Chuck Berry turns 90

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Chuck Berry Celebrates 90th Birthday With First Album in 38 Years

 

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Long live rock n' roll...

Chuck Berry's spirit lives on through countless songs
Mar 19,`17 -- Behind so many great rock bands and rock songs looms the music of Chuck Berry.

Like the time a teenage Keith Richards ran into a childhood friend, Mick Jagger, at a train station in England and discovered they were musical soul mates. "You know I was keen on Chuck Berry and I thought I was the only fan for miles," Richards wrote to a relative in April 1962. "I was holding one of Chuck's records when a guy I knew at primary school ... came up to me. He's got every Chuck Berry ever made and all his mates have, too." Berry died Saturday at age 90, leaving behind not only a core of rock classics such as "Johnny B. Goode" and "Roll Over Beethoven," but countless descendants in songs clearly indebted to him in sound and in spirit.

Chuck Berry performs during a concert celebration for his 60th birthday at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis, Mo. On Saturday, March 18, 2017, police in Missouri said Berry has died at the age of 90.​

You could assemble a heavenly mix tape just of the hits built around his guitar work. You can hear it overtly in the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar," which closes with a near-verbatim homage to "Johnny B. Goode," in Bob Seger's "Get Out of Denver" and the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun," or in brief passages to songs that might not otherwise remind anyone of Berry, like the Eagles' "Peaceful Easy Feeling" or the Who's "Who are You." "It started with Chuck Berry. He inspired us all," tweeted Rod Stewart, whose Berry-influenced songs included "Hot Legs" and "Stay With Me," a hit when he was with the Faces. "The 1st album I bought was Chuck's 'Live at the Tivoli' and I was never the same."

Berry also patented an animated, stream of consciousness storytelling style that artists have been using ever since. Listen to Bob Dylan unfurl his story of paranoia in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" or his old man's boast in "Thunder On the Mountain," or the Rolling Stones' mockery in "Respectable," songs inconceivable without Berry's "Maybellene" and "Too Much Monkey Business" among others. Berry's rocking groove and comic spirit inspire Creedence Clearwater Revival's sci-fi "It Came Out of the Sky," while Seger's "Rock and Roll Never Forgets" consciously brings Berry's teen world into adult life.

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Go Johnny go: Chuck Berry's seven best songs
Sun, 19 Mar 2017 - BBC Music reporter Mark Savage looks at the late rock 'n' roll legend's most influential songs.

"There's only one true king of rock 'n' roll," said Stevie Wonder. "His name is Chuck Berry." The St Louis bluesman, who has died aged 90, basically invented rock. Sure, there were other contributors: Bill Haley's northern band rock 'n'roll; Pat Boone and his New Orleans dance blues; and Berry's label mate at Chess Records, Bo Diddley. But no-one else shaped the instrumental voice and lyrical attitude of rock like Chuck. His recordings were lean, modern and thrilling. In the words of pop critic Bob Stanley, "they sounded like the tail fins on Cadillacs".

What are his best tracks?​

He was the first to admit he drew inspiration from days of old. "There is really nothing new under the sun," he said in the mid-1980s tribute film Hail, Hail Rock 'n' Roll - citing the likes of T-Bone Walker and Charlie Christian as his forebears. Even the famous "Chuck Berry guitar riff", which opened hits like Maybellene and Johnny B. Goode, was lifted - by his own admission - from a Louis Jordan record. What he did with those influences, though, was something else. He gave country the bite of the blues, writing defiant odes to cars and girls at a time when rock lyrics were all Tutti Frutti and A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop. As Brian Wilson said, he wrote "all of the great songs and came up with all the rock and roll beats". "He laid down the law," added Eric Clapton. Here are seven of his most influential songs.

MAYBELLENE (1955)

Chuck's first single sounded like nothing that had ever come before - and gave him a top five hit in the US a full year before Elvis made his debut. It was based on Ida Red, a 1938 hit for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys - but was nowhere near as polite. Chuck adds a thunderous rhythm section and a scuzzed up guitar, while his lyrics lived out a teenagers' fast-car fantasy (even though he was in his mid-20s when he wrote it). "As I was motorvatin' over the hill, I saw Maybellene in a Coupe-de-ville / Cadillac rollin' on the open road / Tryin' to outrun my V-8 Ford." Disc jockeys Alan Freed and Russ Fratto were "encouraged" to play the song - by being credited as co-writers - and a career was born.


[ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN (1956)

"I wanted to play the blues," Chuck once told Rolling Stone. "But I wasn't blue enough. We always had food on the table." So he channelled his other frustrations into music. Roll Over Beethoven, widely believed to be a manifesto for rock and roll music, was in fact an affectionate dig at his sister, Lucy, who spent so much time at the family piano he couldn't get a look in.

Tributes paid to legendary Chuck Berry

Still, the swagger and the message - that Beethoven and Tchaikovsky had been rendered redundant by the sheer power of Chuck and his cherry-red Gibson - resonated with musicians all over the world. The song has subsequently been covered by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, ELO and even Iron Maiden.

SCHOOL DAY (1957)