Elderism #73

“I’m a millionaire, but I cut the grass. It’s satisfying. Every blade that’s cut in half dies, for sure. But the other half springs back to life.”

-83 year-old musician Chuck Berry, in an article by Neil Strauss in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone. We witness the sometimes difficult-to-work-with Berry—Keith Richards once said of him, “I love his work, but I couldn’t warm to him even if I was cremated next to him”—waiting to accept one work proposal until that proposal is made more “loveable.”

But by article’s end, the portrait of the inventor of rock & roll  that emerges is less crankypants than hopemongering: “I want to do something I know will last after I leave,” Berry says. “…Something as powerful as ‘My Ding-A-Ling.”