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.
