[paredown]

He used to tour with just himself and his gear, and perform with pick-up musicians whenever he performed--the story is told in the Taylor Hackford film--in part because of his legendary desire to control his music and based on his legendary frugality. And he could do it because everywhere he traveled he could get a pick-up band together that knew his songs.

Keith Richards did the Hackford movie (as he says) because he wanted to give him a chance to play with really good musicians for a change.

A story I heard (I don't think it is from the movie, but I am getting older)--he played one night with a pickup band after a dinner heavy on the beans. Well the front guy has to signal changes etc, and one of the Chuck Berry signals was a pickup of one foot... Well it seems that the foot was being picked up for other reasons as the beans took effect, which meant that the backup band had a little trouble keeping it together. Or so the story goes...

Absolutely everyone that I know that picked up a guitar could play the opening riff from 'Johnny be Good' (as legend has it, Michael J Fox-who was another garage band kid from Burnaby like me played his own version in Back to the Future...) and the sound was there in everyone's head. I still remember the night when some fairly drunk 'middle aged' guy wandered out of a bar ~1970 and got the busker kids to start playing old-time rock and roll, and this dude belting out the Chuck Berry songs--must have played in a band in the late '50s/early '60s because he was good--and it turned into one of those great moments of street theater with the hippy kids and the old-timers jiving like they were on Dance Party...

Chuck, you will be missed....