Taylor Hackford joins Tavis Smiley
Famed director Taylor Hackford celebrates Chuck Berry’s 100th birthday and reflects on the making of his 1987 documentary, Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/tavis-smiley--6286410/support.
Speaker 1: We've been playing the best of Chuck Berry all three
hours of our show today because today is the centennial
of the birth of Chuck Berry. In many respects, I
think Chuck Berry has never gotten what he really deserves.
For those who know his music, those who know his catalog,
those who offer an earnest and honest assessment of rock
and roll, understand that he was there at the very beginning.
And yet, for some reason, it feels to me like
we ain't quite gave Chuck Berry all that he deserves.
But today, in this hour, we're celebrating the centennial of
his birth, playing, again, the best of his catalog all
three hours of our show today. I should mention, top
of the third hour, once again, we'll be joined live
in studio by Javier Becerra, likely, perhaps, the next governor
of this state. He's coming live in studio today in
our third and final hour, just about 53 minutes from now.
But speaking of now, in this hour, two conversations on
the backside, we'll talk to Marvin Berry, who celebrates the
centennial birth of his cousin with reflections and a preview
of the upcoming Back to the Future Day in honor
of Chuck Berry. But I'm thrilled to open this hour
with the famed director Taylor Hackford, who filmed the 1987
documentary Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll. Taylor Hackford, it's a
joy to talk to you, sir. How are you today?
Speaker 2: Lovely to hear your voice, Travis. I'm fine.
Speaker 1: It's good to hear your voice, man. Good to have
you on the program. Let me start with what I
said a moment ago. I could be wrong. You're the
expert here. You did the documentary. What's your sense of
how we have regarded or not, even all these years later,
the artistic genius of one Chuck Berry?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I was a child of rock and roll,
and Chuck Berry was the voice of rock and roll.
To me, he created it. You know, I happen to
have had the fortune and the luck and the honor
of meeting a lot of fathers of rock and roll.
In that film, I had Little Richard. I had Bo Diddley.
I had, of course, Chuck. I had Jerry Lee Lewis. But,
you know, rock and roll is a gift of American creativity.
And it's a black thing. you know, creation, you know,
coming from R & B, coming from the blues. But,
you know, the reality is rock and roll had a
backbeat to it. And it absolutely had its impact, you know,
on white teenagers. That was me. And I was in
grammar school when I first heard Chuck Berry. And it
was a revelation. But, you know, one of the problems
with our country is that we have lost the the
value of history. You know, nothing is new, Tavis. Everything
has come before. And in this particular instance, you know,
we go back into the history of this country, and
America is only given, there's only one art form, to me,
that America has ever given the world. Everything else existed. Painting,
you know, classical music, those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Jazz.
Speaker 2: is the only thing that America has ever given the
world that's truly uniquely American. And out of jazz, the
evolution of black music came down, and jazz is a sophisticated,
it's an intellectual music. But R & B and rock
and roll, which I believe is certainly related in a
very intimate way to the black experience, that came from
working class people. And Chuck Berry, he exemplifies the black experience,
working class, his family was working class, he was, and
at the same time, as geniuses happen, where do they
come from? They just come from, you know, innately, something
springs out of them, and you can't explain it, but
Chuck Berry was a genius, and he was a lyrical genius,
he was a poet, and if you look at Our
music today, whether it's hip-hop or it's rap, Chuck Berry
is the father. Other people are going to claim it.
But if you listen to Too Much Monkey Business, which
is a great, great tune of his, and you can
hear Chuck Berry created a lyrical rhythm in his songs. And,
of course, he was a great guitarist. But if you
just look at the rhythm of his delivery of his lyrics.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Know where rap came from.
Speaker 1: Nope, I hear it. Taylor Hackford, just getting started. I
love this guy. Going to be a great hour with him.
I've got questions already just born of what he has
said thus far. I want to start when we come
forward with this notion of the devaluing of history in
this country. We don't regard history in this country the
way they do in other places around the globe. And
certainly in the era of Trump 2.0, and I don't
mean to make Taylor Hackford political, but everybody knows it.
In the era of Trump 2.0, we have even less regard,
at least they do, for history. We'll start talking about
the value of history and a great deal more to
get into with Taylor Hackford. We celebrate the centennial, the
birth of Chuck Berry on Tavis Smiley. I was just
looking at an invitation last night. My boy Big Daddy
Kane is here in L.A. this week at the Blue Note.
And you heard Taylor Hackford say a moment ago before,
Big Daddy Kane and all the rest, there was Chuck Berry.
You hear that song from all those years ago. You
hear the roots of hip-hop, and the song is called
Too Much Monkey Business, as you can tell. But I
thought I'd pull that out since Taylor referenced it. Our
guest is a famed director, Taylor Hackford. We're celebrating the
centennial of the birth of Chuck Berry today. Taylor Hackford,
of course, was the brilliant mind behind the film, the
amazing documentary Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll. And so when
you see that documentary, as I have many times, he
got everybody in that documentary. We'll talk about that. This
is an all-star cast of the greats in that documentary.
And so we invited Taylor Hackford on today to talk about, again,
the artistic genius of one Chuck Berry, whose 100th birthday
we are celebrating today, playing some of the best of
his catalog all three hours of this program. Don't forget,
top of the third hour, Javier Becerra, comes live in studio.
All right, Taylor, you said a few things. I want
to give you a chance to unpack a little bit
more for me. We've got some time here. You talked
about history, and that resonates with me, and I suspect
many in this national audience right now, because we are
seeing in real time the way that we disregard history.
You were talking specifically about music history, but even beyond that,
just drew it down a little bit more on how
it is that we end up being a nation that
has such a little regard for our own history, music
and otherwise.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that, you know, in contemporary society and
media and internet and all of the things that bombard
us with what's happening right now, you know, and we've
got a president who just wants to control every facet
of the media and the internet, you know, and I'm
doing this, I'm doing that. He doesn't really care what
it is as long as he commands the airwaves. But
It is a process that I think we all, as
Americans in particular, because we're the most wired country in
the world, we're all focused on now. And unfortunately, everything
that happened now, I mean, not exactly, but just of
what we're talking about, has happened before. If we paid
attention to history, we wouldn't be making mistakes anymore. do make,
you know, and I think that's one of the real
flaws of American society is that we forget that, you know, we're,
compared to the rest of the world, we're a fairly
new country. But, you know, I mean, come on, 1776,
you know, a couple of hundred years, we've had these
things happen. Now, if you get, if you're, if you're,
pardon me, stupid enough to Oh, that happened back then.
It has no relevance now. Unfortunately, it did. And the
things that this country, you know, started with and, you know,
let's face it, our shame, you know, and I'm, you know, slavery,
you know, but the things that grew out of that
and changed and the fact that that happened, you know,
brought with it, and I'm going to bring it back
to the subject here, another world, another culture, another people,
another race to America that wasn't here before. And that
process of the original sin of slavery infused into America
into this. And of course, you know, all the colonists
that came from Europe, from England, you know, they came.
The only people that were original here were Indians. The
Indians got the bad end of the stick, of course,
as we all know. But the fact is, the thing
that's interesting to me is that our culture and our
society is so much more complex. Now, I don't have
to talk to your listeners. They all know. Their ancestors
lived it. The process of having to go from slavery
to today, where they're integral partners of the society, maybe
not as strong as it should be, and we all
know about that and we're not going to go back,
but that's history. That history, which has evolved... But you
go back to the African roots and it was a
singing culture. It was very much. a verbal and melodic culture.
So that process infused itself, and from my point of view,
because I grew up as a young American, that music
that came through radio at the beginning of rock and roll,
I'm listening to, it has absolutely... penetrated me because as
i said i'm a child of rock and roll so
when i heard this music and i heard the people
you know and and it was and of course people
don't give music it's due you know part of part
of integration part of the change of american society for
black people was carried by music if you just took
the the you know the normal process of people in
society that that the The evolution, I think, of equality
and the evolution of integration was accelerated by music. Because
when you take a music that is so infusing of
life and rhythm and excitement and joy and put it
on the radio, kids are going to listen. You know,
we're talking on radio now.
Speaker 1: I can't see.
Speaker 2: I mean, we know each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. You can't see me.
Speaker 2: But when that music comes through, it doesn't matter. And
that's what happened. You pipe Chuck Berry into white teenagers'
bedrooms and it changes because those people grow up and
all of a sudden they realize, wait a minute, don't
tell me that black people don't have any talent. Don't
tell me that because that's the music I listen to.
Speaker 1: If you're just tuned in, you see he's waxing poetic.
He really is this good. He doesn't just do great films,
but he's an intellect. I call him a public intellectual.
He's my friend Taylor Hackford. We're talking about the centennial today,
the birth of Chuck Berry 100 years ago. I want
to get to lyrical genius in just a second, but
if you are trying to figure out why I know
that name, Taylor Hackford, because he's done so many great films,
and why is he so smart about music, this is
the guy who did the film Ray. We all love Ray.
He won Jamie, of course, a Best Actor Oscar, but
this is the visionary Ray. behind the movie Ray that
we watch all the time. Every night I turn on
my television, somebody's playing Ray. One of the best films
ever made about any music artist. And it was Taylor
Hackford who brought that to us along with a long
list of other great pieces that I can tell you about.
I ain't got time. I'm going to play a couple
of clips from his documentary, celebrated documentary, Hail Hail Rock
and Roll. That was in 87. He mentioned a couple
of names of persons that were in that doc, Bo
Diddley and Muddy Waters. You're going to hear them in
just a second here once I weave in a couple
of clips. But let me just go back right quick
to your regard for Chuck Berry as a lyrical genius.
There are a lot of great artists, but they're not
all lyrical geniuses. And I'm a lyricist. I love lyrics.
Tell me why you regard Chuck Berry as a lyrical genius.
Speaker 2: Well, I shot a lot for this film. This documentary,
I was so happy to do it because I'm celebrating
one of my idols. I mean, Chuck Berry was, to me,
the top of the heap when it came to rock
and roll, and I was a child of rock and roll.
I got later in life a huge, huge opportunity because
I did Ray Charles, and Ray Charles was my number
one person. But in this instance, what I knew about
Chuck Berry was he had a brilliant guitar. I mean,
he's an architect. And I'm telling you, everyone from Eric
Clapton to Prince told me that without Chuck Berry, the
rock and roll guitar would not have happened because he
was the ultimate pioneer of this. And I'm not talking
about blues. I'm talking about rock and roll. And any
guitarist that wants, a kid that wants to start out,
they start out with Chuck Berry. You play his licks
or you don't. And then you evolve. And of course,
there's been a lot of people that have advanced that technique.
But for Chuck Berry, to me, It was the lyrics.
You hear them, and they just tripped off the tongue.
And he wrote, he had the genius. Chuck Berry was
a very smart guy. And I'll tell you the truth
about Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry was a commercial animal. He
wanted to make that money. And there's nothing wrong if
you've got talent, but you have to understand, if I'm
going to make some money in this world, because he
was working class, When Chuck Berry started, his father was
a carpenter. So he was trained as a carpenter, and
he worked as an assistant to his father. And at night,
he was a janitor at Ford Motor Company in St. Louis.
This was working class. He had two jobs to pay
for his family. And on the weekends, he played some
music in a club, and he got lucky, and people
heard it, and then he could quit those other jobs.
But he came from working class. So he's writing. He
also understands, you know, what good does it do me
to write a bunch of lyrics that appeal to a
very small audience? Who buys records? Kids, teenagers. So what
he did, he had a genius for writing lyrics that
appeal to teenagers. He is capable of writing more sophisticated things,
but he didn't. His own listening thing, he would listen
In the film, I have him playing a fantastic Tin
Pan Alley song, Cottage for Sale. I think it was
written by some of the great writers. But that was
what he listened to. But when he was going to record,
he said, I know who my audience is. I'm going
to write for those kids. And he bored right into
the hearts and souls of those children. So he's talking
about jukeboxes and cars and He was the first poet
of the American automobile.
Speaker 1: I like that. I like that, yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybelline.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He wrote Maybelline, which was his car and what he
lost his girlfriend and a Cadillac. Some cat and a
Cadillac had taken his girlfriend and he was chasing that
car in Maybelline and he caught that car at the
top of the hill and got his girl back. I mean,
he understood... what teenagers were thinking, and that's a genius.
Speaker 1: No, no, we've been playing some of the best of
Chuck Berry all three hours, and why not just play
a little Maybelline since Taylor Hackford mentioned. Here's Chuck Berry, Maybelline. Maybelline,
why can't you be true? Oh, Maybelline, why can't you
be true? I love how Taylor Hackford referred to Chuck
Berry as America's first automobile poet. And you hear it
loud and clear in that particular track. You said something
else earlier, Taylor, I want to come back to you
right quick. In the two minutes I have now, I
got you for a few more minutes when we come
forward beyond this break. But you mentioned earlier, and I
said it even before you came on today, one of
the things I love about Chuck Berry is not just
his lyricism, but I love that backbeat. Did he talk
to you about that backbeat?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Chuck Berry, when you talk to him
about music, it was very interesting. Chuck Berry was a very,
very difficult man. Later we can talk about it. I mean,
he was, I can define him as diabolical.
Speaker 1: I got a Chuck Berry story for you. I had
to tussle with him one time. I'll tell you my story,
but keep going. Yeah, keep going.
Speaker 2: You know, just saying that he was a very smart,
you know, he said he's working class, but he's a
very smart guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, really smart.
Speaker 2: And very commercial and a realist. You know, he suffered
a lot in segregation. He's from St.
Speaker 1: Louis.
Speaker 2: And remember, Missouri is a border state. You might think
of St. Louis as a sophisticated city. It is. But
let me tell you, one of the great sequences in
my film is that we did the concert with Chuck
Berry at the Fox Theater in downtown St.
Speaker 3: Louis.
Speaker 2: It was one of those huge movie palaces. that was
in the day, like the place that you would go,
designed in a very kind of Middle Eastern way.
Speaker 1: I mean, incredible.
Speaker 2: Three balconies. But anyway, Chuck Berry was not allowed to
go there. You know, he talked about going up to the,
I have him out of the box office saying, you know,
I can't believe that I'm performing tonight at the Fox Theater.
When I was like eight years old, I came up
here and I wanted to see a movie and I
put my money up and they said, nope, get out
of here. We don't let people like you.
Speaker 1: In this theater.
Speaker 2: So, you know, there it was. I mean, black people
certainly have got a million stories about that era of segregation.
But the interesting thing for me, and it tells you
everything about Chuck Berry. You think, oh, it's a little
black kid. He's going to go. What is he going
to see? A cowboy movie? A gangster movie? He's going
to see some action movie?
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: You know the movie that was playing that he wanted
to see at eight years old? What? A Tale of
Two Cities, Charles Dickens. You know, I mean, that tells
you that Chuck Berry was always an intellectual.
Speaker 1: Hold that thought, Taylor Hackford, always an intellectual. I didn't
see that coming. I didn't know that was the film
that he wanted to see. Uh, how thrilled are we
to have, uh, this, uh, amazing, brilliant award-winning director, Taylor Hackford, uh,
who was on to celebrate the 100th birthday of Chuck Berry. Uh,
it was his documentary, uh, back in 87. Uh, there's
so many of us celebrated then, and it's still an
amazing piece of work to see all these years later. Hail, hail,
rock and roll. More with Taylor Hackford when we come
forward on Tavis Smiley.
Speaker 3: And when I went up to, uh, Chicago is where
Leonard Chess and Chess Records were. That was the launching
of my career. We recorded in Chess Studios. Naturally, I
was the only writer because it came from Missouri in
a basement in my house. And when the record came out,
it was Russ Fredo and Alan Freed and Chuck Berry.
You know, who are these guys? You know, I knew
Alan Freed. I heard him on the radio. He's a
disc jockey in New York that played the record. Who
is Russ Fredo? He owns a stenography store, a stationery store,
next to who supplied Leonard with his stationery. Why they
were on it, it didn't matter to me, but I
didn't know that that was a split of the monies.
But when I got my royalties, I saw one-third. Well,
anybody can easily figure out. I'm good at mathematics. I'm
only getting a third of this, you know. So that
was in the days of payola. When you did something
for somebody, you got cut of whatever the issue was. Money.
Speaker 4: You know, I set up all night looking at the contract.
You know, trying to figure out how I was going
to make any money out of two.
Speaker 3: No, half a cent per record.
Speaker 1: Half a cent.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute. You had to sell two records to
make a penny.
Speaker 3: Right. The record cost 59 cents then, didn't it? Yeah. Well,
there were 58 other pennies going somewhere.
Speaker 4: Ooh, boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I majored in math. I was looking at the
other 58 cents.
Speaker 1: I majored in mouth.
Speaker 3: I was done all the talking and no walking. The
record was all you. Couldn't even understand the contract.
Speaker 4: When I got it, I looked at it, and all
I wanted to see was Little Richard. When I saw it,
I said, check out the contract. I didn't even read
the other part.
Speaker 1: Taylor Hackford, you are the man. And at one clip
from his documentary, Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll, you hear
the voices of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard,
only Taylor Hafford can pull that off. What an amazing documentary.
We invited Taylor on the program today because in case
you've just tuned in, all three hours we've been playing
the best of Chuck Berry because we are celebrating the
centennial anniversary of his birth today. What an amazing clip, Taylor.
Speaker 2: Well, listen, I had those three guys, the fathers of
rock and roll, in my living room. I shot that
in my living room in Hollywood. And I moved in
a grand piano. Little Richard immediately jumped on the seat
and started playing. But these guys were the founders. I
look at it as like there were probably five, maybe six,
original founders of rock and roll. Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley,
Little Richard, Fats Domino, who I didn't have. I wish
I could have had him. Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.
Two whites and four blacks. And I had three of
them right there. Jerry Lee Lewis, you know, I got
an interview with later, and he and Chuck had a
checkered history. They were the two real bad boys of
rock and roll. But, you know, my God, I had
this wonderful moment, and they all got around the piano,
and they started talking. I don't think they said, of course,
they knew each other individually, but had gotten together but
they'd never been three of them together and they just
opened up and talked about what they had experienced in
this early period in the 50s where they went out
and played for a lot of white teenagers and went
on American Bandstand and did all as I said before
rock and roll was a real barrier knocked down for
integration but they were they'd suffered they'd gone through as
Chuck just said yeah They had signed contracts where they
didn't know business. And, of course, they learned. Now, Chuck,
I can say something about Chuck. And you know that
famous line, fool me once, it's your fault. Fool me twice,
it's my fault. And Chuck Berry never got fooled again.
He never came up with a songwriting credit.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, Taylor. I'm looking at my clock.
I've got less than five minutes with you. I want
to just get a couple more things done. Let me
ask you a personal question. Just in that one clip alone,
Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard in your living room,
no less at your house in Hollywood. How did you
process for a kid who is a, you know, you're
a rock and roll kid, as you've said a few
times in this conversation. Just take me back to that
moment and tell me how you process. You mentioned Prince
earlier in this conversation. Prince, as this audience knows, one
of my dear friends, traveled the world with that guy.
And I never, as much as I spent as much
time I spent with Prince, I never, ever lost sight
of who he was. I knew the genius that he was.
And every time I was with him, I steeled myself
to be in that moment because I knew whose presence
I was in. How did you process being in the
same room with Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard
at one time?
Speaker 2: Well, number one, they knew that I respected them. And
I had a job to do. My job was to
debrief them. And I basically said, listen, I don't want
to be I don't want my voice to be in here.
I want you guys to have a conversation. And anything
you say is okay. And I want to bring down
the barriers here and make you guys feel comfortable enough.
Because we're making history. I said this interview is going
to be historic. Because the three of you have never
been together before on camera. And I look at this
as giving... a window from the original creators to future generations.
So please, just open up and give. And they did.
And I occasionally would pop in with something, but they
trusted me. And believe me, part of this process is
making sure they understand that you respect them. Two, you
know what you're talking about. And three, you want to
really do something that is important for the future.
Speaker 1: And that was it. They opened up. You got one, two, three,
and in two minutes, I got four and five. Here's
my fourth question. What do you regard as the legacy,
100 years later, the legacy of Chuck Berry?
Speaker 2: Well, Chuck Berry, you know, listen, they're great musicians that
have existed through time. And they.
Whether it's Mozart or it's Ray Charles. And I put
them in the same category. They are geniuses. And Chuck
Berry fits into that category. He really does. He was
able to take electric guitar, make it sound like nobody
else had ever heard before. He took his lyrics and
his ability to syncopate those lyrics with the music. And
he put it together in a way that captured America.
I mean, Chuck Berry at some one time had three
records in the top 10 in the United States. Very few,
the Beatles probably had that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But very few people have ever had it. Chuck Berry did, uh,
you know, the, the, and he had a real ego,
but he didn't have, uh, an arrogance. He was an
arrogant man. He was, he was a man, you know,
let me tell you, Chuck Berry was a tough son
of a bitch. He could, he could, fight for himself,
and I mean physically fight for himself if he had to,
because he had to survive. And at the same time,
he had an arrogance about his, he knew what he
could do on stage. He knew how he could take
an audience and absolutely drive them crazy. But he didn't
have an ego about what he'd created. I kept saying, Chuck,
you don't understand. You're one of the greatest lyricists. Whether
it's Cole Porter or it's Rodgers and Hart are these
great Ten Pan Alley songwriters. You belong in that group. No,
I don't really. He didn't have an ego there. He
didn't understand it.
Speaker 1: I've got to tie it 30 seconds. I could talk
to Taylor Hackford for hours. He has great stories, for starters.
He's a great filmmaker, number two. We could just talk
about his body of work over the course of his
career ongoing, thank God. But I tie it 30 seconds here.
Since you mentioned Ray, and I'm glad you did, since
we see that film on television every day somewhere, just
give me a quick 30-second reflection on what you did
in that amazing film.
Speaker 2: Well, I went to Ray Charles. And I told him
he was my number one guy. And I wanted to
make a film about him. And he, you know, Ray
Charles was brilliant. I mean, Ray Charles is one of
the people I've ever met in my life. And, you know,
he listened to me. And I must have said the
right things because ultimately he said, all right, I'm going
to let you do it. Now, you know what? It
took me 13 years to get that film made. I
kept going out. People said, oh, yeah, Ray Charles was great,
but he's old and I said, no, listen. And nobody
around the world is going to know. I said, Ray
Charles has been touring the world, every continent, for 30 years.
The audience is all over the world.
Speaker 1: Well, guess what?
Speaker 2: I could never sell a studio on it. Finally, one guy,
a guy named Phil Anschutz, who's a billionaire who happened
to love Ray Charles, financed the movie. One man. I mean,
I was so lucky. But Ray stayed with me for
13 years. I go every year saying, Ray, I can't,
I've been trying to sell it. And he said, Taylor,
things happen when they're ready to happen. And lucky for me,
I was able to make the film. And you know what?
If I'd made the film early on, I wouldn't have
had Jamie Foxx. Jamie Foxx was perfect, perfect, perfect for
this role. And Jamie and I bonded on this film
and made it work because we both knew on our
shoulder was one of the great geniuses. We better deliver.
Speaker 1: Jamie was perfect for that role. Make no mistake about it.
But the director was perfect for that role. And it
had not been for your stick-to-itiveness over that 13-year period.
We would never have the film. It is one of
the best films ever made about any music icon, Ray,
brought to us by Taylor Hackford. Again, the documentary we've
been talking about today. Check it out for yourself. Hail, hail,
rock and roll. We celebrate the centennial birth of Chuck Berry.
Taylor Hackford, thank you, man. I deeply appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Oh, it was a great opportunity to talk about somebody
who truly was one of a kind, Chuck Berry.
Speaker 1: That's the end of the Taylor and Tavis show for today.
More of Tavis Smiley, at least, when we come forward.