The songwriter John Lennon focused on more than anyone: “I have no other interest in life”
John Lennon, Paul McCartney and the rest of The Beatles might still be the most influential band in the world, but there was a time, before their many great innovations, that most roads did not lead back to them. When they emerged, music had a completely different configuration than the one we know today. It was only thanks to the rock ‘n’ roll pioneers of the 1950s, such as Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, that the foundations were laid for the Fab Four to later construct the guiding light of their sonic temple atop.
When reflecting on the dazzling creative arc of The Beatles, most people concentrate on the psychedelic experimentation of 1966’s Revolver onwards, a time when they started to pull away from playing live, and much preferred the sanctuary of the studio, where they could work on their art and push it as far forward as their imaginations and technology would allow. A period of immense innovation, typified by 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, it was during this recording that they renounced long-established musical standards more brazenly than anyone had ever done and rewrote the handbook along the way.
Despite their position as inventors, The Beatles were always open about their influences. While Bob Dylan would make a significant impact on them by instilling a frank hit of reality into popular music with his protest songwriting in his earliest chapter, kicking off their consequential experiments with drugs by introducing them to weed – which produced 1965’s Rubber Soul – and his electric period inspiring Lennon’s work with both confessional songwriting and surreal wordplay, he wasn’t the only vital figure for them.
One of these was Chuck Berry. Not only did he transform guitar playing by making it more energetic and gritty, as well as place it front and centre of the mix, but his animated vocal delivery, naughty lyrics, and energetic stage presence were unlike anything anyone had ever heard. Using the influence of the blues, he took the components and burnished them for the incoming era, where the younger generation was starting to rebel under the flag of this new form of rock ‘n’ roll, refusing to lead boring lives like their parents.
Although his transformative guitar playing made a mark on everybody, from The Beatles to Jimi Hendrix and even ‘The Bard’ himself, Dylan, it’s important to note that Berry’s lyrics were also far ahead of their time. They vocalised the dawn of the nascent sexual and cultural revolution. Just listen to the lyrics of ‘Memphis, Tennessee’ or his ultimate cut, ‘Johnny B. Goode’; they are steeped in the real, in Berry’s life, in sex, drama and, of course, rock ‘n’ roll. It says everything that Berry was such a pioneering wordsmith that Dylan, who would later be lauded as the first man to make music real, called him “the Shakespeare of rock ‘n’ roll”.
Lennon was always clear about Berry’s effect on him and popular music. In 1972’s Anthology, he reflected on the 1950s and how Berry stood out, with him the only artist he concentrated on. The Liverpudlian said: “In the ’50s, when people were virtually singing about nothing, Chuck Berry was writing social-comment songs, with incredible metre to the lyrics. When I hear rock, good rock, of the calibre of Chuck Berry, I just fall apart and I have no other interest in life. The world could be ending if rock ‘n’ roll is playing.”
Lennon and The Beatles were so indebted to Berry that they recorded ‘Johnny B. Goode’ in 1964, and played it live numerous times. They even covered ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ in 1963 for With the Beatles, and ‘Rock and Roll Music’ on the following year’s Beatles for Sale. The duck-walking American also impressed himself so exceedingly upon Lennon’s approach that he would eventually sue Lennon for the indomitable ‘Come Together’ leaning heavily on his 1956 number, ‘You Can’t Catch Me’. The classic line, “Here comes old flat-top…” was pilfered from that very song.
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