The musician Pete Townshend crowned rock ‘n’ roll’s most important lyricist
Rock ‘n’ roll was a movement more so than a genre. Of course, there are identifying tropes in the sound of Elvis Presley and his band, but his hip-snaking image was just as vital.
In fact, after he first appeared on CBS, the station launched an infamous internal memo that said in future he had to be filmed from the waist up. No more Elvis crotch for the Confederacy. Likewise, the radical, liberated ways of Ma Rainey’s sexualised blues lyrics and Buddy Holly’s teddy boy outfits were all part of it, too. So, while the structure of rock ‘n’ roll might have been simple, there was depth untold to the whole gamut.
Pete Townshend knew this more than most. The Who guitarist is a man who holds the sanctity of rock ‘n’ roll very dear. “I was the child of the guy who played saxophone in a post-war dance band. He knew what his music was for – it was for post-war and it was for dancing with a woman that you might end up marrying. It was about romance, dreams, fantasy,” he told Apple Music.
This dawned on him throughout his childhood, during which, live every generation, he wondered what he could do differently. As he went on to explain, “Music, even today, is about much more than that. It has a function which is to help us understand what is going on in the world and to help us understand what is going on inside us.”
Very few artists reconcile this with the fervour that Townshend thinks such a notion deserves. Like William S Burroughs before him, he figured that the new generation of artists were the real architects of societal change. Townshend had already sensed that his bullied childhood was liberated by this new explosion of sound, and it was the words he took most notice of.
The vital important of rock’s sordid words
“When I started in the rock business, my grounding in music was probably trad jazz rather than rock ’n’ roll. A little bit of classical music thrown in on the side, listening to my dad’s dance orchestra,“ he said of his early days. “And then, suddenly, the ‘miracle’ of rock ’n’ roll – in the shape of Bill Haley, and Cliff, and Elvis Presley, who I still don’t understand. And that was all. And I don’t call that much of an education.“
The attitude and simplicity shocked young Townshend, illuminating a brighter future for the London lad. But that shock might have worn off if it was merely four aggressive chords and a bit of swagger. That’s where he was suddenly educated on substance. In fact, he claims the world of music took note when rock ‘n’ roll became the realm of wordsmiths as well as radicals. One unique, duck-walking star would combine both.
“I don’t think it was until I heard Chuck Berry that I realised what you could do with words – and how unimportant the music was, [because] Chuck Berry always used the same song!“ That’s a statement worthy of an exclamation mark, too. The exact same lick kicks off ‘Sweet Little Rock ‘N’ Roller’, ‘Johnny B. Goode’, ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ and plenty of others.
As Jimi Hendrix would quip while rattling off the musicians who were “20 times better”, Berru wasn’t renowned for his guitar innovation. In some ways, Berry’s recurring intro and chord structure was simply an instantly identifiable calling card, but the 12-bar rhythms that followed weren’t all that different either.
Yet, this formulaic approach allowed him to play around with his topline melodic lyrics endlessly while pushing the words to the forefront in the process. In this regard, he inspired the likes of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Pete Townshend and plenty of others. For the Londoner, Berry started it all.
He rubbished the need for polish and practice and, in a proto-punk way, proclaimed that what you say is more important than how you say it. For a kid who had grown up surrounded by stilted old genres that said little of the rapidly changing world, this was a lightning rod for Townshend. As John Lennon also put it, “If you tried to give rock ‘n’ roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry”.
Townshend and Lennon were far from alone, either. The likes of Ray Davies also took note of Berry’s substance and swagger, swevering the shackles of boring old technicality. As the Kinks rocker said, Berry was the master of the “bum note“. That was the magic of his roughshod rebellion. He wasn’t bad, he was baaaad.
“A bum note is a bad note, wrong note, whatever. But, I think it’s one of the essences of rock ‘n’ roll,“ Davies said. “He was a beautiful player; I’m not saying he was an untidy player, but he just wasn’t afraid to push the limits with bending the strings, all for the groove, some great stuff.” He had his own language in every sense, and that was a revelation from which the world never looked back.
“I think now it’s evolved to an extent where people can look a long way back,“ Townshend told Paul Du Noyer. “Also, the edges of rock have blurred to such an extent that the word ‘rock’ is inadequate to describe the form. You have to start talking about contemporary music.“ With that in mind, he claimed that only two acts have ever surpassed Berry and entered the rarified realm of classic rock: his own band, conveniently, and The Rolling Stones.
