{"id":405430,"date":"2025-11-26T07:16:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T07:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/405430\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T07:16:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T07:16:18","slug":"the-david-bowie-guitarist-who-talked-back-to-chuck-berry-and-what-he-learned-from-it-you-did-not-talk-to-chuck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/405430\/","title":{"rendered":"The David Bowie Guitarist Who Talked Back to Chuck Berry and What He Learned From It: \u201cYou Did Not Talk to Chuck\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a member of the historic Apollo\u2019s house band, guitarist Carlos Alomar worked with countless musical icons, from Chuck Berry<\/a> to James Brown to Chic to David Bowie. Getting to share the stage with these players, for however long or briefly, allowed Alomar an up-close-and-personal look into how these musicians wrote, rehearsed, performed, and interacted with their colleagues. Sometimes, these practices and habits led to fruitful and dynamic collaborative relationships. Other times\u2026not so much.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, one of Alomar\u2019s clearest memories of the late, great Chuck Berry, which Alomar shared in a 2025 interview with Guitar Player<\/a>. \u201cI got this phone call to do a job at the Rye Playland,\u201d Alomar recalled. \u201cIt was an amusement park. But they had entertainment there under the giant tent and everything. I get there, and in walks Chuck Berry with his electric guitar. He walks right up to us and says, \u2018When I do like this,\u2019 and he takes his headstock and moves it sideways, \u2018you stop.\u2019 \u2018And when I do like this,\u2019 and he moves his headstock up and down, \u2018you play.\u2019 That was it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Describing himself as in his \u201cearly twenties and naive,\u201d Alomar said he called out for Berry as he went to leave the room. \u201cI said, \u2018Excuse me, Mr. Berry. Are we gonna rehearse?\u2019 That man turned around and looked at me and said, \u2018Boy, I ain\u2019t gonna rehearse no rock \u2018n\u2019 roll.\u2019 He turned around, walked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chuck Berry Was One of Many Big Personalities Carlos Alomar Worked With<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carlos Alomar retelling his first memory with Chuck Berry sounds par for the course for the rock icon behind hits<\/a> like \u201cMaybellene\u201d and \u201cJohnny B. Goode\u201d. Even The Rolling Stones\u2019 Keith Richards exchanged words with Berry<\/a>. The guitarist was notoriously brash, no-nonsense, and aggressively averse to feeling like his time was being wasted. But even without all the surprisingly confrontational behavior, Alomar said that performing with Berry was \u201camazing, and to this day, I still kind of conduct the same way that Chuck Berry did. To me, the biggest lesson was you don\u2019t rehearse rock \u2018n\u2019 roll. You either know it, or you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI also learned that you did not talk to Chuck. Chuck talked to you.\u201d Alomar admitted he remembered Berry as a \u201cmean drunk,\u201d while clarifying that he knew that wasn\u2019t all there was to the late musician. \u201cYou only remember your last experience with someone. It\u2019s like a song. You can do a whole song. But if you mess up the ending, all you remember is the messed-up ending. Chuck Berry is like that song.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Alomar thought Berry was a strict rock \u2018n\u2019 roller, he was in for a rude awakening when he went out on the road for a short stint with James Brown. After missing an improvised cue on stage, Alomar remembered collecting his money and realizing his cut was short. \u201cI looked at the guy and said, \u2018Hey, there\u2019s $20 missing,\u2019\u201d Alomar once told Guitar World<\/a>. \u201cHe said, \u2018Yeah, Mr. Brown said you didn\u2019t hit back.\u2019 I was intelligent. My father gave me a mantra: \u2018If you can\u2019t explain it, defend it.\u2019 So, I learned to talk real fast and to explain exactly what I wanted, and I was fired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo by Luciano Viti\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a member of the historic Apollo\u2019s house band, guitarist Carlos Alomar worked with countless musical icons, from…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":405431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[191387,144940,7654,171,975,4185,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-405430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-carlos-alomar","9":"tag-chuck-berry","10":"tag-david-bowie","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-rock-music","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115614776585327243","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}