Rock ’n’ roll icon Chuck Berry dies
Man who brought us Johnny B. Goode was 90
NEW YORK (AP) — Chuck Berry, rock ’n’ roll’s founding guitar hero and storyteller who defined the music’s joy and rebellion in such classics as Johnny B. Goode, Sweet Little Sixteen and Roll Over Beethoven, died Saturday at his home west of St. Louis. He was 90.
Emergency responders summoned to Berry’s residence by his caretaker about 12:40 p.m. found him unresponsive, police in Missouri’s St. Charles County said in a statement. Attempts to revive Berry failed, and he was pronounced dead shortly before 1:30 p.m., police said.
Berry’s core repertoire was some three dozen songs, his influence incalculable, from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to virtually any group from garage band to arena act that called itself rock ’n’ roll.
“Just let me hear some of that rock ’n’ roll music any old way you use it I am playing I’m talking about you. God bless Chuck Berry Chuck,” Beatles drummer Ringo Starr tweeted, quoting from a Berry hit.
While Elvis Presley gave rock its libidinous, hip-shaking image, Berry was the auteur, setting the template for a new sound and way of life.
“Chuck Berry was a rock and roll original. A gifted guitar player, an amazing live performer and a skilled songwriter whose music and lyrics captured the essence of 1950s teenage life,” The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame said in a statement.
Well before Bob Dylan, Berry wedded social commentary to the beat and rush of popular music.
“He was singing good lyrics, and intelligent lyrics, in the ’50s when people were singing, ‘Oh, baby, I love you so,’” John Lennon once observed.
Berry, in his late 20s before his first major hit, crafted lyrics that spoke to the teenagers of the day and remained fresh decades later. Sweet Little Sixteen captured rock ’n’ roll fandom, an early and innocent ode to the young girls later known as groupies. School Day told of the sing-song trials of the classroom (“American history and practical math; you’re studying hard, hoping to pass. . .”) and the liberation of rock ’n’ roll once the day’s final bell rang.
Roll Over Beethoven was an anthem to rock’s history-making power, while Rock and Roll Music was a guidebook for all bands that followed (“It’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it.”)
“Everything I wrote about wasn’t about me, but about the people listening,” he once said.
Johnny B. Goode, the tale of a guitar-playing country boy whose mother tells him he’ll be a star, was Berry’s signature song, the archetypal narrative for would-be rockers and among the most ecstatic recordings in the music’s history. Berry can hardly contain himself as the words hurry out (“Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans/Way back up in the woods among the evergreens”) and the downpour of guitar, drums and keyboards amplifies every call of “Go, Johnny Go!”
The song was inspired in part by Johnnie Johnson, the boogie-woogie piano master who collaborated on many Berry hits, but the story could have easily been that of Berry, Presley or countless others. Commercial calculation made the song universal: Berry had meant to call Johnny a “coloured boy,” but changed “coloured” to “country,” enabling not only radio play, but musicians of any colour to imagine themselves as stars.
Johnny B. Goode could have only been a guitarist. The guitar was rock ’n’ roll’s signature instrument and Berry’s clarion sound, a melting pot of country flash and rhythm and blues drive, turned on at least a generation of musicians, among them the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards, who once acknowledged he had “lifted every lick” from his hero; the Beatles’ George Harrison; Bruce Springsteen; and the Who’s Pete Townshend.
Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born in St. Louis on Oct. 18, 1926. As a child he practised a bent-leg stride that enabled him to slip under tables, a prelude to the duck walk of his adult years.
Country, pop and rock artists have recorded Berry songs, including the Beatles (Roll Over Beethoven), Emmylou Harris (You Never Can Tell), Buck Owens (Johnny B. Goode) and AC/DC (School Days). The Rolling Stones’ first single was a cover of Berry’s Come On, and they went on to perform and record Around and Around, Let it Rock and others. Berry riffs pop up in countless songs, from the Stones’ ravenous Brown Sugar to the Eagles’ mellow countryrock ballad Peaceful Easy Feeling.
On his 90th birthday last year, Berry disclosed that he would release his first new album in 38 years sometime in 2017, titled simply Chuck.