Top 111 Quotes & Sayings by Chuck Berry - Page 2

I wanted to be a comedian. And I did that so much in high school, I couldn't get a girlfriend.

In a way, I feel it might be ill-mannered to try and top myself. The music I play is a ritual. Something that matters to people in a special way. I wouldn't want to interfere with that.

If I wasn't a musician, I'd take up the law. They are the rottenest, wealthiest people in America.

I used to work at Kroger's. When the store opened, you were there. When I worked in an automobile plant, you punched in. So it showed if you were a minute late. If you have a paid job, you show up.

What kind of shorts I wear has nothing to do with music.

I didn't connect with the kids. I was in the studio. I never saw the kids. I hoped they liked it, of course. And then I'd go write some more. And then I'd go buy me a home. Very American.

The media dresses things up. There's a lot of inaccuracy.

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.

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.

I always want to play the songs that people want to hear.

People said I was king, but I was never king, and I say I'm the prime minister.

I added and deleted according to the audiences' response to different gestures, and chose songs to build an act that would constantly stimulate my audience.

It amazes me when I hear people say, 'I want to go out and find out who I am.' I always knew who I was. I was going to be famous if it killed me.

Maybe it is true what they say, that playing these Chuck Berry songs is easy. But try singing them. The words come out hard, like bullets.

Roll over Beethoven, tell Tchaikovsky the news.

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.

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

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

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

It used to be called boogie-woogie, it used to be called blues, used to be called rhythm and blues...It's called rock now.

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

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

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

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

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

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'.

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

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?"

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I'm a millionaire, but I cut the grass. And each time I cut it, it's my grass. And that is satisfying.

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.

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

If your playing basic music, its just rock.

Rock 'n' roll accepted me and paid me, even though I loved the big bands I went that way because I wanted a home of my own. I had a family. I had to raise them. Let's don't leave out the economics. No way.

Rock is my child and my grandfather.

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

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

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

He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell.

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

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

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

Maybellene, why can't you be true?

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.