Every artist in existence is never safe from the cruel passage of time. The more that anyone hangs around that much in the music business, the more liable they are to screw up a good thing or change their sound in a way that makes people question whether they were that talented in the first place. While John Lennon certainly could call out when he thought that something was terrible, he could hardly find a dud in sight when listening to anything in Chuck Berry’s catalogue.
For all of the great putdowns that Lennon directed at both himself and his fellow musicians, it was always about being realistic. Yes, he could be extremely blunt when talking about the music that didn’t suit him, but it was all about acknowledging that not everyone was perfect and that music is a human experience, warts and all.
Then again, part of Berry’s genius was keeping everything incredibly simple whenever he played. There was the occasional song that sounded like the one before, but there were just as many moments where he twisted the narrative a little bit by starting on a different chord or making an engaging story that kept the listener on the edge of their seat throughout the track.
At the same time, Berry never expected his audience to dissect every song he wrote. He was still more than happy to make works that captured someone’s imagination, but tracks like ‘Rock and Roll Music’ are perfectly acceptable songs for people to turn their brains off to and dance their hearts out in a local gymnasium.
Although Lennon seemed to have matured past that stage of his musical development, he admitted that Berry hardly ever made a bad song, telling Rolling Stone, “I’ve loved everything he’s done, ever. He was in a different class from other performers; he was in the tradition of the great blues artists, but he really wrote his own stuff – I know [Little] Richard did, but Berry really wrote stuff, just the lyrics were fantastic, even though we didn’t know what he was saying half the time.”
But what made Berry’s songs so interesting to begin with? His style may have helped birth genres like rock and roll going forward, but the number of great tunes in his arsenal also had a touch of innocence to them, being able to be played by children of all backgrounds regardless of the statutes in place in America at the time.
And while Lennon did have a more melodic side that came out much more in his solo career, he didn’t forget where he came from, either. A song like ‘New York City’ is practically Lennon’s take on a Berry tune, and even on his final album, a track like ‘Dear Yoko’ feels like both an ode to Berry’s sincere rock and roll filtered through the innocence of someone like Buddy Holly.
But that was the key to Berry’s music all along. Yes, the songs are simple, and they might not have a lot of wisdom to impart all the time, but when a track is that open, it makes for something everyone can appreciate.
