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Motor Psycho
At the wheel: RJ Smith’s Chuck Berry biography addresses head on the rock’n’roll innovator’s toxic aspects.
A persuasive new biography explores musical innovation, racism and toxic masculinity. By Mat Snow.
Chuck Berry: An American Life
★★★★★
RJ Smith
OMNIBUS. £25
THERE’S A chilling incident detailed in this new Chuck Berry biography when the middle-aged rock’n’roll legend picks up three local girls – “simple people, not worldly” – near his native St Louis, Missouri where the Midwest shades into the South. They go back to his place and an orgiastic good time is had by all, but suddenly his mood switches to angry and glassy, with the shocked, crying girls ordered to grab their things and go: “Now you know what it feels like to be t reated like a nigger.”