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REVIEW: Chuck Berry hides behind nothing

By John Kenyon

Here are seven ways of looking at the legendary Chuck Berry, who performed an hourlong concert before an audience of thousands on the University of Iowa Pentacrest Friday night after the homecoming parade:

1. At times his concert felt like watching an animatronic Chuck Berry with a short in it, like some sort of Chuck E. Cheese rock 'n' roll fun time exhibit. Berry moved and sounded like himself for the most part, but seemed to run into a glitch every once in a while where a lyric would be forgotten or a guitar line muffed. You cut an 81-year-old some slack when it comes to the dexterity required to play guitar, but shouldn't recall of the lyrics to "Memphis" and "School Days" be just muscle memory by now?

2. To Berry's credit, he hides behind nothing. His band was top notch, which made his own ragged playing stick out all the more. Yet he could easily employ a second guitarist and let his own playing blend in. Instead, he stands front and center, his guitar turned so loud that a tap on the neck coaxed a growl from the amp. His performance was out there, warts and all.

3. It's disingenuous to purport that there would be no Beatles or Rolling Stones or et. al. without Berry; someone would have figured out how to make raw, 4/4 blues accessible to white teens. But he did it first, and thus, you could say that everyone from Keith Richards to Jack White would probably sound somewhat different had Berry not come along. Hearing him perform is like hearing a template for much of what followed over the next half century.

4. Despite all of the changes in the world since Berry recorded many of these songs 50 years ago, they still resonate. Kids whose parents were too young to have experienced any of these songs firsthand were dancing and singing along. It's hard to imagine a direct line between Berry and, say, Lil' Wayne, but these kids have found it, and don't mind traveling in either direction, despite the evidence to the contrary from mainstream radio.

5. A nation of kids that grew up with seemingly no taboos or boundaries can still be shocked by the sight of an 81-year-old man singing about wanting girls to play with his ding-a-ling or wanting to be rocked so hard that his "back ain't got no bone." The hoots and catcalls were genuine; Berry's not-so-thinly-veiled euphemisms put to shame the so-called bravado of the hip hop set.

6. Seeing an 81-year-old man in a sailor cap waving a purple bra like a signal flag is always going to be amusing.

7. When talking with students about reviewing, I suggest that they determine what an artist set out to do, then judge the performance based on how close they came. In this case, you can look at it two ways. Was Berry attempting to recreate the fire and incongruous precise abandon of his prime? If so, then he didn't come very close. Was he trying to give the crowd a good time by playing some classics and giving them the chance to see a living legend in the process? Then he succeeded.