In 1974, a girl I didn’t know at the Monterey County Fairgrounds tore a slip of paper from a pocket notebook and gave it to me. In my memory she is small, with dark hair—Italian or Portuguese, perhaps Hispanic— but she might have been Irish for all I really remember. We were at the foot of the stage after a long show at the county fairgrounds, exhausted but excited. I think (fear) that I had been on stage, with dozens of others, at the frenzied climax. When it was over I got down and talked with the girl and with a guy. I remember him, too, sandy haired, older than me, with a bemused sort of smile. I think he coaxed me onto the stage—but who knows, in a life’s distant past, exactly where imagination begins to create memory? I remember that the guy commented on my excitement. He was clearly a true believer, but seemed a step removed, observing me with bemusement. I remember that the girl showed us her notebook and that when she saw my reaction she tore the page loose.
“You need this more than I do,” she said.
If she is alive, she is, like me, moving now from middle age to elderly. I wonder if she remembers this moment. I met Chuck Berry once. I got his autograph.
Does she remember her small act of generosity?
I treasured it in my own not very careful way for years, leaving it in a sagging cardboard box with old letters, check registers, photos and such. Then, one day, it was gone. I look now and then, half certain it will slide from between a few sheets of something less important, and hoping, I suppose, that it will provide more tangible proof that my bleached and fragmented memories can be trusted.
I have other evidence. I have snapshots taken with a Kodak Instamatic in the obscure light beneath the stage’s canopy. I know that the camera worked because there is one clear photo of a young cop, hands held out in front, preventing one of us from following Chuck Berry off stage. It is taken in sunlight and is as bright and clear as yesterday. But the other pictures are as dark, grainy and faded as memory itself. I had no flash cube. A practiced eye can recognize Chuck Berry. In shot one he leans back into obscurity, eyes shut, high cheekbones emerging from the darkness, playing what is certainly blues in what appears to be the key of A. He’s wearing a black shirt and a bolo tie, and though he’s half hidden by the monitor, he’s only five feet away.
In the far right corner of that photograph, at the bottom, there is another face—the face of the drummer, who looks nearly ecstatic. 35 years after that shot was taken, the drummer would find my blog and comment on the show. He would also point me to pictures of the same stage on his band’s website—tiny, postage stamp sized images that appear sharp and bright but blur into a fog when I enlarge them and are therefore as limited in usefulness as my own snapshots. In one sense they contradict my memory. They are bright and sunny. My memories are informed by the pictures I have. But these brighter shots do provide corroboration. After all, he is wearing the same clothing. My photographs, like my memories, must be real.
The backs of my little prints have a bright red date stamp, “Aug. 74,” which is almost certainly close to the date of the event. So let’s put the show in July or August of that year. I intend some day to search through microfilm at the Monterey library and find whatever review or record might exist.
I’m good at reconstructing obscure histories. I did it for a living for nearly 30 years. And this is my story—not the story of a defective product. I’m motivated.
Once, 15 or 20 years ago, and 15 or 20 years after the Monterey show, I was browsing aimlessly at the Douglass-Truth branch of the Seattle Public Library, a beautiful Carnegie building with one bright room devoted to an African American collection, when I saw a book called “Chuck Berry: Rock and Roll Music,” by Howard DeWitt.
All my life I had looked for such a book, but I found it at a moment when I hardly cared, when I was more interested in African music, jazz and reggae than my old time used to be. But I opened the book and began to turn its pages.
Howard DeWitt seemed to have lived a life that mirrored mine, following Chuck Berry in opposite directions. I moved from California to Seattle, DeWitt from Seattle to the Golden State. We crossed paths more than once. A picture in his book shows him with Bo Diddley in San Jose in the early 1970s. I lived in San Jose then, and stood outside during that night watching Diddley through an open door because I was too young to get into the show. Another picture shows Chuck Berry at a South Lake Tahoe casino in 1982. I was there, too!
And then I saw it. In a section of DeWitt’s book lamenting the increasing number of “mediocre” Chuck Berry shows, he wrote:
“An example of this occurred in Monterey, California, in the early 1970s, when a San Francisco oldies band, Butch Whacks and the Glass Packs, backed Chuck in a concert. After Butch Whacks and The Glass Packs finished their set, Chuck walked on stage and motioned to the drummer to start a song. Since the pickup band had not previously met Chuck, they had no idea what songs he was going to perform. After a forty-minute set, Chuck invited a portion of the audience to dance on the stage as he played Sweet Little Sixteen. Soon, almost a hundred people were dancing on the stage, and Chuck discretely exited the Monterey Fairgrounds. He was driving south on Highway 1 in his rental car when the concert ended. ”
I was both thrilled and shaken. I wasn’t concerned about DeWitt’s opinion of the show—I trusted my own opinion—but I was alarmed by the description of a “forty-minute set.” This directly contradicted my memory and bugged me. I remember once, after losing a big trial, that Rebecca and I were walking and she said that sun and the moon moved across the sky in opposite directions. She said it with such alacrity, and I was so depressed and vulnerable, that for a few minutes I believed her. I fell even more deeply into depression. I pride myself on understanding some basic notions of astronomy. I thought for a moment that I had missed this fundamental fact. It made me feel sick. And that’s how I felt when I read DeWitt’s account of the “forty-minute set.” But there was a difference. It only took a moment for me to decide that Rebecca was mistaken—that the motion of the sun and the moon reflect the earth’s rotation, that each appears to move from East to West because the earth is rotating in the opposite direction. But I had no proof that Chuck Berry’s show in Monterey was as long as I remembered. Maybe it only seemed long to me. Maybe my excitement distorted my reality. Maybe it was short and mediocre! Chuck Berry has a reputation for short sets. His contract calls for 45 minutes. He usually does an hour. But my memory of this show was that it went on and on and on—that he played three or four numbers before he even “began” the show. It shook me to think that one of my core Chuck Berry memories might be a fabrication of my delirium.
And then I studied a picture of the author, and I got walloped again when it hit me that Howard DeWitt was the guy I’d met at the foot of the stage—the sandy haired fellow who urged me onto the stage! I was as certain as I could be 15 or 20 years later.
Many of my memories of that Monterey show are actually concrete and intact. I remember where we were sitting during the opening acts, and how we moved to the foot of the stage when it was time for Chuck Berry. I remember the promoter giving away a used Cadillac at intermission. I remember the architecture of the covered stage, made famous by the film “Monterey Pop.” I remember the backup group, Butch Whacks and the Glass Packs, who opened the show with a funny 50s act.
I distinctly remember a couple of the songs. I remember, for example, that he did “Let it Rock,” and I remember at the time, wondering “Why?” since “Let it Rock” was not, then, a favorite of mine. (As an 18 year old it made no sense to me—a frantic tale about workers getting out the way of a train. I preferred songs about 16 and 17 year old girls, or boys who played guitar.)
One of my strongest memories is a fleeting interaction I had with Chuck himself, my first since the handshake at Lake Tahoe. I wrote him a note on a slip of paper requesting the song “Got it and Gone.” It was a new song from his album, “Bio,” the third or fourth installment in the story of Johnny, or someone like him—but a smaller one, without the bright lights or stardom. I liked the song and wanted my hero to promote it and show the world that he hadn’t stopped writing. So I scribbled the note, and he stooped, and took it, and read aloud “Got it and Gone,” then laughed, shook his head, and went on to play one of his giant hits. So much for trying to influence a legend!
I remember the start of the show, too— that as he got to work he ignored us. He knelt five feet from me, behind a big monitor, plugged in a nutmeg Gibson, and riffed on a slow bluesy number, tuning, picking, tuning, picking— luscious bunches of bent double string notes. I was mesmerized—just like I was at my first live show—but now I knew the riffs, and Chuck Berry was five feet away, making them happen.
I remember distinctly that he worked his way through a couple of numbers, drawing polite applause, but not quite engaging with the crowd. I remember my own expectations. I wanted him to win them, like I’d seen him do at Lake Tahoe, or at a couple of Rock and Roll Revival shows. But as he played the first few numbers he seemed disconnected, almost distracted.
The third or fourth number was “Nadine.” That got a bigger response. “Nadine” was his last big at the time and I had noticed that he often played the song just before turning things up a notch. And sure enough, as the applause for “Nadine” receded Chuck said: “Well, I think now we’re warmed up and in tune, so with your permission, we’ll start the show!” And he did, and the crowd went crazy, and the show didn’t stop for what seemed like hours.
And it’s that part—my memory of a long, luxurious show—that bothered me when I began to write about it 35 years later. Howard DeWitt described a forty- minute set, but I remembered something very different. It occurred to me to look online, where I located a website for Butch Whacks and the Glass Packs. And eureka!— under “fondest memories” Butch Whacks keyboardist Larry Strawther wrote:
"Backing up Chuck Berry for two-and-a-half hours in Monterey, with no set list, no idea what song we're doing next or in what key, and doing a piano solo for 96 bars.”Two-and-a-half hours!
I incorporated my old snapshots and Strawther’s comments into a blog post about the show, and then, months later, got a surprise—Butch Whacks drummer, Michael Patrick Moore, found my blog and commented. Moore described the typical backup band experience. When the band asked for a set list “Mr. Berry suggested that if we didn't have all his songs memorized— everybody knew all his songs, right—then we shouldn't be his band. Wow!”
Almost from the start of his career, Chuck Berry travelled as a “solo.” Starting in the late 1950s his contract called for an amplifier and a backup band. The band is to consist of three or four professional musicians who know Chuck Berry’s material. There are rarely rehearsals. Chuck shows up a few minutes prior to the show, and off they go. Daryl Davis is a Maryland boogie-woogie and blues pianist who has played with Berry countless times. He knows the drill. “He doesn’t use a set list,” Davis says of Berry. “He just plays whatever song he decides on the spot to play when he finishes the one he’s playing.”
According to Butch Whacks drummer Moore, when it was time to go on stage the band was told to “vamp on a chord and he would lead us into the song.” This matches my recollection of that slow start, with Berry kneeling, tuning, and feeling his way a few feet from where I was standing, but Moore has more detail.
“He entered stage right, went right to our piano player, Larry, and sang into Larry's ear telling him how he wanted him to play. I was next. My drums were on a riser and Berry came up to my left side and told me ‘exactly’ how the kick drum and snare pattern should be played, and under no circumstance should I change it. Every band member got his orders from Mr. Berry, and away we went for over two hours non-stop!!”
Thirty years later I’d see the same sort of instruction provided (with and without success) at The EMP in Seattle. Again, Daryl Davis describes how it works:
“Watch the live shows to know that he doesn’t like a walking bass line on most of his songs. He prefers only the root note of each chord played in a specific rhythm on the bass. His cues are made with his legs. When he raises his leg and kicks it down to the floor, if you are playing, then stop. If you’re not, then start. Certain things he does in the way he holds the guitar indicate that he wants you to solo on your instrument.”
A year or so after posting my story about the Monterey show I found more comments from members of Butch Whacks and the Glass Packs on their website. One called the Chuck Berry show “fab.” Another seemed to hate the experience. On a page called “Our Favorite Gigs” he wrote, “WOULDN'T be Chuck Berry (although he technically used OUR band), since he made Larry do a piano solo until his hands bled, never told the band what keys his songs were in, and then invited the entire audience on the stage at the end of the show for US to deal with.” But this opinion seems to be an outlier. Larry Strawther himself described it as “one of the highlights of my life.” He describes those opening moments from a third vantage:
He starts playing two repetitive beats of a single chord—DUNH-duh! DUNH-duh! etc. and gestures for us—the musicians, Bruce Lopez on bass, Rob Birsinger on guitar, Mike Moore on drums, Pete Gordon on sax, and yours truly on piano— to follow him. We do and the next thing you know, we are through one number—without ever changing the DUNGH-duh riff.
Is Mr. Strawther describing the “Bye Bye Johnny” beat that I discussed earlier? Probably—though my memory is that the first jam was done at the pace of a slow, walking blues. Strawther continues.
… [H]e swings his guitar neck down for us to stop and he starts an opening lick in a different key. I put my ear to the keys and start hitting some chords and quickly find the answer and stand up and yell to my bandmates—"he's in E! he's in E!!!" This went on all afternoon — "He's in A!" one song, “He's in D flat!" the next — through Sweet Little Sixteen, Memphis, Roll Over Beethoven, Johnny B. Goode.”It’s a scene that has happened over and over for decades—the great Chuck Berry stepping into the lives of journeyman musicians and giving them a chance to participate in history for an hour or two. Imagine a first term city council member being invited to write law with Thomas Jefferson. Think Willie Mays batting rubber balls in Harlem.
Of course, not all journeymen remain journeymen. In the opening sequence of the film Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll Bruce Springsteen describes what it meant to him to back up Chuck Berry. “We were probably just another of the bands he was using on the road at the time. It was an incredible night. It was just the kind of night that when I’m sixty-five or seventy, I’ve got to tell my grandkids, ‘Chuck Berry! Yeah I met Chuck Berry. As a matter of fact I backed Chuck Berry up one night!’”
Back in Monterey, drummer Moore got a special reward. “At one point— and I have no idea why— Mr. Berry, right in the middle of a song, strolled over to the drum riser, reached over with his right hand, motioned for my hand and gave me an extended hand shake. All I could do was smile and wonder why.” Pianist Strawther got a different sort of honor—the 96 bar piano solo. (That’s eight straight verses of “Johnny B. Goode.” Hum it to yourself and imagine trying to wow the crowd that long. Chuck probably stepped out for a Coke.) Strawther assumed he’d only get 12. “[T]hinking I was only going to get the standard 12 bars I gave it everything I had for those 12, and then the next 12 and by bar 48 my right hand was pretty much toast.”
Strawther remembers the end of the show when “Chuck invites the crowd on stage — seemingly 2,000 of his closest personal friends and next thing we know Chuck is nowhere in sight.” Moore remembers that Berry told the group to “keep playing for at least 5 minutes after I leave," then invited the audience on the stage. “Now that was scary,” said Moore. “One of our roadies had to run up on stage and protect my cymbals from being stolen.”
With the stage packed, Berry “slipped out the back of the stage, got in a car, and off he went.” Gone, like a cool breeze.
I know that someone in our group followed because we have the photograph of the young cop. I think it was Danny.
Which left me by the stage, with the girl and the fan I think was Howard DeWitt.
One day, after blogging about all this, I found Howard DeWitt on one of the social networks. He had gone on to become a professor and write a number of books about music. He was planning a trip to Seattle. He gave me his phone number, and we made vague plans to get together, but the meeting fell through. So months later, on a whim, I called the number. A friendly voice answered. I told him who I was, reminded him about my blog and that we’d been to the same Chuck Berry show in Monterey. “I loved it, but you didn’t” I told him. He conceded that the show might have been better than he described. “I was probably in a bad mood,” he said. Then I told him about those moments after the show.
“I think I met you there,” I said. “I was standing by the stage afterwards, and I was talking with someone who was as big a fan as me. I’ve seen the picture of you in your book, and I think it was you!”
“It was me!” he said, and I could almost see the smile. “It was me!”
11-13-12 3:42 (38) (74)
1 comment:
Great article Peter. You are The rock and roll detective!
Geno
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