Chuck Berry

Charting the origins of rock music within a simple evolutionary timeline would be a bit like handing the play-by-play of the Big Bang over to a football radio broadcast. As if it were a supply chain or an assembly line, rather than a slow, inscrutable series of adjustments. An exhausting convergence of rhythmic, artistic and social factors, an unlimited semiosis in which tracing the archetype is frustrating and, ultimately, not particularly meaningful. And besides, what's the point of going back to the very first, when—clearing away every last patch of hazy uncertainty—it's now easy enough to establish who, among the countless fathers of this triumphant revolution, was the most gifted, the most influential, the boldest, in short, the best? Bill Haley was little more than an amiable master of ceremonies on “American Bandstand“, Elvis Presley an Isaac, son of rural America, sacrificed on the altar of a convenient commercial compromise between the old (segregationist) morality and the new libertarian customs (and consumerism). Chuck Berry, in the era of race records, was not only the first Black artist to be idolized by a predominantly white audience, but also the first African-American to play white music (country, hillbilly) in front of an equally enthusiastic Black audience.

Whether or not he actually invented it, Chuck Berry was the first true composer of rock'n'roll, its first great guitarist, and its first poet. As a songwriter he established the golden template of rock music: three-minute melodies, driven mainly by electric guitar over a rhythm section of bass and drums, sometimes fleshed out with other instruments (sax, strings, keyboards). As a guitarist he openly defied the harmonic conventions of the blues, pouring them into the raw, alternating, galloping chords of hillbilly and country & western, effectively inventing the “double-step” pentatonic scale on which the entire technique of rock guitar playing is built.

His lyrics were by far the most polished (he was the first to introduce regular rhyme) and the most subversively attuned to the changing mores of the time: his uninhibited tales of teenagers chasing sex and freedom (“School Day”, “Sweet Little Sixteen”, “Rock 'n' Roll Music”), his vignettes of American life (“No Money Down”, “Carol”, “Johnny Be Good”), all draw on the idea of “fun” – an unconsciously rebellious hedonism against the restrictions of hierarchical, paternalistic conformism (both embodied, not coincidentally, by the Eisenhower presidency: a general turned politician, a benevolent yet strict “uncle”) – as a semantic crowbar with which to shake the traditional pillars of conservative America.

Few artists have managed to describe and interpret the inner world of the average teenager (and their audience) quite as well: perhaps only the “post-Kennedy” Dylan or Bruce Springsteen at the dawn of Ronald Reagan's second term. Berry's finest work is concentrated in the 1955-59 period, played out largely in the singles and 45s market, before eventually giving rise to a handful of albums (or compilations, if you prefer), the most significant of which are “After School Session” (1958) and “Chuck Berry On Top” (1959). And while the latter boasts a greater number of “evergreens”, we've opted for the former for the seminal quality of its songs and the raw, tight sound throughout.

From the South and the Southwest, from the Mississippi Delta and the churches of Georgia, from the brothels of Texas and the cobblestones of Memphis, a cyclone was "devilishly" tearing through, and at its eye was “School Day”: with his trademark duck walk, Chuck bursts into the school dance, electrifying the couples still clinging cheek to cheek after the usual round of slow songs. As in the famous scene from “Back to the Future”, to them this is alien music: Johnnie Johnson's hiccupping boogie piano is driven forward by Fred Below's breathless drumming, while Berry (on guitar) sets up call and response with himself and delivers dazzling, relentless R&B solos.

Remarkable, too, is the way the lyrics capture the tedious, oppressive atmosphere of school life (“Up in the morning and out to school/ the teacher is teachin' the golden rule/ American history and practical math/ you're studyin' hard and hopin' to pass”), which finally blossoms into the liberating ritual of a provocative dance (“with tha one you love you're makin' romance/ all day long you've been wantin' to dance”) and the immortal chorus “Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll”.

“Deep Feeling” is a laid-back instrumental blues in which flashing bursts of steel guitar tear through (with sharp, sudden picking) the reassuring piano figures. “Too Much Monkey Business” is an impatient, razor-sharp satire on youth consumerism (with its parade of underpaid jobs and social portraits instantly recognizable to the teenagers of the day, crushed by a society in which they had no place or worth except as future adults, parents and workers): a dizzying rockabilly number built on syncopated drums, barely-there sax flourishes and a western-style Berry solo that sounds every bit as vertiginous and futuristic as the talkin'/rap delivery of the verses.

“Roly Poly” is another instrumental dance number made of staccato hits sharp as broken glass, mongrel country-blues harmonies (twang and slide trading places) and drums that carve out harsh, chaotic figures in four-four time. “No Money Down” is a Muddy Waters-style blues (Waters himself, incidentally, had recommended Berry to Chess Records) that spills over into a smooth, white-sounding chorus somewhat reminiscent of Nat “King” Cole, where the traditional laments turn into a brazen ode to the automobile, described as an erotic fetish and a longed-for conquest of a new freedom/sexual identity, with a wealth of hyperbolic, surreal detail that David Cronenberg would have loved.

“Brown Eyed Handsome Man” is a boogie built on slippery Hawaiian guitars and honky-tonk digressions, a cocky celebration of “blackness” (“brown eye” is a sly stand-in for “brown skin”) and the sexual charge that drives it (complete with a defence of adultery and streetwise underage girls: “Mother told her daughter: go out and find your brown eyed handsome man”) and gems of nonsense humor like “Milo Venus was a beautiful ass/ she had the world in tha palm of his hand/ she lost both her arms in a wrestling match/ to find her brown eyed handosme man”.

“Havana Moon” is the tragicomic chronicle of a clandestine (and interracial?) love affair that drowns quite literally in alcohol, an acoustic call and response embellished with a Caribbean (calypso) arpeggio that at times almost foreshadows “Desolation Row”.

“Downbound Train” is another glimpse of the future: a railroad rhythm tormented by scratchy blues guitar and a hobo drawl painting an imaginative infernal landscape (“the boiler was filled by lager beer/ the devil himself was the engineer”) from the perspective of a passenger who is part Orpheus (“sulphuring flames scorching their hands and faces/ (…) louder and louder the thunder crash/ brighter and brighter the lighting flash”) and part Jim from “Huckleberry Finn” (“The passengers was mostly a motley crew/ some were foreigners and other he knews/ rich man in broadcloth, beggars in rag/ handsome young ladies and wicked old hags”). A voodoo-billy number ahead of its time, one that not even Morphine or Gun Club could match.

“Drifting Heart” is a romantic bolero in which Berry sets aside his explosive solos to indulge in a nostalgic imitation of 1940s crooning.

Most editions currently available in digital format include three additional tracks: “Maybellene” (one of the most significant tracks here, a railroad stomp built on honky-tonk piano and sung as talkin' blues) and “You Can't Catch Me” (a loose-limbed, danceable piano rhythm 'n' blues number), a kind of fantasy/novelty diptych devoted to his beloved automobile (a Ford “Flight De Ville” nicknamed, fittingly, “Maybellene”), and “Thirty Days (To Come Back Home)”, the ironic pursuit of a young man “loved and left”, launched on a driving country-rock riff later lifted note for note by the Stones for “High And Dry” (Aftermath, 1966).

Berry's catalogue would go on to serve as an inexhaustible blood bank, feeding the darkest corners of rock music's heart for at least three decades after “After School Session”.

Essential.

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09/03/2008