Happy Birthday to Chuck Berry, the Father Of Rock N Roll, who turns 88-years-old on Saturday (October 18th)!!! Berry, who pioneered the rock genre with his unique storytelling and clever use of poetics, will undoubtedly be remembered for his signature two-note, guitar-bending lick, variations of which opened up his classic 50s hits Johnny B. Goode, Roll Over Beethoven, Little Queenie, Carol, and many more. Berrys music bridged the gap between rockabilly and blues on songs like Maybellene, and broke the color barrier on classics such as You Never Can Tell and School Days, which had more to do with the problems of white American teens than those of segregated blacks living in the south. George Thorogood has been a lifelong fan of Berrys and says that as far as rock artists go, Berry is a complete and unbeatable package: With Chuck Berry, youve got the all-time four-star player. Hes a great performer, a great writer, a great singer, and a great player. Not many people have that, all four things combined. Some can sing great, but they dont write. Some write, but they dont sing. Chuck Berry was the first of that. Theres only a handful of them. John Fogerty -- one, the Beatles. . . Theres very few that have all that covered. And Im talking about great writing and great performing. Im not just talking about, Oh, he plays guitar pretty good or he writes pretty good. (Hes) up there on the top with all four things. . . Arguably, probably the greatest rock n roll star ever. Berry paved the way for the major songwriters of the 60s, such as Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Brian Wilson and Pete Townshend, who were inspired by Berry and his peers Little Richard and Buddy Holly to compose and perform their own material. Chuck Berrys resurgence in the mid-60s was due largely to his influence on the British invasion. Lifelong fan John Mellencamp told us that hes still amazed at the way Chuck Berrys music consistently was able to blur the racial lines in the late 1950s: I think the most interesting guy to ever talk about this topic was Chuck Berry. And how calculated he was about his songwriting and his approach to rock n roll. He used to, like, work in peoples yards, and he would hear the music that they would be listening to -- and how could a black man bring black music to white people? So he kinda disguised it a little bit and made em think that, yknow, it was white music -- but in reality, it was black. I thought it was real interesting the way he explained what he perceived he had done for rock n roll. Yknow, he sang black songs about white people, almost. Dave Davies of the Kinks told us that the band probably never wouldve existed if not for Berrys legendary 50s tunes: Ray (Davies) and I were big fans of Chuck Berry, and we used to get together and play Chuck Berry riffs. Maybe we would never have formed the band without people like Chuck Berry. Although the Beatles only released two Berry covers on their official albums (Roll Over Beethoven and Rock And Roll Music), their 1994 Live At The BBC compilation included six additional Berry covers that were often performed in their nightclub repertoire: Too Much Monkey Business, I Got To Find My Baby, Carol, Johnny B. Goode, Memphis, Tennessee, and Sweet Little Sixteen. The groups I Saw Her Standing There actually borrowed the bassline from Berrys Little Queenie. The Beatles opened their first U.S. concert on February 11th, 1964 at the Washington Coliseum with Roll Over Beethoven as a salute to Berry. John Lennon covered Berrys You Cant Catch Me on his 1975 Rock N Roll collection, and McCartney paid tribute to Berry by recording Brown Eyed Handsome Man on his 1999 album, Run Devil Run. The Rolling Stones debut single was a cover of Berrys Come On. They went on to cover eight other Berry classics, including Carol, Sweet Little Sixteen, You Cant Catch Me, Bye Bye Johnny, Little Queenie, Talkin About You, Around And Around, and Let It Rock. In 2006, Berrys 1987 concert documentary, Hail! Hail! Rock n Roll, was released in both two- and four-DVD expanded editions. The movie chronicled the concert and rehearsals around Berrys 60th birthday concert in St. Louis, and featured performances by the Rolling Stones Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Linda Ronstadt, and others. John Lennon often called Chuck Berry rocks first poet. Berry says that his secret was always to keep his lyrics simple and make them rhyme: Mary had a little lamb, her fleece was white as snow, a da-da-da-da-da-da-da-o. Thats the way it rhymes. Rhyming to me is creating the vowels on the end of each line that is supposed to be, so its a mathematical thing, yknow? Two and two makes four, and as you go on down the line, all those numbers are equal not odds. Isnt that something? Isnt that a way to explain something? Anyway, I liked it, so I kept it up. Berry says that while looking back on his career, he ultimately has very few complaints: The good life outweighs. . . now, I dont say bad, I say the indifferent lives that Ive had. It just makes me happy to know that nobodys gonna live a perfect life -- nobody ever has. So Im thankful that Ive come this far, this long, this good.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 13:06:47 +0000
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