Chuck Berry, who with his indelible guitar licks, brash
self-confidence and memorable songs about cars, girls and wild
dance parties did as much as anyone to define rock ’n’ roll’s
potential and attitude in its early years, died on Saturday. He was
90.
While Elvis Presley was rock’s first pop star and teenage
heartthrob, Mr. Berry was its master theorist and conceptual
genius, the songwriter who understood what the kids wanted before
they knew themselves. With songs like “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll
Over Beethoven,” he gave his listeners more than they knew they
were getting from jukebox entertainment.
His guitar lines wired the lean twang of country and the bite
of the blues into phrases with both a streamlined trajectory and a
long memory. And tucked into the lighthearted, telegraphic
narratives that he sang with such clear enunciation was a sly
defiance, upending convention to claim the pleasures of the
moment.
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