That night in 1974 when Chuck Berry played Anchorage

Editor's note: In 1974, Chuck Berry performed at West High School Auditorium in Anchorage, and local musician Mr. Whitekeys played in the backup band. He later wrote a column for the Anchorage Daily News about the experience. With the news of Berry's death on March 18, we asked Whitekeys to revisit the experience in a new column.

Chuck Berry rode into town like a lone gunslinger. That was the way my buddy Ezmo described it from his backstage vantage point.

Chuck got off the plane with a guitar case, a bodyguard and a briefcase. The understanding of the way things would go was simple: The money goes in the briefcase and the show goes on. If the cash is not put in the briefcase, there will be no show.

He arrived at the Anchorage International Airport at 6:10 p.m. The first show was at 7! Friday night it had been Madison Square Garden in New York, Saturday night it was Bozeman, Montana, and Sunday night — Spenard.

First on the list was to rent a car: this time, a Mustang. Chuck "Strictly Business" Berry did things his way, and he did not ride with anyone else.

His bodyguard was not an imposing bar bouncer gorilla with fists the size of watermelons. He was more like a Secret Service agent in a tailored suit. A small guy who was strictly business — this guy was ice and you knew you didn't want to mess with him under any circumstances. Ezmo said, "Hello," with a nod and a smile, and he was ignored. You were irrelevant unless you did anything to cause a ripple of any kind to Chuck Berry. If that came to pass, the removal of your face would not be out of the question.

Chuck Berry was famous for traveling alone and using local musicians, so the promoter hired a bass player and drummer from one band and I was proud to be chosen to join them … even if it was only because there were no other piano players in town.

The first sign of trouble was when I suggested we get together and jam in preparation for an appearance in front of 2,000 fans with one of the greatest fathers of rock 'n' roll. Their reply was: "We don't need to rehearse — it's Chuck Berry. His music is as simple as can be." The Whitekeys Terror Alert System began to kick in.

[Chuck Berry, who helped define rock 'n' roll, dies at 90]

Berry's music was always described as "simple," but any serious listening shows incredible subtlety and nuance that is nothing less than elegant. It's why he was the traveling gunslinger and every other guitar player in the world playing his songs in every bar in the world is just watering the horses at the stable.

Milo de Venus was a beautiful lass;
She had the world in the palm of her hand;
But she lost both her arms in a wrestling match;
To get a brown eyed handsome man.

It's a simple word play. Your English professor would expound about the juxtaposition of words and literary tension, but I'm saying, "Hot damn! This is the coolest guy on Earth, and I want to have his baby!"

Backstage, I asked: "I know you don't have charts, but do you have a list of songs you're gonna do? Or the keys the songs might be in?"

He'd heard it all before. "It'll be all right, kid. I'll talk to ya before the show." The overriding impression was that Chuck Berry was cool. He always has been cool. And he always will be cool.

Nobody else was quite so cool. Especially promoter Steve London when he appeared during the opening act (the Davis Family) during their LAST number. "Do you want to know where the star of the show is? I'll tell ya where the star of the show is. He went to the hotel to discuss a matter of some urgency with one of his female fans. He said he'd be right back."

And indeed, he was … just as the stage was readied behind the curtain. Nobody knew until later just how close that call was.

It seems that on the way back from downtown to West High, the Berrymobile became slightly disoriented, turned off the Minnesota Bypass onto 15th, somehow drove onto the bike path toward the lagoon, and passed through THREE tunnels before retracing its tracks. The King of Rock 'n' Roll said, "I turned off my lights so the cops wouldn't see me right after I drove through the first of those little tunnels!"

Then, behind the curtain, the professional went to work: "No, no. My amp goes on THIS side. Move everything up to the front. In tighter. We all wanna be close together."

In 30 seconds he had undone four hours of precision placement and adjustments by the musicians, the sound crew and the lighting company. The traveling rock 'n' roll troubleshooter had only been in town 30 minutes but he knew exactly what had to be done and he got it. There was no dispute as to who was in charge.

It was now "before the show" and time to "talk to the band." He told the bass player, "I want you to play bass like this: da dum … da dum. Do that — da dum … da dum. You do that and don't do anything else."

Then he turned to the drummer as well as the bass player. The gunslinger had a very cool move where he lifted his perfectly straight leg 90 degrees up to the side and then snapped it down again. Entire yoga classes are now built on that pose. He demonstrated and said, "When I move my leg like this, you STOP."

He didn't say anything to the piano player, who was now experiencing cold sweats and mild nausea. He had "talked to the band." The curtain went up and he had told no one the key to even the first song!

There wasn't time to sweat. From the first note, he was in total control. The immense energy from the Chuck Berry guitar overpowered everything else in the building. He didn't even need a band behind him — it was his show and he could do it all himself.

Well, sorta. How were any of us to know that the bass player liked to emote? He closed his eyes, made tortured faces and of course never saw ANY of the leg movements. Three people stopped on a dime but the bass man was playing to a different drummer than the one who was only 3 deafening feet away. It was now time for dizziness, shortness of breath and mild heart palpitations.

Somewhere around 40 minutes into the show, Chuck Berry instructed the bass player and drummer to Leave The Stage. Holy crap! I thought, What do I do now? I figured I'd do what he said, or the bodyguard would be eating my liver with onions for his midnight snack.

The duet lasted around 15 minutes. At one point, Chuck Berry stalked over to the piano and joined in a four-handed version of one of his songs. Then, he launched into an extended version of his only No. 1 single, "My Ding-a-Ling," which happened to be my least favorite Chuck Berry song of all time. My terror level had now reached kidney failure and internal bleeding. The audience was going to kill me before I reached the parking lot. The gin-soaked nightly brawling at my regular Chilkoot Charlie's gig was starting to look like a supreme sanctuary of safety and serenity.

Eventually, he called the rest of the band back onto the stage and the first show mercifully ended. My blood pressure went down to 390/285 and the rest of the band heralded the set as the highlight of their musical careers, because, "We're in great company — I heard he once threw Keith Richards off the stage in the middle of a show!"

Immediately after the curtain went down, Chuck Berry left the building and once again headed to the Hotel Captain Cook in his rented Mustang "to discuss a matter of some urgency with one of his young female fans." The second show, of course, started very late because the star of the show was:

Rounding third, he was headed for home
He was a brown eyed handsome man.

I think the second show went better than the first, but it's hard to make judgements when all of your major internal organs have liquefied. It was a Clint Eastwood movie where the gunslinger saves the town even though he leaves it in smoking ruins.

And now, 40 years later, someone occasionally asks, "What was it like to play with Chuck Berry?"

The answer is pretty simple. "It was the worst night ever in my entire musical career, but damn, it was cool."

Chuck Berry left Anchorage Monday morning at 7:30 a.m. He did not pay his hotel bill!

Mr. Whitekeys is an Alaska musician, recording artist, writer, ornithologist and creator of "The Whale Fat Follies" and "Christmas in Spenard." Read more at mrwhitekeys.com.