“One of the screen’s most accomplished pop biographies ever, easily on a par with The Last Waltz.”
In tribute to Charles Edward Anderson Berry (1926 - 2017)
Nigel’s introduction to the film, screened at The Star, 4 April 2017
We’re showing this in tribute to Chuck Berry who died last month at the age of 90.
Chuck Berry is one of the most fascinating characters in history of pop music. Without a doubt he’s a founding father of rock and roll. He was quite rare in the 1950s as a performer who wrote all his songs. His lyrics are amazing. Bob Dylan called him “the Shakespeare of rock and roll”.
He was also a shit. In 1959 Berry was arrested for taking a 14-year-old girl across state lines for “immoral purposes”, a crime for which he eventually served two years in prison. And in 1989 was given a suspended sentence and settled a class action with 59 women after videotapes were found in his home that he’d secretly recorded in the toilets of a restaurant he owned.
You’ll also see in the film that he has an uncanny ability of pissing people off.
I say all this, first because I don't want anyone to say we’re just glossing over that stuff, but also to acknowledge that it is possible to separate the artist as a less than appealing person and as someone who’s made this incredible body of work.
And despite his flaws, I must admit there is something irresistible about Chuck Berry.
This film came out in 1987 and at its centre is a concert the previous year at the Fox Theatre in Berry’s hometown of St Louis with a star studded band and guests, all being led by Keith Richards (with whom he has a frosty relationship). And it's more significant that this is a theatre than when Chuck Berry was a kid was white only.
It’s directed by Taylor Hackford who’s probably still most famous for directing An Officer and Gentleman (he’s also married to Helen Mirren).
He wrote a great reminiscence of making the film after Chuck Berry died which I think brilliantly captures the character of Chuck Berry and the challenges of making the film.
“Chuck was more difficult than any movie star I’ve ever worked with. More complicated, more difficult, more diabolical. Diabolical is a fitting term. At the same time, I totally loved him.
I had six days to make the entire movie work, including the concert. The first day, I wanted to interview Chuck in the Cosmo Club in East St. Louis, Ill. — the first club he played in. I said, “I’ll send a car for you. He said, “Nobody drives Chuck Berry except Chuck Berry.” I said I wanted to start at 7 in the morning, and he said, “No problem, I’ll be there.”
We get the crew there, we’re all set. This is a documentary and I don’t have much money and I need every precious second. At 7 o’clock, no Chuck Berry. At 7:30, 8 o’clock, no Chuck Berry. I got worried because he was very prompt. I called his assistant. She said, “Chuck left at 5:30 this morning.” So we wait.
That part of East St. Louis was like a war zone. A very difficult place. A lot of drugs and prostitutes. All of a sudden a pay phone on the corner starts ringing. Obviously this is someone trying to get hold of someone for some drug deal. It keeps ringing and finally a crew member picks it up and and says to me, “It’s for you.”
It was Chuck. I said, “Where are you?” He said, “I just want you to know, everything’s cool between you and me. Let me talk to [producer Stephanie Bennett].” Universal was paying him $500,000 for all the music and all the rights, but he wanted $2,500 in a brown paper bag.
It was Saturday. All the banks were closed. Somehow she pieced the money together. It took all morning and early afternoon to get it. Chuck showed up at 3 o’clock. That was his M.O. Here we were to celebrate him, and he did everything to sabotage us.
I love Chuck Berry, but every day was a negotiation. It is not an exaggeration to say he was the most difficult star I have ever known, as complicated and talented as anybody I’ve ever met. He let me inside his life — up to a point. He could make me laugh; very few people could be as charming, but he could turn on a dime and be as dark as it gets. He was totally unpredictable. Chuck was full of contradictions, but always shining through was the talent. Everybody was in awe.”
But you can see where this money-grabbing, sticking it to the man attitude comes from. Chuck was part of that generation of black artists who felt like the Beatles and Rolling Stones profited off their backs and who got regularly screwed over by record companies, promoters and publishers.
I’ll give the last word to Chuck. His autobiography came out around the same time as the film. There is no ghost writer.
“If the movie Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll does well, maybe I’ll try doing another one but it would have to be a drama and I could enjoy writing the script for it. That’s about the only way I’d find a screenplay that did not have within it stereotyped black characteristics from bygone years. I never accepted the few roles presented to me during my career for just that reason; they overplayed traits and customs of the American black person, especially the male and all too often the black female. The time is coming, though, when all the races and nationalities in the United States will be merged into one, let’s say ‘Americanese’ people. Now wouldn’t that be real nice…?”
