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10 The Emergence of Art Rock (1980)

John Rockwell

Long, flat expanses ofprofessionalism bother me. I'd rather have a that could explode at any time. And I think that's what people like too: soul and expression and realfire and emotion more than peifection. -Neil Young (Kohut and Kohut 1994, 99)

The deluded notion that we're making anything but sugar is nuts. I'm not saying that sugar doesn't taste good, but it burns fast. It's not meant to last. This is not . -Gene Simmons of Kiss, 2002 (Rabin 2002, 14)

Rock is like a battery that must always go back to the blues to get recharged. -Eric Clapton (Szatmary 2009, 188)

In "The Emergence of Art Ro~k" John Rockwell documents the history and musical elements of early prog (or progressive, or art) rock, and suggests that if exhibits a life cycle comparable to other arts and artistic movements (youth, maturity, decay), we might broadly characterize its first two decades as follows: the '50s was a period of youthful exuberance, the '60s a time of healthy maturity, and the early '70s an era of decline and decadence. For some, prog rock was thus a terminal "cancer." Inevitably, death is followed by life, in this case the birth in the mid-70s of , which brought back the energy and excitement of the '50s. If we accept Rockwell's three-part scheme, we might then ask: Has rock experienced a similar life cycle (or cycles) since the mid '70s? If so, how might we describe that cycle? Rockwell, who served as both classical music critic and chief pop music critic for The New York Times, also observes that most of the art rock bands were English, and for a good reason. In England classical music is a part of the culture of all musicians, and rockers there relate to it in ways that Americans do not.Thus, English rockers naturally adopted classical music techniques. Finally, concerning the music itself, Rockwell notes that a characteristic of art rock is abrupt tran­ sitions, from one mood, tempo or style to another.

There is a morphology, an inherent developmental cycle, to artistic movements. They begin with a rude and innocent vigor, pass into a healthy adulthood and finally decline into an overwrought, feeble old age. Something of this process can be observed in the 53 of Art Rock 54 John Rockwell The Emergence 55

of the Fifties thro~gh the here from the Seventies are acts like · Emerson passage of rock & roll from the three-chord prim~ti~sm The principal examples the hollow emptmess of ; Renaissance; Yes; ' and Rick burgeoning vitality and experimentation of the SIXties to Lake and Palmer; Deep Purple; . artists did was just souped-up, oversynthesized, much of the so-called progressive, or "art," rock of the Seventies. Wakeman. Much of what these rock m te~ms interest or pretensions. But at one time or whole notion of art rock triggers hostility from those who define vaguely "progressive" rock of no particular The Wakeman, classically its development. Rock was born as a street rebellion all o~ th~m dealt in some form of classical pastiche. of the early-middle stages of an?ther ser­ ~in Pan Alley pop ~nd Royal Academy, is as good an example as any. After against pretensions and hypocrisy-of Fifties society, Fifties tramed as a piamst at the idea ?fart ro~k .s:ri.kes for the likes of and Cat Stevens, he joined high art in general ("Roll Over Beethoven''). Thus the very ving tim~ as a session pianist revers10n to primitivism into a convoluted pop mysticism. He eventually left some as a cancer to be battled without quarter, and the punk Yes, .helpmg to lead the group rock. !he troubl: is, on~e a solo career devoted to such elaborate, portentously titled was in part a reject~on of the. fanci~r forms of progre~s!v~ Yes m 1974 to pursue to obliterate it to the Centre of the Earth and The Myths and Legends consciousness has mtruded itself mto the process, its impossible orch~stral narratives as ]o~rney so even primitivism, self­ Round Table. These ice-skating epic~ had their (except maybe with drugs, and then only temporarily). And of Ktng Arthur and the Knights of the art rock.. But his classical excursions were dispatched with consciously assumed, became one of the principal vehicles o~ elements of elephantine humor. often cited as the ?ro­ cynicism as to be genuinely appalling. ' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) is such a brutal album .that dr~ma~ized busily ripping off Grieg their music was oper­ genitor of self-conscious experimentation in rock. It was the . Even whe? such groups weren't had prev10usly dismissed through their ponderous appeal to a middle-class rock's claim to artistic seriousness to an adult world that atically arty m the bad sense, aspired to someth~ng on electronically updated nineteenth-century the whole as blathering teen entertainment. !he Be~tles sensibi~ity and the.ir lame reliance clever (harmomes, these pastiches were further burdened by the really daring and new-an unabashedly eclectic, musically vaud~ville ~tag~ t~icks. Too often only have been created in certain sorts of loud, arty British bands had rhythms and, above all, arrangements) melange that could seemmgly irresistible weakness . . "poetry." Yes's album covers make the point as well as the modern recording studio. for sc~ence-fiction art and rock, anticipated by for the teenyboppers­ One inevitable implication of the whole notion of art anything, but such puerile mythologizing-Tolkien forms of"higher," m.ore and lapsed over with insufferable affecta­ Sgt. Pepper, is that it parallels, imitates or is inspired by other pervaded much of British pop poetry to emulate classical electric folk-rock camp, too; think only of Jethro "serious" music. On the whole, imitative art rock has tended tion into much of the British orchestral sorts. The Tull and Cat Stevens. music, primarily the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century album Days of Future Past to be limited simply to quotations, however, nor pioneers in this enterprise were , whose Classical borrowings don't have Moody Blues devo­ The whole craze for "rock operas" of ­ paired the group with the London Festival Orchestra. Although do they have to be bad by definition. than mere rock, they work. Similarly, some of the fairly straight­ tees seemed to think they were getting something higher toned Who variety produced some fascinating music, pure and regr~t­ colored their music with the judicious application were kidding themselves: Moody Blues records were mood forward heavy-metal groups have except for the mis- (the use of Eastern modes and instrumental tably not so simple. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, of nonrock styles, to telling effect in 's "Kashmir," for example). categorization into something more profound. . . . . accents music come from styles and formal ideas blends impercep­ The vast majority of the bands that pillage traditional classical . Su~h use of classical and other nonrock classics, .however ton~e­ eclecticism-the free and often febrile switching Britain. Why British bands feel compelled to quote t~e tibly mto all-purpose stylistic analysis. In .comparison the same piece. Eclecticism, by now a talisman of the in-cheek, leads into the murky waters of class and nat10n among different styles within Most American rockers in all the arts, was more prominent in the with the British Americans tend to be happy cavepeople. entire post-Modernist movement by one in the middle anywhere else, and, at its best, it stops being wouldn't know ; Beethoven symphony if they were run down Seventi.es .Po~ world in London than art (music, paintin~, imitative and enters the realm of creativity. of a freeway. One result of such ignorance is that Americ.an lamely of a. c~tured sensi­ the Seventies fell into the eclectic art-rock camp: poetry, films, etc.) can develop untroubled by lame affectations Numerous British bands of class d1Vls10ns and the Orchestra, Qyeen, Supertramp, Sparks, lOcc, bility. In Britain the lower classes enjoy no such isolation. The Genesis, ~ng Crimson, Electric Light Rockers see~ far There were Continental bands like Focus and crushing weight of high culture flourish essentially untrammeled. Gentle Giant and Be-Bop Deluxe. upper-class approbation, Styx and Boston that fit here also. Cer;ainly more eager to "dignify'' their work, to make it acceptable for even Ameri~an groups like Kansas, they are. ~ar n:o;e these groups, large differences, and there were many by freighting it with trappings of classical music. C?r, co~versely, there were differences between by ~astardlZl~g it m But they all shared a commitment to unprepared, intent upon making classical music accessible to their au~iences more groups. ~hat could be listed. to the pomt ofludicrous­ to another. Sometimes the shifts were between the rock context. Or, maybe, they feel to parody it abrupt transit10ns from one mood intensity that American of volume, sometimes between whole styles of ness. In all cases, they relate to it with a persistence and tem?os, sometimes between levels disruptive and nervously tense, and as such groups rarely match. music. The effect in any case was violent, 56 John Rockwell The Emergence of Art Rock 57

no doubt answered the needs of the age as well as anything. At their best (or at their Electronic Sound, 1969) and John Lennon (whose Two Virgins with Yoko Ono was most commercially successful), these groups never lost sight of older rock basics, as another particularly appealing early art-rock entry in 1969). with Qyeen's best work. Still, what was left in the forefront of experimentation was interesting enough. In a sense, might be considered the leader of this particular pack, The mere fact that Eno had to leave Roxy Music (quite apart from the question of especially between 1971 and 1973, when :-vas. a member. of the band. clashing egos with Ferry) indicates the difficulty of pursuing experimentation and But even from the first, and despite the strong contributions of commercial success at the same time. The London avant-garde scene, insofar as any and , this was always 's band, as proven by the continu­ outsider can tell, is marked still by a fascinating if rather private and sporadic inter­ ity in his subsequent solo albums. Ferry's artsiness e~pressed itself s.o much as change between the classical and pop worlds. In the Seventies the pop stars (Eno, style over substance that style itself became substan,tive. ~s the ultm~ate self­ guitarist Phil Manzanera of Roxy, Fripp) did rather more interesting work than professed lounge lizard, he managed to take pop-rocks hoariest co~vent~ons .( t~e those who wandered over from a classical background (David Bedford, Stomu love song, even actual oldies on his solo albums) and coat them with wit~ mtl­ Yamash'ta, the Japanese percussionist-turned-rocker). Michael Oldfield fits here to mations of unspeakable decadence. But the real art rocker in Roxy Music was a certain extent, although his work-particularly after his best-selling Tubular Bells Eno. Aside from the quality of his music, which is considerable and which he sus­ (1973), which did admittedly have a bland appeal as a reduction of California com­ tained into the Nineties, he is interesting from two points of view: his command poser Terry Riley's ideas-was lame beyond recall. of the and his relation to others on the London and New York exper- Much of this work, from Oldfield to Eno and even Riley, is head music, and imental scenes. relates :o a rather interesting form of avant-garde , which brings us to The synthesizer is a much-abused, much-misunderstood instrument. When the subject of drugs. The avant-gardism in rock of the Sixties and Seventies, for all played like a souped-up electric organ by people like Keith Emerson, Jon Lord ~of its ultimate debts to surrealism and other vanguard movements from earlier in the Deep Purple) or Rick Wakeman, it can sound simply ~ashy and cheap. If t~e. oblig­ century, owed its primary fealty to the proliferation of drugs in the Sixties. It would atory drum solo used to be the bane of any self-respecting ~oer s life, the be misleading to overstress this, but just as false to repress it. Marijuana, LSD and obligatory synthesizer solo, preferably with smoke bomb and laser obbligato, was the other psychedelics, and methedrine, or speed, all had a profound effect on how music curse of the Seventies. If weren't regarded as newfangled organs, they in general, and art rock in particular, was made and perceived. This is not to say that were taken literally, as something that "synthesizes," and we were subjected to Wendy you had to be stoned to play or enjoy this music. But it does mean that the climate Carlos's and 's synthesized versions of the classics. and sty~istic preoccupations of many varieties of present-day art are built in part on The synthesizer is an instrument with its own characteristics, and those char- percepnons analogous to the drug experience. Sometimes it takes only one trip as acteristics are just beginning to be explored by rock musicians. When ?layed w~th with acid, to give you a whole other fix on the world. ' the subtlety and discretion of a Stevie Wonder or a Garth Hudson, it can rein­ The kind of quiescent, dappled textural shiffings that mark much of American force conventional textures superbly. And when somebody like Eno or Edgar composer La Monte Young's music (Eno was strongly influenced by Young; and Froese of Tangerine Dream gets hold of it, the synthesizer can create a whole , formerly of , worked closely with him) owe world of its own. Eno's Discreet Music (1975), with its title-track first side full of something to grass, at least originally: Maybe Young has never smoked in his life but soothing, hypnotic woodwindish sounds, or No Pussyfao!ing (1.975) and. E~ening his art could have germinated only in a subculture primed for it by marijuana. And Star (1976), two collaborations with , ex- gmtans:, or the same is true for the whole acid-rock phenomenon. Music far Airports (1978), were masterly examples of genuine rock avant-gardism. :he pure acid-rockers of the Sixties-from to the Jefferson Airplane-­ Of course, they weren't really "rock'' in any but the loosest sense: There was no don t really co~cern us here. But , originally Britain's premier acid-rockers, reference back to a blues base, even in attenuated form. But they still counted as do. After cutting a couple of British hit singles in 1967, the group concentrated on music produced by a rock sensibility aimed at a rock audience. extended compositions, often with spacey lyrical motifs. The Dark Side ofthe Moon Eno's position within the London avant-garde, and the natu~e. of that avant­ (1973) became one of the most successful albums of the decade, a best-seller in garde, are both of interest, too. London, like New York, ~as a thriving avant-g~rde Europe and America as well as England. Floyd turned out some of the most consis­ musical community that doesn't place much of a premium tently interesting "head music" of the late Sixties and Seventies and managed in its on formally acquired . h , ' technique, thus remaining open to fresh infusions of energy from os~e?sible "a~a­ various s ards after its breakup, at least to re-create some of that work arrestingly teurs." In London the experimentation in rock was fostered by British taxati?n, thereafter. The group had a sense for line and continuity and ritualistic repetition which forced most of the successful commercial rockers out of the country, leavmg that was quite special, and to dismiss it simply as technically limited is philistine. the rest to experiment relatively free from Top Forty pressures. This robbed the In Los Angeles the drug scene helped spawn , one of London scene of some potential big-name experimenters like George Harrison (see the first rock groups to emphasize mixed-media presentations, dubbed "freak-outs" The Emergence of Art Rock 59 58 John Rockwell

doesn't have to be clever complex­ teetotaler, was forced after the first ~elf-conscious primitives are right: Maybe art rock by leader . Zappa, a self-professed answers the needs of these affairs-naturally to all. Maybe real art is that which most clearly and directly few L.A. freakouts in 1967 to disavow the use of drugs at ity at classical in turn, means that we can prize pure rock and pure pop, from Mothers combined social satire, parody of rock & roll oldies, its audiences. Which, no avail. The inferior to that which may entail a more highly homage to Edgard Varese-and a growing taste on, as "art" in no way references-Zappa regularly paid of a far larger process in been an influential collage of formalized technique for its execution. Rock may be part for vaguely avant-garde improvisation. It has by jazz vio­ its gestures to encompass an audience made more numerous the work of such diverse musicians as Jean-Luc Ponty, the which art broadens styles, affecting into strata heretofore ignored. once cited the Mothers' first album, Freak Out, as a the permeation of social equality down linist, and Paul McCartney,' who and pop artists were . There is another, more philosophical side to it. What Warhol key inspiration for Sgt. Pepper. been telling us all along--is that Sixties, kindled by (among others) Pink trying to tell us-and what composer John Cage has The psychedelic enthusiasms of the late removed and in London, a product crafted painstakingly by some mysterious, and the Mothers of Invention and centered in San Francisco art isn't necessarily Floyd the perceiver, choose to perceive artistically. A Brillo resonance in the Seventies in West Germany. Kraftwerk artist-deity, but is whatever you found their most sustained bunch of them into a museum. United States, thanks to the surprising box isn't suddenly art because Warhol put a stacked had the biggest commercial impact in the the super­ Dream and its them there he encouraged you to make your every trip to in 1975 of Autobahn. Rather more interesting was Tangerine But by putting success in so doing he exalted your life. Everybody's an artist group's records and Froese's solo albums were impression­ . market an artistic adventure, and leader, Edgar Froese. The notion than encouraging of electronic color. There is a parallel to who wants to. be, which is really a more radically populist istic extravaganzas, full of gentle washes room for us. and more overtly rock studies of the blues. Roll over Beethoven, indeed, and make Eno's work here. But Eno is a more diverse artist than Froese, scholarly Music he shows an oriented, and in such purely experimental pieces as Discreet like Young, Riley indebtedness to the structuralist principles of classical composers of the Bay Area in the (himself an offshoot of the psychedelic/meditative climate hand, owes his classical Sixties), Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Froese, on the other Gyorgy Ligeti and inspirations to such orchestral colorists as Hungarian composer Xenakis. Froese's work the of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis his choice of inspirations seems less interesting than that of his models, but at least betrayed a certain sophistication. Eno twice collab­ More directly related to Eno was the band Cluster, with which disco "factory" cannot be orated. And the artier implications of Giorgio Morodet's of the best trance records ignored here. His "I Feel Love" for Donna Summer is one in New York by of the Seventies, among other things-as a version performed upon his disco formula, Blondie and Fripp reaffirmed so well. And before he hit disc, influenced by the Moroder had made an overt art-rock synthesizer collage the time nobody could be German psychedelic groups but better than his models. At too busy to bother. interested in releasing it, and since then Moroder has been Seventies, and its sub­ The evolution of the New York art-rock scene in the late States, was such an sequent spread to Los Angeles and other byways of the United the pattern suggested by eruption of energies that it merits separate treatment. But a rejection of overcom­ London was brought to triumphant fruition in this country: a direct merger with plexity, the development of new artistic primitivism and finally Eno and Fripp, both of other forms of avant-gardism, both classical and jazz-with whom moved to New York, as catalysts. self-consciousness, and This disquisition began with talk about morphologies and scene of the past decade in some ways the aesthetic behind the New York art-rock brings us full circle. seriously question both Looking at rock from a populist standpoint, one can high art itsel£ Maybe the its aspirations to high art and the very hegemony of 7

Classic Rock (1969; excerpt)

Nik Cohn

A lot ofpeople call me the architect ofrock & roll. I don't call myself that, but I believe it's true. -Little Richard

He's the Ernest Hemingway ofrock & roll. He gets right to the point: he tells a story in short sentences; and you get a great picture in your mind ofwhat's going on in a very short amount oftime. -Aerosmith's Joe Perry on the subject of Chuck Berry

In the following excerpts the English rock journalist and critic Nik Cohn describes the simple, raw energy of early rock 'n'mll, which he contrasts with the musical and lyrical sophistication of what followed in the 1960s. He vividly evokes the excitement that accompanied the appearance of each new maniac '50s rocker; and observes that rock 'n' roll was born when black and white musics mixed, particularly in the South. Cohn's description of the power and art of Little Richard is surely without peer; and his suggestion that Chuck Berry was rock's first true poet is hard to dispute.

Rock 'n' roll was very simple music. All that mattered was the noise it made, its drive, its aggression, its newness. All that was taboo was boredom. The lyrics were mostly non-existent, simple slogans one step away from gibberish. This wasn't just stupidity, simple inability to write anything better. It was the kind of teen code, almost a sign language, that would make rock entirely incomprehensible to adults. In other words, if you weren't sure about rock, you couldn't cling to its lyrics. You either had to accept its noise at face value or you had to drop out completely. Under these rules, rock turned up a sudden flood of maniacs, wild men with pianos and guitars who would have been laughing stocks in any earlier generation but who were just right for the fifties. They were energetic, basic, outrageous. They were huge personalities and they used music like a battering ram. Above all, they were loud. It was a great time-every month would produce someone new, someone wilder than anything that had gone before. Pop was barren territory and everything was

29 31 30 Nik Cohn squeals, rasps, siren 1960, .t~ings On every phrase, he'd embroider with was some kind of progression. Around enraged bull-like roar. simple, every tiny gimmick limitless and his songs were mostly total non­ died out. Pop had become more sophisticat­ whoops. His stamina, his drive, were evened out and much of the excitement playroom lyrics, but still he'd put them were the time when pop was just songs, nothing but bedrock 12-bars with more creative, more everything. But the fifties desperate belief, real reli­ ed what was new last syllable was liquid gold. He sang with something to switch on the ra?io and ~ear across as if every and po~, when it was really Molly, you sure like a ball-when you're rockin' be so good an~ simp~e agam. gious fervour: 'Good golly, Miss right that minute. Things could never momma call.' by Little Richard and, at one throw, rollin', I can't hear your instance the first record I ever bought was Mohammed Ali For went: 'Tutti frut­ was brash, fast, bombastic, a sort of prototype I ever need to know about pop. The message As a person he and it taught me ev~rything electrifying and full of personal magnetism'), frutti all rootie, awopbopaloobop ~opbamboom!' ('I'm just the same as ever-loud, ti all rootie, tutti frutti all rootie, tutti only to Elvis. Most of his records sold about, this was nothing but masterly. right through the middle fifties he was second a summing up of what rock 'n' roll was really Help It', 'Keep A As through .. Anarchy 'Long Tall Sally', 'Lucille', 'The Girl Can't early years are the best that pop has yet been a million each: pre­ Very likely these sleek, all sounded roughly the same: tuneless, lyricless, couldn't possibly make it unless you were white, Knockin', 'Baby Face'. They moved in. For thirty years you in the middle somewhere and a constant now you could be black, pu~­ Neanderthal. There was a tenor sax solo nicely spoken and phoney to your toenails-suddenly screaming his head of£ Individually, on eart.h and could still piano and Little Richard himself delinquent, diseased or almost anything rou smashed-up unending scream and ple, moronic, . . mean much. They were small episodes in one you were new, just so long as you cam~d excitem~nt.' the records didn't clean up. Just so long as when you put them all together. came out of the South:. Elvis from Mis~iss1ppi, only made sense Most of the best early rockers No warning-he just stopped touring, from Texas, Jerry Lee Le~s from But in 19~7 he suddenly upped and quit. Little Richard from Georgia, Buddy Holly in a Seventh Day Adventist the states where the living had making records, and went off to play piano Gene Vincent from Virginia. These were stopped Louisiana, to, and where, there­ Church offTimes Square. where teenagers had been least catered down on always been meanest, plane and a fire had broken out. Richard got most frantic. Apparently, he'd been in a fore the rock kickback was now he'd give up the devil's music for ever music-conscious section in A~erica, .it his knees and promised that if he was spared, Anyhow, the South was by far the most answered my prayers and and gospel, and 1:s music himself to the gospel instead. '.And God It had huge traditions in R&B, country, trad. and devote always had been. 1t had a stopped the fire.' less pretentious than that up north. Mostly, was in every way more direct, but his entourage thought he was crazy Down here, rock was an obvious natural. So he announced that he was giving up, sledgehammer beat and pulled no punches. performance, took his many all the sources around them. at him. Then Richard, in a typically flash innovation was that the rockers made use of and laughed 'I wish I'd The only had never them into the sea. Almost $20,000 worth: country, Negroes had ~sed R&B, and the tw:o rings from his fingers and flung Up to this time, whites had used fish. A king's ransom, all courtesy of Little anything they could lay ~eir hands on, seen the face of the man that caught those remotely overlapped. Now everyone incorporated the story he tells, and it might be gave its flavour. And he quit on the spot. At least, that's this mix-up of black and white musics that Richard.' and it was true. Some of his stories are. But in the early sixties was the aforemen­ kept it up, made no records, gave no interviews. southern rockers, just about the most splendid Five years he go back to Of all the great and from there it was inevitable that he'd out of Macon, Georgia. he began to cut gospel records, tioned Little Richard Penniman but he was still a name. Several times he thirteen children, and had a predictably rock again. He didn't get any further hits, He was born on Christmas Day 1935, one of a storm. the local gospel choir. At toured Britain, and each time he went down At fourteen, he was singing solos with Stones, Bo harsh childhood. show. Fro?1 was in 1963, sharing a bill with the Rolling dancing and selling herb tonic in a medicine . The first time I saw him fifteen, he was blues-shouting, cut them all to shreds. He didn't look sane. a sequence of nothing records, and finally m D1ddley and the Everly Brothers, and he there, he got into a variety of groups, made his skull. He came down front Frutti'. . and his eyes bulged; the veins jutted in he was twenty, sold a million copies of'Tutti He screamed watch­ 1955, when twenty-six tie, cuff-links, his golden shirt, his huge diamond He wore a baggy suit with elephant trousers, a.nd stripped-his jacket, he He looked beautiful. inside a silk dressing-gown, and all the time his hair back-combed in a monstrous plume-like nght down to flesh. Then he hid inches at the bottoms and he had it was the beginning of rock all and a round, totally ecstatic face. everyone jumped about in the aisles like Then he had a little toothbrush moustache roared a?d fountain. hammering ~w~y over agam. and he'd stand knock-~eed at the kerboar~, always He played piano, hea lift much. Anyone else that has a great stage act to bust the thing apart. At climactic moments, Objectively, he didn't even do with two hands as ifhe wanted speed, Johnnie Ray has pain, Elvis has with his heel, and his trouser rims would an obvious selling point: James Brown has one leg and rest it on the keys, banging away has was energy. Little Richard had none of that. All he had sex. on his billow like kites. hysterical, endlessly. On 'Hound Dog', he dropped down and scream. He had a freak voice, tireless, He howled and hammered He'd scream and scream was all gospel-'that healing music, his life sang at anything lower than an and grovelled, and still he howled. It completely indestructible, and he never in knees Classic Rock 33 32 Nik Cohn

He kept it up so long, so slogan of rock. But almost best of all was 'Sweet Little Sixteen'. makes the blind see, the lame to walk, the dead rise up'. adopted as the universal it and murdered us. up better the twinned excitement and frustration of the time: loud, it made your head whirl. Good ; he murdered Nothing summed 'That Little Richard,' he said, 'such a When he was through, he smiled sweetly. Sweet little sixteen, she's got the grown-up blues nice boy'. Tight dresses and lipstick, she's sportin' high-heeled shoes Oh but tomorrow morning she'll have to change her trend And be sweet sixteen and back in class again. rock's definitive chronicler, interpreter and wise-guy Chuck Berry was a bard; classic sang in a them. with vici~us, sly cyn­ he played a very fair blues guitar, Chicago-style, and voyeur. He wrote endless Teen Romance lyrics but sang B~yond his writing, as his hair. On stage, his speciality was the duck walk, which icism and this is the clash that makes him so funny, so attractive. voice as waved and oily that gets a lot of its the stage on his heels, knees bent, body jackknifed and gui­ His most perfect song was 'You Never Can Tell', an effort involved bounding across Chuck had served a hefty gut. Then he would peep coyly over his shoulders and look flavour from the knowledge that it was made soon after tar clamped firmly to his without her parents' herself, all big eyes and fluttering lids. He had a pencil mous­ jail sentence for transporting a minor across a state boundary like sweet little sixteen the cool of a steamboat gambler. A brown-eyed consent: tache and had the smoothness, handsome man, in fact. wedding and the old folks wished 'em well, mistake with the minor It was a teenage Just when things were going so well for him, he made his that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle, · rock was finished but the You could see and was put away. By the time he got out again, in 1963, monsieur and madame have rung the the chapel bell­ made blues hero number And now the young British R&B boom was just getting underway and he was the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell. nothing but Chuck Berry C 'est la vie, say one by , who started out playing almost swirling of course, he'd landed on his feet. rambled away legato in the background and there were great songs. Almost as a matter A jangle piano be hard to deal with. intoned than sang, sly and smooth as always, the He was brought over and made much of but turned out to sax riffs and Chuck himself more but myth that's right a~ the When he liked to turn it on, he could be most charming eternal 16-year-old hustler. That was it-the Teendream He was arrogant, rude. evocatively First and last, he was amazingly mean. pop and 'You Never Can Tell' expressed it more exactly, more often he couldn't be bothered. heart of all British tour, he used to attempts at the same theme.' . There's an authenticated story about him that, on his first than any of the other fifty thousand in WI.th what ha,s nightly and check to see if there had been any fluctuation Of course, this is all very naive and. undeveloped by c~mparison study the evening paper m mass media, you don t was any deviation in his favour, no matter how small, he'd come since, but then Bogart proved thirty years ago that, rates of exchange. If there a definite disadvantage if before he went on. On one night, this supplement came to need to be a monster intellectual to be great. In fact, it's demand payment in cash and these are the exact 2s. 3d [about one cent]. you are. What you do need is style, command, spe~ific i~age . things that Chuck Berry has always been overflowing with: would have. written Basically, what it boils down to is detail. Most pop writers have been nothmg. But 'You Never Can Tell' as a series of generalities and it would ale and he had to drag Chuck was obsessive, he was hooked on cars, rock, ginger the cherry-red Jidney '53 them all in. That's what makes it-the little touches like or the coolerator. and, when he was Chuck was born in California in 1931, grew up in St Louis and he was always going older, got to be a hairdresser. By nature, he was an operator singing, he wrote, he made to be successful. The only question was how. So he tried and from then progress. In 1955, he had his first national smash with 'Maybelline' on he was a natural Mister Big. rock movement. He As a writer, he was something like poet laureate to the whole or mourned its limita­ charted its habits, hobbies, hang-ups or celebrated its triumphs exactly that school-kid tions and he missed nothing out. 'School Days' pinned down 'Johnny B. Goode', guitar­ sense of spending one's whole life listening for bells and should have been slinger, created a genuine new folk hero and 'Roll Over Beethoven'