With each year that passed after 1980, it seemed more and more likely that Chuck Berry had moved into the “strictly live performances” phase of his career. He stopped making records after 1979’s Rock It—an album where prototypical Berry songwriting is marred by dated late ’70s production like tinny drums and cornball keyboards. From then on, he performed countless one-nighters with a different backing band in every town. He earned a reputation for being a prickly, demanding performer, and that portrait was amplified by his openly hostile interactions with Keith Richards and Eric Clapton in the 1986 documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll. But while Chuck seemed like a tough guy to get along with, that film was also a testament to something else—he had tons of classics under his belt, and decades after they initially made impact, those songs remained vital.
In his final years, though, Chuck had unfinished business. He kept writing, and as he revealed a few years ago, he felt that he could still add something important to his discography. “I want to do something that I know will last after I leave,” he said in 2010. “I want to do another ‘Johnny B. Goode,’” or “something as powerful as ‘[My] Ding-A-Ling.’” So, on his 90th birthday last October, he announced his attempt at another career-defining work: Chuck, a 35-minute album with new songs and covers of old standards. He recorded the album with members of his family (all professional musicians in their own right) and a few marquee players. Tom Morello, Nathaniel Rateliff, and Gary Clark, Jr. all back up Berry on Chuck—each students of his work in their way, folding into his aesthetic fairly seamlessly. Chuck died five months later, making it his final recorded work and his last chance at creating a Chuck Berry classic.
The heartless truth is that, overall, Chuck is not as good as the early hits. That’s an impossibly tall order. Forgetting the untouchable “Johnny B. Goode” (deemed important enough to launch into space) and “Maybellene,” the guy released classics at a clip—“Nadine,” “You Never Can Tell,” “School Days,” “Back in the U.S.A.,” and tons of others. He wasn’t reinventing the wheel every time, but the hits kept coming, so he didn’t really need to.
The Chuck Berry template rears its head, for better and worse, throughout Chuck. “Big Boys” is the man at his best—an extremely familiar guitar solo intro that leads into a verse about working up the courage to dance with a crush. It’s a careening rock’n’roll song, vintage in its structure but lovably boisterous in its delivery. Chuck’s fully in his lane here—singing about falling in love and discovering rock’n’roll’s life-giving power when he was just “a little bitty boy.” During his prolific hitmaking stretch of the 1950s, when Berry was a 30-something high school dropout, he wrote extensively and expertly about teenage bliss. At the end of his life, he still knew exactly how to encapsulate the feeling of meeting someone special and having your life change at the perfect party.
The weakest links of Chuck don’t add anything new to his catalog. “Lady B. Goode”—his fourth (!) sequel to “Johnny B. Goode”—is predictable enough. The newest installment of the Johnny saga sounds a lot like “Johnny B. Goode,” only the lyrics are different and the pace drags a little more. “Jamaica Moon,” an updated version of his 1956 single “Havana Moon,” does not need Chuck’s newfound island patois: “Me still alone, me sip on the rum.” By recycling the old stuff, the new versions also highlight how Chuck’s crisp production quality can’t top the analog warmth of his earliest records.
When he announced Chuck, Berry released a short statement dedicating the album to his wife of 68 years, Themetta. “My darlin’ I’m growing old!” it read. “I’ve worked on this record for a long time. Now I can hang up my shoes!” Ultimately, the best and most vulnerable moments of the album are meditations on love and mortality. He sings about how “life can pass so fast away” on “Darlin’”—a heartfelt duet with his daughter Ingrid Berry-Clay. His voice slinks on a satisfying blues rendition of the 1938 standard “You Go to My Head” (which, coincidentally, also just got covered by Bob Dylan). But it’s on his live recording of “3/4 Time (Enchiladas)” where the wild-eyed, duck-walking raconteur crops up. He sings excitedly to the crowd that, despite his age and his health, he stays up all night writing songs. “I love what I’m doin’,” he shout-sings. “I hope it don't end too soon!” And that’s the best thing about Chuck—a portrait of an icon who refused to stop.
