ROCK AND ROLL LEGEND CHUCK BERRY NO MORE
Rock n’ roll was more than a new kind of music, but a new story to tell, one for kids with transistor radios in their hands and money in their pockets, beginning to raise questions their parents never had the luxury to ask.
Along with James Dean and JD Salinger and a handful of others in the 1950s, Chuck Berry — who was 90 when he died on Saturday at his suburban St Louis home — helped define the modern teenager. While Elvis Presley gave rock n’ roll its libidinous, hip-shaking image, Berry was the auteur, setting the narrative for a generation no longer weighed down by hardship or war. Well before the rise of 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 other people were singing, ‘Oh, baby, I love you so,’” John Lennon once observed.
“Classic rock” begins with Chuck Berry, who had announced late last year that he would first new album since 1979, called Chuck, this year. His core repertoire was some three dozen songs, but his influence was incalculable, from the Beatles and Rolling Stones to virtually every garage band or arena act that called itself rock ‘n roll.
In his late 20s before his first major hit, Berry crafted lyrics that spoke to young people 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”). Back in the U.S.A. was a black man’s straight-faced tribute to his country, at a time there was no guarantee Berry would be served at the drive-ins and corner cafes he was celebrating.
“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.
When NASA launched the unmanned Voyager I in 1977, an album was stored on the craft that would explain music on Earth to extraterrestrials. The one rock song included was Johnny B. Goode. AP