Hail! Hail! Chuck Berry

So, the fish are disappearing from the sea (is 2048 the new 1984?) and Canada’s carbon footprints on the earth are 10 times what they should be for sustainability. When (and if) Saddam Hussein’s death sentence is carried out, he’ll likely take thousands of other Iraqis with him. Big thinkers like Thomas Homer-Dixon (in his new book, The Upside of Down), think that if we are to avert social/political/ecological catastrophe, it’ll be narrowly, and require a lot more political and personal will than we’ve heretofore shown any inclination to exert.

So all this is going on and what’s happened recently that’s upset this early Baby Boomer the most (aside, that is, from the Tigers losing the World series)? Why, it’s that Chuck Berry’s 80.

Chuck Berry’s 80! That’s an age no rock and roller should reach, or, I’ll bet, ever has. Rockers are the Romantic Poets of the mid-20th century and they need to die young. Yes, I know that’s a thing easily said when you’re 20; the Who could scream out "Hope I die before I get old," but Pete Townsend (61) and Roger Daltrey (62) have not only just released a new album (Endless Wire), but they’re bloody well touring for it. Will they be collecting their pension cheques at concert intermissions?

But even they are a long way from 80. And Chuck berry is 80. The lusty St. Louisan, who not only duck-walked his way through such indelible oldies classics (just coz’ they’re oldies kids, doesn’t mean they weren’t transgressive) as Johnny B. Good, School Day, Sweet Little 16, Roll Over Beethoven and Reelin’ and Rockin’, he did it for decades, though, appallingly, his only No. 1 hit was the silly wee-wee song My Ding-a-Ling.

All those greats were recorded in the late 1950s, before Berry got into trouble for supposedly transporting a 14-year Apache girl, later arrested for prostitution, across a state line, thereby violating something called the Mann Act, and finding himself in prison for a stretch.

At more or less the same time, Little Richard quit rock and roll for God, Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin, Elvis was drafted and Buddy holly died. And so, it was thought, would rock and roll. But all these great artists got a second life with the British invasion, with groups such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals and the Yardbirds practising a form of rock and roll ancestor worship.

So Chuck had a second life and even though such songs as No Particular Place to Go and You Never Can Tell did not have quite the pop currency of the earlier hits, they are nonetheless great tunes, exhibiting Berry’s clever wordplay, ability to catch the spirit of the age, and signature guitar riffs (not to mention the signal and driving contribution of his piano player, Johnny Johnson).

So, leaving aside Berry’s more questionable moral side,and his celebrated difficulty (if you doubt it, just watch him spar with a frustrated Keith Richards in the latter’s 1987 tribute film Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll), I want you to love him, or at least his music (did I mention that he’s 80?).

But given Berry’s vast and decidedly mixed output, novices may need some help sorting through the discography. If you can find his early Chess albums such as Rock, Rock, Rockm, One Dozen Berries or an early hits sampler called Berry is on Top, good on you. Or you could simply buy the Chess Box multi-CD set. But for starters, I’d recommend The Great 28, a compilation of the best of Berry, with only a few of them sour.

Chuck Berry may be a difficult guy to love, but he’s one of the most important and influential figures in the history of rock and roll, a man with his finger firmly on the rebellious youthful pulse of his era: "Hail, hail, rock and roll/ Deliver me from the days of old/ Long live rock and roll/ The beat of the drums, loud and bold/ Rock, rock, rock and roll/ the feelin’ is there, body and soul."

Hail! hail! to you too, Chuck Berry. And keep on rockin’ until they carry you out.