them do something, or else I'll pay family dues," he cackles. "Even Keith Richards or Johnnie Johnson -- I'd welcome them if they wanted to play. A lot of people would be surprised. All I want is a good song."
Chuck Berry celebrates his 75th birthday on Thursday, Oct. 18, at the Pageant, with special guest Little Richard.
Berry is definitely the most charismatic person I have ever met and probably the most significant person I have ever interviewed, and I didn't get much time with him--maybe 20 minutes or a half-hour, and I wasn't allowed to use a tape recorder, which both amused and irritated me, since I'm a stickler for quoting people precisely, and, to put it mildly, Chuck Berry resists paraphrase. He had the most peculiar and poetic way of phrasing things, a sort of ur-Country Grammar lexicon that is impossible to replicate. Some of his gnomic locutions reminded me of my late grandmother's sayings; others seemed unique to him. After our interview, I literally ran to my office and transcribed my notes right away, so I would be able to capture as much of that sui generis voice as possible. I could still hear his voice ringing like a bell in my brain, and I could still feel the grasp of his enormous hand, the force of his singular star power. Most celebrities (especially septuagenarian celebrities, as he was at the time) seem smaller and more ordinary in real life. Not Chuck Berry, though: even eating chicken wings in a goofy captain's cap, he was majestic, mysterious, suffused with dark energy disguised as mere genius.
I knew before I started Smith's comprehensive and unstintingly honest but enormously sympathetic biography that his would need to be an unauthorized biography. Berry was protective of his privacy and his legacy, and his family no doubt feels that Berry's own biography is definitive. But as fantastic as Berry's autobiography is (for one thing, it replicates his voice exactly, which makes sense since he actually wrote it), it conceals as much or more than it reveals. This is going to sound like a strange comparison, but in many ways Smith's great challenge is similar to the one faced by Jan Swafford in writing about Johannes Brahms, another genius perv who wore mask over mask over mask and drenched every meaningful extramusical statement in irony. With a subject as complex and contradictory as Berry or Brahms, how can the biographer tell if you have found his "true" self and not another mask? More likely the "true" self is this multitudinous assemblage of lies, myths, delusions, and unconscious compulsions, but it takes a biographer as talented as Swafford or Smith to present the subject in all its irreducible complexity. It helps that they're both very good at writing about music qua music, which is, after all, the language Berry and Brahms spoke best.
Despite my pledge to use the library rather than buy more books, I ended up ordering a copy of Chuck Berry: An American Life after I finished the library book. I don't write about pop music anymore, so I won't use this as a research source the way I refer to my Swafford bios or my music encyclopedias, but I want to have this in my collection, and I want to be able to press it into the hands of the next blowhard fool who says something ignorant and dismissive about the man who gave my city, nation, and world so many priceless gifts.
In the event that anyone wants to read my short interview with Berry, I cut-and-pasted it below, since it's old enough to be getting unsearchable, at least in the existing RFT archives:
Riverfront Times, October 17, 2001
Somewhere around the middle of the long, long list of things that make Radar Station sad, somewhere between kitten torture and the demise of the bustle in ladies' skirt fashions, is the fact that St. Louis rock icon Chuck Berry doesn't get the respect he deserves in his own hometown. Sure, he's got a bronze star on Delmar, his monthly gigs at the Blueberry Hill Duck Room always sell out, and Gov. Bob Holden and Mayor Francis Slay are scheduled to present him with "proclamations of his greatness" at his big birthday bash at the Pageant on Oct. 18. These honors notwithstanding, when your garden-variety St. Louis hipster utters Berry's name, it's likely to lead to a crack about coprophilia and underage girls, not a serious discussion about his astonishing musical legacy.
It's partly his own fault. Anyone who's seen Berry in concert recently is painfully aware that he phones in his performances more often than not, seldom bothering to rehearse with his pickup bands or even tune his guitar. No one held a gun to his head when he outfitted his employee bathrooms with hidden video cameras. No one forced him to record the staggeringly stupid novelty jingle "My Ding-a-Ling." But what does it say about the kitten-torturing, bustle-slighting world we live in that this infantile paean to Berry's illustrious pee-pee remains his all-time biggest hit, bigger than "Roll Over Beethoven," "Little Queenie," "Maybellene," "Nadine (Is It You?)" and "No Particular Place to Go"? What does it say about us that we'd rather make poop jokes than talk about the poetic brilliance of lyrics such as "with hurry-home drops on her cheeks" or "as I was motorvatin' over the hill" or "campaign-shouting like a Southern diplomat"? Indeed, we're mindless sheep, too busy playing with our own ding-a-lings to appreciate the legend who duck-walks among us.
In the end, of course, it doesn't matter whether we make dumb gibes or issue proclamations. Berry's legacy is right there on his records: those slithery, wild, scabrous guitar licks; those groin-grinding jump rhythms, that heady elixir of honky-tonk and R&B -- the very essence of rock & roll, in all of its primitive, spastic, id-centered glory. Without Berry's quicksilver genius, rock music as we know it would not, could not exist.
Radar Station had the singular pleasure of interviewing the brown-eyed handsome man in person last week, when he met with us at Blueberry Hill. At nearly three-quarters of a century, Berry looks dapper and alert. Wearing a black windbreaker and his signature captain's hat, he sits at the head of the table, in front of an uneaten basket of hot wings and a glass of what looks like orange juice. He urges us to move closer -- not because he's trying to get fresh with us but because he's a little hard of hearing. Radar Station (who suddenly feels too cute to be 9,460,800 minutes over 17) finds his gallantry irresistible, if absurd. He fixes his cloudy black eyes on our face and, when asked how he'd like to be remembered, politely informs us that he doesn't care. "People's opinions can't be altered," he observes cheerfully. "Realizing this, I've found much pleasure and peace." Asked to name his favorite song, he says, "It's just like kids -- how can you say you love your boy more than your girl, your angel more than your brat?"
Berry doesn't seem to mind being interviewed, but he doesn't like to indulge in freeform reminiscence: "A guy came in, some college student. He set down a hand tape-recorder, and he said, 'Chuck, I've been waiting for this moment for six years. Go ahead and talk.' I said, 'Well, then, we're done now. You ask the questions -- I'll answer anything you ask, but I'm not just going to talk. You can even ask me what kind of underclothes I'm wearing, and I'll tell you.'" Radar Station, a helpless literalist, takes the bait and asks him. "Good ones," he responds with a wide, sly grin. "Briefs today, but I own a variety."
Having established this important information, we ask whether he has any comment on the lawsuit his longtime pianist Johnnie Johnson filed recently, wherein Johnson claims that he deserves co-writing credit on most of Berry's classic songs. "It's not Johnnie that's doing this," Berry says sadly. "I've known him 40 years. Someone inspired him to go along with him and seek their desire to try for an easy dollar. At the Pageant's grand opening, I talked to him for 20 minutes in the dressing room. At that time, I didn't know [about the lawsuit]. If I would have known, I would have popped the question: 'Hey, baby! What's up with that?' But he never said a mumbling word."
Berry, who intends to keep rocking for the next 20 years, isn't holding grudges. Besides playing out regularly, he's recording a new album, which has been on the back burner since 1978. He claims he's written nine new songs, but he doesn't want to estimate a release date. "I thought last March, but I might as well not predict anymore. It will take the application of time, will and effort," he says. Berry's daughter and son, among others, will probably back him up. "I have to let them do something, or else I'll pay family dues," he cackles. "Even Keith Richards or Johnnie Johnson -- I'd welcome them if they wanted to play. A lot of people would be surprised. All I want is a good song."
Chuck Berry celebrates his 75th birthday on Thursday, Oct. 18, at the Pageant, with special guest Little Richard.
September 25, 2022
If you're looking for biographies against which to compare this majestic biography of Chuck Berry, don't look in the music section of your bookstore (or online site). Move over to the Politics section and work your way through the works of Robert Caro.
While Caro was obviously most concerned with the use of power, he also focused on a question and a mission. The question at the heart of his Robert Moses and (ongoing - next volume, PLEASE!!!) Lyndon Johnson biographies is, what makes a person great? Is it their achievements, their impact on the world? Or is it their traits, their interactions? The mission, in turn, was to place his subjects within the times they inhabited, and in doing so, to employ their subjects as a prism through which to view the greater world.
RJ Smith's biography of Chuck Berry does what Caro's books do. He gives proper acknowledgement and appreciation for Chuck Berry's accomplishments and contributions. He sees Berry as a visionary, imagining a world that includes him, and then willing that world into existence. But Smith also looks, completely unflinchingly, into Berry's deep, profound flaws as a man - the abuses and the mistreatments he inflicted, while explaining, not excusing, how the world may have shaped, or at least magnified, Berry's flaws.
But Smith, in order to explain Berry fully, also places him in the world - as specifically as the St. Louis area he lived in and as broad as the world he toured through (often without welcome). He shows you a world of music that he created that has also passed him by - while giving sufficient respect to the dogged stubbornness that would not allow Berry to simply chase trends in the pursuit of acclaim (as though the acclaim he received wasn't sufficient for a lifetime).
None of which describes how entertaining and often funny this book is. It's a pleasure to read, written by a sympathetic but by no means sycophantic biographer. This book is every bit the equal of Smith’s amazing James Brown biography, The One.
I am old enough to be a Chuck Berry fanatic, but I'm not. I can appreciate everything he did and love a lot of his work, and can acknowledge the world of music built on his efforts, but he is not an artist I listen to with any regularity. I believe he is a great artist, though. I say this because you absolutely do not need to be a Chuck Berry fan to fully enjoy and love this towering biography.
Many thanks to Hachette and NetGalley for the advance copy.
While Caro was obviously most concerned with the use of power, he also focused on a question and a mission. The question at the heart of his Robert Moses and (ongoing - next volume, PLEASE!!!) Lyndon Johnson biographies is, what makes a person great? Is it their achievements, their impact on the world? Or is it their traits, their interactions? The mission, in turn, was to place his subjects within the times they inhabited, and in doing so, to employ their subjects as a prism through which to view the greater world.
RJ Smith's biography of Chuck Berry does what Caro's books do. He gives proper acknowledgement and appreciation for Chuck Berry's accomplishments and contributions. He sees Berry as a visionary, imagining a world that includes him, and then willing that world into existence. But Smith also looks, completely unflinchingly, into Berry's deep, profound flaws as a man - the abuses and the mistreatments he inflicted, while explaining, not excusing, how the world may have shaped, or at least magnified, Berry's flaws.
But Smith, in order to explain Berry fully, also places him in the world - as specifically as the St. Louis area he lived in and as broad as the world he toured through (often without welcome). He shows you a world of music that he created that has also passed him by - while giving sufficient respect to the dogged stubbornness that would not allow Berry to simply chase trends in the pursuit of acclaim (as though the acclaim he received wasn't sufficient for a lifetime).
None of which describes how entertaining and often funny this book is. It's a pleasure to read, written by a sympathetic but by no means sycophantic biographer. This book is every bit the equal of Smith’s amazing James Brown biography, The One.
I am old enough to be a Chuck Berry fanatic, but I'm not. I can appreciate everything he did and love a lot of his work, and can acknowledge the world of music built on his efforts, but he is not an artist I listen to with any regularity. I believe he is a great artist, though. I say this because you absolutely do not need to be a Chuck Berry fan to fully enjoy and love this towering biography.
Many thanks to Hachette and NetGalley for the advance copy.
November 24, 2022
There are stories in this book that will curdle your stomach. There is music described in this book that is as magnificent as any work of art ever made. There is the legacy of racism encountered, fought against, beaten down, reconfigured. There is shame and there is glory. There is beauty and there is pain. It’s all connected in the story of one man.
RJ Smith is among the handful of musician biographers who can dig deep into character and characteristics good and bad of the human beings behind the music without losing sight of the accomplishments which made them worth covering in the first place. (I’m sure there is a handful, but only Smith and Peter Guralnick come into my head right away.) He is also accomplished at placing individuals into the context of society and history. This book offers insight into the history of St. Louis and race, things which have not been common knowledge to those of us who have lived here for decades. In fact, throughout the book, Smith keeps race always in mind when describing things Berry did and which happened to him. He never makes Berry an innocent victim by any means, but he does add context.
✓
The music did not spring from Berry’s mind like Athena from Zeus. Rock and roll was part of the changes taking place in African American music in particular during the 1950s, and Smith does a great job of showing how all those changes influenced Berry who then influenced more changes. The piano playing of Johnnie Johnson, itself influenced by blues and jazz and boogie woogie all around him, helped shape Berry’s guitar playing, which then sounded like nobody else on the instrument until nearly everybody else on the instrument sounded like it. The electric guitar was still fairly new when Berry took to it, and his playing did not have many specific rules or roles to worry about. It takes a long time, but Smith eventually points out Berry’s exceptionally long fingers which enabled him to easily play across many frets on the guitar that most people simply could not reach – I would really like to hear a lot more from jazz pianist Vijay Ijer on the discussion of Berry’s hands and experiences affecting the way he played.
Nat King Cole heavily influenced the way Berry sang, particularly his focus on diction. The songwriting came from a combination of blues and storytelling tradition and poetry. Berry was an originator – and Smith makes a point of showing how the originators of rock and roll (including Little Richard, Bo Diddley, and Jerry Lee Lewis) were different from everybody else who came after. Berry benefited financially from the British Invasion bands who performed his songs, but he never had much respect for them – it’s a little bit funny to think he referred to the Rolling Stones frontman as Dick Jagger quite a few years after everybody else in the world knew very well the proper name.
The chapter on Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n Roll is full of fascinating insight into an experience which I participated in by virtue of being at one of the two filmed concerts for that movie. But, then, a lot of that insight seems to come from extras included on the DVD reissue which I’ve never seen. I wish Smith could have learned about Berry’s triumphant appearance a few years after that event when he headlined at the same Fox Theater over Jerry Lee Lewis and gave the greatest performance I could possibly imagine. It was so good that I decided I would never again see Chuck Berry live, as I wanted that to be my final memory of the man on stage – it never occurred to me at the time that a 63-year-old would have another 25 years of performing in him.
The ugliness is investigated thoroughly. Berry’s notorious demands for money up front before he would walk on stages are shown to be a combination of his understanding of numbers and money as proof of worth as well as a need to retain control at all times. His frequent surliness to fans, admirers, and especially other musicians does not paint him in any kind of good light. But, of course, it is sex and fetishes that are the worst. Berry seemed to constantly require sex, and he mixed his desire with revenge for racists that wouldn’t let him even talk to white women and a shameful desire to be punished for crossing lines. The famous story of the 14-year-old girl he brought back to St. Louis from the Southwest, which led to his conviction under the Mann Act, leaves nobody looking good. It’s possible to have been unjustly singled out as well as to have acted dishonorably and awfully.
This comes up again with the truly infamous stories about his videotapes of women using the restroom and locker room in the restaurant he owned just over thirty years ago. Everybody looks terrible here, and it turns out it’s possible to still be shocked further than what I had been before. Berry was clearly guilty of terrible behavior as well as a victim of illegal searches and seizures in the rush to bring this to light. Smith’s research and descriptions in this chapter are unblinking and essential.
I never really met Chuck Berry, though he did walk out of Blueberry Hill by himself after midnight once in about 1984 when I was walking with a friend after work. “How ya doin’, fellas?” was the extent of my interaction with the man. But, starting with the fact that I went to high school with his son, I’ve got a lot of first-degree separations, and it’s fascinating the number of people I’ve known quoted and/or acknowledged in this book. I’ve read a lot of biographies in my life, but never one in which I can hear the speaking voices in my head of this many people offering ideas and anecdotes. That won’t be true for everybody who reads it, but it possibly at least partially colors my impression of the book, so I figured I should mention it.
The music of Chuck Berry, especially the singles created between 1955 and 1972 (from “Maybellene” to “Tulane”) remains totemic in my world. Smith does an incredible job of describing what makes Berry’s music so great. He even devotes a chapter that makes “My Ding-A-Ling” seem more than just a low point in his career (while also pointing out that the only number one hit record for Chuck Berry was basically stolen from Dave Bartholomew). It would be wonderful if the man who created so much truth and beauty could have been as nice as his music was free. But that’s not the way it was, and neither was any American Life.
RJ Smith is among the handful of musician biographers who can dig deep into character and characteristics good and bad of the human beings behind the music without losing sight of the accomplishments which made them worth covering in the first place. (I’m sure there is a handful, but only Smith and Peter Guralnick come into my head right away.) He is also accomplished at placing individuals into the context of society and history. This book offers insight into the history of St. Louis and race, things which have not been common knowledge to those of us who have lived here for decades. In fact, throughout the book, Smith keeps race always in mind when describing things Berry did and which happened to him. He never makes Berry an innocent victim by any means, but he does add context.
✓
The music did not spring from Berry’s mind like Athena from Zeus. Rock and roll was part of the changes taking place in African American music in particular during the 1950s, and Smith does a great job of showing how all those changes influenced Berry who then influenced more changes. The piano playing of Johnnie Johnson, itself influenced by blues and jazz and boogie woogie all around him, helped shape Berry’s guitar playing, which then sounded like nobody else on the instrument until nearly everybody else on the instrument sounded like it. The electric guitar was still fairly new when Berry took to it, and his playing did not have many specific rules or roles to worry about. It takes a long time, but Smith eventually points out Berry’s exceptionally long fingers which enabled him to easily play across many frets on the guitar that most people simply could not reach – I would really like to hear a lot more from jazz pianist Vijay Ijer on the discussion of Berry’s hands and experiences affecting the way he played.
Nat King Cole heavily influenced the way Berry sang, particularly his focus on diction. The songwriting came from a combination of blues and storytelling tradition and poetry. Berry was an originator – and Smith makes a point of showing how the originators of rock and roll (including Little Richard, Bo Diddley, and Jerry Lee Lewis) were different from everybody else who came after. Berry benefited financially from the British Invasion bands who performed his songs, but he never had much respect for them – it’s a little bit funny to think he referred to the Rolling Stones frontman as Dick Jagger quite a few years after everybody else in the world knew very well the proper name.
The chapter on Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n Roll is full of fascinating insight into an experience which I participated in by virtue of being at one of the two filmed concerts for that movie. But, then, a lot of that insight seems to come from extras included on the DVD reissue which I’ve never seen. I wish Smith could have learned about Berry’s triumphant appearance a few years after that event when he headlined at the same Fox Theater over Jerry Lee Lewis and gave the greatest performance I could possibly imagine. It was so good that I decided I would never again see Chuck Berry live, as I wanted that to be my final memory of the man on stage – it never occurred to me at the time that a 63-year-old would have another 25 years of performing in him.
The ugliness is investigated thoroughly. Berry’s notorious demands for money up front before he would walk on stages are shown to be a combination of his understanding of numbers and money as proof of worth as well as a need to retain control at all times. His frequent surliness to fans, admirers, and especially other musicians does not paint him in any kind of good light. But, of course, it is sex and fetishes that are the worst. Berry seemed to constantly require sex, and he mixed his desire with revenge for racists that wouldn’t let him even talk to white women and a shameful desire to be punished for crossing lines. The famous story of the 14-year-old girl he brought back to St. Louis from the Southwest, which led to his conviction under the Mann Act, leaves nobody looking good. It’s possible to have been unjustly singled out as well as to have acted dishonorably and awfully.
This comes up again with the truly infamous stories about his videotapes of women using the restroom and locker room in the restaurant he owned just over thirty years ago. Everybody looks terrible here, and it turns out it’s possible to still be shocked further than what I had been before. Berry was clearly guilty of terrible behavior as well as a victim of illegal searches and seizures in the rush to bring this to light. Smith’s research and descriptions in this chapter are unblinking and essential.
I never really met Chuck Berry, though he did walk out of Blueberry Hill by himself after midnight once in about 1984 when I was walking with a friend after work. “How ya doin’, fellas?” was the extent of my interaction with the man. But, starting with the fact that I went to high school with his son, I’ve got a lot of first-degree separations, and it’s fascinating the number of people I’ve known quoted and/or acknowledged in this book. I’ve read a lot of biographies in my life, but never one in which I can hear the speaking voices in my head of this many people offering ideas and anecdotes. That won’t be true for everybody who reads it, but it possibly at least partially colors my impression of the book, so I figured I should mention it.
The music of Chuck Berry, especially the singles created between 1955 and 1972 (from “Maybellene” to “Tulane”) remains totemic in my world. Smith does an incredible job of describing what makes Berry’s music so great. He even devotes a chapter that makes “My Ding-A-Ling” seem more than just a low point in his career (while also pointing out that the only number one hit record for Chuck Berry was basically stolen from Dave Bartholomew). It would be wonderful if the man who created so much truth and beauty could have been as nice as his music was free. But that’s not the way it was, and neither was any American Life.
July 22, 2023
Man this was a disappointing book. How could it be otherwise? Chuck Berry was not a nice person. He didn't like talking to journalists, and he was already dead when this author went to work. But still.
But still. RJ Smith is the worst rock writer I've ever seen. And I grew up with some really awful rock writers. Remember Robert Christgau comparing Chuck Berry to Proust? I mean, why not Lieber and Stoller? I'm still trying to figure out who he was trying to impress! But this guy is worse. Very few insights, but plenty of excuses. Lots of woke virtue signaling. The low point is where RJ Smith says (with a straight face) that Chuck's classic songs are about "girl power." Sure they are. That's why they inspired the Rolling Stones to write all their great songs about "girl power." You know, songs like Under My Thumb. And the Midnight Rambler!
You can make excuses for Chuck Berry, but in the end, they're the same excuses people make for Harvey Weinstein. Or Donald Trump, for that matter. Now, I still love "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" and "Too Much Monkey Business." But reading this book taught me that "Sweet Little Sixteen" is a lot like "Shakespeare In Love." Creepy guys know that if they celebrate entitled white virginity in public, they can shame poor white girls in private all they want. That's what Chuck Berry was into. And the great RJ Smith can't tap-dance away from it fast enough.
In the wee wee hours, this writer needs to do something with his ding-a-ling.
One final thought: I wish the author would have compared Chuck Berry to OJ Simpson. Both of them gained a huge fan base of adoring white folks, mostly by creating a cheerful, upbeat public image. Both of them had a dark side they tried to hide, and both were sexually obsessed with white women. The difference is that Chuck Berry was more petty and small-minded, less tragic and more calculating. You couldn't picture Chuck Berry marrying a golden girl like Nicole. But you couldn't see him murdering her either.
But still. RJ Smith is the worst rock writer I've ever seen. And I grew up with some really awful rock writers. Remember Robert Christgau comparing Chuck Berry to Proust? I mean, why not Lieber and Stoller? I'm still trying to figure out who he was trying to impress! But this guy is worse. Very few insights, but plenty of excuses. Lots of woke virtue signaling. The low point is where RJ Smith says (with a straight face) that Chuck's classic songs are about "girl power." Sure they are. That's why they inspired the Rolling Stones to write all their great songs about "girl power." You know, songs like Under My Thumb. And the Midnight Rambler!
You can make excuses for Chuck Berry, but in the end, they're the same excuses people make for Harvey Weinstein. Or Donald Trump, for that matter. Now, I still love "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" and "Too Much Monkey Business." But reading this book taught me that "Sweet Little Sixteen" is a lot like "Shakespeare In Love." Creepy guys know that if they celebrate entitled white virginity in public, they can shame poor white girls in private all they want. That's what Chuck Berry was into. And the great RJ Smith can't tap-dance away from it fast enough.
In the wee wee hours, this writer needs to do something with his ding-a-ling.
One final thought: I wish the author would have compared Chuck Berry to OJ Simpson. Both of them gained a huge fan base of adoring white folks, mostly by creating a cheerful, upbeat public image. Both of them had a dark side they tried to hide, and both were sexually obsessed with white women. The difference is that Chuck Berry was more petty and small-minded, less tragic and more calculating. You couldn't picture Chuck Berry marrying a golden girl like Nicole. But you couldn't see him murdering her either.
December 6, 2022
Great bio about Chuck Berry, one of the most complex beings in American culture. I often think about Steven Van Zandt's comment that he would never want to end up like Chuck Berry, whose music he loved, but in person, seemed to be a mean spirited, money grubbing hack. In RJ Smith's take, he was all that. But the way to look at him was as a supreme individualist, rule breaker and artist. In this book, Smith displays a firm grasp on Berry's artistry, while also showing his human side. Berry, it turns out, was a fan of musicians ranging from Muddy Waters to the Everly Brothers to Nat King Cole. He was a good lover, chess player, and handy man. He was also capable of kindnesses and even friendship to fans and fellow musicians, such as Bo Diddley and Carl Perkins. The thing about Berry, however, was that he always had to have things HIS way -- defying the law, the racist mores of the land, the IRS, the record industry, concert promoters and, in a terrible, serial fashion, sexual civility. In doing so, he repeatedly stepped on his own toes, and then some, while sadly rejecting the idolatry of his fans. He also never fully acknowledged pianist Johnnie Johnson's contributions to his sound, and perhaps, his songwriting -- even as he took pains to cite the general influence of Country, Blues and Jazz musicians. Smith delves deep into Berry's life in St. Louis and looks at how the racial divide, his imprisonment, and paranoia, helped mold Berry's hopes, dreams and reality.
July 9, 2023
Chuck Berry. Genius? Absolutely. Weird cat? No question.
Does the latter cancel the former? Not even a little.
This book doesn’t shy away from both sides of the father of rock n roll and nor should it, because it’s the light and the darkness that made chuck Berry who he was and informed the gifts he left for us all.
So appreciate the musician while chastising the man.
Does the latter cancel the former? Not even a little.
This book doesn’t shy away from both sides of the father of rock n roll and nor should it, because it’s the light and the darkness that made chuck Berry who he was and informed the gifts he left for us all.
So appreciate the musician while chastising the man.
August 18, 2022
This book is heavy. Heavy in ideas, heavy in its subject matter, and heavy in details. It also should have been 2 separate books.
I love Chuck Berry and this book filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge of him and those parts were great. The trend of biographies that also include the history of the world around the subject is overdone, and in this case detracted from the book. The author seemed more interested in the history of the times and it felt at times like he was using Chuck’s story to write a history book. There were a few times where he would give a brief description of an event, comment that it has been covered in other books, then knock out 10 or so pages on the subject, never once mentioning Berry. It was extremely tedious and read like a textbook at times.
That said, the parts that were actually about Chuck were fascinating and I really wish that he’d been the main focus of his biography.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this
I love Chuck Berry and this book filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge of him and those parts were great. The trend of biographies that also include the history of the world around the subject is overdone, and in this case detracted from the book. The author seemed more interested in the history of the times and it felt at times like he was using Chuck’s story to write a history book. There were a few times where he would give a brief description of an event, comment that it has been covered in other books, then knock out 10 or so pages on the subject, never once mentioning Berry. It was extremely tedious and read like a textbook at times.
That said, the parts that were actually about Chuck were fascinating and I really wish that he’d been the main focus of his biography.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this
December 6, 2022
RJ Smith does a wonderful job capturing the complexities of Chuck Berry (and I’m not just saying that because he gave my band a great review years ago). I thought I knew the subject, but Smith is chock full of facts and places the artist in his times to create a wider panorama than just a gossipy rock bio (but the gossipy parts are there and boy are they foul). It’s a thrilling and, for me, somewhat sad life. But even more than Sinatra, Check Berry did it his way.
November 22, 2022
If you read Chuck's autobiography, and know his work, do you really need to read this? Yes. The level to which Smith connects Chuck's work and actions to currents in U.S. society (and to their effects on those currents) is very impressive. In addition, he deftly handles the difficulty of considering a genius who was not always a good human being. Highly recommended.
February 22, 2023
If you don't know Chuck Berry, you don't know rock and roll. This is the story of one of the most influential musicians ever. The good, bad and the ugly. The story of the great music by a complex, and sometimes disturbing man. This is a great music bio of an icon, and far from perfect human being.
January 4, 2023
This is one of the very best music biographies I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them!
Chuck Berry, if he didn't "invent" rock and roll (whatever that means), was surely one of its foundational performers. Consider that when "Maybellene" was released in 1955, listeners thought they were hearing a white singer who successfully mixed country music and rhythm & blues. In comparison, when Elvis released "That's All Right," also linking country and R&B styles, record buyers initially thought he was a Black singer.
Like Presley, Berry appreciated many different styles of singing. The crooner Nat "King" Cole was one of his friends. Elvis? He liked Dean Martin's style, and Roy Orbison's. Chuck, who did not offer praise very often, said that Elvis had an outstanding voice, which he compared favorably to Bing Crosby's voice. A lot of Berry's songs, while lyrically very different, sound similar, and Berry does not sing across a broad range of styles. Elvis had the ability to sing in almost any style - rock, gospel, ballads, blues, country - and still put the music across. And Elvis, being white, had a much larger cultural impact than Berry. Berry composed most of his own hits and was a terrific lyricist. Elvis was an interpreter only. Elvis recorded or performed many of Berry's songs. I can't think of any Presley songs that Berry recorded.
Berry understood he was a performer in the Jim Crow era, but he pushed against the limits imposed by racism. A man with a powerful sex drive, Berry's preference for white women often got him into trouble (remarkably, his marriage lasted over 50 years). Chuck, who didn't finish high school, was in trouble to begin with, doing prison time as a young man for robbery, and prison again for violations of the so-called Mann Act, "transporting" a minor (in this case, a 14-year-old prostitute) across state lines "for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose." And then Berry served time for tax evasion, which is not so surprising when we consider that he refused to go on stage unless and until paid IN CASH for the performance. I doubt he kept very careful records.
Berry was gregarious, but he was also solitary. He did not have many friends. (i am tempted to say he did not have ANY real friends.) He had an out-sized ego and could be, and often was, difficult. The video of his sharp criticism of Keith Richard's performance of Berry's "Carol" is pretty stunning.
So, we can say that Chuck did it his way, I think. Much more than Elvis, who was under the thumb of his manager for nearly all of his career. I thought I knew what I needed to know about Berry before I read this book, but I was wrong. He was not an easy man to like, but he knew what he wanted and he mostly went and got it. It's hard to imagine the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, not to mention every bar band in the universe, without tipping your hat to Chuck Berry.
Chuck Berry, if he didn't "invent" rock and roll (whatever that means), was surely one of its foundational performers. Consider that when "Maybellene" was released in 1955, listeners thought they were hearing a white singer who successfully mixed country music and rhythm & blues. In comparison, when Elvis released "That's All Right," also linking country and R&B styles, record buyers initially thought he was a Black singer.
Like Presley, Berry appreciated many different styles of singing. The crooner Nat "King" Cole was one of his friends. Elvis? He liked Dean Martin's style, and Roy Orbison's. Chuck, who did not offer praise very often, said that Elvis had an outstanding voice, which he compared favorably to Bing Crosby's voice. A lot of Berry's songs, while lyrically very different, sound similar, and Berry does not sing across a broad range of styles. Elvis had the ability to sing in almost any style - rock, gospel, ballads, blues, country - and still put the music across. And Elvis, being white, had a much larger cultural impact than Berry. Berry composed most of his own hits and was a terrific lyricist. Elvis was an interpreter only. Elvis recorded or performed many of Berry's songs. I can't think of any Presley songs that Berry recorded.
Berry understood he was a performer in the Jim Crow era, but he pushed against the limits imposed by racism. A man with a powerful sex drive, Berry's preference for white women often got him into trouble (remarkably, his marriage lasted over 50 years). Chuck, who didn't finish high school, was in trouble to begin with, doing prison time as a young man for robbery, and prison again for violations of the so-called Mann Act, "transporting" a minor (in this case, a 14-year-old prostitute) across state lines "for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose." And then Berry served time for tax evasion, which is not so surprising when we consider that he refused to go on stage unless and until paid IN CASH for the performance. I doubt he kept very careful records.
Berry was gregarious, but he was also solitary. He did not have many friends. (i am tempted to say he did not have ANY real friends.) He had an out-sized ego and could be, and often was, difficult. The video of his sharp criticism of Keith Richard's performance of Berry's "Carol" is pretty stunning.
So, we can say that Chuck did it his way, I think. Much more than Elvis, who was under the thumb of his manager for nearly all of his career. I thought I knew what I needed to know about Berry before I read this book, but I was wrong. He was not an easy man to like, but he knew what he wanted and he mostly went and got it. It's hard to imagine the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, not to mention every bar band in the universe, without tipping your hat to Chuck Berry.
January 27, 2023
An unflinching look at a great musical innovator who doubled as a moral tarantula and predator. Smith's exceptional sequence of stories situates the Berry family in the African-American community of segregated St. Louis, Missouri and the striving, largely black neighborhood of the Ville. There, Chuck grew up, overcame a reckless youth, learned to play electric (important word) guitar and dream up a "boogie-woogie" repertoire, to became one of the central founders of rock 'n' roll.
Smith is a generous biographer who chronicles Berry's rapid rise to musical stardom, even as he became a brusk, distrustful egomaniac, voyeur, and sex addict (albeit never described as such). Smith cuts Berry a considerable amount of slack--indeed, he writes Berry as a veritable progressive anti-segregationist--for wanting to create circumstances in which he could simultaneously play for mixed black and white audiences that were illegal throughout the South and de facto segregated in many northern venues as well. But Berry wouldn't be marching in protest of anything: as Smith observes, Chuck's motives were primarily monetary. He recognized the black audience for rhythm and blues was morphing in the 1950s into a vastly larger white rock'n'roll audience that he wanted to win over. Indeed, throughout his long career, as his audiences grew, Berry became more distrustful of promotors and moneymen and insisted on being paid in cash before he stepped onto the stage...
To be continued...
Smith is a generous biographer who chronicles Berry's rapid rise to musical stardom, even as he became a brusk, distrustful egomaniac, voyeur, and sex addict (albeit never described as such). Smith cuts Berry a considerable amount of slack--indeed, he writes Berry as a veritable progressive anti-segregationist--for wanting to create circumstances in which he could simultaneously play for mixed black and white audiences that were illegal throughout the South and de facto segregated in many northern venues as well. But Berry wouldn't be marching in protest of anything: as Smith observes, Chuck's motives were primarily monetary. He recognized the black audience for rhythm and blues was morphing in the 1950s into a vastly larger white rock'n'roll audience that he wanted to win over. Indeed, throughout his long career, as his audiences grew, Berry became more distrustful of promotors and moneymen and insisted on being paid in cash before he stepped onto the stage...
To be continued...
February 10, 2024
A biography that's written well enough (there are many oddly phrased sentences) that conveys the musicality of Berry (and Johnnie Johnson, too, thankfully) and that directly addresses racism, sexism, misogyny, unsavoury acts including but not limited to the illegal taping of females, transporting a juvenile female over state lines, peculiar business dealings, and much else. Smith goes to good lengths to capture the times Berry lived in and through and his shaping of them, to a degree, with his music and its appeal. A bit more on Berry's last years would have been welcome. Whatever one thinks of Berry the person, the music remains. Recommended reading.
September 18, 2024
A must-read biography of Chuck Berry, precisely because it’s so willing to consider him in all of his contradictions and thorniness— genius and asshole, innovator and abuser, pioneer and pervert. Smith’s biography doesn’t make excuse or apology for the ugly bits of Berry’s life, but neither does it allow that ugliness to tarnish the incredible creative legacy Berry left behind. I wish there had been more about Berry’s marriage and family life, but with that caveat aside, this is a deeply compelling, readable, and vigorously researched testament to a towering figure of American music.
September 20, 2024
Great biography, although a bit tedious at times. There was much more history of race relations than I anticipated, but it was enlightening. My only criticism of the writing is that it was a bit redundant at times, thus hard to follow.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s I was always familiar with Chuck Berry and his music. I was aware of his Mann Act conviction and prison sentence, but was not aware of just what a pervert he was. It is surprising that he wasn't caught up in the the "Me Too" movement. He was definitely a voyeur, philander, and sex addict, as well as a sex offender. Groping women in sexual ways was criminal even back in the day. He had much in common with Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R Kelly, and, now, P Diddy. Although a great creative talent, Chuck Berry was missing much in the way of humanity.
Despite Berry's personal failings, I believe the author has earned a 5 star rating. Writing about the race and sex issues must have been extremely difficult. Just because the subject of the biography was a jerk doesn't negate the fact that the story was well crafted
Growing up in the 50s and 60s I was always familiar with Chuck Berry and his music. I was aware of his Mann Act conviction and prison sentence, but was not aware of just what a pervert he was. It is surprising that he wasn't caught up in the the "Me Too" movement. He was definitely a voyeur, philander, and sex addict, as well as a sex offender. Groping women in sexual ways was criminal even back in the day. He had much in common with Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R Kelly, and, now, P Diddy. Although a great creative talent, Chuck Berry was missing much in the way of humanity.
Despite Berry's personal failings, I believe the author has earned a 5 star rating. Writing about the race and sex issues must have been extremely difficult. Just because the subject of the biography was a jerk doesn't negate the fact that the story was well crafted
November 12, 2022
As a diehard Chuck Berry fan I was really looking forward to reading this new biography. I have followed Chuck Berry's career for over six decades, and having read his autobiography I was interested to learn more about this icon of rock'n'roll music. I did learn quite a bit but I also found this book difficult to get through. The first third of the book was more focused on historical and musical context and barely focused on its main subject. The rest of the book presented some interesting insights into Chuck Berry, but I found it academically dry and unengaging. Overall there is some good information but I struggled to get through it.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Books for an advanced reader copy.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Books for an advanced reader copy.
May 8, 2023
Holy shit! This is an extraordinary book, with countless great stories, lots of historical and racial context, and a truly unique, complicated subject. It offers so much to think about that listening to rock & roll will never be quite the same.
January 31, 2023
I feel like I understand what made him the way he was. Though I’m not happy knowing
April 18, 2023
Makes a convincing case for Chuck as inventor of Rock 'n Roll. Well worth reading.
July 8, 2023
Stunning
Stunning in the research Smith shares and explains. A fabulous and complex mind blowing story of an almost inexplicable life journey.
Stunning in the research Smith shares and explains. A fabulous and complex mind blowing story of an almost inexplicable life journey.
March 15, 2024
I'm struggling to define how I felt about this book. It's undoubtedly a major, important piece of scholarship about the man who set the parameters of what rock & roll was and remains one of its greatest, most brilliant artists. Its winning, deeply felt critical apprecibation of Berry's music, lyrics and performances is exciting and validating to read for a lifelong fan. The passages on how his early songs give such agency and freedom to his characters are a total thrill, in particular, even when the same logic is somehow successfully extended to "My Ding-a-Ling"; I remember Brian Wilson and Mike Love saying that "Fun, Fun, Fun" was as inspired by Berry's lyrics as his music, chiefly because they wanted to show a girl being the hero / being in control of her destiny. What surprised me was how the book was structured. It essentially tracks his early life, then the bulk of his successes, then only in the final third does it start to contend with his failings and troubling acts as a human being. The treatment of these things is sensitive and persuasive without discounting the experiences of those wronged by Berry, but there's also a weird sense in which all this is minimized as part of Smith's argument; he all but says you're out of your mind to find Berry's music challenging to enjoy with this knowledge. I personally don't, but I think you're out of your mind if you don't see how someone might. Even though his closing piece on the necessity of "unsafe" art is magnificently well-written and I agree with its conclusions, I felt too much like the book was pushing that perspective rather than presenting the information in a compassionate but tough manner. In other words, despite the book being taken as a reckoning in many quarters, I think he was actually too easy on Berry. Maybe the thought process was that younger generations will miss the forest (the genius of the man's work) for the trees (his having been a misogynist creep), but I think that really understates the ability of people to appreciate nuance, and I don't think Berry's legacy is in any particular danger. How can it be when his work is literally the foundation of everything that's come since? (I love Elvis, but fuck Elvis.)
All that said, my god, fact-checking has gone downhill. Two huge glaring errors in the hardcover edition stuck out just because they overlap with my own areas of (relative) expertise. The Beatles covered Brill Building songs (by choice, because they loved them; in fact John Lennon said once that Carole King was the only celebrity he was ever nervous to meet); the Brill Building never wrote songs for the Beatles, nor did anyone else: the one exception, "How Do You Do It?", was unreleased until 1995. Secondly, as meticulously documented by James B. Murphy in his book Becoming the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry was never denied royalties for "Surfin' U.S.A." and was always intended to be listed as its sole author, borne out by the fact that his publisher Arc Music is credited on even the earliest versions of the single. The "Brian Wilson" composer credit on the single was a mistake made by Capitol Records. In RJ Smith's defense, he's only parroting something that was conventional wisdom for generations (the Beach Boys "stole" "Surfin' U.S.A." from "Sweet Little Sixteen"), but the latest research has proven conventional wisdom wrong, and you'd hope a major publication like this would see fit to correct the record.
All that said, my god, fact-checking has gone downhill. Two huge glaring errors in the hardcover edition stuck out just because they overlap with my own areas of (relative) expertise. The Beatles covered Brill Building songs (by choice, because they loved them; in fact John Lennon said once that Carole King was the only celebrity he was ever nervous to meet); the Brill Building never wrote songs for the Beatles, nor did anyone else: the one exception, "How Do You Do It?", was unreleased until 1995. Secondly, as meticulously documented by James B. Murphy in his book Becoming the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry was never denied royalties for "Surfin' U.S.A." and was always intended to be listed as its sole author, borne out by the fact that his publisher Arc Music is credited on even the earliest versions of the single. The "Brian Wilson" composer credit on the single was a mistake made by Capitol Records. In RJ Smith's defense, he's only parroting something that was conventional wisdom for generations (the Beach Boys "stole" "Surfin' U.S.A." from "Sweet Little Sixteen"), but the latest research has proven conventional wisdom wrong, and you'd hope a major publication like this would see fit to correct the record.
October 29, 2022
My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Hachette Books for an advanced copy of this music biography that will soon be the standard that other biographies about Chuck Berry will be based on.
Charles Edward Anderson Berry loved math, telescopes, photography and chess. Chess is fitting as it would be the Chess labels that he would make his reputation, and photography would nearly destroy it. Emulated, hated and often imitated Chuck Berry duck walked the globe, living life on his terms, darning the consequences. R. J. Smith in his magisterial biography Chuck Berry: An American Life has written the account of the man who gave us rock and roll, who changed the world with his songs, his attitude, and whose demons continued to win out no matter how high his star rose.
Charles Berry was born in St. Louis, a place he lived in all his life until his death, growing up middle class in the time of segregation. Growing up black affected almost everything Berry did, making him work for success, making him want to break the rules, no matter what the cost, and making sure that he got paid for his work, even as he cheated everyone, his band, the government, whoever he felt was keeping him from getting his. Charles was good at math, and school, but it wasn't for him, so he left to work with his dad a carpenter, and fix-it person who passed his skills onto Charles. A lark of running to Los Angeles lead to a multi-state crime wave, putting Berry in reform school for almost 3 years. It would not be the last. On parole Berry got married, found a good job and make extra money playing guitar with a local band that was doing well. A trip to Chicago, and a meeting with legendary bluesman Muddy Waters got him a tryout a Chess Records, where he recorded Maybellene, adapting another song so as not to have to pay royalties, and Berry suddenly had a hit. However with fame, came great temptation, one Berry was not good at avoiding, nor cared to.
What a biography. Easily one of the best musical biographies I have read, frankly one of the best biographies. Smith gets Berry, and writes about him as no one else could. Berry was not one to talk about his life, either lying, ignoring, or staring until the subject was changed. Nor did he have close friends, who he confided with. Combing interviews with impressive research and great writing Smith captures everything that make Berry great, his song writing, his playing, his ability to create songs that only he could really play, with the bad, his love of women, money, treating band members like trash, not caring about the legacy of the music as long as the cash was good. Smith can discuss the song writing and delivery of a song, as well as he can describe the British music scene, and the changes in record promotion and sales. The book never drags, never gets lost, just powers along, like a Chuck Berry song ,but with a particular place to go.
A book for music fans and scholars. And for people wanting a slice of the scene and life in the United States for kids, a black man, and for the powerful. A book I hope to see on many best of lists, and on many people's holiday shopping lists. This is the book that other scholars of rock and roll will start with.
Charles Edward Anderson Berry loved math, telescopes, photography and chess. Chess is fitting as it would be the Chess labels that he would make his reputation, and photography would nearly destroy it. Emulated, hated and often imitated Chuck Berry duck walked the globe, living life on his terms, darning the consequences. R. J. Smith in his magisterial biography Chuck Berry: An American Life has written the account of the man who gave us rock and roll, who changed the world with his songs, his attitude, and whose demons continued to win out no matter how high his star rose.
Charles Berry was born in St. Louis, a place he lived in all his life until his death, growing up middle class in the time of segregation. Growing up black affected almost everything Berry did, making him work for success, making him want to break the rules, no matter what the cost, and making sure that he got paid for his work, even as he cheated everyone, his band, the government, whoever he felt was keeping him from getting his. Charles was good at math, and school, but it wasn't for him, so he left to work with his dad a carpenter, and fix-it person who passed his skills onto Charles. A lark of running to Los Angeles lead to a multi-state crime wave, putting Berry in reform school for almost 3 years. It would not be the last. On parole Berry got married, found a good job and make extra money playing guitar with a local band that was doing well. A trip to Chicago, and a meeting with legendary bluesman Muddy Waters got him a tryout a Chess Records, where he recorded Maybellene, adapting another song so as not to have to pay royalties, and Berry suddenly had a hit. However with fame, came great temptation, one Berry was not good at avoiding, nor cared to.
What a biography. Easily one of the best musical biographies I have read, frankly one of the best biographies. Smith gets Berry, and writes about him as no one else could. Berry was not one to talk about his life, either lying, ignoring, or staring until the subject was changed. Nor did he have close friends, who he confided with. Combing interviews with impressive research and great writing Smith captures everything that make Berry great, his song writing, his playing, his ability to create songs that only he could really play, with the bad, his love of women, money, treating band members like trash, not caring about the legacy of the music as long as the cash was good. Smith can discuss the song writing and delivery of a song, as well as he can describe the British music scene, and the changes in record promotion and sales. The book never drags, never gets lost, just powers along, like a Chuck Berry song ,but with a particular place to go.
A book for music fans and scholars. And for people wanting a slice of the scene and life in the United States for kids, a black man, and for the powerful. A book I hope to see on many best of lists, and on many people's holiday shopping lists. This is the book that other scholars of rock and roll will start with.
November 20, 2022
Noted writer RJ Smith (THE ONE: The Life and Music of James Brown) delves deeply into the personal and professional twists and turns of Charles “Chuck” Berry, whose life spanned much of the 20th century and, arguably, provided some of its most memorable musical messages.
Berry was born and raised in a middle-class Black neighborhood of St. Louis, in an atmosphere of quiet pride that included reciting the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and hearing his mother sing hymns. His first musical performance in high school yielded great applause, which stirred him to buy his first guitar. But Berry’s was a crooked trajectory toward the great star he was destined to become. His teen years included crime and punishment, marriage and conventional employment, along with his continued zeal for performing. As Smith puts it, “There was Charles Berry the father and family man, and there was the guy with the electric guitar.”
There was also the poet within, inspiring his first great hit, “Maybellene,” with many others to follow, all distinctive for their wild yet thought-provoking lyrics and the simple but hard-driving way that he chose to convey them: “Too Much Monkey Business,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Johnny B. Goode” --- all covered by hundreds of other artists. Berry’s songs made people dance, especially his young female fans. And his conflicted inner life would land him in trouble many times as he secretly pursued those fans, while publicly garnering award after award in genres of blues, country and pure rock. In a life that spanned 90 years, Berry somehow managed to find the limelight again and again, moving from singing to songwriting, rewarded with covers by everyone from Elvis to the Beatles.
Smith’s approach to Berry combines an almost day-by-day account of events infused with a sense of his own writer’s pride and pleasure in having this amazing man as a focus. He has an admirable ability to pluck out some of his most compelling words, from the amusing and outrageous to the profound, as when Berry stated, regarding race, “Everything can be beaten, if one is smart and patient, and lucky.”
The man Smith brings to new life is a musical genius whose ambitions could not keep him from stepping out of line when the mood struck him, but whose artistry generally saved the day and, in the end, produced a fortune and an enviable legacy. As Smith so deftly draws it, “In 2022 he seems less like a rocker and more than ever simply a representative American artist.”
Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
Berry was born and raised in a middle-class Black neighborhood of St. Louis, in an atmosphere of quiet pride that included reciting the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and hearing his mother sing hymns. His first musical performance in high school yielded great applause, which stirred him to buy his first guitar. But Berry’s was a crooked trajectory toward the great star he was destined to become. His teen years included crime and punishment, marriage and conventional employment, along with his continued zeal for performing. As Smith puts it, “There was Charles Berry the father and family man, and there was the guy with the electric guitar.”
There was also the poet within, inspiring his first great hit, “Maybellene,” with many others to follow, all distinctive for their wild yet thought-provoking lyrics and the simple but hard-driving way that he chose to convey them: “Too Much Monkey Business,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Johnny B. Goode” --- all covered by hundreds of other artists. Berry’s songs made people dance, especially his young female fans. And his conflicted inner life would land him in trouble many times as he secretly pursued those fans, while publicly garnering award after award in genres of blues, country and pure rock. In a life that spanned 90 years, Berry somehow managed to find the limelight again and again, moving from singing to songwriting, rewarded with covers by everyone from Elvis to the Beatles.
Smith’s approach to Berry combines an almost day-by-day account of events infused with a sense of his own writer’s pride and pleasure in having this amazing man as a focus. He has an admirable ability to pluck out some of his most compelling words, from the amusing and outrageous to the profound, as when Berry stated, regarding race, “Everything can be beaten, if one is smart and patient, and lucky.”
The man Smith brings to new life is a musical genius whose ambitions could not keep him from stepping out of line when the mood struck him, but whose artistry generally saved the day and, in the end, produced a fortune and an enviable legacy. As Smith so deftly draws it, “In 2022 he seems less like a rocker and more than ever simply a representative American artist.”
Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
January 16, 2024
There are many Chuck Berry biographies but I have read just this one, Chuck Berry: An American Life. The sub-title is important because this book not only tells the story of his life in depth and detail but fills in the social, cultural, and political context in which the inventor of rock and roll grew up, emerged as a star, and lived out his weird and wonderful existence.
This was an unauthorized biography so there is plenty about the dark side of Berry’s life, especially the infamous tale of his liaison with a fourteen-year-old girl that put him in prison for a while early in his career, but also his voracious sexual appetite and preference for white women, as well as his moody, aloof, and unpredictable personality and his obsessive relationship with money. But it was the story of the times that author RJ Smith colored in behind the portrait of the man that make the work so special.
Berry grew up in St. Louis before the civil rights era and spent much of his early adult years touring in the Jim Crow south, unable to stay at white hotels, getting meals around the back door of restaurants, and playing to crowds where a rope line separated the white audience from the black one. That is, if a mixed audience was allowed at all. As a native of Buffalo, NY, I take unearned pride in the fact that Berry found his paradigm of racial harmony at Mandy’s, a jazz club on Clinton Street, where black folks passed as white and white folks passed as black and everyone mixed together happily. Unfortunately, that wasn’t where Berry lived most of the time.
Author Smith is a music critic, so the story of Berry’s music and where it came from is told in deep detail: the clubs he played, the guys he played with, roots in blues and soul and country music, the record companies and publishers, the studios, the whole messy business. There is plenty in the book, as well, about the appropriation of Berry’s music by white acts from Elvis on down for which his resentment only seems appropriate.
As a writer of significant skill and artistry, RJ Smith does not hold back. There’s a hint of be-bop in the prose, and Smith seems to take Jack Kerouac’s advice to “blow as deep as you want to blow.” In any case, he wrote the hell out of it.
This was an unauthorized biography so there is plenty about the dark side of Berry’s life, especially the infamous tale of his liaison with a fourteen-year-old girl that put him in prison for a while early in his career, but also his voracious sexual appetite and preference for white women, as well as his moody, aloof, and unpredictable personality and his obsessive relationship with money. But it was the story of the times that author RJ Smith colored in behind the portrait of the man that make the work so special.
Berry grew up in St. Louis before the civil rights era and spent much of his early adult years touring in the Jim Crow south, unable to stay at white hotels, getting meals around the back door of restaurants, and playing to crowds where a rope line separated the white audience from the black one. That is, if a mixed audience was allowed at all. As a native of Buffalo, NY, I take unearned pride in the fact that Berry found his paradigm of racial harmony at Mandy’s, a jazz club on Clinton Street, where black folks passed as white and white folks passed as black and everyone mixed together happily. Unfortunately, that wasn’t where Berry lived most of the time.
Author Smith is a music critic, so the story of Berry’s music and where it came from is told in deep detail: the clubs he played, the guys he played with, roots in blues and soul and country music, the record companies and publishers, the studios, the whole messy business. There is plenty in the book, as well, about the appropriation of Berry’s music by white acts from Elvis on down for which his resentment only seems appropriate.
As a writer of significant skill and artistry, RJ Smith does not hold back. There’s a hint of be-bop in the prose, and Smith seems to take Jack Kerouac’s advice to “blow as deep as you want to blow.” In any case, he wrote the hell out of it.
April 13, 2023
My goal for this review was to compare this book with Berry’s own “Chuck Berry: The Autobiography” which if I was on Goodreads when I read it would have easily given it 5 stars. Sadly, I’ve forgotten most of the latter book (it’s been 30 years), leaving only the vibe, that I loved it, and that it explained a lot about Berry’s genius. “An American Life” is a good biography, but it looks at Berry from a higher viewpoint, and is therefore more remote. Smith quotes quite a bit from The Autobiography and comments on it from the point of view of a researcher and observer. That’s a big difference in impact. He also covers a lot of what was going on around Berry, e.g., other musicians, American culture, etc. I did learn some things though, like the meanings of the references to “bypassed Rock Hill” and “ninety miles out of Atlanta by sundown” in “Promised Land”. Hard to believe I’ve heard that song scores of times and never thought about the lyrics.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in race in America, because it’s pretty much the central story of this book, and to a large extent The Autobiography. If you’re just interested in learning about Chuck Berry, my advice would be: First, watch Hail, Hail, Rock ‘n’ Roll, the movie in which Keith Richards decides that for Berry’s 60th birthday, he should do a concert with a “real” backup band. (What could possibly go wrong?) My favorite scene from that movie is the one where Berry teaches Richards how to play Chuck Berry songs. After watching the movie, read The Autobiography (325 pages), and lastly, this book (360 pages).
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in race in America, because it’s pretty much the central story of this book, and to a large extent The Autobiography. If you’re just interested in learning about Chuck Berry, my advice would be: First, watch Hail, Hail, Rock ‘n’ Roll, the movie in which Keith Richards decides that for Berry’s 60th birthday, he should do a concert with a “real” backup band. (What could possibly go wrong?) My favorite scene from that movie is the one where Berry teaches Richards how to play Chuck Berry songs. After watching the movie, read The Autobiography (325 pages), and lastly, this book (360 pages).
March 24, 2025
I quite enjoyed this book about rock & roll legend Chuck Berry. I knew he was one of the greats, of course, but the book made me take stock of the tons of great songs he wrote and his influence on so many groups and artists who would follow. But while the book rightfully shines a light on his genius, it also brings into focus his dark side. I knew going in he had a prison rap sheet but I didn’t know the details of the cases that led to his multiple arrests and convictions. The author walks the line on giving us both the good and bad and the ugly and takes pains to present points and counterpoints surrounding all these aspects. The book deserves to be saluted for that accomplishment and additionally for wrapping it up in a highly readable package. Some parts made me laugh. Others gave me literal nightmares. I was sorry to see it end. On the downside, I do think there could have been more about Berry’s family life. His one and only wife and children make appearances in the book but they tend to read as afterthoughts; their stories are secondary to Berry’s many paramours and random acquaintances. Also, I would have liked a little more perspective on Berry. We tend to learn most of this from secondary sources, which makes sense considering the book idea developed only in 2017, according to the text. If only the author would have had access to his subject, I kept thinking. Still, he does an admirable job pulling off a well rounded story about this musical genius and troubled soul.
August 1, 2023
I find myself in an odd position writing a review for this book.
It’s well written, interesting, engaging & informative - granted, there’s not a lot of psychological explanations as to why Chuck turned out the way he did but as an overview I found it thought provoking.
My ‘problem’ or ‘issue’ is the subject matter himself: Mr C Berry. I honestly felt as if I needed a bath after reading this, like I was somehow ‘dirty’
Berry’s attitude to music seemed to be a mere means to an end: I don’t think he was ‘passionate’ about music or what you’d call a musician’s musician. He basically re-wrote the same song over again & never developed as a guitarist. What songs he did compose had just as much input from Johnnie Johnson! Influential, yes - but not in the same league as a Buddy Guy, BB King, Albert King, Freddie King, Hendrix or a Clapton. And as for him being a ‘jazz’ musician - the likes of Wes Montgomery would have run rings around him, technically speaking.
To me (IMHO) Chuck viewed music as a way to gain access to & ‘fund’ his other ‘pursuits’ and this is where I find my problem(s). You’ll have to read it to find out what I mean but he comes across as a thoroughly unpleasant deviant, who set-out to make backing him very difficult (refusing rehearsals & constantly changing keys midway through a song, for example).
All told: a good bio but the subject of the book is definitely not worth any kind of hero worship!!!
It’s well written, interesting, engaging & informative - granted, there’s not a lot of psychological explanations as to why Chuck turned out the way he did but as an overview I found it thought provoking.
My ‘problem’ or ‘issue’ is the subject matter himself: Mr C Berry. I honestly felt as if I needed a bath after reading this, like I was somehow ‘dirty’
Berry’s attitude to music seemed to be a mere means to an end: I don’t think he was ‘passionate’ about music or what you’d call a musician’s musician. He basically re-wrote the same song over again & never developed as a guitarist. What songs he did compose had just as much input from Johnnie Johnson! Influential, yes - but not in the same league as a Buddy Guy, BB King, Albert King, Freddie King, Hendrix or a Clapton. And as for him being a ‘jazz’ musician - the likes of Wes Montgomery would have run rings around him, technically speaking.
To me (IMHO) Chuck viewed music as a way to gain access to & ‘fund’ his other ‘pursuits’ and this is where I find my problem(s). You’ll have to read it to find out what I mean but he comes across as a thoroughly unpleasant deviant, who set-out to make backing him very difficult (refusing rehearsals & constantly changing keys midway through a song, for example).
All told: a good bio but the subject of the book is definitely not worth any kind of hero worship!!!
August 21, 2022
Chuck Berry: An American Life will be released November 8, 2022. Hachette Books provided an early galley for review.
I knew Chuck Berry's songs and his importance in the history of rock 'n' roll. Until I read this book, though, I did not know his story. And what a story it is.
I was fascinated by how Berry, like his father, was a tinkerer. I liked to see that even towards the end of his life that he was sharp and calculating - something he had to be his entire life. He needed those skills to navigate a world that, as history shows, was already unbalanced against him and others of his race. Smith juxtaposes Berry's own story with that of world around him, showing the reader a country wrestling with racial tensions and challenges.
The book also breaks down all of the controversial aspects of Berry's life. His sexual exploits and criminal behaviors are all laid bare. His attitudes towards others who recorded his songs and evolved the musical genre are shown honestly - warts and all. Chuck Berry was indeed a troubling figure in music, and every music nerd definitely needs to know this story.
I knew Chuck Berry's songs and his importance in the history of rock 'n' roll. Until I read this book, though, I did not know his story. And what a story it is.
I was fascinated by how Berry, like his father, was a tinkerer. I liked to see that even towards the end of his life that he was sharp and calculating - something he had to be his entire life. He needed those skills to navigate a world that, as history shows, was already unbalanced against him and others of his race. Smith juxtaposes Berry's own story with that of world around him, showing the reader a country wrestling with racial tensions and challenges.
The book also breaks down all of the controversial aspects of Berry's life. His sexual exploits and criminal behaviors are all laid bare. His attitudes towards others who recorded his songs and evolved the musical genre are shown honestly - warts and all. Chuck Berry was indeed a troubling figure in music, and every music nerd definitely needs to know this story.
December 3, 2023
At first Smith's approach seems magisterial, but as the biographical subject shifts from merely overzealous of his own limitless genius in remaking the R&B and western swing idioms to trying protect its social revolutionary legacy, the biographer's style adapts by writing numberless essays on aspects of Berry's work, and ultimately loses the subject; by the end, I'm tempted to say, Smith-the-chronicler is too cosmopolitan by half.
Berry ultimately didn't ask for, and wouldn't have wanted, this treatment. No man -- forget artist, forget revolutionary -- ever more deeply believed in private life than Chuck Berry. But he also didn't quite believe in the galvanizing effect of his own being-in-the-world, the result being that he consistently misjudged what it was about. That's pretty understandable, even poignant, and if Smith could ever stop writing odes to Harry Weber's sculptures, he's onto a story that catches out the poignancy.
That said, Chuck Berry c. 1988 (Taylor Hackford & his own autobiography) gets you closer to the rocker's humanity, even as it fails to canvas his damage.
Berry ultimately didn't ask for, and wouldn't have wanted, this treatment. No man -- forget artist, forget revolutionary -- ever more deeply believed in private life than Chuck Berry. But he also didn't quite believe in the galvanizing effect of his own being-in-the-world, the result being that he consistently misjudged what it was about. That's pretty understandable, even poignant, and if Smith could ever stop writing odes to Harry Weber's sculptures, he's onto a story that catches out the poignancy.
That said, Chuck Berry c. 1988 (Taylor Hackford & his own autobiography) gets you closer to the rocker's humanity, even as it fails to canvas his damage.
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