The 1972 show that caused a feud between Chuck Berry and Little Richard: “I’m going to fix him!”
At the beginning of the 1970s, the larger-than-life star Little Richard warned the world in an explosive interview, “I am going to fix Chuck Berry”, and somewhere off camera, Berry was quaking in his boots at the display.
Of course, the pair of rock-and-roll stars were good friends behind the macabre performances for the media, so the darting tongues and furrowed brows were, mostly, all in jest. But in that particular BBC interview, it was evident that Richard was perturbed beyond his usual fraudulent finger-pointing.
The feud had been sparked over a show at Wembley Stadium set to take place on August 5th, 1972. While Richard believed that his contract had stated that he was the shining star of the affair, it had come to light that Berry would be headlining the momentous occasion. As the journalist sheepishly referenced the ordeal, Richard became animated at the mention of the “friction” between the icons, a scowl plastering his otherwise splendid features. “Oh, I’m going to fix him!” he promised, a refrain he would turn to throughout the rest of his biting response.
Perplexed at the threat, the journalist asked, “I thought he was your friend?”, and Richard, shaking his head, clarified, “He is my friend, but I’m going to fix him. They made him the star of the thing, and my contract said that I was the star”, his Georgia accent deliciously stretching out the vowels.
After explaining the personal nickname he’d given the star (“Blackberry”, in connection to his mother’s past-time making blackberry wine), the star continued, “I am going to upset his nerves and let him know that I am the king of rock and roll, the undisputed king, and can’t nothing take my throne. I am going to show him that he is from the valley and not from the mountain.”
Richard loved talking trash in Hollywood, dazzling paparazzi, and running circles around them with stories he’d conjure up on a whim, and in this instance, he didn’t even mention that other major acts, including Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bill Haley and His Comets, were in on the event.
Despite Richard’s protestations that “he can’t close no show behind me; how can he have the nerve, the audacity to walk on?”, Berry ended up being the headliner on the night, which celebrated an effervescent kind of 1950s nostalgia.
Approximately 85,000 watched as Richard’s raucous set of classics like ‘Tutti Frutti’ and ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On’ ended, and the performer was replaced by a smirking, shaking Berry. Despite his protestations, he’d failed to convince the organisers to shift the line-up for his ego.
Interviews were spliced into the remastered footage of the show, and in one of them, delusional and still not defeated, Little Richard told the camera, “I wasn’t on the top of the bill, but in my heart I knew I was the top. See, you don’t have to be at the top of the bill to climb the hill. See, it’s not the size of the ship that makes you sick, it’s the waves in the ocean.”
The singer-songwriter might not have been the headliner, but he sure was the maestro of metaphors.
