Roll over Beethoven
Roll Over Beethoven is the title of an evergreen composed and recorded by Chuck Berry in 1956 .
History of origin
In her early teens, Chuck Berry's sister Lucy Berry took up the only piano at home for her classical music practice . Chuck Berry with his blues- oriented music was left behind. The composition of Roll Over Beethoven reflects these experiences. In the title Ludwig van Beethoven stands symbolically for classical music, "roll over" for "roll over". Most of the text was therefore dedicated to his sister and not to Beethoven himself. Since his mother didn't want to see justice, Chuck Berry considered writing a letter and mailing it to the local DJ to a radio disc jockey . In humorous arrogance he tries to equate rock 'n' roll with the music of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and is convinced that both would be surprised and enthusiastic. The text announces the musical generation change, because Beethoven and Tchaikovsky are outdated, rock 'n' roll is the music of the present. Finally, he tried in puns the epidemiology at the Rock 'n' roll coming pneumonia and the boogie-woogie triggered flu ; a passage that was picked up a year later by Huey "Piano" Smith with the title Rockin 'Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu (July 1957). Berry quotes a title by Louis Jordan (November 1947), Blue Suede Shoes by Carl Perkins (January 1956), Early in the Morning , and The Cat and the Fiddle refers to Bo Diddley , who also liked to play the violin.
Roll Over Beethoven was recorded on April 16, 1956 with Too Much Monkey Business , Brown Eyed Handsome Man , Havana Moon and Drifting Heart in only Chuck Berry's third recording session in Chicago. As a B-side was Drifting Heart selected. The line- up consisted of Chuck Berry (vocals / guitar), Johnnie Johnson (piano), Leroy Davis (saxophone), Willie Dixon (bass) and Fred Below (drums). The producers were the label owners Phil and Leonard Chess . In the absence of their own recording studios , they had Chuck Berry recorded - like almost the entire early Chess repertoire - in the studios of the Universal Recording Corporation in Chicago.
Publication and Success
Roll Over Beethoven / Drifting Heart ( Chess Records 1626) was released as a single in May 1956 and made it onto the US pop charts in August 1956 , where it only climbed to 29th place. She was able to reach number two in the rhythm and blues charts. Despite the only moderate placement in the US pop charts, the single sold well and became the second million seller for Chuck Berry. Roll Over Beethoven is one of the 50 titles that the Library of Congress added to the National Recording Registry in 2003 . The song ranks 97th of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by the music magazine Rolling Stone (as of 2004).
Cover version of the Beatles
The Beatles had Roll Over Beethoven on December 25, 1962 for the first time live in the Hamburg Star-Club played, taken by Adrian Barber and only on the LP Live! Released at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany 1962 (September 1977). On February 28, 1964, they recorded the song live on the BBC for the show Saturday Club . The first studio recording took place on July 30, 1963 at Abbey Road Studios for the LP With the Beatles (November 1963). In the US, the song appeared on the LP The Beatles' Second Album in April 1964 and as the opening track on the EP Four by the Beatles (May 1964). The song was released as a single in March 1964 and only reached 68th place on the US pop hit parade during the British Invasion .
Cover versions
There are at least 57 other cover versions . Carl Perkins was the first to take up the evergreen (January 30, 1957). Gene Vincent covered Roll Over Beethoven several times, first for the television series Town Hall Party with country music (live November 7, 1959), for the BBC Saturday Club (December 7, 1963), in Gary Nieland's home studio ( Salem, Oregon) ; 14/15 May 1969) and - shortly before his death - on the Johnny Walker Radio Show (October 1, 1971). Other essential versions are from The Velairs (August 1961) or Pat Wayne & The Beachcombers . This unknown beat band also recorded the song in Abbey Road in a Beatles-like version (produced by band member Bob Barrat; November 1963).
This was followed by Bobby Russell (1964), Rattles ( B-side of Bye Bye Johnny ; April 1964), Johnny Rivers (LP Here We à Go Go Again!; October 1964), Jerry Lee Lewis (January 6, 1965), Linda Gail & Jerry Lee Lewis (produced by Jerry Kennedy ; September 1969), Billy M. Lawrie (producer was Maurice Gibb ; November 1969), Ten Years After (LP Live at the Fillmore East ; February 27-28, 1970) or Mountain ( December 1971).
Jeff Lynne produced an extra long and unusual version of 8:09 minutes for his Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) on September 8, 1972. In the intro she uses the first movement from Beethoven's 5th Symphony and interpolates this motif almost seamlessly in Chuck Berry's subsequent composition through a fast electric guitar part. The famous Beethoven riff of four notes is repeated with the guitar during the song. In addition to Jeff Lynne (vocals, guitar, Moog synthesizer and harmonium), the cast in the London AIR studios also included Bev Bevan (drums and percussion), Wilf Gibson (violin), Mike Edwards and Colin Walker (cello), Michael de Albuquerque (Bass) and Richard Tandy (Moog synthesizer, piano, guitar and harmonium). In the AIR studio next door, Paul McCartney's recordings of Live and Let Die also took place, whose producer George Martin stopped by ELO and nodded his head in confirmation. After it was released in January 1973, the single version, shortened to 4:32 minutes, climbed to 6th place on the British charts and 42nd place in the US charts.
interpretation
Contrary to what the title of the piece of music might suggest, it does not call for something like a symbolic overrun of Beethoven and his musical culture. Rather, it is an invitation to him to step over to the side and into the sphere of pop music. Berry called the hero of the Viennese classic to his peers via rock song. At the same time, rock 'n' roll was born and there were waves of indignation among conservative fans of classical music in the United States about this nascent - supposedly noisy - “unmusic”.
Just a few years earlier, the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955/1956 challenged racial segregation . This event is considered to be the birth of the US civil rights movement.
It was daring when the black rock musician, so to speak, offered the idol of "white" musical culture in a figurative sense of friendship. The music journalist and university professor Lutz Lesle writes:
“This demonstrative gesture, which wanted to wipe out the elitist behavior of the upper class in the US, has set a precedent. The Beatles picked up the song, along with some of the other musicians in the 'scene': And so gradually a chapter of Beethoven's impact on pop music emerged. The rock musicians tried to expose the educated bourgeois either / or, 'Beethoven or Rock', as an ideological prejudice. They propagated 'Rock with Beethoven'. "
The beginning of the extremely rapid development of the mass media meant a radical upheaval in the production, distribution, reception and impact conditions of music, which first took place in the industrially highly developed USA. It was a country that had not suffered the devastating destruction of World War II and was confronted with it directly in everyday life. Berry's Roll Over Beethoven shows this clearly. The song reveals this not only in terms of the surface of the commercially fueled rock 'n' roll enthusiasm, but much more in a developing feeling for the dubiousness of all the musical rules of conduct established at that time - in social terms Behavior that is considered a norm of behavior for society - using the example of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky . He questioned their supposedly safe place within a bourgeois order and society - which they held.
The German musicologist Peter Wicke notes:
“With the technology of audiovisual mass communication and the resulting social changes within culture, the development has actually literally 'rolled over' the aesthetic maxims of Beethoven and the great bourgeois musical tradition. The changes were profound. [...] There are new experiences in the medium of art, tied to the technology of mass communication, conveyed in the everyday life of their recipients. You have found expression in a concept of music for which the terminology of the work of art aesthetics is unsuitable. They have robbed the academic art expert of his authority because in this social model of art, the popular art forms, everyone is an expert at the same time. Therein lies the deeper truth of Chuck Berry's rock 'n' roll number from the 1950s - Roll Over Beethoven . "
Berry equates the all-encompassing fascination of rock 'n' roll music with fever and illness, the inevitability of which is seen as a metaphor for its effectiveness. It is not without irony that he confidently contrasted this fascination with an understanding of art - symbolized in the names of classical artists - to which greater contrast than the sung jukebox and generally a self-sufficient sensuality of rock 'n' roll do not seem possible. A comparable status and equal cultural relevance are claimed at the same time. It is much more than a mere provocation of the adult world through an emphatically disrespectful treatment of its musical sanctuaries. What Berry screamed out in this song, his "breathless Roll Over Beethoven", calls for an understanding of music that is aware of its novelty and challenges traditional musical traditions.
On closer inspection, what was new was the relationship between rock 'n' roll and records as a means of mass communication; Radio, TV and film. American rock 'n' roll had its prerequisites for its existence in these. He uncompromisingly accepted this as a possibility for artistic creation. The money-making power that it showed had never existed before. It is not, as is often claimed, anchored in the supposed exoticism of its Afro-American roots. Even in the era of swing - several decades before - “black” artists and bands were confirmed by a very universally skin-pigmented audience. Contrary to what is often claimed, there had already been exchange processes between “black” and “white” music before that. The pretense of a completely separate development of Afro-American and Euro-American music contains a racist argument. This attempted to legitimize established racial barriers by claiming an actual cultural contrast between "black" and "white" allegedly based on skin pigmentation, which only rock 'n' roll bridged. The relationships between the Afro-American minority population in the USA and the Americans “white skin color” are far more complex than such a schematic black-and-white thinking suggests, even against the background of arbitrarily erected racial barriers.
Among other things, it was Berry's Roll Over Beethoven in which the new musical self-image of the rock 'n' roll enthusiasm, which was already at its peak in the USA, found its provocative and challenging expression. This remained something of a leitmotif.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chuck Berry, The Autobiography , 1988, p. 150
- ^ Dave Marsh, The Heart of Rock and Soul (1989), 43
- ^ Ian MacDonald: Revolution in the Head , Chicago 2007, p. 93
- ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 95
- ^ Hans Olof Gottfridsson, The Beatles: From Cavern to Star Club , 1997, p. 156
- ^ Derek Henderson, Gene Vincent: A Companion , 2005, p. 38
- ↑ Jeff Lynne songs on Roll Over Beethoven
- ↑ Ludwig van Pop . In: Zeit Online , April 8, 1977
- ↑ Peter Wicke: Rock Music. On the aesthetics and sociology of a mass medium. Reclam, Leipzig 1986.
- ↑ Peter Wicke: "Roll Over Beethoven". New experiences in the medium of art