SENSATIONAL NEWS: Chuck Berry and Peter Sellars win Sweden's Polar Music Prize 2014 The parameters of rock music were set one day in May 1955, when Chuck Berry recorded his debut single “Maybellene”. Chuck Berry was the rock’n’roll pioneer who turned the electric guitar into the main instrument of rock music. Every riff and solo played by rock guitarists over the last 60 years contains DNA that can be traced right back to Chuck Berry. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and a million other groups began to learn their craft by playing Chuck Berry songs. Chuck Berry is also a superb songwriter. In the course of three minutes he conjures up an image of the everyday life and dreams of a teenager, often with the focus on cars. Chuck Berry, born in 1926, was the first to drive up onto the highway and announce that we are born to run. The director Peter Sellars is a living definition of what the Polar Music Prize is all about: highlighting the music and presenting it in a new context. With his controversial productions of opera and theatre, Peter Sellars has depicted everything from war and famine to religion and globalisation. Sellars has set Mozart in the luxury of Trump Tower and in the drug trade of Spanish Harlem, turned Nixon’s visit to China into opera and set Kafka’s obsession with home cleanliness to music. Peter Sellars shows us that classical music is not about dusty sheet music and metronomic precision, but that classical music, with its violent power and complexity, has fundamentally always been and will continue to be a way of reflecting and depicting the world. Source: Polar Music Prize * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chuck Berry home on National Register
usatoday.com / December 15, 2008
Johan Hasselberg, Box 156, SE-95222 Kalix, Sweden
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * November 18, 2007, me and my daughter have been to the Chuck Berry gig in Tilburg, the Netherlands. The gig was awsome. Chuck is still rockin' our socks off and he even did a duckwalk on stage!!! "Johnny B. GOOOOOOOOOOOOD" was fantastic and his daughter plays the mouth organ very well. "Nadine", "Carol", "My Ding-A-Ling". LOL! Great evening to remember. I can't tell you how much of a treat it was to see Chuck and the band at Cranford MusicFest on Saturday, Sep 15, 2007. My ears are still ringing because I had to be so close to the stage to see him and the band, but its worth it!!! It was an honor to be there. I will treasure it forever. Come back to NJ soon. |
Charles Berry Jr and Jim Marsala in Berlin 2007.