‘There are ten thousand freedoms,’ the late Joshua Clover once said, ‘but rock freedom is definitely set – in the first instance – in a car, when it’s late outside. It can be ecstatic, it can be boring, it can be adjectiveless freedom, but you have reached escape velocity, faster miles an hour, you have no particular place to go, and you have the radio on.’
Chuck Berry’s ‘Maybellene’ recently turned 75. Recorded on 21 May 1955 in a studio on the South Side of Chicago, it tells the story of a man chasing his girlfriend down the highway. He’s in a Ford V8, she’s driving a Cadillac. She’s cheating, the car’s overheating, he’s trying to catch her before she gets away for good. ‘Maybellene’ isn’t Chuck Berry’s best song but it was his first single. Without it there’d be no Bob Dylan. No rock and roll as we know it. It’s a miracle.