Roll Over, Beethoven

A true story

A friend of mine and I met Chuck Berry in the Spring of 1964 when he performed at an old skating rink on Dyer street, past the Rocket Drive-In in Northeast El Paso. That area at the outskirts of the city was known for its predominantly white and somewhat redneck population so it was with a little trepidation that we went to the show. Not that we expected trouble but the Southwest has lots of rattlesnakes, some of which are bipeds. We called the kids who lived there Stompers but I don't know why. The cultural divide between us could be measured in astronomical powers of 10 given their preference for The Beach Boys’ surf music. That's right -- surf music in the deserts of West Texas. All the Stompers needed to realize their bikini laden surfing fantasies was a few quadrillion barrels of salt water added to the several million acres of sand that surround the city. And a massive wave machine.

Just add water

Chuck had been released from prison a few months before and was now attempting a comeback. I don't know if he chose the El Paso venue because it was obscure enough to hide a possible failure or because given his prison records, better venues weren't ready to hire a convicted rapist and armed robber. He had served a prison sentence for armed robbery when he was a teenager in 1944, then again for violating the Mann Act in 1959. Even the city's most popular and influential DJ, Steve Crosno, who counted many celebrities and top musical acts among his friends didn’t risk appearing with Chuck, though he regularly defied his Program Director and played Berry's records several times out of the normal rotation.

 

  In the 60's only one radio station in El Paso played Chuck Berry's records. His music and other music like it were considered uncivilized but kids like me liked it a lot. We couldn't wait for school to let out so we could listen to the Top 40 on KELP. The Top 40 was mostly populated with smarmy doowop songs freighted with teenage angst, lost loves, untimely teen death, unrequited passions, and one song that ended with a romantic double murder. But interspersed within the treacly flotsam were the golden nuggets of the real Rock & Roll we longed for. We didn't bother with KROD or KTSM and the sterile offerings by Pat Boone, Perry Como and the like. KSET billed itself as "El Paso's Fine Music Station" featuring familiar classical music excerpts and atrocious instrumental covers of songs by Connie Francis, Frank Sinatra and the cast of TV's Hit Parade. KHEY played country music and I didn't know anyone who listened to that station save one of my classmates and me. We both listened for the same reason. If we could ignore the content of the songs and the singers we could hear some creative licks, riffs and counterpoints from the backup musicians whom I guessed weren’t listening to lyrics or the singers either. Late at night, if the weather conditions were just right I could tune my radio to KOMO, 800 miles away in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and hear more Rock & Roll. The static was awful and the station faded in and out but it didn't matter. Across the border in Juarez, border blaster XELO with its 150,000 watt transmitter spread Garner Ted Armstrong's evangelical polemics worldwide on weekends from 10 PM 'til midnight.

The powerful signal swamped many stations in the U.S.

I could pick up KOMO on this radio

Berry's music was new and exciting. Defying their parents and pastors, kids danced to it and begged for more. It felt good to use up the energy that our elders kept hammering down. It made musicians want to play harder and louder. Dozens of future Rock & Roll stars credited Berry for his influence on their music. Though by current musical standards his music and onstage antics are considered quaint, at their inception they were revolutionary. He was among the first musicians to venture into the unknown ocean of lifelike, exuberant musical expression; not dipping his toes cautiously in the water but jumping in, guitar and all, without a safety line. Chuck didn't teach anyone how to play, he just showed them the way. Play what's in your head ---- not what’s expected. Jimi Hendrix, admittedly influenced by Berry’s music, would lead the next generation of rockers into even deeper waters.

Berry's music broke many radio traditions. Music like his and the musicians who inspired him weren't played on typical radio stations. There were things wrong with "Colored" music. It wasn't fit for the civilized. During the Flapper Era of the 1920's the saxophone’s seductive sound was blamed for causing young women to lose their virtue. (If only!) Now Rock & Roll was believed to be the on-ramp for the highway to hell. Before Americans had genitals, TV audiences watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show were not shown his gyrating hips lest America's youngsters think there was something down there besides pocket change. Chuck broke other traditions as well such as the tradition of paying income taxes. Over his lifetime he would make and lose small fortunes and earn convictions for violating tax laws.

"The highway to hell is that way! Let's go, people!"

On the afternoon I met Chuck I was surprised to see that his band was made up of local guys I'd seen playing around town. Where were his sidemen? Where was the tour bus? Why were those kids on stage? I looked around and wondered why he would play at an old skating rink with its lousy acoustics and rickety bandstand. I understood then what the term rinky dink meant.

The band began to play and I thought they must be the warmup band. Chuck and his men would be up next after the local guys got the audience revved up. But, no. Two songs later Chuck walked on stage wearing a white suit, white shoes, red shirt, white tie, and, of course, his duck tail hair. The band backed up to make room for Chuck and got ready to play.

It wasn't until the late 1980's when I was watching a documentary* celebrating his 60th birthday that I learned Chuck Berry didn't have a band, a tour bus, or a manager. He did as many as 100 shows each year, all one-nighters, using unrehearsed local bands who were paid by the concert promoter. His requirements were that the promoter pay his air fare, one hotel night, pay him in cash, and that the local band had to know all his songs. It was the cash that got the IRS' attention.

We cheered when he opened the show with “School Days”. It was a rough start for the band. They were nervous and it showed. For starters, the drummer was an eighth note late with the first beat, then the bass fumbled the bass run. Chuck continued playing until they caught up. After the first song they got better and the show got better with Chuck doing the stage act we had all seen on American Bandstand, including his trademark duck walk across the stage. The acoustics was crappy and the only pro on the bandstand was Chuck Berry but we loved it anyway.

By 1967 he was a headlining again

By the time they had played six or seven songs they were in sync with Chuck and were able to pick up his cues for the bridges and the beat. They began playing "Johnny B. Good" and the exhilarated crowd dove into it, roaring the chorus along with Chuck and the band. It was a shared moment of discovery, kindred spirits, exuberantly shouting out joy and fun. The bass player who had been rock steady in support of the song decided to show off his improvisational skills. Chuck and the other musicians looked at him -- what the hell was he doing? They continued playing and when the chorus came around we roared again:
        “Go, go, go Johnny go! Go, go, go Johnny go!"
Chuck turned his back on the audience to face the bass player. He cued the drummer to increase the tempo. He turned back to the audience, tossed his head in the direction of the bass player then cued the drummer to up the tempo once more. The drummer was having the time of his life taking direction from Chuck Berry! By this time the beat was so fast that the bass player could barely keep up. He was standing high up on his toes, leaning back as far as he could, holding his breath, and seemed about to fall over. Chuck brought the beat down to normal and gave the bassist a little smile maybe to remind him to never upstage the marquee act.  

Go! Go! Go, Johnny! Go, Go, Go!

When band took a break my friend and I went looking for a bathroom. We got lost and found Chuck sitting near an exit at the end of a hallway backstage. He was sitting by himself on a rusty folding chair smoking a cigarette; the exit door propped open to let the smoke out or fresh air in. He saw us and nodded acknowledgement. We were alone, face to face with Chuck Berry. I could ask him anything. I was afraid to lose the moment and tried to think of intelligent things to ask. Instead, I became a standard issue “fan” babbling nonsense ---- Great show! Love your songs! Have all your records! What do you call your guitar?! His responses to my stupid remarks were appropriately courteous and laconic.

Many musicians have a sort of affection for their instruments. The attachments might be based on some superstition or maybe they truly have a favorite instrument that "fits" them better than any other. B.B. King's favorite guitar is named Lucille. He has an elaborate story about how he came to name it following a fire at a club where he was playing. Willie Nelson's acoustic guitar which has as many miles on it as Willie's face, has a large hole worn into the wood below the strings where his picks scrape when he hits hard chords. Chuck took a drag on his cigarette, looked out the door at the desert then said to me, "What do I call my guitar? I call it my guitar". 

Almost 50 years later, paraphrasing Sigmund Freud, it’s clear to me that sometimes a guitar is just a guitar.

Come on, Baby, Light My Fire

 A mostly fictional story

We were standing outside singing loudly when the firemen and paramedics drove up. The Chief, who to us looked about 12 years old, hustled over trying to look tough ordering us to move away from the fire in my front yard. "Move back!" he squeaked. Naturally, we all ignored him. We were all his senior in years, experience, and cussedness. This pipsqueak knew nothing of what we had seen and had to do decades ago. On this day of all days his power had no power over us. Through our lost youth and lives we had earned all the authority we needed to ignore this kid and his over-sized Chief's hat. Meanwhile, the other fire fighters had located the garden hose and were putting out the fire.

It had all begun when Spence had suggested a reunion of the bunch of us who had served together in Vietnam. We had been a tight group, bound together by our circumstance, our distaste for the authoritarian demands of the military, our coincident tastes in music and reading, and on a few occasions enjoying R&R together in some of the sleazy recesses of the Far East from which no man returns the same as when he went in.

It was decided that we would get together in Florida where I live because it has the mildest weather in January. Russ would come in from Idaho, Spence from Baltimore, Sergio from San Francisco, Max from Austin, Marc from Alaska. No formal plans were laid. The only thing set in stone was that everyone arrive at my home on the same day. Our wives, who had known each other and us when we were single, immediately agreed that we should get together without them.

Luckily, the guys landed at the airport within an hour or two of each other and I picked them up in my van. Russ and Max had their guitar cases and a small suitcase each. Marc, the most fastidious among us, had 3 suitcases; beach wear, formal wear, and everyday wear, he explained. Sergio carried only his backpack which I hoped contained some of the herbal remedies we had used to calm our nerves back in the day. More than forty years had gone by since we had all been together. None of us looked familiar to one another anymore. We'd been just kids long ago. Now we were old men but the light behind our eyes still shone as it had back then.

We trundled into the house, got some beer and sat on the couches and chairs I'd set up in the den. As they talked and sipped their beers I looked at each of them in turn.

Russ, the gunsmith, had quit his successful criminal law practice and purchased 300 acres of mountainside in Idaho. The land was far enough from the general population to ensure privacy but near enough to have some creature comforts that included electricity and internet service. His private forest was posted with numerous and very specific warnings about the consequences of trespassing and even more severe warnings about hunting on his property. His income came from making meticulously handcrafted replicas of various historical firearms. Though it took him several months to complete each piece, the collectors who bought them didn't mind the wait or the sums he charged. Each piece was constructed so that it could never be fired. Other gunsmiths so respected his fine craftsmanship that they refused to modify his creations in any way. The guns were too perfect. Any change would lower their value. His wife of 35 years was an artist and naturalist by inclination, content to work her art and live in isolation in their snug home in the woods; their library, and their crafts.

Spence had become a forensic accountant for the IRS who could seemingly spot phony numbers just by reading the cover page on an accounting report. His supervisors weren't comfortable with his work, however. While he was an unparalleled expert in detecting falsifications in a report, he also knew how to make them undetectable. It made his bosses wonder if some of companies that had been cleared by other agents had been coached by their star accountant.

Marc ran his own charter service in the Northwest. His youthful dream to be a pilot had been partially fulfilled as he flew hunters and fishermen to remote sporting lodges in which he was a silent partner. His real ambition to be an airline pilot collapsed when failing to take his unreported medications, he had two extended outbursts of Tourette's while welcoming the passengers to their transoceanic flight aboard his 747.

Sergio had become a professional pharmacist. When I first met him he was an amateur pharmacist mixing cold remedies using various over the counter drugs and one or two under the counter drugs. He knew exactly how much each of us needed to be boosted to improve our odds of survival 'way back when'. Nowadays, his small neighborhood drugstore gave him enough income to vacation in Hawaii once a year and drive a nice car at home.

I don't think I ever saw Max more than a few feet away from his 12 string guitar. He was an excellent player who had been good enough to be a sideman for some of the luminaries of the rock and folk music of the 60's and 70's and through the revivals of those genres in the following decades. Like thousands of musicians who shine but never explode as super novas, Max lacked stage presence. His work was widely admired but he disappeared as soon as he stopped playing. The stars who remembered his playing if not his face still hired him for their studio sessions.

We spent the next couple of hours insulting each others wrinkled, flabby bodies; missing hair and the youthful six-pack abs that were now more like soft-side party kegs. When we ran out of beer, Max and Marc made a beer run but forgot the beer. Instead, they bought whiskeys, mixers, and a bag of ice. On the way to buy beer they reminisced about an R&R trip to Singapore where they had tried to teach a wretched hotel bartender how to make mixed drinks "American Style". His bad English and their slurred English didn't help. It finally came down to Max or Marc pointing to the liquor bottles and mixes, pantomiming how much of each ingredient to make Max's Southern Comfort Old Fashioned or Marc's complicated Black Russians. Naturally, we were obliged to consume both the successes and the failures, though it wasn't long before none of us knew the difference.

Back at the house, Marc became the bartender. He knew the formulas for dozens of cocktails. Russ and Max took out their guitars and Russ tried earnestly to replicate the speed and skill of bygone days. The speed was gone and his hands moved along the strings as though his fingers had become 2x4's. But it didn't matter how it sounded. There was enough of the old sound to remind each of us of how we had been once upon a time; a few good times in the middle of a real bad time.

Obviously frustrated with his wooden fingers, Russ went outdoors with Max to sit on the porch with their guitars. The rest of us settled in our chairs to talk about all that had happened to us after our service; the divorces, remarriage, kids, grandkids, jobs, triumphs and failures. All in all we had survived and made it this far in life. Sergio dug into his backpack and found his cigarette papers along with a baggie of grass. Unlike Russ, his fingers were in fine shape and he deftly rolled a fat joint which he lit then passed to me. I nearly passed out from the first hit just as I had the first time I inhaled the weed at Russ's behest decades ago. Spence took a shallow hit and passed it on to Marc who declined. A curious fellow was Marc. Though he consumed and smoked the same things we all did, he never appeared drunk or high. He never got the giggles or the munchies and I never saw him stagger even though he had matched me drink for drink or hit for hit.

Spence scooted down in his chair resting his head on the backrest. Sergio squatted on the floor. Marc sat by the window sipping his custom made Mai Tai watching Russ and Max out on the porch starting and stopping several tunes. I went looking for my laptop where I keep my digitized music. My collection of vinyl LP's and reel to reel tapes was gone but I had converted them to digital files over the years. I selected the folder labeled "The Devil's Handbasket" which contained the supposedly satanic music that had driven my older sisters, their spouses and their entire cohort into righteous rages and condemnations back in the 60's. Reflecting on those memories I concluded that they're probably still raging about everything they wish they had done but never had the courage to do.

I started the music, keeping the volume low so that we could hear each other talk. In a few minutes we were very mellow and starting to get the giggles watching Marc sip his drink while he made funny faces at us as though he were entertaining infants. Sober as a judge was he. Out on the porch I heard Russ talking to someone. I looked out and saw Charon, my neighbor from across the street, and Fred from next door. Russ assumed they were my friends and invited them in for a drink. Fred practically burst through the door looking for the booze. Charon stopped just inside the door, acknowledged everyone then sat down next to Spence who was humming to a Simon and Garfunkel tune playing on my computer.

Sergio rolled another joint while Marc mixed more drinks. Fred told me he was hiding out from his sister who had been on his case all day about him losing her copy of "Anger Management Made Easy" for which she had “paid 25 goddamn dollahs at the traffic school the %&*@!!&$ judge had forced her to attend after her arrest for calling the cop a #*&@#$%^, $%^&*!@#, and a &^*#$%# thug, stomping on his foot, and tearing up the traffic ticket”. I told him he could stay until my party was over. After that he was on his own.

Charon was telling Spence and Russ about himself and his work as some kind of civilian minister at a local church. I saw Sergio sit up at the mention of Charon's conversion to The Church of The Second Coming of The First Christ in The Last Millennium (TCTSCTFCTLM for short). Sergio had been raised in a very religious home but had left the faith at the age of 14 after decking a priest whose ideas of the holy sacraments were not exactly holy. He saw the tiny Bible Charon had in his shirt pocket. He reached out and snatched it. His eyes narrowed as he flipped the pages until he found the passage he was looking for. He was about to read out loud but Spence, knowing Sergio's temper, quickly told him to go with him to get more ice and snacks at the liquor store. He took the Bible and passed it off to Max, who opened it to the title page and read that it was a condensed, abridged version.

"My grandmother", he said, "has a First Edition signed by the Author. She used to read me her favorite parts like 'the meek shall inherit the earth'. I always wondered if that included the shitty parts of the earth. What do you think?"

Then Russ averred that the Blessed Peacemaker he owned would bring a man to a dead stop at 50 yards either from fear or the impact of high velocity lead. “Remember Dirty Harry?” he asked. Then he clenched his jaws, gritted his teeth. Squinting hard he rasped a quote from the movie:

"I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?"

Charon thought they were jesting and began to recite his favorite Dirty Harry lines. He must have seen the movies dozens of times since it appeared to me that he was reciting entire scripts. He'd only had two drinks so far but was acting as though he'd had a lot more. He tried his Clint Eastwood impressions, first threatening Marc, then Max but stopped when he turned to Russ who was not amused, Dirty Harry being his all time hero. Russ was no Bible scholar but he did know some movie dialog. He gathered himself, assumed a wrathful look then delivered a quote from Pulp Fiction with all the malevolence and thunder he could muster:

'The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides with the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon those with great vengeance and with furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.'

Charon panicked when he saw the rockets' red glare in Russ's eyes. He knew his Bible inside out but had never read that passage. Had he missed it somehow or did he have the wrong version? He was afraid to ask. Besides, Russ and Mother Nature had placed an urgent call to his loosening bowels and he moved fast to find the bathroom.

Meanwhile, Fred was scarfing up more booze and occasionally looking out the window in case his sister came home.

We slowly ran out of reminiscences about old times. Each of us had added to or subtracted from the recollections until we came to silent agreement that "Yeah, that's how it happened". As the liquor and the second hand smoke from Sergio's joints began fuzzing our memories even the smothering weight of the bad times began to lose its power to crush. We started to have fun.

Max told a story about the time he gave a ride to a chubby girl he met during one of his gigs. His next job was in Tulsa where the girl was from so he said ok when she asked for a ride. Late that night as they were heading up I35 from Austin to Tulsa the fan belt broke. Max remembered that in a pinch, a panty hose could be used as a fan belt so he asked the girl if she had any in her stuff. She was wearing the only pair she owned so she opened the door to take them off but being wide hipped she was struggling. Seeing her struggle, Max came around and started pulling on the waist band. The Texas State Trooper coming up the road saw a woman's legs kicking in the air and a man hunched down between them.

The trooper's siren scared the girl who started screaming. A few seconds later Max was face down on the ground, handcuffed and knocked silly, his head having had a momentary but violent collision with the trooper's 8 cell flashlight. It took a half hour for Max and the girl to convince the trooper that there was nothing untoward going on. I told him he should make the experience into a song a la Bob Dylan, working title: "I Didn't See the Light But I Sure Felt It."

Spence, the IRS auditor, told stories about how he would mess with the finely coiffed big shots and their slimy tax attorneys who thought they could intimidate him by flashing their cuffs and pinky rings to show how much status they had and how little he did.

His favorite thing was to stare dejectedly down at the desk and say, "You know, six months ago I lost my wife to assholes just.......... like......... you. She was the only thing in life I ever loved; the only thing that ever mattered to me. She's gone. She's not coming back. I have nothing left to lose if I take you and your pissant lawyers down. So, let me ask, are you feeling lucky? Well, are you punk?"

We were so high and giggly we even toasted the IRS. There was a knock on the door and I went to open it. There was Fred's sister, Patti, in her favorite string bikini. I couldn't look away from her tanned hide. She was a natural Florida blonde who in her youth had refused to believe that the sun was her skin's enemy. In the course of her 50 some years the sun's relentless rays had turned her once creamy skin into five and half feet of beef jerky. I had purposely put up a hedge between her yard and mine to shield my eyes when she sunbathed by her swimming pool.

"UPS delivered this to my house. I didn't know it was for you so I opened it. It's a cake. The note says Happy Birthday from your sister. Sorry", she singsonged.

All eyes were on Patti. Even Fred looked up from behind the couch where he was hiding. I had a flashback to Engineering 101 when I had struggled to understand Newton's Laws of Motion. Now here, Fred and Patti were about to teach me with flashbulb clarity the meaning of the First and Third Laws.

First Law
An object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. 

AKA -- the law of inertia.

To wit, they saw each other and Fred made a dash for an exit. The the one he chose was a sliding glass door that my wife had thoughtfully cleaned in anticipation of my friends' visit. In a word, or in four words, actually, the glass was invisible. As a result of my wife's diligence, Fred was unable to pass to the other side of the glass, bouncing off, thus demonstrating Newton's Third Law. (To every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.) He got up fast and ran out the kitchen door with Patti close behind.

"Did you see that?", Marc giggled. Through the patio door we saw Patti tackle Fred then kneel on his back, yelling at him as she banged his head up and down on the dirt.
Q.E.D - Newton's Third Law

Everyone got the giggles all over again. Then we smelled smoke. On her way over to give me my birthday cake, Patti had tossed her cigarette in the pile of leaves on the lawn. I was still holding my cake as we stumbled into the night to admire the spreading flames.

Max started it: "Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, Dear Fernando ......."
We were still singing when the Fire Department showed up. 

Killjoys, punks.