A brilliant showman. If you can make your way through the corny "Rock! Rock! Rock!"[1] movie of 1957 you'll see some pretty awful performances from artists of the day. But then on comes Berry[2] His segment was heads-and-shoulders above the rest and still enjoyable today.
He was arrested for transporting a 14-year-old girl across state lines for immoral purposes, set up hidden cameras in his restaurant bathroom, and was accused of a bunch of some other stuff that makes Trump look like a feminist by comparison.
The first video is some one and half hours long. Any idea where to skip for the Berry performance? edit: Ah, I get it, the second link is the Berry's performance starting at 22:34.
It's hard to imagine how much of an positive impact Chuck's music has had on the world over the last several decades.
I think it's worth mentioning that his music was selected to represent earth on "Music from Earth" [1] which is a pretty great honour in my opinion. Whether or not any other extra-terrestrials get to groove out to some Chuck one time is another thing, but I sure hope they do.
Rest in peace Chuck Berry, thanks for all the great music!
I always found it amazing that the guy who could be credited for the birth of rock'n'roll more than anyone else was still alive. Longevity isn't as much of a thing in the rock circles, and the genre has changed so much over time.
Also, major props for putting out a new studio album almost 40 years after his previous one.[1]
Chuck Berry and Elvis generally get the "King" label not because of the music they created, but because they achieved mainstream success with that music. They crossed the racial divide to bring music which had very much a black background (but also a white background) to the white youth of the day. Another artist which often gets the "King" label is Little Richard, but for the music rather than level of success.
Chuck Berry was so much a part of my childhood. As a kid in Detroit I was a fan of WXYZ disk jockey Lee 'the horn" Allen. He was good friends with Berry and often told the story that Chuck wrote several of his hits in the back seat of his Caddy as they went from bar to bar.
As I went through school his music was never far behind. Even in his eighties he could still rock the joint. Hoping I could see him do it in his nineties but I guess not.
Chuck would have been (in one way or another) the inspiration for almost everyone who plays guitar today. Aside from "Stairway to Heaven", the opening riff to "Johnny B Goode" is one lick that almost every guitarist learns to play. I've been playing that lick for 40 years, but still can't get it to sound as cool as Chuck did... RIP.
That lick is my go to when I'm in the middle of a solo and need a minute to think about where to go (and he definitely plays it cooler than me).
Even if lots of people today aren't aware of him, they're probably aware of the uncountable number of artists he directly influenced. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bruce Springsteen [0] immediately come to mind.
[0] Coincidentally, I was watching a video of a Springsteen concert where he was arranging a cover of a Chuck Berry song for his band on the spot yesterday: https://youtu.be/L-Ds-FXGGQg
Exactly. Many youngsters I meet today who were inspired by more contemporary guitarist usually don't realise that their heroes were in turn influenced by Chuck. He was definitely one of the 'founding fathers' of modern guitar playing.
I thought the parent was referring to playing a fifth on the top two strings with a slide, not the blues shuffle (which dates back to at least Robert Johnson).
Cyberferret refers to "the opening riff to Johnny B Goode", which is extremely similar to the opening riff from Ain't That Just Like a Woman. For some reason the link I pasted started several seconds in, which might be causing confusion.
Thanks for posting, and for fixing the link too - I played it the first time and missed it, and thought that you were talking about the standard blues shuffle beat too.
> I've been playing that lick for 40 years, but still can't get it to sound as cool as Chuck did
I'll leave this here as a consolation for you:
Chuck Berry teaching Keith Richards the lick in "O Carol"[1]. Keith had probably 40 plus years experience at that point and still didn't get it right the first time, and not the second and third...
"the great 28" was part of my musical "coming of age" in the 80s, and I definitely annoyed the heck out of everyone else in the house practicing along to that double album.
this is one of those people whose influence and impact will be felt for decades to come (like les paul, hendrix and many other icons)
One of the first celebs to create a sex tape, Berry famously coined the phrase "I like to do that" after farting in the face of a hooker. The video was recovered in the late 1980's after a drug raid on Berry's house by Police. A great man has left the world.
One day, I thought "I should go see Chuck Berry, because he's getting old and I'd like to see him before he dies"
So I did. That was in 1987.
Unlike standard rock concerts, Chuck Berry came on stage at exactly the time printed on the tickets. He played exactly one hour, then he went off again. No encores, no banter.
Reading this obituary reminds me of Michael Jackson's death. Someone dies and suddenly all the bad things in their life are expunged. Berry was a very influential and talented musician but he spent time in prison related to being caught with a 14 year old suspected prostitute. He spent time in prison for robbery. He spent time in prison for tax evasion. He settled a lawsuit for video taping 50+ women including underage girls in the bathroom of his restaurant. I get it, no one is perfect and a person's death is a time to celebrate their life, but these crimes are part of his legacy. Not even giving them a passing mention in his obituary sends a horrible message that if you are talented enough you can get away with anything.
EDIT: This is currently the top comment, which likely isn't fair either. These things are a part of the story of his life but they also probably shouldn't be the top line. My point is simply we should be talking about his entire life and this is a poor obituary for not even mentioning it. The New York Times has a better obituary available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/arts/chuck-berry-dead.htm...
To be perfectly honest, it's rock 'n roll, not church choir music.
Rock 'n Roll used to be dangerous music performed by minorities before the Civil Rights Movement, and listened by rebellious teenagers, before it was co-opted, watered down, and packaged up. If you're not listening to Chuck Berry, and you don't pick out innuendos, you're not listening hard enough.
The Sex Pistols covered Chuck Berry - the bassist was a heroin addict that killed his girlfriend, then himself.
The Beatles covered Chuck Berry - John Lennon is not looked upon with a positive light given how he treated his son and first wife.
The Rolling Stones covered Chuck Berry. People have been murdered at their shows.
Rock 'n Roll is filled with the causalities of unstable, chemically dependent, suicidal people. Chuck Berry was Rock 'n Roll.
I don't disagree. My counter would be would you ever tell the story of Rock n' Roll without mentioning how damaged, disenfranchised, and rebellious the people who created or where drawn to it were? If not, shouldn't it be mentioned in one of the creators obituary how damaged they were?
Those things you mention are self destructive, the comment you were replying to was specifically mentioning damaging others, vulnerable ones in particular.
Maybe you should ask the question in a different way, such as was MJ the victim of a which hunt to frame him for a crime he never commuted. In that case the answer is undoubtedly, YES.
At what point do you conjoin the two? Does the line vary? If a brilliant painter turns out to be a convicted pedophile, for instance, would you still hang their art on your wall? Just curious to hear opinions. I was just wondering about this sort of thing the other day.
I think it depends on how influential you think the artist's life is on what he produces. I think that varies a lot from artist to artist.
If some painter has suffered from depression and does amazing paintings about it, the guy's bio should reflect that.
If Chuck Berry has has a tumultuous life, leading him both to those convictions as well as this new form of music, that should be part of his story. It might not be that way, I don't know enough about him to know, but his biographers will decide.
There's also the personal question of whether you want to support a criminal. Say Roman Polanski does a new movie. It might be a great movie not concerning underage sex, but I would still have a think about whether I wanted to pay a guy who is a fugitive from justice. I don't think I should compel anyone else to decide one way or the other; I think it's perfectly legal to watch his movies, so up to everyone to decide.
In theory you could enjoy the art just as art, but I tend to like art because I enjoy learning from how they saw the world. Finding out they were doing horrible things makes me less excited to absorb their life lessons, which makes the art less interesting to me.
I see the argument. How bout this scenario: We uncover that Hitler (hello Godwin's law) was a master sculptor, absolutely unparalleled. His art speaks volumes, especially to those unbeknownst of its origins. How do you see the art being viewed then? On one hand, he has the legacy of attempting genocide, but on the other hand his art is amazing. What are the morality guidelines behind this sort of predicament?
Does humanity keep it on display in a museum and continue his legacy in the vicinity of works such as Rembrandt's? Even though it would undoubtedly offend millions? Does the fact that it's great art outweigh the social negativity surrounding the whole predicament?
Sure - I did consider a hypothetical Hitler as artist argument.
So, the boring rejoinder is that, yes, his work ought to be recognized on its merits. Sculpture as a discipline shouldn't be punished for Hitler's sins.
Hung next to Rembrandt? Probably not, but then again how much do we know about Rembrandt? There are plenty of great artists whose personal life we know little about (see Shakespeare for instance. We don't know where he went to school or what he looked like!) If we found out tomorrow he peeped on women in the bathroom should we burn all our copies of Hamlet?
Anyway, regarding Hitler, a more interesting answer (to me) is that I'm not convinced great art and the will to extinguish an entire people really exist in the same soul. We know Hitler to be a failed artist. I wonder if good art requires a sensitivity to the world that sociopaths simply do not possess.
>Anyway, regarding Hitler, a more interesting answer (to me) is that I'm not convinced great art and the will to extinguish an entire people really exist in the same soul. We know Hitler to be a failed artist. I wonder if good art requires a sensitivity to the world that sociopaths simply do not possess.
This is somewhat different from what you were discussing, but it genuinely is interesting looking at his paintings. There is a penchant to read into them as coming from the mind of one of humanities worst, but I am intrigued by the fact that they are almost all paintings of architecture with some landscapes mixed in. Any human that is depicted is just happenstance. There is also the fact that Hitler's signature seems to be different in every painting that I have ever seen of his. Do these facts suggest the painter is a man that never identified with other people and constantly was in search of his own consistent identity? Who knows. But it is at least a worthy discussion.
I doubt Hitler was a sociopath. A psychopath, probably, but definitely not a manipulative empathy lacking sociopath. He was sensitive to the world, just in a perverse way...his hatred was real, not just an act of manipulation.
Also, the father of one child ended up commiting suicide IIRC. Most of us think it was guilt of using his kid as blackmail.
Also I've read MJ caved in settling because the constant lawsuit exposure was a career death sentence. No matter how just or unjust it would be, settling was the only liveable option for him.
The oddest part of MJ's defense on the subject were the few interviews were he would appear quite confused. But there's his personality under pressure, after a time it's quite possible he was just stuck into a corner and couldn't express himself.
For such a celebrity under so much scrutiny I'd side with him, nobody managed to find sufficient proof.
Sort of relevant. I was watching an old movie that featured the original writer and performer of "I put a spell on you." His name is screamin' j Hawkins. I actually thought he was doing a cover. Apparently he is the real father of shock rock. I consider myself to be a music afficionado and I was completely unaware of this guy's contributions. I'm sure there are many that don't know how much Chuck contributed to the creation of rock. Rest in peace man.
Either Screamin' Jay or Arthur Brown (see: Fire), I would think? Then again Chuck did really bring the showmanship. The TV series Metal Evolution has a nice little episode on shock rock if you find the topic interesting. With that said, I'm not big on eulogizing so I'll steal a friend's Facebook post:
Now free of his corporeal confines, Ghost Chuck Berry can watch you pee wherever he wants. Roll Over Beethoven.
Screaming Jay was a legend. Started his career as a classical pianist but had way more success with the blues. He took to performing on stage coming out of a coffin. Claimed to have fathered over 75 children. When bookings became scarce he was a strip club MC in Honolulu for a few years.
HN was always more than mere startup culture / computer science posts.
The same way that every balanced programmer (or scientist for that matter) has always been.
And it's difficult to be an entrepreneur of any major scale if one doesn't understand the society they live in, its culture, and its roots. Selling socks, maybe.
Celebrity news and gossip is explicitly the sort of mainstream content which HN is supposed to select against, and which doesn't belong here. No one on Hacker News cared enough about Chuck Berry to post about him when he was alive, why should his death be worth discussing now?
Someone's death is often a moment to consider them, and HN has had discussions like this for years. I'm sure no two readers share the same list of which such discussions belong on HN, but as long as it's not excessive or predictable I don't see why we shouldn't have them. Chuck Berry's a pretty important historical figure.
I was downvoted considerably when I made similar complaints in the Carrie Fisher thread, and so far I'm at -1 for my comment here.
It could be because Chuck Berry isn't nearly as much of a trigger for pop-cultural nostalgia and trivia as Carrie Fisher, and so the thread simply isn't as popular, or it could be that I'm not entirely wrong.
I used to be fine with these threads but over time they've gotten more and more grating to me.
Perhaps because many programmers and engineers are musically inclined as well?? And perhaps Chuck Berry is as much a life influence and role model to them as Alan Turing, Steve Jobs, Margaret Hamilton etc.?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCt4_Dwt-Lk
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jKrHzps0XM