Today’s the birthday of one of the rock’n’roll originals:
Chuck Berry is 88 today. Would the Rolling Stones as we know them exist without
Chuck Berry? Most likely not. And much
else follows from that.
Today’s song struck me—when I first heard it at whatever
tender age—as a kind of “Ur-tale” of rock myth. Here we have the quintessential
story of the kid who comes from nothing and nowhere and, just because he can “play
guitar like ringing a bell,” ascends into legend. Or, at least that’s what I
assumed. But if you listen, everything is still prospective at the end. His
mama, no doubt wowed by her boy’s abilities says “Maybe someday your name will
be in lights / Saying ‘Johnny B. Goode tonight.’” And maybe not, maybe he’s
just a kid who strums his guitar to the rhythm of the rails and that’s the end
of it.
In other words, one of the best aspects of Berry’s idea of
how to proclaim his hero is not to make his stardom a done deal. It’s more
about that “log cabin made of earth and wood”—like the origins of Abe Lincoln
or some other folk hero—and that “guitar in a gunny sack.” It’s about not
having anything but talent and the fact that talent will out. “People passing
by would stop and say / Oh my, that little country boy can play.” It’s just so
obvious and so good, people have to remark on it.
So Johnny can’t help but “B. Goode,” which is pretty clever
in itself. What’s more it’s about musical talent as a gift, as a birthright, as
something that just “comes natural.” And that’s as it should be. It’s set
against learned lessons—“he never learned to read or write so well”—to indicate
that what comes naturally, without guide or prod, is what’s best. So when his
mother is thinking about his glorious future of stardom, as the leader “of a
big old band,” she’s not thinking about it in the sense of making a killing or
living in the fast lane, she’s thinking about the fact that people won’t just “stop
and say,” but come from miles around and pay. Because playing that good will
find its audience. It’s a given.
This song—with those urging, urgent “Go go, Johnny, go / Go
go, Johnny, go”—is an epitome of rock lore and what’s more it’s a song that
incarnates what it sings about. Having written and recorded it, Chuck Berry
writes himself into the annals of rock’n’roll for all time. There are quite a
few other Berry songs as indelible, but this is the one that, when I reach back
to my earliest idea of what a rock’n’roll song, pre-Beatles and Stones, sounded
like, comes to mind immediately and has the strongest association to Berry
himself because, though it’s been covered plenty, it’s his trademark song. To
have written this song and not perform it for folks is tantamount to misanthropy.
Because it feels so good to “go, go” with Johnny, and with Berry. Electric
guitar music here comes into its own, and rockabilly goes the next step to rock’n’roll.
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