Chuck Berry (1926 - 2017)
Chuck Berry was a prick. It's fairly well documented. He was busted (and jailed) for tax evasion, filmed women using the toilet in a restaurant that he owned (settled out of court - 59 women involved), and went to considerable lengths (travelled across state lines) to try and have sex with a 14 year old girl. Berry was 36 at the time. (He was jailed for this, too.)
Berry is widely credited for inventing rock and roll. He deserves this credit, because it's precisely what he did. But the credit was denied to him. If you ask Berry, he'll say this was because of the endemic racism both in America and the American music industry in particular. He's got a point. Berry certainly lacked the white-market appeal of Elvis Presley. And though few would question the magnetism and genius of Presley as a singer and performer, Elvis couldn't write a song for shit, whilst Berry wrote dozens of them. Berry invented the duck-walk, which Angus Young took into hyper-drive. Was Berry denied credit for his achievements because he was black? Yes. But being an inveterate arsehole didn't help his cause.
I struggle with Berry, as I do with many great performers, because of aspects of their personal lives. In another world, Berry might have gotten the credit for his achievements that he deserved. But in a world different again, maybe he'd be regarded with the derision and distaste deservedly directed at sex offenders like Rolf Harris, Robert Hughes and Bill Cosby. (In the case of Hughes, as if being responsible for Hey Dad wasn't reprehensible enough.)
Rock and Roll is more than a world of music; it's a world of sex. (Yes, there is love, and family and, in the world of Midnight Oil, social and environmental activism.) But for the better part of seventy years, music has been sexualising (and then romanticising the sexualisation of) teen and pre-teen girls. I'm not comfortable with this. Sex and sexuality are wonderful parts of life, but mature-age men singing about young girls is creepy, especially when the men have sugary words and tunes in their mouths, lust in their eyes and blood in their loins. It's just gross. And Berry was at the forefront of this grossness.
I love rock music. I love music. I have thousands of albums, know hundreds of artists and would happily pit my knowledge of 20th and 21st century music against anyone. But this doesn't mean I can't have a problem with some of it. (I love James Bond, too, despite loathing the ingrained misogyny.) Sometimes, simply trying to appreciate a cracking film and decent tune can give me a headache. Why? Because so much of our world and the things that exist in it - even the good things - naturalises ideas, expectations and constraints that I REALLY don't like.
I'd never want to tell others what to think. But I didn't want to let Berry's passing slip by without saying what I think. I seem to have gotten a reputation for eulogies on FB - but probably not for ones like this. Berry may well have learned from the errors of his ways. Maybe not; I don't know. But they should not be expunged from his history. He did these things. Yes, many have gotten away with much worse. (Jimmy Page being a prime example.) But that changes nothing for Berry. He was a sexual predator and opportunist, and a pretty shitty bloke, by all accounts.
Despite this, he invented rock and roll. For this, I thank him. For the rest, I'm kinda glad I never met him.
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