The Guitar Plugged · Guitarist Index
Chuck Berry
Solo
1953–2017
Rock · Blues
The man who invented the rock guitar riff as a hook.
Main guitar
Gibson ES-350T, later ES-335
Signature sound
Bright hollowbody through a driven Fender Bassman, with double-stop bite
Era
1953–2017
Influence
94 / 100
Genre
Rock / Blues
Why they matter
The man who invented the rock guitar riff as a hook.
Berry's contribution is structural. Before him, guitar in popular music mostly accompanied. He put the riff at the front, made the intro the hook, and wrote lyrics about cars, school and teenage life that gave rock and roll its subject matter as well as its sound.
The playing itself is deceptively hard: two-note double stops bent slightly sharp, played fast and loose over a shuffle, with a right hand that never lets up. Countless players learn 'Johnny B. Goode' and get the notes but not the drive.
Every band in the British Invasion started as a Chuck Berry covers act. That is the whole argument for his placement here.
The sound
Bright hollowbody through a driven Fender Bassman, with double-stop bite
Johnny B. Goode
Bright hollowbody into a small overdriven amp — the treble is the point, and it is why the intro cuts through any mix.
Maybellene
A rawer, earlier sound with more room ambience and a country-derived attack.
Roll Over Beethoven
Double stops driven hard enough to blur into distortion, defining the sound of early rock rhythm guitar.
Recreate the sound
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Style & technique
How you recognise the playing
Double-stop lead
Two-string bent intervals used as the primary lead voice rather than single notes.
Riff-as-hook writing
Intros designed to be the most memorable part of the song — the template for rock songwriting.
Shuffle-driven rhythm
A relentless boogie right hand that supplies the song's momentum without a second guitarist.
Showmanship as part of the part
The duckwalk was theatre, but the playing never dropped a beat while it happened.
The rig
Instruments, amplification and effects
- Gibson ES-350T
- Gibson ES-335
- Gibson ES-355
- Fender Bassman
- Fender Dual Showman
- House backline (famously, whatever the promoter provided)
- None to speak of — amp overdrive only
- Gibson P-90s (ES-350T) and later humbuckers
Essential listening
Where to start
- 011955
Maybellene
Chuck Berry · single
- 021956
Roll Over Beethoven
Chuck Berry · single
- 031958
Johnny B. Goode
Chuck Berry · Chuck Berry Is on Top
- 041958
Sweet Little Sixteen
Chuck Berry · single
- 051964
Nadine
Chuck Berry · St. Louis to Liverpool
Career landmarks
The moments that mattered
'Johnny B. Goode' intro
The most copied eight bars in rock guitar, and the one included on the Voyager Golden Record.
The riff as songwriting
He established that a guitar figure could be the identity of a song, not just its accompaniment.
The legacy
Lineage
Influenced by
T-Bone Walker
Charlie Christian
Carl Hogan
Influenced
Adjacent players
More from the archive
The player who turned amplifier noise into a musical language.
The virtuoso who rewrote the vocabulary of rock guitar.
Session-hardened producer who built rock guitar as an architecture, not a solo.
The player who translated Chicago blues into British rock volume.
The restless technician who kept reinventing what an electric guitar could be.
The master of the long note — space, sustain and perfect note choice.