Chuck Berry was more than a rock icon — he was also a huge pervert
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By Bruce Golding
Update December 4, 2017
Modal TriggerChuck Berry performs on stage in Crocus City Hall on April 14, 2014, in Moscow, Russia.Getty Images
When it came to sex and drugs, rock ‘n’ roll legend Chuck Berry rang all the bells — and then some. Berry, who died of natural causes at age 90,
is widely credited with helping create rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s with a
string of hits including “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven.”
But he would come to set a standard for rock-star depravity that few of his disciples would hope — or even want — to match.
Following two trips to the slammer — first at the height of his fame
in the early 1960s for transporting a 14-year-old girl across state
lines for sex, and again in 1979 for tax evasion — Berry was busted over
a 1990 drug raid on his estate in Wentzville, Mo. Although authorities suspected him of transporting huge loads of
cocaine in his guitar case as part of a multimillion-dollar drug
operation, the search only turned up about two ounces of pot, some
hashish, two rifles and a shotgun, as well as more than $122,000 in
cash. But the cops also found a huge stash of pornography, including dozens
of videotapes, trays of photographic slides and books — some of which
appeared to show underage girls. Berry, who publicly denied ever using coke, was charged with pot
possession and three counts of child abuse for the underage porn. He sued the county prosecutor, William J. Hannah, accusing him of
filing malicious and politically motivated charges, and later cut a
no-jail plea deal in which the child-abuse charges were dismissed and he
dropped his civil case.
Modal TriggerChuck Berry poses for a portrait in a scene from the movie “Go Johnny Go.”Michael Ochs ArchivesThe seizure of Berry’s porn collection, however, led to a scandalous
1993 report in the since-defunct Spy magazine that went way beyond the
earlier scandals — revealing a penchant for sexual fetishes involving
bodily excretions and a predilection for spying on women in bathrooms.The magazine described a homemade video in which Berry and “an
attractive blond white woman” both relieved themselves during a New
Year’s Eve romp in the bathroom of a hotel suite in Lake Tahoe, Nev. The report also detailed how Berry allegedly installed hidden cameras
in the women’s restroom at the Southern Air restaurant in Wentzville
after he bought it in 1987. One camera “was evidently behind the toilet
seat,” according to Spy, while others captured “aerial views of the
toilets’ contents during the seconds after the women stood but before
they flushed.” The recordings were then reportedly “painstakingly” edited and
compiled in a pair of “toilet tapes” that showed hundreds of women and
girls “in the act of relieving themselves.” “Sometimes the frame is
frozen for a few seconds, lingering on moments that must have been
considered particularly moving,” Spy reported. In 1994, Berry settled for $830,000 a class-action suit filed by
dozens of women who claimed they had been taped using the bathroom, and
also settled a similar suit filed by a former restaurant worker and
another woman for $310,000.
Modal TriggerChuck Berry performs at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minn., on July 1, 1984.Michael Ochs Archives
Berry was also publicly shamed when the High Society nudie magazine
in January 1990 published photos of him posing naked with different
women, with the publication claiming to be “the only magazine with the
balls to show Chuck’s berries.” The “School Days” singer’s first brush with the law came as a youth,
when he was sent to reformatory for three years for pulling off an armed
carjacking with a pair of buddies.
Modal TriggerChuck Berry with wife Themetta in 2011UPI
After getting sprung, he got a cosmetology degree and worked as a
beautician, and in 1948 married Themetta “Toddy” Suggs, with whom he had
four kids.His music career began in the early 1950s. Berry scored his first hit in 1955 with “Maybellene.” But by 1959, he was in trouble again, busted over a racially charged incident at a dance at the Meridian, Miss., high school. According to Berry’s autobiography, “one of the girls threw her arms
around me and hung a soul-searching kiss that I let hang a second too
long.” Someone shouted out that “this n—-r asked my sister for a date!” and a
mob chased him outside, where the cops caught him hiding in a nearby
building. Berry was charged with disturbing the peace — which he settled by
spending a night in jail and surrendering the $700 seized from his
pockets.
Modal TriggerChuck Berry poses for a portrait circa 1958.Michael Ochs Archives
That incident paled in comparison, however, with the case brought
later that year, when he was charged with violating the federal Mann Act
— also known as the White Slave Traffic Act — which prohibits
transporting women across state lines for “prostitution or debauchery,
or for any other immoral purpose.”The victim in question was a 14-year-old waitress and prostitute whom
Berry picked up while traveling in Mexico and brought back to St. Louis
to work as a hostess at his Club Bandstand nightclub. Berry — who later claimed the girl told him she was 21 — fired her
after several weeks, after which she was busted for prostitution and
told the cops that Berry repeatedly had sex with her while they were on
the road, including in the back of his Cadillac. Berry was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to the maximum
five years in the slammer by Judge George Moore, who told him “I have
seen your kind before” and denied him bail pending appeal. “I would not turn this man loose to go out and prey on a lot of
ignorant Indian girls and colored girls, and white girls, if any,” he
added. The conviction was overturned based on racist remarks made by the
judge, but a second jury also convicted Berry and he wound up serving 20
months behind bars, during which time he wrote several songs.
The lyrics to one of them, the 1964 widely covered “Promised Land,”
recount a cross-country trip from Norfolk, Va., to Los Angeles — even
though Berry said prison officials “were not so generous as to offer a
map of any kind, for fear of providing the route for an escape.”Berry ran afoul of the law again in 1979, when he was slapped with
tax charges and quickly struck a plea deal in which he admitted cheating
the feds out of $110,000 in income taxes. He twice broke into tears during his sentencing, at which the judge
slapped him with 120 days behind bars and four years’ probation. The court session came little more than a month after Berry had
entertained then-President Jimmy Carter and his family on the lawn of
the White House.
‘Those who knew him well told me about what a wonderful family man he was. He was a walking contradiction, that’s for sure.’ - Bruce Pegg on Chuck Berry
Years later, Berry admitted the tax case “was no bum rap” — but claimed that the government had inflated its losses. “It was straight, true. It was a bum rap in the sense that . . . it
was about 15 percent that they added, but that’s nothing to kick about,”
he told Goldmine magazine. “In other words, they were about 85 percent
right and 15 percent wrong.” Berry long cultivated a reputation as a cheapskate, in large part
because he used local “pick-up” bands while on tour instead of hiring
regular performers, often resulting in sloppy performances with the
musicians he met just moments before hitting the stage. In 1987 — a year after his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of
Fame — he even admitted that he became a rock ‘n’ roller for the money,
and that “the Big Band era is my era.” “Rock ‘n’ roll accepted me and paid me, even though I loved the big bands,” he told the Los Angeles Times.
Modal TriggerChuck Berry’s star on the Hollywood Walk of FameGetty Images
“I went that way because I wanted a home of my own,” he said. “I had a
family. I had to raise them. Don’t leave out the economics. No way.”Later that year, Berry was accused of punching a woman in the mouth during an early morning dispute at the Gramercy Park Hotel. Friends described victim Marilyn O’Brien Boteler as a 30-something
rock singer who dated Berry — whom she slapped with a $5 million suit
that claimed she needed five stitches as result of the smack. Berry was also charged with assault but failed to appear in court in June 1988, leading to a bench warrant for his arrest. He later plea-bargained to a lesser charge of harassment and was sentenced to a $250 fine. Author Bruce Pegg, who wrote a 2002 biography titled “Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Times of Chuck Berry,” described the musician as a complicated man. While Pegg said he believed the Mann Act conviction “was racist in
nature” and the videotape scandal “began with a personal grudge,” he
also said Berry was no saint and someone who “kept on giving everyone a
2-by-4 big enough to hit him with. “Yet at the same time, those who knew him well told me about what a wonderful family man he was,” Pegg added. “He was a walking contradiction, that’s for sure.”
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