Chuck Berry in Eindhoven

Chuck Berry was actually quite a rebel and often came into contact with the judiciary. In his  high school period (1944), he was arrested for three armed robberies in Kansas City and imprisoned 3 years. In 1962, Berry was charged with suspected fornication with a 14-year-old girl from Texas. In 1979 he ended up in jail for a hundred days for tax evasion. In 1988 a woman dragged him to court because the guitarist would have hit her in the face. And in 1990 a group of women sued Berry because they were secretly filmed with cameras that Berry would have hidden in the toilets of his restaurant in Missouri.

In the 70s and 80s, Chuck still lived on past successes and more or less traveled through Europe with his guitar and a suitcase with clothes. He was playing with random accompaniment bands arranged by the organizer of the event and simply assumed that they could play his music. Practicing was not necessary. He had all sorts of demands, otherwise he just didn't play, and usually let himself be paid in cash, with the money simply going loose in the guitar case. $ 25,000 for a performing an hour was nothing, and an encore costed another 2500 dollars. In 1983 the 52 year old Berry, toured criss-cross through Europe, and would visit Eindhoven as the only city in the Netherlands, and of course the Rocking Rebels did not miss that.

Berry had it stipulated in his contract that he would have a large Mercedes rental car at his disposal until after the performance in Eindhoven. On arrival at Schiphol from Peterborough, England, he booked rooms at the Marriott and booking agent Tjallie Huizenga was waiting with a Mercedes 230 for Chuck to drive to Eindhoven. That did not go down well because he had ordered a Mercedes 280 SE that he himself could drive. That was not easy to arrange at that time, but finally they managed to arrange a 280 SE in Eindhoven and it was in Amsterdam at half past six. Instead of driving to Eindhoven he went with 'no particular way to go' and was found back with a prostitute in an Amsterdam Chinese-Indian restaurant.
The former houseband of the Rocking Rebels; Mac Taple in Eindhoven was the supporting act. They would play that day Sunday, September 4, 1983, until 8:55 PM, and then after a short break, Chuck's performance would begin at 9:15 PM. However, at nine o'clock the entire company was still in Amsterdam.....dammed