A good book for any fan of Rock and Roll or Chuck Berry. For I like both. The author though does take a while to get into everything about the man and first gives you a history of St.Louis, and then also of their housing. This is way before he is born. Once you get into his life the story is as rocky as his life. From hit records to arrests and jail and then back in the studio for another hit record and then back out on the road. All the while his wife stayed true to the man your guess is as good as anyone's if he did the same. His music though was and is still good and I still listen to it to this day and a very good book.

The definitive biography of the father and king of rock n roll, Chuck Berry. Warts and all. A fabulous read.

Besides being one of rock’n’roll’s top founding figures, Chuck Berry had an enormously complicated and often controversial personal life. Both are covered in this biography, which isn’t the first one of Berry, even if you don’t count Berry’s autobiography. Despite its heft, it’s not wholly satisfying, even if the writing is livelier in some ways than it is in the best Berry book, Bruce Pegg’s Brown-Eyed Handsome Man. There are numerous digressions into the context of Berry’s times and music, particularly his early years in St. Louis, some worthwhile, and some more like superfluous padding. Smith intelligently analyzes much of Berry’s music, and digs into some of his recording sessions, but hardly covers or fails to mention some of his classics at all, including “Memphis, Tennessee”; “Reelin’ and Rockin'”: “Little Queenie”; “Carol”; “Almost Grown”; “No Particular Place to Go”; and others.

Although Smith did more than a hundred interviews for the project, many of the key figures (not just Berry himself) are gone, and some of the ones Smith does quote have peripheral or no connections with Chuck. Much attention is given to the most controversial activities that got him into trouble (particularly those that got him in jail in the early 1960s), and while those can’t be glossed over, some more weight on his music would have been preferable. Or more inside accounts, like good ones he does get from Steve Miller, whose band backed Berry in concert in 1967.

It’s too spotty to be definitive, though all Berry fans, of which there are many, will find much material to interest them in what’s covered, spanning his entire life. If you are a big fan, although you probably know this already, be aware that the documentation of his less admirable traits might make you feel like you know more about him than you wished. These include his oft-gross sexual fetishes, his mercurial insistence on using and sometimes tormenting scrappy pickup bands, and his generally unpredictably wayward manner of dealing with many social situations.

As a diehard Chuck Berry fan I was really looking forward to reading this new biography. I have followed Chuck Berry's career for over six decades, and having read his autobiography I was interested to learn more about this icon of rock'n'roll music. I did learn quite a bit but I also found this book difficult to get through. The first third of the book was more focused on historical and musical context and barely focused on its main subject. The rest of the book presented some interesting insights into Chuck Berry, but I found it academically dry and unengaging. Overall there is some good information but I struggled to get through it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Books for an advanced reader copy.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Hachette Books for an advanced copy of this music biography that will soon be the standard that other biographies about Chuck Berry will be based on.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry loved math, telescopes, photography and chess. Chess is fitting as it would be the Chess labels that he would make his reputation, and photography would nearly destroy it. Emulated, hated and often imitated Chuck Berry duck walked the globe, living life on his terms, darning the consequences. R. J. Smith in his magisterial biography Chuck Berry: An American Life has written the account of the man who gave us rock and roll, who changed the world with his songs, his attitude, and whose demons continued to win out no matter how high his star rose.

Charles Berry was born in St. Louis, a place he lived in all his life until his death, growing up middle class in the time of segregation. Growing up black affected almost everything Berry did, making him work for success, making him want to break the rules, no matter what the cost, and making sure that he got paid for his work, even as he cheated everyone, his band, the government, whoever he felt was keeping him from getting his. Charles was good at math, and school, but it wasn't for him, so he left to work with his dad a carpenter, and fix-it person who passed his skills onto Charles. A lark of running to Los Angeles lead to a multi-state crime wave, putting Berry in reform school for almost 3 years. It would not be the last. On parole Berry got married, found a good job and make extra money playing guitar with a local band that was doing well. A trip to Chicago, and a meeting with legendary bluesman Muddy Waters got him a tryout a Chess Records, where he recorded Maybellene, adapting another song so as not to have to pay royalties, and Berry suddenly had a hit. However with fame, came great temptation, one Berry was not good at avoiding, nor cared to.

What a biography. Easily one of the best musical biographies I have read, frankly one of the best biographies. Smith gets Berry, and writes about him as no one else could. Berry was not one to talk about his life, either lying, ignoring, or staring until the subject was changed. Nor did he have close friends, who he confided with. Combing interviews with impressive research and great writing Smith captures everything that make Berry great, his song writing, his playing, his ability to create songs that only he could really play, with the bad, his love of women, money, treating band members like trash, not caring about the legacy of the music as long as the cash was good. Smith can discuss the song writing and delivery of a song, as well as he can describe the British music scene, and the changes in record promotion and sales. The book never drags, never gets lost, just powers along, like a Chuck Berry song ,but with a particular place to go.

A book for music fans and scholars. And for people wanting a slice of the scene and life in the United States for kids, a black man, and for the powerful. A book I hope to see on many best of lists, and on many people's holiday shopping lists. This is the book that other scholars of rock and roll will start with.

If you're looking for biographies against which to compare this majestic biography of Chuck Berry, don't look in the music section of your bookstore (or online site). Move over to the Politics section and work your way through the works of Robert Caro.

While Caro was obviously most concerned with the use of power, he also focused on a question and a mission. The question at the heart of his Robert Moses and (ongoing - next volume, PLEASE!!!) Lyndon Johnson biographies is, what makes a person great? Is it their achievements, their impact on the world? Or is it their traits, their interactions? The mission, in turn, was to place his subjects within the times they inhabited, and in doing so, to employ their subjects as a prism through which to view the greater world.

RJ Smith's biography of Chuck Berry does what Caro's books do. He gives proper acknowledgement and appreciation for Chuck Berry's accomplishments and contributions. He sees Berry as a visionary, imagining a world that includes him, and then he wills that world into existence. But Smith also looks, completely unflinchingly, into Berry's deep, profound flaws as a man - the abuses and the mistreatments he inflicted, while explaining, not excusing, how the world may have shaped, or at least magnified, Berry's flaws.

But Smith, in order to explain Berry fully, also places him in the world - as specifically as the St. Louis area he lived in and the world he toured through (often without welcome). He shows you a world of music that he created that has also passed him by - while giving sufficient respect to the dogged stubbornness that would not allow Berry to simply chase trends in the pursuit of acclaim (as though the acclaim he received wasn't sufficient for a lifetime).

None of which describes how entertaining and often funny this book is. It's a pleasure to read, written by a sympathetic but by no means sycophantic biographer.

I am old enough to be a Chuck Berry fanatic, but I'm not. I can appreciate everything he did and the world of music built on his efforts without him being an artist I listen to with any regularity. I believe he is a great artist, though. I say this because you absolutely do not need to be a Chuck Berry fan to fully enjoy and appreciate this towering work.

Chuck Berry: An American Life will be released November 8, 2022. Hachette Books provided an early galley for review.

I knew Chuck Berry's songs and his importance in the history of rock 'n' roll. Until I read this book, though, I did not know his story. And what a story it is.

I was fascinated by how Berry, like his father, was a tinkerer. I liked to see that even towards the end of his life that he was sharp and calculating - something he had to be his entire life. He needed those skills to navigate a world that, as history shows, was already unbalanced against him and others of his race. Smith juxtaposes Berry's own story with that of world around him, showing the reader a country wrestling with racial tensions and challenges.

The book also breaks down all of the controversial aspects of Berry's life. His sexual exploits and criminal behaviors are all laid bare. His attitudes towards others who recorded his songs and evolved the musical genre are shown honestly - warts and all. Chuck Berry was indeed a troubling figure in music, and every music nerd definitely needs to know this story.

This book is heavy. Heavy in ideas, heavy in its subject matter, and heavy in details. It also should have been 2 separate books.

I love Chuck Berry and this book filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge of him and those parts were great. The trend of biographies that also include the history of the world around the subject is overdone, and in this case detracted from the book. The author seemed more interested in the history of the times and it felt at times like he was using Chuck’s story to write a history book. There were a few times where he would give a brief description of an event, comment that it has been covered in other books, then knock out 10 or so pages on the subject, never once mentioning Berry. It was extremely tedious and read like a textbook at times.

That said, the parts that were actually about Chuck were fascinating and I really wish that he’d been the main focus of his biography.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this