We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Chuck Berry is on Top
Year: 1957
If “Roll Over Beethoven” was a master class in lionizing rock ‘n’ roll as music, then “Johnny B. Goode” does the same for mythologizing the people who played rock ‘n’ roll.
Or in this case, Chuck Berry himself.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #197: Chuck Berry – “Johnny B. Goode”
Album: Chuck Berry is on Top.
Year: 1956.
Is there any sound more perfect than Chuck Berry’s guitar open to “Roll Over Beethoven?” We are almost 60 years from when he wrote and recorded that song, and yet the immediacy of his guitar intro – and that solo!! – is as powerful as ever. And that’s despite the fact that approximately 5,694,875,634 other guitarists have played that lick in the intervening decades!
And the words. While Chuck Berry wrote more than a few songs extolling the rock and roll music he was the real king of, the beauty of “Roll Over Beethoven” was that it was also a “fuck you” song to older forms of music, specifically classical.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #196: Chuck Berry – “Roll Over Beethoven”