Chuck Berry Quotes

He never ever learned to read or write so well, but he could play his guitar like he was ringing a bell.

A contract is an ask game, and if it asks for an hour, and I submit to an hour, then it's an hour. When I look at a contract, I look at the obligation - where, when, how long, the compensation. If I agree to it, that's the way it is. I have an obligation. They have an obligation.

He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell.

Could you imagine the way I felt, I couldn't unfasten her safety belt. All the way home I held a grudge, for the safety belt that wouldn't budge.

Don't let the same dog bite you twice.

Of the five most important things in life, health is first, education or knowledge is second, and wealth is third. I forget the other two.

Science and religion are both the same thing. They're there; they're life. If it's not science, it's not a fact.

This is my 1963 Ford. It was the only car I could A-Ford.

Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news.

Back in the class room, open your books, keep up, the teacher don't know how mean she looks.

Rock is rock, and, rock and roll, rock is just short for rock and roll.

My music is simple stuff. Anybody can sit down, look at a set of symbols and produce sounds the music represents.

Music is an important part of our culture and record stores play a vital part in keeping the power of music alive

Music is music and I think music people are the delivers, the actors, when they put their music out they want to insert their character in it. So they call it such and such so you know how they live so to speak.

Everything I wrote about wasn't about me, but about the people listening.

Actually I'm writing as best I can, in order to keep the momentum and the career there, but I want to live.

Maybellene, why can't you be true?

Hail, hail rock and roll / Deliver me from the days of old.

If the people in the audience are talking, you're being ignored. If the people are gazing at you, you've got something they want to hear.

Up come a flat top, he was movin' up with me.

My ding-a-ling, my ding-a-ling, won't you play with my ding-a-ling.

The gateway to freedom...was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'.

They're drinkin' home brew from a wooden cup. The folks were dancin' there got all shook up.

You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.

A song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song Yesterday. Listen to the lyrics.

All were artists, playing foolish, having fights and making love as if the rest of the world had no racial problems whatsoever.

You know, your ears record. You might can sing a song once you hear it.

It's amazing how much you can learn if your intentions are truly earnest.

Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering "who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?"

It's gotta be rock and roll music, if you wanna dance with me.

Praise doesn't mean anything to me. I don't judge myself.

I would sing the blues if I had the blues.

All I want for Christmas is a rock n roll electric guitar.

There have been so many empires, kings are kinda going out of style.

I think I see her, please let me off this bus. Nadine, honey, is that you?

Sometime we'll try and reach for things we know we each want and don't deserve.

Prejudice doesn't make me mad. It just - I guess 'pisses me off' is the word.

The Big Band Era is my era. People say, 'Where did you get your style from?' I did the Big Band Era on guitar. That's the best way I could explain it.

Describe Elvis Presley? He was the greatest who ever was, is or ever will be.

I have so many entities now as grow older you gain responsibilities, you know, real estate, and I like video, and you know I want to live a little you know, because time is passing, its not as long as it has been.

Rock is my child and my grandfather.

When I was a kid I used to scoot under the table, and whenever company would come around you know or my sisters or parents would tell me, go under the table and I'd do it because it was entertainment for the family or aunts or whatever. And one time at the Paramount when I first did it, you know, Brooklyn Paramount, I did it in the act during an instrumental and it got a big ovation and so I coined it as one of the things I should do in the act. And since I've been doing it.

Looking hard for a drive in, searching for a corner cafe, where the hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day.

All in all it was my intention to hold both the black and the white clientele by voicing the different kinds of songs in their customary tongues.

If your playing basic music, its just rock.

Don't bother me, leave me alone. Anyway, I'm almost grown.

I grew up thinking art was pictures until I got into music and found I was an artist and didn't paint.

Music is music; you can't change rock and say well this is punk rock and this is acid rock or rockabilly.