![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Paul-Simon-Musician-1974-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover)<\/p>\n
Wed 5 November 2025 19:45, UK <\/p>\n
The idea of becoming a rock and roll star didn\u2019t really fit with what Paul Simon<\/a> wanted to do. <\/p>\n He grew up on rock and roll, but he wasn\u2019t exactly the same kind of artist that could hold a room together the same way that Elvis Presley or Little Richard could whenever he played. He was more interested in being a storyteller, and that tradition went back to a time well before rock and roll was even born.<\/p>\n Hell, as far back as music goes, there have been people willing to share their stories in song. Even if you listen to the greatest classical musicians who ever walked the Earth, they were always looking to profess their love, pain, and any other emotion they were working through in their music, but when it comes to rock, the clearest originator of the genre always comes back to the blues.<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean you have to be a bluesman to understand rock and roll, but if you look at what the genre\u2019s roots are, you\u2019re going to be drawing from people like Muddy Waters, whether you know it or not. A lot of the greatest blues players approached their stories of anguish as if they were second-nature, but something got lost in translation when transferring over to rock. If Robert Johnson showed everyone blues could be painful, Chuck Berry showed his generation rock could be fun.<\/p>\n Because if there\u2019s one thing that Berry was good at, it was taking people on a journey with his lyrics. There\u2019s already a common joke that every one of his tunes sounded the same, but it was never about trying to master every song he played. It was about hearing what he had to say, whether that was talking about going through the nostalgia trip of \u2018School Days\u2019 or the borderline-political commentary of a song like \u2018Brown Eyed Handsome Man\u2019.<\/p>\n At that point, Simon was still working on singing doo-wop songs, but in Berry, he found someone that he could relate to a little more, saying<\/a>, \u201cChuck Berry, I would say he was probably the first really major influence. But I didn\u2019t really know that until later. The reason that I single out Chuck Berry is because that was the first time that I heard words flowing in an absolutely effortless way. That were not just clich\u00e9 words. He had very powerful imagery at his disposal in a lot of songs.\u201d<\/p>\n