How to play guitar like Chuck Berry
When it comes to who invented rock and roll guitar playing, the answer is simple: Chuck Berry. Across five decades, but mostly throughout his work in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Berry set a standard for which all guitar players would follow. Featuring dynamic lead lines and lightning-quick double stops, Berry was so distinctive that scores of followers, whether they were George Harrison, Carl Wilson, Bob Weir, Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, or Malcolm Young, directly copied his style of playing.
To understand how Chuck Berry became the first rock and roll guitar player, you have to look at the music genres that he was pulling from. Specifically, Berry combined the basic structure of the blues with the energy of R&B and the intricate guitar picking of country music. It was only after he met pianist Johnnie Johnson, however, that Berry was able to put all the pieces together for his signature guitar style.
If you’re looking to replicate Berry’s guitar playing, you’ll probably gravitate toward his iconic guitars. Berry is best known for playing two models of guitars, both of them from Gibson. The first was the Gibson ES-350T, which Berry nicknamed ‘Maybelline’ after his first hit single. This was the guitar that Berry used to record classic songs like ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ and ‘Too Much Monkey Business’. Berry picked up another ES-350T, with different pickups, after 1956 to record all-time tracks like ‘Rock and Roll Music’, ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’, and the eternal ‘Johnny B. Goode’.
Starting in 1963, Gibson discontinued the ES-350T, causing Berry to switch over to the ES-335 model instead. This was the guitar that Berry played on songs like ‘You Never Can Tell’, ‘Promised Land’, and his only number-one hit, ‘My Ding-a-Ling’. Occasionally, Berry would play similar Gibson models, including the ES-330 and ES-345 guitars, but when Berry passed away in 2017, he was buried with one of his beloved ES-335s.
When it came to amps, Berry used so many different kinds that it’s almost impossible to find exactly one to call his. According to legend, Berry stipulated in his concert riders that he be provided with three Fender Showman Reverb amps at every gig. It’s not exactly known what he plugged into, as oftentimes it was whatever was provided for him in the studio or on stage, but Berry almost never used pedals of any kind, even after they became part of the standard guitarist’s arsenal. His tone was in his guitars and in his fingers – besides, his feet were too busy duckwalking to push pedals anyway.
Now that you have the gear, it’s vitally important to know the technique. Berry was a large man, probably about 6 foot 2, and had long fingers to boot. He used those fingers to his advantage when he played rhythm, often sticking to the root and fifth of whatever chord he was playing. Instead of completing a full voicing or simplifying to a power chord, Berry used his pinkie finger to hit the sixth of a chord, giving his songs the iconic shuffle and drive that he became famous for.
Berry loved to start almost all of his songs the same way: with a double-stop riff. That’s how ‘Johnny B. Goode’, ‘My Mustang Ford’, ‘Let It Rock’, ‘Carol’, ‘Brown Eyed Handsome Man’, and countless other classic tracks start. It was so iconic that Berry could hardly start a song without one, and it became a distinctive sign that you were listening to one of his tunes. Once that double-stop riff comes in, you know you’re about to hear a Chuck Berry joint.
Another key to Berry’s lead style was his mastery of the pentatonic scale. Although he rarely played songs in minor keys, Berry often used the bluesy pentatonic scale with accidentals and non-chord tones to give his solos character. While messing around in the major pentatonic scale, make sure you make liberal use of string bends. These were Berry’s bread and butter in order to add a dynamic fluidity to his solos.
Once you get these techniques down, simply wash, rinse, and repeat. Chuck Berry had a style all his own, and once he found it, he almost deviated from it. Repeating the same guitar figures might sound boring or dull, but Berry never seemed to tire of ripping out pentatonic solos or sliding into arresting double stops. That’s just the way he played, from the very beginning to the very end.
Although it’s relatively simple once you deconstruct it, Chuck Berry’s guitar playing was nothing short of revolutionary. Timely covers by everyone from The Beatles to The Grateful Dead, along with prominent appearances in films like Pulp Fiction and Back to the Future, have solidified Berry as the king of rock and roll guitar. Nearly 70 years after the release of his first single, you still hear Berry’s influence on every generation of rock and roll guitar player. That’s because it all started with Chuck and grew from there.
