Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Chuck Berry was born and raised in St. Louis, and he’s always lived in the area. The city could never contain him—or his myriad musical accomplishments. Yet he is perhaps more a part of his hometown now than ever. For years, he has performed monthly (more or less) at Blueberry Hill, where fans can get closer to one of rock ’n’ roll’s founding fathers than would seem possible. And right across the street from the venue, a bronze statue was dedicated last year in Berry’s honor, its permanence a symbol of St. Louis’ recognition of a native son whose impact is not merely local, regional, national, or even global. It is, in fact, interstellar.
Somewhere out in space, hurtling through the galaxy, are two Voyager spacecraft, each fitted with a gold-plated copper phonograph record containing sounds and images of the planet. The records’ contents include spoken languages, animal noises, and music by the likes of Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Louis Armstrong…and Chuck Berry, whose “Johnny B. Goode” made the cut.
Some months after the 1977 launch of the spacecraft, Saturday Night Live did a sketch reporting that an alien culture had intercepted the ships and replied. The message? “Send more Chuck Berry.”
Such a reaction, should it ever really come, seems completely plausible. For that’s been the response of the millions of earthbound creatures who have had the pleasure of hearing Berry’s hits—not just “Johnny B. Goode,” but also “Maybellene,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “School Day,” “Rock & Roll Music,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” and so many others.
“If you tried to give rock ’n’ roll another name,” John Lennon famously said, “you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.’”
If such praise seems extravagant in an era of popular music that seems particularly disconnected from its rock ’n’ roll roots, it once was self-evident. Rare was the garage band that didn’t cut its teeth on Chuck Berry songs.
The Beatles recorded some of them, while the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards wrote in his autobiography, Life, “I could never overstress how important he was in my development. It still fascinates me how this one guy could come up with so many songs and sling it so gracefully and elegantly.” Perhaps rock ’n’ roll’s center has given way too much for it to have any one unifying factor at this late date. But for as long as it was possible, Chuck Berry songs were rock ’n’ roll’s undisputed lingua franca.
There were reasons for this: with his “motorvatin’” rhythms and clarion guitar, Berry married blues and R&B with country music in ways seldom heard before; his records crossed over from R&B to pop charts and his shows—as well as his own Club Bandstand venue in St. Louis—challenged the rule of segregation in the separate-and-unequal days of the 1950s.
Then there were Berry’s lyrics, which were far more advanced than the simple rhymes of most early rock ’n’ roll songs. Berry told stories, like “School Day,” which chronicles the quotidian concerns of a typical teenager; he tweaked the noses of high society with “Roll Over Beethoven,” in which rock ’n’ roll leaves the great composer spinning in his grave; and he decorated various songs with surprisingly poetic images, from the “hurry home drops” in the eyes of little girl Marie in “Memphis” to the “coffee-colored Cadillac” that appears in “Nadine.”
Berry’s aim was seldom political. He always had an eye on the bottom line, of “whatever would sell,” as he wrote in his 1987 autobiography. But that didn’t stop him from writing and recording “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” a song of racial pride that was coded cleverly enough to pass muster.
His life has been checkered with mistakes, lapses of judgment, and transgressions against the law and against others that have been covered elsewhere ad nauseam. Some—but certainly not all—have forgiven and forgotten them. For his part, Berry seems mellower in his old age and perhaps a little less suspicious of a world that has sometimes dealt him a harsh hand. He is a flawed man, no doubt; but his genius remains unassailable.
It took a long time, but it seems like St. Louis is saying “Hail! Hail!” to Chuck Berry at last.
