The following amazing story features in Pete Pritchard’s autobiography, ‘Touching Bass: My Rock n Roll Life’

 In the UK, we played mainly theatres but once we got into mainland Europe the gigs were much more varied. Football stadiums to arenas to clubs, we played them all. Chuck was certainly an eccentric character. We generally enjoyed his quirkiness but not everyone did. He had gained something of a bad reputation with the public which I considered to be unfair. If there were problems, it was usually because the promoter had defaulted on the contract somehow. You have to remember that back in the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, artistes were ripped off terribly, especially if they were black. So Chuck had learned the lessons. He would stick rigidly to the letter of the contract. Therefore, problems occasionally arose. Maybe his fee or performance time was not as per the contract. Of course, the public would not be privy to the reasons for Chuck’s late appearance and would blame him.

One example that affected me directly was when Chuck had a disagreement with a French promoter. We played in Paris on a Saturday and we were booked to play an outdoor festival in Holland the next day. The French promoter had agreed to provide transport for the onward journey into Holland. However, due to their now fractured relationship, no transport was forthcoming. It fell to our tour manager, a terrific guy called Tony Harvey to find us transport. Not an easy task on a Sunday morning in 1970’s Paris. He managed to hire a car for Chuck to drive, so he set off. We, on the other hand needed a bus to transport six people, equipment and luggage. That proved to be a much tougher challenge. He finally arrived at our hotel with what I can only describe as a French laundry van. The type that was featured in the 101 Dalmatians cartoon, if you can imagine. We climbed into this thing and we got under way. It chugged and rattled mile after mile until we finally reached the festival site. Sadly, we arrived far too late to play. Fortunately for Chuck, Matchbox, a fellow British rock n roll band was also on the bill and had agreed to back him. (Who wouldn’t?).

Matchbox were good mates of ours. We stood chatting before agreeing that we would all meet back at the hotel for a beer or three. The lead singer of Matchbox, Graham Fenton, joined us in our laundry van for the journey. What we hadn’t factored in was just how exhausted Tony, our tour manager was. We got under way, but when we stopped at a junction he, not used to driving on the right, looked the wrong way and pulled out in front of an oncoming car travelling at high speed. Both vehicles were written off. By some miracle, no one from either vehicle was seriously hurt. Graham had a cut on his head and my leg and foot was bruised and bleeding. We were carted off to hospital, patched up and got to the hotel just in time for last orders.

To this day whenever Graham and I meet, we call each other ‘blood brothers’.

Here’s the post script to the story. The next day, we had a gig in Germany. I was backstage hobbling up the stairs when Chuck came down the other way. He stopped, put his arm around me and asked how I was. I told him I was okay but my leg ached a bit. He told me to put a stool on stage so I could take the weight off my leg as I played. I did this. I didn’t actually sit on it aka Val Doonican but rather, I just leant against it.

The following morning, I was sat at breakfast when our tour manager came in holding a newspaper and asked me if I had seen it. There was a review of our concert together with a photo of me leaning on the stool. The caption (which was translated for us), read: “Chuck Berry’s bass player was so drunk, they had to prop him up on a stool!”

Rock ‘n’ roll ‘eh?

Pete Pritchard

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