Chuck Berry Takes Keith Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Update: The great Chuck Berry has passed away at 90, join­ing many oth­er leg­ends in rock n roll heav­en. There’s so many great things to say about Mr. Berry. And we’ll have more on the site in the com­ing week. For now, enjoy one of our favorite Berry items from the archive.

The pur­pose of Tay­lor Hackford’s 1987 film Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll was to doc­u­ment two con­certs held at the Fox The­atre in St. Louis to cel­e­brate Chuck Berry’s 60th birth­day, and that it does, giv­ing audi­ences loads of con­cert footage. Berry plays the hits, backed by an all-star band of leg­endary blues­men, R&B singers, and rock gui­tarists, assem­bled and direct­ed by pres­i­dent of the Chuck Berry fan club, Kei­th Richards: There’s Bob­by Keys and Chuck Leavell, Robert Cray and Eric Clap­ton, Etta James and Lin­da Ron­stadt.

And that’s not to men­tion the talk­ing head appear­ances from peo­ple like Bo Did­dley, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbi­son, Lit­tle Richard, and Bruce Spring­steen. In the pan­theon of rock-docs, it’s right up there with Last Waltz. The live takes are electrifying—the band’s pis­tons pound as they strug­gle to keep up with Berry. If the man had slowed down any in his sixth decade, it’s lit­tle won­der he had trou­ble hold­ing onto back­ing bands in his youth. Watch him go in the 1958 clip below.

But there’s anoth­er rea­son Berry burned through musi­cians. He is not an easy man to work with (nor, I would think, for). Bril­liant live per­for­mances abound in Hackford’s film, but one of its prin­ci­ple charms is the rehearsal footage, where Berry berates and bewil­ders his musicians–and some­times, like he does above to Richards, takes them to rock ’n’ roll school. In the clip above, Richards, Berry, and band rehearse “Car­ol,” but it takes them a good while to get going. Richards tries to play band­leader and, think­ing he’s doing Chuck a favor—or not want­i­ng to lose the spotlight—suggests that Berry play rhythm while he plays the lead.

Berry agrees at first. They bick­er and look dag­gers at each oth­er as Richards spoils a bend that only Chuck can play to his own sat­is­fac­tion. Final­ly he dives in and takes over. Why not? It is his song. Richards falls in line, takes the rhythm part, but looks a lit­tle sullen as Berry out­shines him. It’s almost an oedi­pal strug­gle. But the rock fore­fa­ther isn’t about to roll over and let Richards take over.

Else­where in the film, Berry gives voice to the under­ly­ing anger he har­bored for Richards. The Stones and oth­er British bands took Berry’s riffs (he claimed) and made mil­lions, and Chuck nev­er for­gave them. He still doesn’t get enough cred­it. The Rolling Stones still tour and record, but Berry, almost twen­ty years old­er than Richards, is still out on the road too, still show­ing ‘em how it’s done. See sec­ond video below.

1958

2012

Bonus:

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness