(Credits: Far Out / Bert Verhoeff / Anefo / Nationaal Archief / Chess Records)
Sun 22 March 2026 0:00, UK
It didn’t take much for Elton John to start gushing about some of his favourite artists.
The biggest names in music had left an indelible impression on him before he had even touched a piano, and from the first time he saw Elvis Presley, he knew that there was a way for someone to have a massive effect on people purely through what they could do onstage. But even if Presley was a living legend, there were more than a few musical juggernauts that John didn’t think deserved to be among the greatest of all time.
And no, it’s not Madonna. For as much as John and ‘The Queen of Pop’ have had their spats over the years, there was never a point where she ever seemed not to pull her weight when it came to her artistry. The visual was just as important as the music itself whenever she made a record, and while John may not have agreed with her approach, the fact that she could put on one glamorous show after the next had to have an effect on anyone with eyes, especially when she got to the album Erotica.
But for John, his taste was more catered to people who could knock out everyone with pure music whenever they made a record. Most rock and roll fans needed something a bit more than someone singing a song at a piano or with a guitar in their hands, and there wasn’t a soul on this Earth that wasn’t transported somewhere else the minute that they heard the opening riff to ‘Satisfaction’ by The Rolling Stones or were levelled when they heard Aretha Franklin singing ‘Respect’ for the first time.
Then again, all artists who have been going around the world for a while have to deal with their one sworn enemy at least once: time. There’s always a limit on how long anyone can keep up their insane track record for hits, and while John was lucky enough to have different periods where everything was working perfectly between him and Bernie Taupin, he did get a little bit annoyed by the one-trick ponies still making the rounds.
It’s not like a band like AC/DC needed to retire if they were really good at their one trick, but when listening to someone like Chuck Berry, John did have a few issues with him. Here was someone known as the father of rock and roll for writing songs like ‘Johnny B Goode’, and yet on every one of his albums, he seemed to be making songs that sounded like he hadn’t covered any new ground since 1959.
That might work fine for his fans, but John wanted a little bit more out of Berry or would rather not hear him at all, saying in 1973, “Chuck Berry is god, but what the fuck has he written? I mean, people say he wrote all those great rock and roll songs, and we never wrote any, but at least we’re still writing things. He hasn’t written anything decent for 15 years. It amazes me why everybody exults him. I think it’s about time all this Chuck Berry idolizing came to a halt. I can dig the nostalgia trip, and I dig his old records, but I find that side of the business very irritating.”
Sure, the songs all sound the same, but Berry was one of the few cases where he could be given a pass compared to everyone else. There’s a certain magic that comes with the guitar lick that started all guitar licks, and while John might not have seen it at the time, the fact that it still excited people seeing Marty McFly do his own version of the tune in Back to the Future is proof enough that the song would outlast every other rock song in the world.
So while John might be one to bring a bit more sophistication into rock and roll, the reason why Berry’s music has endured is because it’s all about the bare fundamentals. There isn’t a whole lot going on in those mixes, but because it’s played with passion, there’s a good chance that his records are never going to go out of style no matter how many times he remade some of his old classics.
