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Topic: Chuck Berry documentary shows dark side of rock legend (SSC) Return to archive Page: 1 2
15th June 2006 04:08 AM
Ronnie Richards
quote:
sirmoonie wrote:


Oh, I was in love with that little chippy back in the day. Man, how tastes change.



Yeah, Cox was a fox back in the day..

BTW here's some Springsteen/Chuck Berry related trivia..
(from http://www.brucebase.org.uk/gig1973.htm#10)

28/04/73 - UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK, MD

SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT / DOES THIS BUS STOP AT 82ND ST / BLINDED BY THE LIGHT / THUNDERCRACK…….then, as Chuck Berry's backing band…MAYBELLENE / ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC / SCHOOL DAY / ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN / NADINE / NO PARTICULAR PLACE TO GO / SWEET LITTLE SIXTEEN / MY DING-A-LING / REELIN' AND ROCKIN' / JOHNNY B GOODE

ONE show, triple bill, with CHUCK BERRY headlining, JERRY LEE LEWIS 2nd billed and SPRINGSTEEN opening - a show now steeped in legend and mystique. Berry's contract stipulated that it was the promoter's responsibility to supply him with a backing band for this concert. Apparently Bruce learned about a week before the show that the promoter was seeking a group to support Berry and immediately volunteered his band's services for free - which the promoter gladly accepted. There was no rehearsal or soundcheck with Berry, so Bruce and the boys improvised as best they could.

Bruce and the boys opened their part of the show with a 50-minute set, followed by a 60-minute set by Jerry Lee and his band. Chuck Berry (with the entire E Street Band backing him, including Bruce and SOUTHSIDE JOHNNY) closed the evening's festivities with a 70-minute performance. Springsteen recounts some hilarious details in the Berry bio-film "Hail, Hail Rock & Roll" but does not mention Southside Johnny’s appearance. Fearing the Berry might not want a harp player Bruce positioned Southside in the shadows at the extreme end of the stage. However Berry enjoyed the harp playing and near the end of the show he actually acknowledged Southside to the crowd saying “that white boy can blow, can’t he”?

The above-mentioned setlist represents most, if not all, of the performances from both Bruce's opening slot and from the Chuck Berry & The E Street Band's performance. Sadly THERE IS NO KNOWN AUDIO. This sold out gig in the 5,500-seat Cole Field House was not without some controversy. Such was the demand to see the show that the school newspaper reported that 20 people were arrested when police spotted individuals sneaking into the concert via an open female lavatory window at the back of the building. Apparently 200-300 people made it in before the police caught wind of what was going on.
15th June 2006 07:19 AM
Ten Thousand Motels Chuck has a "dark side"?????
Well I suppose that means he won't be beatified or canonized anytime soon.

15th June 2006 07:26 AM
egon i gotta have that dvd

only saw the movie once on tv a long time ok.
brilliant shit.

isn't he explaining in that movie
how he keeps all his old cadillacs
and sells them in 10 years time cos they will be worth double or something?
15th June 2006 07:53 AM
Maxlugar [quote]sirmoonie wrote:

No, no, Skeechie. No, no. Anorexic, breast implants, and stupid. Not an attractive woman she turned out to be.


I'm going to have to go and sort of disagree, yeah.



You can go have your androgynous Dancing in the Dark version. I'll take the one above.
[Edited by Maxlugar]
18th June 2006 02:05 PM
Kilroy Might be a complete Dick, He's not coming here to supper. He wrote the great 28 rock n roll songs of all time. He also wrote the worst My Ding a Ling.
So he has the best Johnny B Goode and the worst.
[Edited by Kilroy]
18th June 2006 02:33 PM
BILL PERKS
quote:
telecaster wrote:


A date with that Hudson chick and a bottle of Schlitz

In other words, a Black Crowes show

Why do you ask?


LMFAO
[Edited by BILL PERKS]
18th June 2006 07:13 PM
Lethargy
quote:
Saint Sway wrote:
whats the going rate for 18 songs and 1 encore?



SWAY, remember how disappointed we were after seeing Chuck in the eighties? As I recall, he played for EXACTLY 45 minutes, then left without an encore.
19th June 2006 12:49 PM
ListenToTheLion
quote:
justinkurian wrote:
Chuck Berry documentary shows dark side of rock legend
By Dean Goodman

Twenty years ago, a camera crew and some of the world's biggest rock stars ventured to St. Louis to help Chuck Berry celebrate his 60th birthday.

They were lucky to survive the experience.

The famously prickly "father of rock 'n' roll" shook down the filmmakers for a big bag of cash every day, almost started a prison riot, belittled his protege Keith Richards, hit on the female producer and then lost his voice for the climactic all-star concerts before a hometown crowd.

The darkly comic saga is detailed in the new DVD of "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll," which was originally released in movie theaters in 1987. Long out of print on home video, the film was directed by Taylor Hackford, who went on to collaborate with another musical icon, Ray Charles, for the movie "Ray."

The two back-to-back concerts at the Fox Theater in October 1986 served as the backbone for the original film. Hackford shot the difficult rehearsals at Berry's rundown estate, interviewed Berry, his family members and associates, and added often-raucous commentary from peers such as Little Richard, Bo Diddley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

"I signed on to this as a celebration of somebody who had had a major impact on our lives," Hackford told Reuters in a recent interview. "So we went there to celebrate him, and we had every expectation to expect a lot of cooperation because he was also a producer. Lo and behold ... we found quite a different situation."

MORE HEADACHES THAN MICK JAGGER

Rolling Stones guitarist Richards, whose adoration for Berry over the years has largely been greeted with disdain and even a sucker punch by his idol, was musical director of the concerts. Long disappointed by Berry's take-the-money-and-run gigs, he assembled an ace house band, insisted that Berry rehearse and invited the likes of Eric Clapton, Etta James and Robert Cray to play the shows.

In the film, an exhausted Richards described the experience as torture, adding, "He gives me more headaches than Mick Jagger. But I still can't dislike him."

One key scene shows Berry and Richards at loggerheads during rehearsals over the chords for "Carol," one of about a dozen Berry songs covered by the Stones during their career.

"That was a very tough moment," Hackford said, "because it was a humiliating moment where Chuck is taking him to school ... it's like, 'Go ahead, Keith. You're the big rock 'n' roll star. Blow up and stomp off.' Keith just stood his ground."

Hackford said Berry, now 79 and still playing one-nighters, had no involvement in the production of the DVD, which will be released on June 27. Although they are on fairly cordial terms, Hackford recalled that Berry dismissively laughed at him when he asked to license some unseen concert footage.

"Everything with Chuck Berry has to do with the dollar sign. But you know what? It's OK."

That's the basic sentiment of many who have dealt with Berry. He may be tyrannical, but if he had not written tunes like "Maybelline," "Johnnie B. Goode" and "Roll Over Beethoven," the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan might not have gone very far. (A call to his long-time booking agent was not returned.)

TOO MUCH MONKEY BUSINESS

Less enamored was producer Stephanie Bennett, who put the whole project together, and recalled in the documentary that she was rewarded with constant unwelcome advances from Berry, whom Hackford described as "a major sexual animal."

Such attention paled against the groping Bennett and Berry's girlfriend endured from horny inmates when Berry took the filmmakers to the prison where he did three years for armed robbery as a youth. The only way they could avert a riot was if Berry played for the captives, which he did. Hackford shot the priceless footage, but Berry took it from him and has refused to give it back. Only some still photos capture the event.

Perhaps worst of all, Berry refused to show up for filming each day until Bennett gave him a bag of cash, which is how he used to be paid for his slapdash concerts. She estimates that Berry cajoled upwards of $800,000 out of the production, a hefty sum given that the budget was $3 million. Hackford was forced to give up his director's fee in order to stem the tide of red ink but ended up with the DVD rights.

Berry's love of money yielded a key scene in the film but almost scuppered the birthday concert. Midway through rehearsals, he surprised the filmmakers by announcing plans to play a show in Columbus, Ohio. They followed him on the trek, showing how he travels alone, armed only with his guitar, a comb and a toothbrush, pockets his fee before playing a note, performs for the contracted duration, and flies straight home afterwards.

Unfortunately, he lost his voice after the gig and was barely able to sing during the birthday concerts a few days later. Most of the audio footage was overdubbed during post-production -- with Berry taking a fee for his time.

While the documentary does not paint Berry in a flattering light, Hackford -- a Peabody Award-winning TV journalist in an earlier life -- sees the DVD as a well-intentioned attempt to preserve for posterity "a really complicated, very complex individual.

"Nobody is ever gonna know what really goes on inside that head. No one's ever gonna do the entire picture of Chuck Berry because it's just too deep and dark."




If Wolfgang, his German manager, reads this he will get very, very angry...
19th June 2006 01:14 PM
justinkurian This is from Rolling Stone.com:

Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll: Chuck Berry Slays New York Crowd Dead

Don’t go by me. Because by me, Chuck Berry is the alpha and omega of rock & roll. Rock’s first great singer-songwriter, inspiration for the Beatles and the Stones – hell, taught Keith Richards every trick he knows that doesn’t involve a needle and a spoon. Elvis – he’s Prometheus: stole fire from the gods, was damned to eternal suffering. Little Richard – I dunno, Job? His riches taken for no reason except god wants to prove he’s god. And Bo Diddley? Sisyphus! Rolls the rock up the hill all the time, never gets his due. But Chuck Berry – all that wrapped up in one guy with the biggest hands you’ve ever seen. Big as two houses. And you know what they say: Big hands . . . inventor of rock & roll!

Anyway: Friday night, B.B. King’s in Times Square, maybe the greatest show I’ve ever seen. Chuck Berry, four months shy of his 80th birthday, plays guitar for an hour. Now that may not seem like much, unless you know Chuck is famous for taking the money and running – plays for the $ and not much else, a story you can hear told in Taylor Hackford’s Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll, maybe the greatest rock doc ever made (disagree? Netflix awaits, rube, because it’s now on DVD).

But tonight, plays guitar – amazing guitar, bizarre guitar, because (watch Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll and hear Keith Richards bitch about it) Chuck plays in any key he wants to, any time he wants to. So he sounds positively harmolodic, could be gigging with Ornette Coleman, who’s doing a show at Carnegie Hall fifteen blocks uptown the same night. I mean, seriously rock & roll, seriously blues, and seriously out. In the stratosphere. Inventing new language as he speaks it. When he did the “Carol”/”Little Queenie” medley, his chorded soloing could have been James Blood Ulmer, so out of his head was he. Amped up past the rest of the band, his tone was utterly his own ¬– lithe and heavy at the same moment, his guitar bleeding rust at all times, making you think that Jimi Hendrix must have caught a live show somewhere along the way. Thousands of other people have played these same riffs. No one else sounds like this.

End of the show: Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen girls onstage, along with two little kids, dancing to a filthy version of “Reeling and Rocking,” or a filthy version of some other song Chuck cleaned up for white teenagers. I don’t know what song it was. I had long since gone out of my head, following single note runs, out-of-key chords and dirty jokes way past the ceiling of this basement club skyward towards the heavens. Four months shy of 80, more alive than Elvis, in better voice than Jerry Lee, and headed for the airport and home while the applause still rang out. Is there any better revenge?
[Edited by justinkurian]
19th June 2006 04:44 PM
Saint Sway
quote:
Lethargy wrote:


SWAY, remember how disappointed we were after seeing Chuck in the eighties? As I recall, he played for EXACTLY 45 minutes, then left without an encore.



Jerry Lee Lewis hurled a broken bar stool at your head!
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