R.I.P. Chuck Berry

[Namcot]

Chuck Berry and Jimmy Hendrix and Elvis Presley is where Rock n Roll is at.

As far as Berry's past misdeeds. No one is perfect. We are all humans. We all have made mistakes in our lives at one time or another: from small minor things to big felony things.

We all have skeletons in our closet.

What does the book says? He who is without sin cast the first stone?

None of us are without sin!

Have you ever stolen something? To steal is to take something that you know it's not yours. We all have stolen something. You took a pen or paper clip in the office that wasn't yours and it wasn't for communal use: that's stealing.

We all have told a lie at one time or another as children or as adult.

We all have broken laws even minor ones like running a red light or a stop sign or speeding or crossing the intersection while walking where there is no crosswalk and pedestrian crossing signal.

[FrostyQN]

Originally Posted by Namcot

As far as Berry's past misdeeds. No one is perfect. We are all humans. We all have made mistakes in our lives at one time or another: from small minor things to big felony things.

We all have skeletons in our closet.

What does the book says? He who is without sin cast the first stone?

None of us are without sin!

Have you ever stolen something? To steal is to take something that you know it's not yours. We all have stolen something. You took a pen or paper clip in the office that wasn't yours and it wasn't for communal use: that's stealing.

We all have told a lie at one time or another as children or as adult.

I never brought a 14 year old girl I met in a bar in Juarez, Mexico to Missouri for sexual purposes, so forgive me if I'm not feeling all that reverent towards Chuck.

[wildwest08]

R.I.P.

[Jason X]

R.I.P.

[alexora]

This is probably the finest filmed example of Chuck's trademark 'duckwalk':

You Tube

You Tube

Originally Posted by PennyPurehart

I never brought a 14 year old girl I met in a bar in Juarez, Mexico to Missouri for sexual purposes, so forgive me if I'm not feeling all that reverent towards Chuck.

Well, he did say it was a "teenage wedding".

Personal issues aside, I've been a huge fan of Chuck's since my dad introduced me to his music back when I was a kid. I mostly listen to hard rock/metal now and a lot of those early guitar heroes were heavily influenced by Chuck. If you were going to build a Mount Rushmore of rock n roll, you would definitely have to put Chuck there along with Elvis. Who the other two would be is open for discussion, so talk amongst yourselves. While you're doing that, here's a couple of covers of his tunes. (neither of these are as good as the original)

You Tube

You Tube

You Tube

You Tube

[alexora]

Here's an interesting article that deals with how we speak of the dead, dwelling on the reactions to Chuck Berry death:

Another View: I hate to speak ill of the dead, but then it all depends on who’s died

I was always taught not to speak ill of the dead – “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum” - but this week that ancient aphorism was put to the test following two prominent deaths.

Chuck Berry may have broken down racial barriers at a time of segregation and been the biggest inspiration in the history of popular music, providing the template for pretty much all rock’n’roll over the next 60 years, but when he died some people preferred to focus on his failings as a human being. Never mind that these amounted, at worst, to being a tax-dodging voyeur with a penchant for underage girls (probably not a surprise to anyone who ever listened to ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’), to, at best, being ‘not a particularly nice guy’. Neither of these things were capital offences the last time I looked, and were certainly not unknown among prominent artists over the course of history, but some people still reacted to his death with sour comments about him being a tax dodger and a pervert, which I found a little odd, if not a little bit racist.

The same thing, rather more predictably, followed the death of Martin McGuinness. One of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, he was, whether you like it (or him) or not, a crucial figure in bringing peace to Northern Ireland. Not that you’d know it from some of the front pages the morning afterwards. While broadsheets acknowledged, his contribution to ending a conflict that had scarred our lives for decades, The Sun and The Daily Mail chose to focus exclusively on the IRA’s atrocities in the 1970s, when he was one of their leaders, rather than the period after he opted for the ballot box over the bullet.

But only in the UK – their Irish editions concentrated on his contribution to the peace process.

That’s either giving your readers what they want, if you want to be generous, or knowing which side your financial bread is buttered (or a bit of both), if you prefer to be cynical. But it’s also symptomatic of the way we seem increasingly to forget that a slice of bread has two sides. So do most human beings. In an age where we all think we’re political commentators with something important to say - if only to our friends on Facebook or ranting into the volatile void of Twitter - everyone seems increasingly inclined to take sides. After all, it’s much easier to have an argument that way, and it’s much easier to get attention if you have an argument, and everyone seems to be desperate for attention. But life is rarely that black-and-white: it’s largely made up of shades of grey. And so it is with humans. We’re a mass of contradictions.

If you look back through history, you’ll discover that many people who did good things, and notable things, and important things, also did fairly awful things in their private lives. Does that make their achievements any less significant? I don’t think so. While I agree that you cannot separate actions from the person responsible for them, that’s not to say you must apply the flaws of that person to their work. If you did, you’d constantly be revising your opinion of everything you once liked, as and when you discovered something unsavoury about the person responsible for it.

Take Chuck Berry. On the one occasion I saw him perform, in 1998, the highlight came when he began to indulge in some bluesy improvisation with the pianist. It brought tumultuous applause at the end of the song. Having no idea who the pianist was (he always insisted on having a hired band familiar with his repertoire), Chuck went over to ask his name and introduced him to the crowd, who roared their approval. He showed off a bit on the piano; they roared again and he showed off his skills again... a little too much for Chuck, who abruptly started the next song, then stopped it, went over to the pianist - and turned the amp down so low that the piano could no longer be heard. But my fondest memory is not of his vindictive moment of revenge: it’s of the sublime few minutes preceding it when Chuck Berry began to enjoy himself and surrendered himself to the music, rather than just collecting the cash and going home.

I’m also reminded of when an American friend asked me what kind of music I liked as a child and I recited a list of pop stars – David Bowie, T.Rex, Gary Glitter – who had soundtracked my youth. My friend immediately asked whether it saddened me to be unable to listen to Gary Glitter any more, because of his later conviction as a paedophile. It was a thought that had never occurred to me. I liked his records growing up, they brought a heady whiff of nostalgia on the rare occasions I heard them as an adult, and it never occurred to me to try to reprogramme my memory so that I no longer enjoyed them. Memories, and minds, just don’t work like that, but it doesn’t mean I condoned Glitter’s paedophilia.

If they did, it would just be too confusing: Michael Jackson fans would have spent much of the latter part of his career liking and then unliking and then re-liking his songs as awkward accusations came and went. More to the point, we would be constantly re-evaluating our heritage as new facts came to light. This would be particularly true in the arts, where there is a long history of great work being made by fairly awful people.

You can go all the way back to the 15th century and Sir Thomas Malory, the English MP who wrote ‘Le Morte d’Arthur’, a book devoted to ideals of chivalry written in Newgate Prison by a man accused of attempted murder, robbery, rape, and extortion, before escaping and robbing a monastery. Then there’s Wagner, a notorious antisemite and racist beloved of Hitler, whose music has attracted admirers including the great Jewish conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim and Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. Or Ezra Pound, an outspoken fascist and antisemite who openly admired Hitler and Mussolini, but whose work remains widely admired, albeit controversial.

Then there are those whose personal lives might have marked them out as pariahs if they were not so celebrated as artists and, perhaps crucially, celebrities. Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones notoriously began a relationship with 13-year-old Mandy Smith when he was 47. She claimed it was consummated when she was 14: something to think about that the next time you listen to the Stones singing ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ or ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’. Some 25 years before that, Chuck Berry’s contemporary Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin (when he was 22). His attitude towards racial equality was not exactly enlightened either. He supposedly once finished a show by setting his piano on fire and marching straight into Chuck’s dressing room as he prepared to go onstage next, with the words: “Follow that, n*****”.

You might argue that these personal traits – or flaws – inform their work, or you might feel that the two are entirely separate. I’d say they’re an integral part but I don’t believe the flaws diminish their work, though I can of course understand why Jews might not all take Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’ to their desert island and black musicians may not be queueing up to play with Jerry Lee Lewis. And I would be surprised if a future obituary of Lewis, or Wyman, did not mention their penchant for underage girls.

Besides, it’s patently not true that we don’t speak ill of the dead. I don’t remember people holding back about Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden when they died. – and I don’t suppose politeness held anyone back from telling the truth about Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot. Let’s face it: if we really didn’t speak ill of the dead, but just said nice things about dead people, then we would have no history at all – or, at least, only a history of good people doing good deeds. Call me an old cynic but I don’t believe that’s an entirely accurate way to look at the past. Or the present.

http://standard.co.uk/comment/comment/another-view-i-hate-to-speak-ill-of-the-dead-but-then-it-all-depends-on-who-s-died-a3498571.html

[FrostyQN]

^ so you found a article supporting your support of a child molester. Big Deal.

[alexora]

Originally Posted by PennyPurehart

^ so you found a article supporting your support of a child molester. Big Deal.

No: I found an article that describes people with your mindset...

Originally Posted by alexora

some people still reacted to his death with sour comments about him being a tax dodger and a pervert, which I found a little odd, if not a little bit racist.

[FrostyQN]

He wasn't a pervert, he was a sexual predator. Big difference.
Thank god Jared couldn't play an instrument or you'd be advocating for him.