Hail, Hail Rock 'n' Roll!

Interesting counterpoint tonight. I went to the Chelmsford beer festival, as you do, and listened to a quite competent rock ‘n’ roll band. But then they did the Who’s Can’t Explain. Now I remember listening to the Who playing Can’t Explain in the Ealing club in 1964, can it possibly have been fifty-one years ago? Well it was, and to say that the band I heard tonight were the palest shadow of the Who as they were is not to denigrate the band, rather to remember the brilliance of the Who, surely one of the most exciting bands ever.

Then on the TV this evening was the recording of a live concert by Chuck Berry in 1972. Chuck berry is the same age as the Queen, he’ll be ninety next year. And listening to him and watching him, the most competent of performers, took me right back to my days in the band in the early 1960s. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that if you want to succeed in the pop music scene, you need to be original. The Who were original; Chuck Berry, endlessly imitated is, nevertheless, actually inimitable. Hail, Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll!