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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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CHUCK
BERRY
(with Nine Below Zero)
100 Club, London
March 23rd 2008
It’s
around seven o’clock in the evening on an
unseasonably early Easter Sunday in London, and
outside on the capital’s retailing street
of shame bewildered tourists are walking by the
closing down sales and trash shops into the face
of a biting wind and stinging sleet. |
| Inside
the 100 Club it’s already hot and sweaty,
late lunches and chocolate overdoses mixing with
the plentiful wine and beer to produce a pleasingly
benign atmosphere. It’s aided by the fantastic
music being played by the exceptionally youthful-looking
comedian and TV presenter (and owner of an allegedly
huge collection of ‘obscure’ rock and
roll records) Mark
Lamarr. It’s cracking stuff, and most
appropriate for a crowd who’ve paid what can
only frankly be called a ridiculous amount of money
(sorry Serge) to attend a ‘private’
gig featuring an 81- year-old three-times jailbird
who in the past has been notorious for his throw-away
live performances. We need something to settle our
nerves. |
| Helping
out are Nine
Below Zero – you know who they are –
with the former Rory Gallagher rhythm section Gerry
McAvoy on bass, and Brendan O’Neill on drums,
Dennis Greaves on guitars and vocals, and harmonica
virtuoso Mark Feltham on virtuoso harmonica, who
deliver a pretty good set given that it’s
only about eight o’clock, and it’s a
Sunday. But most of us are still thinking about
the old man – will he make it to the stage?
Will he deliver? I did see him back in the late
1970s giving a fairly tawdry performance, the centrepiece
of which was the rather shameful ‘My ding-a-ling’,
so I wasn’t entirely confident. |
| Preceded
to the stage by his band (featuring his son Chuck
Berry Jnr on guitar), who were made to wait nervously
for what seemed like ten minutes, Chuck
Berry finally made his way through
the crowd shrouded by minders and stalked, by of
all people, guitar-legend Wilko
Johnson, who’d been lurking around since
the start of the evening. The man who created the
riffs that defined rock and roll is wearing his
age, skipper’s cap and blue-sequined shirt
pretty well, and like so many performers gained
at least a couple of inches in stature as he took
to the stage, red Gibson hanging from his Union
Jack guitar strap, bursting into a rather staccato
‘Roll over Beethoven’. Chuck Jnr., looks
on (as he does all night) concerned. There’s
obviously no set-list, and as Chuck Snr moves from
song to song (in no particular way to go, ‘Around
and around’, ‘Nadine’, ‘Rock'
n' roll music’, ‘Maybellene’,
‘You never can tell’, the unfortunate
‘My ding-a-ling’, ‘Carol’
‘Little Queenie’) you can see that Chuck
Jnr. is willing him to get it right. |
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Well let’s say that his voice is remarkable;
I don’t know where it comes from but it’s
Chuck Berry ringing out like a bell, and most of
the lyrics are good and true (even if he can’t
remember the names of his band, which he can’t).
Of course he sings with his face – he grins,
raises eyebrows, smirks, and gives the odd salacious
leer like an eighteen-year-old. As for the guitar,
it’s like talking to an older person I suppose.
Sometimes they just don’t seem to be there,
and then you get moments of absolute clear lucidity
with razor-sharp recollection. And that’s
what we got from Mr Berry’s guitar –
and when it was good, as it was when he left the
stage after an hour still riffing away to ‘Reelin’
and rockin’’, it was as good as it gets.
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For
that last song he’d invited some ‘gals’
of dubious age to take the stage, which they did,
but there amongst them was the ten-year-old boy
whose Dad had sneaked him in to see the Prime minister
of rock and roll at work. What a story for his grandchildren,
whenever that might be. Sad of course that he forgot
to play ‘Johnny B Goode’ for him, but
you can’t expect a man of his age to remember
everything. - Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate)
Kate's
Chuck Berry photo album  |
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the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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