Hail, Hail
“If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’.” — John Lennon
This post is a weird double whammy. Actually, read on… It might even be a quadruple-whammy.
I was going through my digital music library and decided I’d clean it up a bit and make some space. I don’t know how I got to a really lo-res (56kbps!!!) version of Chuck Berry’s Memphis Tennessee.
And I remembered that John Lennon had nicked Come Together‘s opening line (Here come ol’ flat-top, he was movin’ up with me) from a Chuck Berry lyric. A few google search attempts later and I had discovered it was You Can’t Catch Me. I’d always thought it was Come on…
He’d later record a whole album of Rock’n’Roll standards in order to settle this royalties issue.
It’s funny, I usually post so many lyrics, and this is a lyric-initiated blogpost but it’s actually leading to a mostly instrumental theme. Bear with me…
I then realized John Lennon was also “inspired” for Sun King, another track on Abbey Road.
Forget about the lyrics: they’re mostly gibberish and Google translate didn’t recognize the Span-talian at the end.
Focus on the progression: it sounds a lot like a Fleetwood Mac instrumental called Albatross
And the worst part is Peter Green got his inspiration from Chuck Berry‘s Deep Feeling
Once again, we have the Chuck Berry connection…
But wait, there’s more!
It seems a lot of lesser-known musicians are still not credited by the big boys. Click here to read some more about about Jake Holmes and Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused.
And all this “inspiration” took me straight back to that lyric from 1992: “Hail hail rock ‘n’ roll, comes from r ‘n’ b and soul…”
Ahaha ahaha ….
Pockets of hate, rockets of love
It’s never too late, the change in the color of
The color of her, the color of him
It really doesn’t matter what skin you’re in
Big yellow taxi cab passed me by
Stopped on the next corner to pick up a white guy
The color of you, the color of me
You can’t judge a man by looking at the marque
Hail hail rock ‘n’ roll, comes from r ‘n’ b and soul
Don’t leave me standing in the cold
I used to fake ‘I never grow old’
Hail hail rock ‘n’ roll, don’t leave me standing on the bleak
Don’t leave me stranded on the street
I see the light, I feel the heat
Blame it on you, blame it on me
Now let’s the race that won’t let’s get on history
Pain in my heart won’t let me be
Take it from me but don’t you take away my liberty
Father of coal, mother of pearl
Never too black to blush to pick up a white girl
The color of you, the color of me
You can’t judge a man by looking at the marque
Hail hail rock ‘n’ roll, comes from r ‘n’ b and soul
Don’t leave me standing in the cold
I used to fake ‘I never grow old’
Hail hail rock ‘n’ roll, don’t leave me standing on the bleak
Don’t leave me stranded on the street
I see the light, I feel the heat
Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino
Here come Elvis, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee
Hail hail rock ‘n’ roll, comes from r ‘n’ b and soul ….
Hail hail rock ‘n’ roll, comes from r ‘n’ b and soul ….
Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino
Here come Elvis, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee
Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino
Here come Elvis, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee
I love everything about this song: the video, the lyrics, the story behind the album “Don’t Call Me Buckwheat” as well as Garland Jeffreys‘ crazy career.
But wait! there’s more… we go full circle once again: Hail hail rock ‘n’ roll is a documentary film that chronicles two concerts celebrating Chuck Berry‘s 60th birthday!!!
Post-Scriptum: As I was finishing this post I did a small research and realized John Lennon and Chuck Berry had actually played together on the Mike Douglas show in 1972!!! Thank you WFMU. I’ll leave you with a great version of the track that started this whole post!!!
Audiogrammes 
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