Customer Reviews

Live at the Fillmore Auditorium

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an incredible CD. My opinion is some what biased in that this was first concert where I heard Chuck Berry live. Berry rocked, the Fillmore rocked and this CD rocks! Listening to this make me recall even the smell of the auditorium. At the time, we had no idea it was being recorded. If you like rock, if you like blues you will like this CD.

Great Chuck Berry & co. performances of his songs and covers. It's on the bluesy side, for the most part, but that's okay with me because they are all played so well. Throw this one on the player and relax.

A great live release by Chuck Berry. Sadly, this CD went largely unnoticed.If you are looking for HAIL, HAIL ROCK 'N'ROLL it is not here (just a little bit). This is Chuck at his greasy blues best! Not only is he in killer blues form here, he proves he can ice the blues cake with the best of them. Just check out "Everyday I Have The Blues" & Driftin' Blues". You'll be in BERRY orbit! Steve Miller guests on "It Hurts Me Too". A must for any Berry fan! A+

Everybody who knows and loves rock and roll knows and loves the one and only Chuck Berry. This is an early 1970s live recording done during that unusual period when so many 50s rockers got a second wind and could command a large audience again. Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry were among the rockers capable of reinventing themselves onstage and attracting an excited live audience.

Playing to the west coast hippies, Chuck chose to play blues rather than rock guitar throughout most of this set. I love Chuck as much as anyone, and he's a surprisingly smooth crooner on slow blues tunes. But as a bluesman, he's no Buddy Guy or B.B. King. If you're expecting a collection of superior blues performances or a series of classic blues tunes rocked-up in suitable rockabilly style you will be disappointed.

On the other hand, I am one of the few here who enjoyed Chuck's versions of "My Ding-a-Ling" and "Reelin and Rockin'" but then again I've seen Chuck live and I've always got a kick out of those songs. Throughout, the Steve Miller Band gives Chuck Berry an excellent support and keep this disc on a consistently professional level.

So, if you love Chuck Berry, you'll buy this CD like I did. If you're not a diehard Berry fan, however, you'd better stick with his Greatest Hits.

Two of the easiest things for audiences since to forget: 1) Chuck Berry was a bluesman first ("Maybelline" was intended as a satire); and, 2) the Steve Miller Band actually began its life as a preponderantly blues group. It made better sense than fans of either of the two now might think that Berry should have pulled into the Fillmore Auditorium in June 1967 and play a round of shows with the original Miller aggregation (when Boz Scaggs was still Miller's guitar partner). Berry hadn't yet been consigned to the nostaligia circuits; he'd reverted to his blues roots to keep fresh as a performer and recording artist (he'd been moving to Mercury Records at about this time) while the British Invaders and company (many of whom built their entire styles on Berry's foundations---hello, Rolling Stones?) kept his classic vintages alive and kicking.

It made for some of the most interesting recordings of his career, and for this remarkable selection of the best of those Fillmore shows. Berry's in solid voice; his guitar work is sharp and able to integrate some of what he'd been hearing from the younger San Franciscan turks without compromising his basic attack; and, most pleasantly, Miller and company stay with Berry without trying to overwhelm him. It's almost worth the price just to hear the aggregation's jolting take of Peter Chatman's standard "Every Day I Have the Blues" (which was already long set as B.B. King's set opener), but their revisitation of "Driftin' Blues" and their reimagination of Elmore James's "It Hurts Me Too" expose Berry's blues root almost as profoundly as their attack upon the near-signature song of the man who made Berry's recording career possible in the first place, Muddy Waters's "Hoochie Coochie Man." With the Miller band in full sympatico, by the time Berry gets finished there's almost no further way to revisit this song without driving people to the nearest drink. He hits it as though he just discovered it fresh and found things yet to tell from within it without abandoning the deceptive simplicity of the style he made famous.

It's enough to make you wonder what might have been if Berry and the Miller Band could have toured and recorded further. Berry certainly had innings left to play as a bluesman, sometimes combining that with striking updates of his classic rocking. (Smoke out "Concerto in B Goode," the marathon title jam of which beats the Grateful Dead at their own game and isn't anywhere near as boring or as limpen, even if Berry can't resist recycling a few licks and runs---because he does it to remarkable effect.) But I'm not entirely convinced he was as exuberant and as committed in that return to his roots as he was with these shows. For that matter, I'm not entirely convinced that Steve Miller---for all his subsequent success---would ever be as committed as he sounds here, riding with the master without quite falling away from the road.

I was a tad dissapointed with LIVE AT FILLMORE AUDITORIUM, because I've never been very interested in Berry's slow stuff and there's nearly wall-to-wall true blues on the LP.

On the other hand, it's Chuck Berry, and he IS the king of Rock'n'Roll, so how bad could it possibly be?

When I saw Berry in concert about 15 years ago, he was still doing shows like he'd done for a couple of decades: pickup bands, or just one step better than that, everything in A, and make up the playlist as you go. The band here is Steve Miller's, there is the occasional tune in B or G, and the playlist is surprisingly berift of the better known Berry songs. He focuses instead on slow blues and a couple of drifting jam sessions.

But I could listen to Berry play his wandering leads on that red hollow body all day long. He's occasionally sloppy, but so was Jimmy Page and I liked his stuff too.

A word of warning: the versions of "Reelin' And Rockin'" and "My Ding-A-Ling" are NOT the hit versions. "Reelin' and Rockin'" chugs along just fine; "My Ding-A-Ling" isn't as good as the hit single, which was recorded in the UK...and a lot of people didn't think the hit was too great to begin with. "Johnny B. Goode" is thE disapointment of the album, starting as a slow dirge before shifting into a franticly uptempo mess.

As others have pointed out, this odd collection of slow blues and instrumentals, which comprise perhaps 50% or more of the music, is perhaps for the Berry fans who have all his studio and live releases. It is obviously culled from at least two shows and the music definitely doesn't represent typical, or even best, Chuck. It is true that Chuck's blues playing doesn't compare to the best blues guitarists but it still is great to have these tracks. What doesn't work for me, however, are the instrumental sections on the album. Simply too much instrumental material chosen for this album. On the other hand, it is of high musical and historical interest to have Chuck playing with what was known at the time as "The Steve Miller Blues Band" and to hear the exchanges between Chuck and Bill Graham. I purchased this on vinyl way back when it was released and the cd sound is excellent. Overall, get it unless you have no or little Chuck Berry in your music collection...and if that's the case, why would you be reading this page??

Classic Chuck Berry CD's are hard to find if you desire to have these old tunes on CD you should rush to pick them up before the MP3 world takes over completely!

In his "later years" Chuck Berry never toured with his own band. He would have his people find a local band to learn Chuck songs. Chuck would show up at the auditorium, holler out a song to the band and the key it was played in, and that was it! Even Bruce Springsteen backed Chuck a couple of times before he made it.
Steve Miller backed Chuck at the Fillmore a few times while both were playing the venue,, as did a local SF band called the Loading Zone.

This live performance is a gem. Most people think of Chuck Berry as the originator of rock and roll, which he is, but this live set shows that he is also a phenomenal blues man. I appreciate Chuck Berry's pop songs for their tremendous impact on the history of rock and roll, and their impact on society at large, but this album digs deep into the roots of rock and roll, the blues. Chuck's influences are the great blues musicians who paved the way for him and other musicians like him. This performance is a tacit tribute to his mentors. The set is full of classic blues songs and improvised blues jams, all the while back lit by Steve Miller on the harp. Overall, this is a special performance that I am glad to own.