Originally published at: RIP Chuck Berry, who died this day in 2017 | Boing Boing
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Does it cover the decades of abusive relationsips and his hiding cameras in public bathrooms to spy on the women using them?
eta: I’m a fan of his music (it’s only been a week since I posted some on the bbs), but that he was kind of an awful person should at least be mentioned
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I and friends had run-ins with him. A legend as a thoroughly nasty man who died a horrible statue.
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Yes. The book covers everything.
Except where he got that pedal steel.
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It’s not like pedal steel guitars were only sold to white people. He probably got it the way other musicians got theirs. He bought it. As far as playing it…it’s a guitar. Playing it is much like playing electric slide guitar with an open tuning. The man, in addition to being a terrible person, was a tremendously talented guitar player. I don’t think there’s a more complicated answer than that. He was a guitar player who liked the sound of pedal steel guitars, so he bought one and messed around on it until he could make it make music, which in his case probably didn’t take all that long.
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… if we’re going to celebrate somebody on an anniversary, shouldn’t it be the day of their greatest accomplishment, or maybe their birthday 
Unless he died sacrificing himself for a cause observing a “death day” every year seems morbid
oh yeah and that too
jesus dude wtf
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If he were growing up in Texas or maybe the South where there were more readily available pedal steels around and in music stores, odds are better that he’d just come across one. But he didn’t.
And he’s not playing slide guitar or a steel bodied National as many blues players did—he’s using pedals on a pedal steel guitar. Sure, it’s bluesy, not Nashville E9, but still kind of specific. He obviously spent some time studying Western swing, which features steel playing hot leads, as pedals were just evolving.
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