Chuck Berry Photo

Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll

Starring: Chuck Berry, Ingrid Berry, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, Bo Diddley

Directed by: Taylor Hackford

RS: 4of 4 Stars

2006

In the 1950s, during the explosive birth of rock & roll as we know it, Chuck Berry was the man -- lean and mean, with self-penned hits like "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Johnny B. Goode" motorvating his fast-lane machine. In 1986, in honor of Berry's sixtieth birthday, a concert was assembled at St. Louis' Fox Theatre -- the very place where Berry had been turned away as a boy during segregation, and blocks from the courthouse where, as Berry says, "my forefathers were sold." In front of a ready-to-riot crowd, the concert brilliantly captures Berry's unflagging power as a guitar virtuoso (as well as his audacity in literally duckwalking circles around guest Linda Ronstadt). But what makes this a great film is what happens (on the road, in rehearsals and during interviews) leading up to the concert: Keith Richards, musical director of the celebration, nearly driven to tears by Berry's ball-breaking insistence that Richards bend a note just right; Jerry Lee Lewis' admission that his own mother told him Berry was the true king of rock & roll; a still-gobsmacked Eric Clapton confessing, "I didn't know about black men until Chuck Berry." Fascinating too is watching Berry handle his own business -- traveling without backing band or entourage, demanding to be paid what he's worth -- thus proving he also pioneered rock & roll's potent DIY ethic. An entertaining document of an original rock & roll immortal, Hail! Hail! is a perfect tribute to a homegrown American genius.