RIP Chuck Berry, Rock’s First Guitar God
Rock ’n’ roll is “too organic and chaotic to be attributed to any one creator, but if anyone deserves pride of place as its founding father, it’s Chuck Berry,” who died Saturday at 90, writes Dan McLaughlin at National Review. “He was rock’s first ‘guitar god,’ a complete package who wrote and sang his own songs, supported them with guitar theatrics, and had his own manic, mesmerizing stage presence complete with his signature duck walk.” Plus, he wrote, “Johnny B. Goode,” arguably “rock’s greatest single song. It’s one of the first rock songs to do two things, let alone combine them — tell a story and feature a guitar solo . . . It’s also a song about rock, and the possibilities it offers, even to a barely literate African-American teen in the age of Jim Crow.”