Chords for Nils Lofgren on Beatles, the Who, Keith Richards and backing Chuck Berry

[F#] _ _ _ _ I spent eight years in the South Side of Chicago where I was born.
When I was five, every kid played accordion.
I asked to take lessons and I did.
After the waltzes and polkas, you move into classical or jazz.
My teacher took me into classical accordion.
It was an enormous musical study and backdrop.
And as a young teenager, _ I fell in love with the Beatles and Stones.
_ Through them, I discovered the British Invasion, the American counterpart of great rock bands
in the 60s, Staxvolt, Motown, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, all of it.
Little Richard, Jerry Lee.
_ _ I just was playing [B] guitar as a hobby.
[F#] After playing classical [N] music, it's the written note.
You cannot change the written note.
To just improvise blues guitar was very exciting.
And having emotionally fallen in love with this new type of music and sound, it was very
_ transformative for me and powerful.
But it was always just a hobby.
In the mid-60s, you really didn't see rock and roll.
The Beatles, the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, you loved them.
But you never thought I could do that for a living.
_ _ Just like we do to our kids now.
You're a teenager.
Every four months, you're a stranger to yourself because of hormones.
And all the adults are saying, pick a job and a life and a college and what are you
going to be?
And you're like, what are you talking about?
I don't even know who I am, let alone what I'm going to be.
But that's what we do to our kids.
And I was no exception.
I had great parents that financed all these lessons.
And then, very long story short, because it's a whole other story.
But basically, I hit the road at 17 with my band, Grin.
And we struck out in New York with some auditions, headed out to _ LA.
And just before I left, I met Neil Young.
I was sneaking backstage asking for advice because I knew nothing about the music business.
But really, it was the Beatles and Stones.
My brother, Tommy, played an old beat-up guitar my dad had, started showing me with his first chords.
And that's how I fell in love with just the guitar as a hobby.
And it was a night in Washington, D.C. where I went to see The Who, the 67.
_ And then we ran over to the Ambassador Theater to see Jimi Hendrix's experience.
Pete Townshend was in the audience with us.
And seeing those two bands that night, I was kind of possessed, uncomfortably, with the
notion, like, maybe I need to be a professional rock musician.
And of course, the next thought is, well, you can't do that.
This is middle America.
You know, we don't do that.
But long story short, I was like possessed with this notion.
And here I am, you know, this September, 47 years later, on the road.
I've been very blessed with a lot of rocky ups and downs.
But all in all, I've been one of the lucky ones that's had incredible adventures and
opportunities and been able to make a living playing music, which is also my hobby.
Chuck Berry.
Well, you know, Chuck Berry, I kind of discovered through [G] Keith Richards.
It's funny.
I feel like what Chuck Berry was to Keith Richards, Keith Richards is to me.
So _ what Chuck did was incredible and beautiful.
But by the time I discovered him, I was already deep into the Beatles and Stones.
And from my perspective, they had taken what he did and amplified it, like in general,
the generations do, into something even bigger and broader, emotional landscape that I could grab onto.
I still saw Chuck at 86 last year opening for, I think it was Billy Joel, Elton John's show.
_ And he was still great.
And we played for him when the Hall of Fame opened, which was, you know, it's funny.
I was never in a backup band for Chuck Berry.
And Bruce Springsteen tells the story.
He was in one of them.
Ronnie Neumeyer, a bass player, a friend of mine, did one.
Everyone who says the story is Chuck shows up, has to get paid first, never communicates
with the band, just starts playing.
You have to follow along.
He's not known for his bedside manner.
And _ one of the great moments, we were at the Rockwell Hall of Fame.
The E Street Band had been broken up basically since 89.
_ And 92 or 3, when the hall opened, we played.
We backed up Jerry Lee Lewis.
It was great.
We played a few E Street songs, which was great.
And just that whole day there, watching Al Green's soundcheck was one of the highlights
of my life.
He had to be there.
But that's another story.
So anyway, at the end, Chuck comes out.
We're backing up Chuck Berry.
And I think you have _ G.E. Smith with his great band.
You have Steve Van Zandt, Chrissy Hine, Bruce Springsteen, myself, two or three other amazing guitarists.
And Chuck's out there.
[G#] I got an acoustic guitar.
I'm just trying to get something together that's real free form.
And again, we're just going to do something off the cuff.
And Chuck, again, not too communicative.
He's standing there, and he starts playing.
Well, we're all pros, so we start following along. _ _
Somehow, a minute or two in, he shifts a song in gears and a key without talking to us.
Now we all, OK, we're pros, right?
So we're all _ trying not to make a train wreck.
And it's tricky.
But OK, what key is he in?
Let's start playing there.
Then he shifts keys again.
And he shifts keys four or five times.
I can only imagine to mess with us.
I can't imagine why else this happened.
And we're all looking around at each other, like the cast of characters [N] and the backup band.
These are pros, decades in. _
And we are making these horrible sounds _ collectively in front of a stadium sold out.
And we're looking at each other like, this can't be happening, right?
We're not creating this thing we're listening to.
Yes, we are.
And at the height of it, when no one has an idea how to fix this, _ Chuck looks at us all
and starts looking at us, duck walking off the stage, away from us.
He leaves the stage, leaves us all out there playing in six different keys with no band leader,
gets in a car and drives away.
Now, if that's not rock and roll, I mean, _ and I love Chuck Berry.
But man, you know, it's funny, all these years and stories of, did you ever back up Chuck?
No, no, no.
Well, I got my chance.
And man, it was everything that was promised and more.
It was so bad that on the ride back, we kind of started talking like this.
And I was in a van and there's a lot of other good stuff going on that day.
But Bruce and I started talking about that because I don't think the two of us,
we've been in a lot of clubs together and jam separate from the E Street Band.
_ And I don't think the two of us have ever participated in something that got awful musically
since we were probably 13 or 14.
[E] I didn't even start playing until I was 14.
And the fact that we did that in a stadium, in an event like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opening,
it was just so insane and absurd and bad that we started, we got into those laughing jacks
where you can't stop [Em] laughing.
We were howling.
And then when we could barely talk, we'd explain the other awful thing that happened
with Chuck as our leader.
And we just couldn't, it was just hilarious and awful all at once.
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