Alice Cooper discussed The Rolling Stones and The Beatles getting their sound from Chuck Berry in a new BBC Radio interview. The Rolling Stones Guitarist ‘Lost Job’ To Rock Icon?
The BBC host said, “Yeah, it’s a big con because The Beatles lived in Liverpool, and their dads worked on ships, and their dads and uncles brought back blues records from the Mississippi Delta. They refashioned them and sold them back to you. You then sold it to the likes of Johnny Rotten, and then he sold it back to you again!”
Cooper responded, “It was really good though because when we were learning to play, the best thing you can do when you’re learning to play is learning Chuck Berry.
“Chuck Berry – every young band in a garage right now should be learning Chuck Berry because that’s the basis of everything. That’s the basis of every kind of hard rock there is.
“And The Beatles were doing Chuck Berry, The Stones were doing Chuck Berry, every single British band was doing Chuck Berry. And to this day, I think that hard rock, even what we’re playing now, is based on that nucleus of Chuck Berry.
“So he was the one that we had in common, that was the one American act that we had in common. And the great thing about Chuck Berry was he could tell you a story in three minutes, and make it funny.
“And if he couldn’t think of a word, he’d make one up! He’d say, ‘Don’t give me no botheration.’ There’s no such word as ‘botheration’! But it made total sense though, in his language, we all went, ‘Oh, yeah, OK.'”
