Stepping to the microphone at the JFK Library Sunday, Caroline Kennedy had a toothy grin on her face. And why wouldn’t she? There, sitting in the first few rows, were Leonard Cohen, Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Shawn Colvin, Al Kooper, Peter Wolf, and writers Salman Rushdie, Bill Flanagan, Tom Perrotta, and Peter Guralnick.
Cohen and Berry had been summoned by PEN New England to accept the group’s inaugural Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Award, and some of the celebrated songwriters’ famous friends had come to salute them. (A few others, including Rosanne Cash and Bob Dylan, emailed their regrets as only they can. But more on that later)
Introducing Cohen, who was looking handsome as ever at 77 and wearing his familiar fedora, Rushdie said the Canadian singer’s “extraordinary songbook” was an important influence on him growing up.
“I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, the other Cambridge, the old one,” joked Rushdie. “When we were kids, Leonard taught us something about how it might be to be a grown-up.”
The author of “The Satanic Verses” credited PEN New England for recognizing lyrics as literature – he called the award “way way overdue” – and hailed Cohen for his hymn-like songs that weave wit, “jaundiced comedy,” and disillusion.
“There are not many hymns that would rhyme ‘hallelujah’ with ‘what’s it to ya,’” said Rushdie.
Colvin then picked up an acoustic guitar and, with Cohen leaning forward to listen, played his song “Come Healing.”
Speaking slowly and in the same low register as many of his songs, Cohen said he was grateful for the award, but called Berry the best.
“If Beethoven hadn’t rolled over, there would have been no room for any of us,” he said. “All of us are footnotes to the words of Chuck Berry.”
Flanagan read a few emails he’d received from VIP fans in absentia. “’There’s a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in,’” wrote Cash, quoting Cohen’s “Anthem.” “Just that one line is enough to get Leonard Cohen into any hall of fame.” (Sunday would have been Johnny Cash’s 80th birthday, and his daughter was busy at his birthplace in Arkansas.) In his missive, Dylan hailed Berry as “the Shakespeare of rock ’n’ roll,” adding “say hello to Mr. Leonard, the Kafka of the blues, and Lord Byron Keith if he shows up.”
The Rolling Stones guitarist did indeed show up and, after Simon read a few of Berry’s best-known verses, Richards even grabbed a guitar and joined Costello for a version of Berry’s song “Promised Land.” (Costello had earlier played “No Particular Place to Go,” prefacing it by saying “one of the more intense things you’ll ever do is play a Chuck Berry song in front of Chuck Berry – without a band.”)
At 85 and complaining of a bad ear that prevented him from hearing most of the adoring remarks, Berry is still plenty game, demonstrating that with a few rough chords of “Johnny B. Goode” as the crowd sang along
“That’s the way rock ’n’ roll is. It’s all funky,” he said. “Is that too bad a word to say?”
