Chuck Berry

Like millions of people, I’ve been mourning the loss of Chuck Berry this past Saturday.  And I’ve been hearing from friends who want to be reminded about my close encounter with the legend himself.

"Stay loose and play tight" is now my standard exhortation to myself and those with whom I’m about to go on stage.  I heard it for the first time in 1978.  I was playing in a band called Sonora (that name alone should help you get to sleep tonight) in Los Angeles.  One of the guys in the band, Dave Sheils, had an older brother who was an agent with the William Morris Agency.  Big stuff, that agency.  So Dave was always bugging his brother Peter to help our band.

One day Peter calls me (I was the business manager of said band, as well as the bass player) and says "I got you guys a gig.  Any time that Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley plays in California, you guys will be on stage as their back-up band.”  Wow!  All we had to do was join the union.  No problem.

But get to rehearse with these 50's rock stars before the show, we did not.  Instead, we were told to learn every song from Chuck Berry's "Golden Hits" album, which we dutifully did, and advised to be prepared to think quickly on stage. 

Our first gig with Chuck was at Knott's Berry Farm, a poor man's Disneyland in Orange County.  The show was scheduled for 8 p.m., so we were there and set up far in advance.  Maybe we thought we'd get a little rehearsal at the sound check.  No such luck.  Instead, as the crowd was starting to chant "Chuck, Chuck, Chuck" at 7:55 with the curtain still down, we were still looking around and saying "where is he?" 

At exactly 7:58, the back door to the stage opened, and there he was, guitar in hand, all alone. He walked over to his amp, plugged in his guitar, turned all the knobs up to 10 (I swear this was before Spinal Tap) and played an out-of-tune E chord.  The crowd stirred, sensing that the Great One was in the building.  With the curtain still down, he walked up to the mic, turned it 180 degrees so that he was facing us with his back to the stage curtain, and said "Have I ever played with you guys before?"  "No sir, Mr. Berry, sir, we have never played with you."   "Okay, I want you to watch my right foot.  When I put that foot down, you start to play.  When I lift it up, you stop playing.  Down is start, up is stop.  You got that?  Okay, I want you guys to stay loose and play tight."

With that he launched into "Johnny B. Goode," and as the curtain went up the crowd went crazy.  There was only one problem.  On his record, he played the song in B flat.  (One of the little secrets to his unusual sound was that he played in the flat keys instead of the usual guitar keys of E, A, G and D.)  But because he was about 50 years old at the time of this story, he had decided to play the song in a lower key to make it easier to sing.  So while he was playing in A flat, we were in B flat or some other key unrelated to A flat.  It sounded a little like that piece that Charles Ives composed for two marching bands that were to march past each other playing the same tune in two keys that were as far apart as two keys could be (a flatted fifth from each other.)  What worked as 20th century atonal music for Charles Ives did not work so well for the song that NASA chose to put on the Voyager spacecraft, as a representation of earthly rock 'n roll for any extraterrestrials who might find it.

Several fretful moments passed before our piano player Jim King yelled out the correct key and we got into the groove with Chuck.  He played this song and two others with his back to the audience to tumultuous applause.  Then he turned his mic stand around and said "Thank you.  With your permission, we will now begin our performance."

We performed a handful of other times with Chuck, including a show at the San Diego Sports arena after a Clippers NBA game (back when they still played in San Diego.)  The picture below shows, from left to right, John Raymond on guitar, Chuck Berry on guitar, Paul Gladen on drums, yours truly on bass, and Dave Sheils on percussion.  Jim King was off on stage left, out of this picture.  But none of these shows ever topped that first time.

We never really got to know Chuck Berry, since we always had separate dressing rooms and never rehearsed with him.  Up close, we could see the genius and the madness.  I admired him for his art and not for his personal life.  In retrospect, I was in no position to cast the first stone.

If you can find a copy of the movie “Hail, Hail, Rock ‘n Roll” by Taylor Hackford, that will show you the personality of Chuck Berry as we saw him.  It’s a great documentary with a bonus disc that has a discussion between Chuck Bo Diddley and Little Richard in a hotel room, talking about the old days and the various ways they got cheated by The Man.

So, goodbye, Chuck.  When you died, so did a part of my past.  So did the memories of millions.  You will live on in your music, videos and autobiography.