Western cultural history can be divided into two eras: b.c.b. and a.c.b. For those of us raised in the a.c.b. era (after Chuck Berry), the old world can never come into focus. It appears as through a lens whose edges are softly vignetted. It can be neither experienced nor understood. The July 1955 release of Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene” did more than define rock ’n’ roll: It changed Western culture.
On The Mike Douglas Show in 1972, John Lennon met Chuck Berry for the first time. When Douglas asked Berry whether the latter had invented rock ’n’ roll, Lennon quickly interjected, “I’ll answer for him. He did.” Music historians might scoff at the assertion that Berry invented the genre, noting that Ike Turner, Bill Haley, Big Joe Turner, and many others were banging out jump blues, boogie-woogie, and rockabilly in the early ’50s (and even the late ’40s). But Lennon understood what Chuck Berry had created with “Maybellene.” Although some of that earlier music might have been called “rock ’n’ roll” at the time, each kind remained a distinct ingredient until Chuck Berry blended them together.
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