Dept. of Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll!
Saturday, 18 March 2017 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaffy_rBrown Eyed Handsome Man
He was rock and roll.
Listen to him; listen to his clear, aggressively pleasant, and eminently modern voice, then listen to what he's saying in the songs he wrote. He was a black American born in Missouri, who wrote convincingly about a teenage world that white kids thought was their own - and managed to sneak himself into those songs, a brown eyed handsome man, rounding third and heading for home, subverting everything about the straitened world he wanted to break free of, turning himself into the star.
Listen to that guitar. Rock critic Greg Kot says Berry built his sound on a country base, with blues on top and ramped up rhythm turning it into something new. I like that description. I think it's probably as close as anyone might get in words to describing what came out of his guitar and his throat. And yes, let's acknowledge that he couldn't have done it without Johnnie Johnson's piano, half-pounding, half-trilling, in the background. But it was Berry who blazed, and everyone who came after - Keith Richards, John Lennon (who said that if you wanted to give another name to rock and roll, you could call it Chuck Berry) - wanted a bit of that fire.
Don't just listen to him, though. Watch him - not the duck walk, even though that's a lot less goofy than you'd think, but that wide-legged stance he'd take, sliding to earth while looking at the audience with one eyebrow raised, knowing they couldn't resist watching him, probably knowing he scared the hell out of all the white men in that 1958 audience, then hopping back up, all the while pulling, plucking and clipping at the strings of his guitar and making sounds that would have made Charlie Christian's jaw drop. Look at his face, covered in sweat and alive, never at rest, always seeking out the people watching him, always urging them to pay attention to him and nothing else - that's rock and roll.
He never really broke free of the walls of American racism. His first visit to prison was, I think, purely because he tried, because he was that brown eyed handsome man who dared to say he wanted to go with who he wanted to go with when he wanted to. Mann act, my ass. And like a lot of us humans who don't have the strength to rise above what we are afflicted with, he got bitter. The better angels of his nature stayed in his music, but had a hard time staying in his heart. Put less floridly, he could be a selfish, suspicious dick. And his last go-round with the law, hidden camera and all, reminded us that he was, at the least, creepy about sex and probably deserved a punch in the nose, or some other extreme gender consciousness raising.
And yet, something in his soul never quite died; never quite got completely bitter or completely creepy. He still was able to love, and he still played incendiary rock and roll because he loved it.
Hail, hail, rock and roll. Heaven just got a lot cooler.
Here's a raw and live version of his first hit. I could just erase everything I wrote about his performances and point you to this.
He was rock and roll.
Listen to him; listen to his clear, aggressively pleasant, and eminently modern voice, then listen to what he's saying in the songs he wrote. He was a black American born in Missouri, who wrote convincingly about a teenage world that white kids thought was their own - and managed to sneak himself into those songs, a brown eyed handsome man, rounding third and heading for home, subverting everything about the straitened world he wanted to break free of, turning himself into the star.
Listen to that guitar. Rock critic Greg Kot says Berry built his sound on a country base, with blues on top and ramped up rhythm turning it into something new. I like that description. I think it's probably as close as anyone might get in words to describing what came out of his guitar and his throat. And yes, let's acknowledge that he couldn't have done it without Johnnie Johnson's piano, half-pounding, half-trilling, in the background. But it was Berry who blazed, and everyone who came after - Keith Richards, John Lennon (who said that if you wanted to give another name to rock and roll, you could call it Chuck Berry) - wanted a bit of that fire.
Don't just listen to him, though. Watch him - not the duck walk, even though that's a lot less goofy than you'd think, but that wide-legged stance he'd take, sliding to earth while looking at the audience with one eyebrow raised, knowing they couldn't resist watching him, probably knowing he scared the hell out of all the white men in that 1958 audience, then hopping back up, all the while pulling, plucking and clipping at the strings of his guitar and making sounds that would have made Charlie Christian's jaw drop. Look at his face, covered in sweat and alive, never at rest, always seeking out the people watching him, always urging them to pay attention to him and nothing else - that's rock and roll.
He never really broke free of the walls of American racism. His first visit to prison was, I think, purely because he tried, because he was that brown eyed handsome man who dared to say he wanted to go with who he wanted to go with when he wanted to. Mann act, my ass. And like a lot of us humans who don't have the strength to rise above what we are afflicted with, he got bitter. The better angels of his nature stayed in his music, but had a hard time staying in his heart. Put less floridly, he could be a selfish, suspicious dick. And his last go-round with the law, hidden camera and all, reminded us that he was, at the least, creepy about sex and probably deserved a punch in the nose, or some other extreme gender consciousness raising.
And yet, something in his soul never quite died; never quite got completely bitter or completely creepy. He still was able to love, and he still played incendiary rock and roll because he loved it.
Hail, hail, rock and roll. Heaven just got a lot cooler.
Here's a raw and live version of his first hit. I could just erase everything I wrote about his performances and point you to this.
And this? This is the Brown Eyed Handsome Man
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no subject
Date: Monday, 20 March 2017 12:56 am (UTC)2. He was, as you say, also a selfish, suspicious dick, and a PITA to back, as any who ever worked for him can attest (yes, Virginia, she did). Ditto Van Morrison (yep, now shush). But that doesn't change the fact that between them they represent the absolute pillars of both rock and blue-eyed soul. Nor the fact, too often forgotten in today's climate of whiny fault-finding in quarters that would do better to use that energy to combat genuine wrongdoings, that it's possible to hate the artist whilst loving the art. Nuff said.
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Date: Thursday, 23 March 2017 12:37 am (UTC)It doesn't surprise me about you and the two artists in question.
And you're right; musical genius is no respecter of ethics or general (decent) humanity. I may not be able to bring myself to completely enjoy Wagner, but I completely agree that he is a musical genius.
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Date: Thursday, 23 March 2017 02:15 am (UTC)I quite like Wagner's stuff - it's the original heavy metal, after all - but never pay attention to his life and times. And I can still praise The Bounty, Mel Gibson's breakout piece, and even enjoy his knowing turn as a baddie in an Expendables film, whilst being aware that he is an utter piece of scum. For that matter, I still have a soft spot for most of Robert Heinlein's novels and stories (yes, even Sixth Column which a bestie found in a garage sale here a few years ago; it's fucking hysterically funny in its mega-racist ignorance), and he was definitely an utter piece of scum.
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Date: Saturday, 25 March 2017 07:17 pm (UTC)Heinlein had some good points; he was a strong supporter of blood drives because his life had been saved by blood donations; I remember meeting him extremely briefly at a blood drive I took part in, at the 1977 World Science Fiction Convention. He also adored his wife. And there are some stories of his where certain images or situations have left me in tears, for all the right reasons; Mary choosing to stay on the planet of the "bunnies" in Methuselah's Children, Lazarus's vision of the geese flying as he (thought he) died in France during WW1 in Time Enough for Love, the death of Beulah the talking mule ("There's a pool hall by the Pawn Shop"...) in the same book.
The stories in 6xH are perhaps his best work, especially The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag and they show what he could do at his best.
But basically he was a fascist who wasted his own considerable potential. I stopped reading him when I got to Farnham's Freehold. I think I managed to finish reading it, but it sucked in so many horrible ways. That was the end of him for me, although I haven't taken his books off my shelf as I did with Marion Zimmer Bradley. Because of what I got from him, and because he wasn't an incestuous, violent child abuser, for one thing.
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Date: Saturday, 25 March 2017 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, 25 March 2017 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, 19 March 2017 02:38 pm (UTC)Rock music wouldn't have been the same without him.
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Date: Thursday, 23 March 2017 02:42 am (UTC)