Johnny B. Bad: Chuck Berry and the Making of Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Music,Musical Genres,Rock
Johnny B. Bad: Chuck Berry and the Making of Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll Details
Thirty years ago, Chuck Berry starred in the seminal music documentary Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll, which profiled the legend during a star-studded concert celebrating his 60th birthday. Now, on the heels of Berry's death, comes the complete story behind one of America's most enduring and embattled icons. Compiled as an oral history by the film's producer, Stephanie Bennett, Johnny B. Bad combines interviews from the film's participants, including its music director - Keith Richards. These unique interviews and accounts paint a vivid and multifaceted picture of the artist. Berry was at once a witty, articulate genius, now widely considered the godfather of rock and roll; a shrewd businessman who had no trouble endlessly renegotiating contracts and refusing to perform until additional cash was gathered up; and also a convicted criminal, who in addition to serving time in prison for transporting a minor across state lines for "immoral purposes" had also been accused of sexual assault and sued in civil court for installing cameras in the restroom of the Southern Air, a restaurant he owned in Wentzville, Missouri.
Reviews
For starters, and I guess this kind of standard doesn't matter much anymore in today's Trumpian-emojil-laden illiteracy, but it does to me: this is one of the worst manuscripts I have ever seen, and that includes that god-awful Cass Elliot biography that quoted someone talking about the "conquered bridge" when he said "Concord bridge." How this was ever published outside of an internet vanity press is beyond me. Was there an editor within spitting distance of this, a copyeditor, even a proofreader? "Baited" breath, a color "palate," Keith's guitar tech Alan Rogan becomes Alan Rogen maybe five or six lines later, The Chess brothers are named as Marshall and Leonard, instead of Phil and Leonard (Marshall is a past president of Rolling Stones Records and Leonard Chess' SON.) On and on; the punctuation is off, the grammar like a fifth grade class assignment where the teacher has written SEE ME!! across the top. There are paragraphs of repetition throughout, not just by topic but verbatim.. The interviews with Bo, Richard and Chuck are a slightly-extended transcript of what they had to say in the film, nothing new of value, same with Bruce. Keith too,, he wasn't inteviewed for this.And this lack of editing becomes even more crucial when you have a book that claims it's an "oral history." I have my doubts about the accuracy of the interview transcription, but what I know for sure is that this reads like a raw transcript dump. It is an account of what an absolute SOB Chuck Berry was, which was the world's worst kept secret, but still, the depths of his depravity are limitless, not the least of which is arranging the sexual assault of both his daughter and two other women on the production team on a prison visit, because the guys need a release. And the men in the book sort of shrug it off as an unfortunate incident, one explaining that the guys weren't really VIOLENT, one says he's made movies in prisons before, he knows all about men turning violent and it wasn't like THAT. Inmates ripping Berry's daughter's panties off, almost pulling the producer apart, to the point where they had to be clubbed off the women by guards, but it was just an unfortunate situation. Somewhere, Al Franken's pancreas just blew through the top of his head.I would suggest that anyone who is unfamiliar with Chuck Berry or any of the brilliant musicians in this film skip this thing, BIG TIME, and put the money to better use. Buy the movie, you'll watch it at regular intervals until you die, buy his MUSIC, more proof that it's a great feeling when all artists are as wonderful people as the works they create, but it's not necessary or even required, buy the music of the musicians involved in the concert, which gets short shrift in this thing, just another endless account of Chuck's maniacal behavior and endless extortion of the producers. Which is not, shall we say, uncommon in the glamorous world of filmmaking.I read the Kindle edition, and I wish I had that money back, I could have made much better use of it, like flushing it down the can.