One of my realizations is that if you revel over joy, you're going to ache over pain and get killed over hurt. Your span of feelings are going to go just as far one way as the other.
Chuck BerryRead
I directed my music to the teen-agers. I was 30 years old when I did 'Maybellene.' My school days had long been over when I did 'School Day,' but I was thinking of them.
Interpretation
Chuck Berry reflects on how he aimed his music at teenagers even as he aged, recalling his own school experiences.
In this quote, Chuck Berry expresses his connection to the youth culture through his music, highlighting how he created songs that resonated with the experiences of teenagers despite being older than them. Songs like 'Maybellene' and 'School Day' serve as a bridge between his past and the present teenage audience, showcasing the timeless nature of youth and the universal themes of growing up.
In practice
This quote could be cited during a discussion about the influence of nostalgia in music.
One of my realizations is that if you revel over joy, you're going to ache over pain and get killed over hurt. Your span of feelings are going to go just as far one way as the other.
Everything I wrote about wasn't about me, but about the people listening.
Rock is my child and my grandfather.
In the Fifties, there were certain places we couldn't ride on the bus, and now there is a possibility of a black man being in the White House. You have to feel good about it.
Hail, hail rock and roll / Deliver me from the days of old.
I wanted to play blues. But I wasn't blue enough. I wasn't like Muddy Waters, people who really had it hard. In our house, we had food on the table. We were doing well compared to many. So I concentrated on this fun and frolic, these novelties.
A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!
The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.
People do dismiss ambient music, don't they? They call it 'easy listening,' as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.
As a child, all I knew was that people kept asking me to sing, and because I liked to please, I would sing. It wasn't until my dad told me that my singing made him happy that I began to think my voice might be good.
I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. ... I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14-to meet women. ... If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings. ... My songs are like my kids.
I write songs. Then I record them. And later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple. I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it...Music is spiritual. The music business is not. Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.
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