Chapter 32 - Growing Older

You could almost see it coming. First, two shows in New York City on New Year’s Eve, and then another in Chicago on New Year’s Day. And he didn’t take his band, or even Jimmy Marsala. He travelled alone. Later I’d learn that he had a cold in New York, and saw a report that he’d been pushing a wheelbarrow at Berry Park all day before heading to the first show.


So in Chicago Chuck Berry collapsed on his piano.

The videos were hard to watch. In one he struggled to tune his guitar for a couple of minutes before being escorted off stage. But he kept coming back. He finally apologized to the crowd, told them he’d been checked out by medics, and then did his scoot without a guitar before leaving the stage for good.

Since we are talking about an imaginary friend, I can envision an imaginary and cinematic end. Imagine, perhaps, that he collapses one night many years hence, surrounded by women, surrounded by family, during the frantic final minutes of a particularly good show in St. Louis— one of the big ones at The Pageant with his extended family in attendance. He is taken off stage like Charlie Chaplin at the end of the film Limelight (Chaplin left stuck in a bass drum; Chuck can walk off with help from his son and the band). He has time for comfortable and sweet goodbyes. A long life well lived ends where we saw him live it so vividly—on stage, with family, without an encore.

Right. And we must immediately balance that romantic vision with the image of him arguing with Keith Richards in “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll!”

“I ain’t dying!” he says. And he may be on to something.

It has been interesting watching Chuck Berry grow old. He has done it exceptionally well.

When I first saw him he was young, energetic, strong as a person could be, capable of astounding feats—but at 45, he was already considered one of the “old men” of rock and roll (which, of course, he was.)

When he turned 60 nothing had changed. He no longer had the smooth facial skin of a younger person, but he looked fitter than Keith Richards. Most 30 or 40 year old men would happily take the sculpted upper body he showed off on the cover of his autobiography. I saw live him when he was 62 or 63. He was the same old Chuck Berry. He could still do splits, the duck walk, and the “scoot.”

When I saw him in 2003 it was different. He covered his thinning hair with a cap. It was the first time I saw him act grumpily. He looked older. His face was a bit careworn. He could still play the guitar with panache, but I don’t recall that he did his famous “scoot.”

Then January 2009 at Blueberry Hill. He came out tall, happy, in great voice. (When I saw him in the 1970s his voice was ragged from constant touring. At age 82 he sounded younger, like a 30 year old.) But he looked considerably more frail. He was still tall and lean, but there was a slight hunch to his shoulders. When women jumped on stage his son Charles looked concerned and cautious. Chuck himself ignored the temptations of a 22 year old who was doing her best to interest him. He forgot lyrics now and then. He played interesting rhythm guitar, but he couldn’t pick a lead worth a damn. He seemed to watch his stiff fingers as if in disbelief. He didn’t even try to do the “scoot” that night— but it was a great show, full of energy, humor, and delight.

A year and half later at The Pageant he seemed 20 years younger, grinning slyly, hitting nearly all of the riffs perfectly, singing beautifully. He did the “scoot” several times. It was a beautiful evening.

A few days later he put on another good show, but messed up one song completely because he couldn’t tune his guitar. In fact, he did just the opposite—he twisted and cranked it mercilessly till the notes that exited the pickup bore no relation to what his fingers were doing.

The show had started well— and the crowd never uttered a whisper of complaint. They danced, sang “Go Johnny, Go!" and shouted “Happy Birthday!” and “We love you Chuck!”

He started with “Carol,” “School Day,” and “Sweet Little Sixteen.”

When he asked for requests a guy in full Chicago Cubs regalia yelled “Ding-a-Ling.” He obliged.

But then chaos. After “Ding-a-Ling,” Chuck begins to tune his guitar. I see momentary cringes from both Jimmy Marsala and CBII (whose look seems to say “You’re digging your own grave, pop!”) (Marsala’s expression, though lightning fast, has the character of that oft-repeated movie scene where a person runs towards the camera in slow motion yelling “Nooooooo!”)

But it’s too late. Chuck twists the tuning knobs on his guitar, just a bit. When he looks for approval from his band members and gets a slightly annoyed look instead he stamps his foot and uses a line similar to one heard in Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll during the famous amplifier scene. “This is how I wish it.” The comment elicits a shrug. I remember Keith Richards in that same film saying “Even when it’s goin’ great he won’ leave it at that (indecipherable drunken slur) the potential to screw it up!” And when I see him tuning his guitar despite all the advice not to, despite the shrugs, (“This is how I wish it!”) I think of the Edgar Alan Poe story “The Imp of the Perverse,” where the hero confesses to a murder he has gotten away with. He describes other sorts of insane actions we take on a daily basis—walking towards a precipice, or procrastinating despite our own best interests. “Examine these and similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the Perverse. We perpetrate them merely because we feel that we should not.” That’s what I initially think is happening—that my hero likes to tempt fate, push limits, and defy authority, even when it’s against his best interest. It is a standard, worn out interpretation of Chuck Berry.

The first song out is a rocker, and actually, it works. Even though the guitar is partly out of tune, Chuck bends the strings until they sound pretty good. The rhythm carries the song, and disaster is temporarily averted.

But eventually things fall apart, the circle will not hold, and mere anarchy is loosed up the Duck Room— for a few moments, anyway. From off stage we hear Ingrid Berry singing the opening lines of the blues “Rock Me Baby.” There are a few moments of confusion about the key. Then, as the song begins, Chuck attacks the tuning knobs on his guitar a second time— not just tweaking them, cranking them this way and that, like a fishing reel. The result is three minutes of musical chaos, with the band playing one number and Chuck Berry making disjointed but very loud noise in the background.

I’m thinking at the time that it’s passive aggression without passivity. (A passive person might stop playing, but Chuck settles morosely at the back of the stage, leaning his forearm on the bass amp and making loud, incoherent sounds on his guitar, with a look that says—unconvincingly—“this is how we wish it.”)

I follow his fingers as best I can. It looks like he’s playing the proper positions. My guess is that he’s doing a sort of arpeggio that he likes to play during a slow blues while others solo, the one I’d watched him do at The Pageant, admiring the way his long fingers stretched easily across expanses that would make my own tendons shout in agony. He seems to be making the same moves—but the sounds that escape from his giant amplifier are awful—like an animal dying. I’m amazed that Ingrid and the band manage to keep going. She and Charles huddle at one point, eyeing each other with determination.

But all’s well that ends well. When the song finally ends Chuck surrenders his guitar to Jimmy Marsala, apologizes to the crowd (“When it rains it pours,” he says) and accepts a cream colored Stratocaster from his son. There’s a scare when he almost “tunes” that one, but he absorbs a meaningful head tilt from Charles, smiles acceptingly, and launches into another good rocker.

When my sister Rooney heard this story she immediately linked it to hearing loss. She had been reading Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophelia. Sacks describes an elderly composer who loses his sense of pitch because of hearing loss. He thinks his piano is out of tune, especially in the higher registers. In order to continue working the composer has to have his piano deliberately unturned until it sounds right to him.

That might be what Chuck is trying to do. For 60 years he has worked on bandstands in front of loud guitar amps, drum sets, and monitors. He unquestionably suffers from hearing loss. Maybe it has affected his pitch. According to Sacks’ book, the effect can be intermittent, and fades during periods of concentrated musical activity. Maybe Chuck’s properly tuned guitar sometimes sounds wrong to Chuck. Maybe the crazy tuning he sometimes does on stage is simply to make it sound right to himself. But as part of an ensemble he can’t do what the lone composer did. He needs to make it sound right on stage, when the guitar itself might not sound right to him. If Rooney’s theory is right—if he’s suffering from loss of pitch because of hearing loss— it’s a predicament.

He’s getting older, on stage.

For me, and for all of his “rock and roll children,” it’s like watching a parent age, and can be bittersweet. On the one hand, I grant him and admire all that he has earned through his years on earth. He plays and performs with great grace and wisdom. On the other hand, it can sometimes hurt to see him mess up a lick or forget a famous line.

I no longer attend his shows for the music—though when he’s playing with his regular band, or with Daryl Davis, I think the music is authentic and powerful. But I’m prejudiced towards the days when I first saw him perform at South Lake Tahoe and Monterey— convinced that his best musical performances were 40 years ago, when his guitar skills were peaking and his body was still young enough to amaze us with its balletic contortions. In those days he had it all. I don’t expect to see or hear anything like it again.

And although I enjoy them, I don’t go to his concerts to hear the same old songs. The best thing I’ve heard him play in the last three shows was a song called “Love in ¾ Time.” He didn’t even write it, though it fit him to a T. (“I like enchiladas, and old El Dorados that shine!”)

I have no expectation that he’ll ever play the new songs that I’d love to hear, or the lesser known songs that he so rarely plays.

But I go whenever I can because I have to see him. He is important to me. And watching him grow old is important to me. Being with him is important.

I’ve seen various reviews and internet comments encouraging him to “hang it up.” Sometimes it’s just silly—crappy writers taking cheap shots, or unsuccessful club musicians complaining foolishly that Chuck Berry is stealing stage time from the up and comers. But sometimes it hurts. One of the earliest and most cutting (because it was most loving) came from critic and Chuck Berry fan Robert Christigau, who wrote way back in 1973 “Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player who ever lived, but he just can’t cut it anymore. He reminds me more of Chuck Berry every time out.” I know what he meant about Willie Mays. In October 1973 I watched in horror and pain as Mays flopped to his stomach chasing a fly ball in the World Series. Though I respect him, I don’t agree with Christigau, who was panning the pretty danged decent record “Bio.”

But unlike Willie, who had to stop, Chuck keeps going—like Pinetop Perkins, who boogie-woogied until he died at age 97, and like Chuck’s contemporary, B. B. King, who brings a chair to stage now, and often spends as much time telling stories as he does singing or playing guitar.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” Daryl Davis once told me. “We’ve never seen a rock and roller get so old. It’s going to happen to the others. Chuck is showing us how it’s done. He’s still a pioneer.”

When I got to spend a few minutes with him a couple of days before his 84th birthday I was struck most by the human scale of the man—the white hairs, curly now, that bunched out from beneath the back of his cap, the worn fabric of his pants, the thin lines of his face. A few days later I saw him stamp his foot in frustration, and when he cranked his guitar out of tune, I remember thinking that his kids, who obviously love him dearly, are living some difficult moments on stage with their aging father—moments that are usually far more private. (Then again, those same children live moments of great joy with him on stage, too—far more of those than the difficult ones.)

A couple of times I’ve heard of Chuck Berry telling someone “I hope you live 100 years, and that I live forever.”

And of course, in one sense, his eternal life is assured. Bob Dylan called him a survivor and “force of nature.” His music was sent into outer space as “a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings.” Chuck Berry’s legacy will live as long as human culture and technology survive.

But I guess, like the rest of us, he won’t live forever.

Since I began blogging I’ve received e-mails and messages from several fans who worry how they’ll cope when the day comes. (They may be underestimating his endurance, and over optimistic about their own. Who’s to say they’ll outlive him?) One wrote, “Something I think about a lot is: what's going to happen when the day comes when I have to hear that Chuck isn't around anymore? I dread that day. Sounds crazy but the only thing I dread more is the day when my mother leaves me. The world will shrink so much for me when that happens.”

I understand. I used to think about it, too.

I used to wonder what form the news would take, and how big a splash it would make. At first I imagined a small headline. By the late 1970s I knew that it would be a front page story, but I didn’t know how big it would be. With every decade the story has climbed higher and higher towards the masthead and the headline has gotten bigger. We don’t always acknowledge it, but he is a giant of our culture. I think everyone knows by now that he is far more important than the so-called “King,” Elvis. (It is a sore subject for Chuck Berry fans from the 1970s.) He’ll be on the cover of many magazines that he will never see.

His life has already been long and rich. He seems to have lived it full tilt, with little regard for the rules of society, but with a fairly high regard to his fans and his family and to what he perceives as truth. Yes, he can be a grouch, and yes he has been a criminal. He can fuck things up like few can do it. But he has also been an uncompromising and uncompromised person and artist. He has never watered down a thing. He’s been Chuck Berry all the way, and it has served him and his legacy well. He matters to us in a special way.

So when I see him struggling for a moment on stage, I don’t feel more than a minor sting of regret for the loss of his youth and virtuosity. Mostly what I feel is an extreme pride, and awe, that this man I first encountered when I was 14 is still going strong 40 years later at age 84, his guitar still ringing, his name still in lights, his grin as devilish as ever. And though I no longer fear the day that he’s gone, I’m thankful for every moment that he remains, and for every day that he’s been there, for me, for you, for all of us.

(This is part of a book length piece on my imaginary (well, sort of) life with Chuck Berry.  You can find the first Chapter over to the right, or CLICK HERE  to find the next one!)

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