performance :: Blog
Interview with Guitarist Joe Bonamassa
Guitarist Joe Bonamassa is a charismatic blues-rock star and singer-songwriter of stylistic depth and emotional resonance. A child prodigy, Bonamassa caught B.B. King’s ear at the age of 10. After hearing him play for the first time, King said: “This kid's potential is unbelievable. He hasn't even begun to scratch the surface. He's one of a kind.” By age 12, Bonamassa was opening shows for the blues icon and went on to tour with artists such as Buddy Guy, Foreigner, Robert Cray, Stephen Stills, Joe Cocker and Gregg Allman. Bonamassa’s recording career began in the early ’90s with Bloodline, a hard-charging blues-rock group also featuring Robby Krieger’s son, Waylon, and Miles Davis’ son Erin. His 2000 solo debut, A New Day Yesterday, was produced by 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Tom Dowd.
He was named Billboard’s Number One Blues Artist in 2010 based on the charting success of Black Rock ...
Rare Performances: Chuck Berry's 1986 Hall of Fame Induction Jam Session
“To me, Chuck Berry always was the epitome of rhythm and blues playing, rock and roll playing. It was beautiful, effortless, and his timing was perfection. He is rhythm supreme.” – Keith Richards
The very first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony got under way on January 23, 1986, in New York City, with Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones ripping off his tuxedo jacket, revealing a flashy leopard-print jacket underneath, in true rock and roll style. That inaugural evening, Richards – Chuck Berry’s biggest fan – inducted his long-time idol, noting, “…this is the gentleman who started it all!” The ceremony itself was a melting pot of all that created rock and roll – country, gospel, the blues, rockabilly and rhythm & blues – with several of the initial inductees on stage, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers, who stood beside Lewis’ piano bopping and clapping his hands, and Chuck Berry.
With a who's who of rock and ...
Interview with Marshall Chess
Brothers Leonard and Phil Chess were responsible for creating the preeminent blues label of the fifties and sixties. Polish immigrants who settled in Chicago, the brothers formed Aristocrat Records in 1947 before launching their eponymous label two years later. They assembled an unparalleled roster of blues, R&B and rock and roll artists, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Etta James, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. While Phil focused on jazz, Leonard honed in on roots music, making Chess the greatest repository of blues music by the late Fifties. It was under Leonard's tutelage that Muddy Waters’ electric blues fomented a revolution that led directly to rock and roll in the person of Chuck Berry.
The reach of the label's music extended far across the Atlantic, where a band of impressionable twentysomethings billing themselves as the Rolling Stones sought to emulate the hard-driving R&B sounds they heard on songs like Waters' "I Can't Be Satisfied," Big ...
Chuck Berry and Keith Richards Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll
The concert held on October 16, 1986, to celebrate Chuck Berry's 60th birthday and later released as the rock documentary Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, directed by Taylor Hackford, featured a spellbinding lineup of musicians, including Eric Clapton, Etta James, original Berry keys man and blues-piano virtuoso Johnnie Johnson, sax extraordinaire Bobby Keys and Julian Lennon. It was a powerful show of reverence for rock and roll's poet laureate, a tribute as could only be orchestrated by the film's musical director and Berry fan: Keith Richards.
In his 2010 autobiography, Life, Richards shared a letter from April 1962 to his aunt Patty that recounts his introduction to Mick Jagger, writing: "You know I was keen on Chuck Berry and I thought I was the only fan for miles but one mornin' on Dartford Stn. … I was holding one of Chuck's records when a guy I knew at primary school 7-11 yrs [sic] y'know came up to ...
Chuck Berry in "Rock, Rock, Rock!"
Rock, Rock, Rock!, the 1956 black-and-white film starring Cleveland disc jockey and "the King of Rock 'n' Roll" Alan Freed as himself, told the story of a teenage girl trying to gather the money she needs to buy a gown for an upcoming dance. A number of performances – including those by Hall of Fame inductees Chuck Berry, LaVern Baker, the Flamingos, Frankie Lymon and the Teengers and the Moonglows – move the picture along and provide its rock and roll soundtrack.
In the clip below, Freed introduces the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's 2012 American Music Masters honoree Chuck Berry, who delivers his signature moves over "You Can't Catch Me."
Award-winning documentary filmmaker Joe Lauro will present a compilation film of rare clips of Chuck Berry through out his career as part of the American Music Masters conference on Saturday, October 27 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. The film ...
Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll: "Imagine"
"Imagine" became one of the enduring anthems of John Lennon's post-Beatles work. In an interview days before his death, he made a case for the brotherhood of man and woman: "That should be credited as a Lennon/Ono song. A lot of it – the lyric and the concept –came from Yoko, but in those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution, but it was right out of Grapefruit, her book; there's a whole pile of pieces about imagine this and imagine that, and I have given her credit now long overdue." Ono downplayed her involvement, claiming the period was ripe for mutual inspiration. Lennon responded, "Yeah, but if it had been Bowie, I would have put 'Lennon/Bowie' if it had been a male, you know... but when we did it, I just put 'Lennon' because, you know, she's just the wife and, you ...
Rare Performances: Talking Heads Live in 2002
"Boy, am I honored to be mentioned in the same breath as the Talking Heads," noted 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis after taking the podium to induct the Talking Heads into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
"I remember the exact place that I was, the exact moment that it happened, that I heard the Talking Heads for the first time," recalled Kiedis. "That's an incredible indication of what a beautiful influence they would have on my life, because there's not too many things I could say that about. I was in the living room of Donde Bastone, I was 15, it was 1977, and the song that he put on was 'Psycho Killer,' and I absolutely freaked out. I made him play that song over and over and over again because it was like nothing else I'd ever heard, and it made me ...
Rare Performances: Pink Floyd and Billy Corgan Live in 1996
In the fall of 1995, Smashing Pumpkins, the Chicago-based alternative band who cracked the Billboard 200 Top 10 in August 1993 with Siamese Dream, released the anticipated studio follow up, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The sprawling 26-song double album Corgan then referred to as The Wall for Generation X highlighted the lead songwriter's penchant for abstract lyricism and expansive, evocative instrumental arrangements that owed much to the psychedelic rockers who came decades before him.
At the 1996 Hall of Fame induction ceremony, a twentysomething Corgan inducted Pink Floyd, with David Gilmour, Nick Mason and the late Richard Wright on hand to accept their awards. "The first album I heard was Dark Side of the Moon, which as we all know is probably one of the best albums of all time," said Corgan, a self-professed "fan" of the band. "I first heard this album in The Wall era, which to me, at my tender age of 14, was too ...
