Sun Mar 19, 2017 11:42 am
I saw him perform back in the late 80s. At that time he was still driving himself around the country to get to his gigs, in a big old Cadillac with his guitar in the back seat. According to a friend who worked the show I saw, he demanded to be paid up front in cash (a legacy of all the times he'd been ripped off by promoters) and expected a band to be there to back him. He didn't practice with the band, because every decent rock n' roll band knew how to play every Chuck Berry song. He would just tell them "If you're playing when I stomp my foot, stop; if you're not playing, start." Apparently he would sometimes turn up to find a "name" act waiting to be his backing band (the E Street Band, Tom Petty, etc).
He had some uh, issues, in his personal life but if any single person invented what we think of as classic rock n' roll, it was Chuck Berry.