Kultur International Films recently published a series of 12 DVDs named
Songs That Changed The World. Each DVD covers one particular song, e.g.
I Want to Hold Your Hand, Heartbreak Hotel, Stayin' Alive or
Like a Virgin. Whether these or any other song in fact "changed the world" is strongly doubted ...
The DVDs come from a TV series of same name, according to the Net shown in various countries such as Finland, Australia, Mexico, and on various cable channels such as Discovery Channel. The series was originally produced for Country Music Television (CMT) in Canada and premiered January 2003.
The interesting thing about this DVD series is that one disk concentrates on Chuck Berry's
Maybellene. It's interesting to note that the makers of this TV series found that
Maybellene as a birthsong to Rock&Roll had more impact than, let's say,
Rock Around the Clock or
Johnny B. Goode.
As the other disks in this series,
Song That Changed The World: Maybellene is a documentary consisting mostly of very brief comments by famous people about Berry, about the song, or about the 1950s at all. Some spoken introductions are underlaid with 1950s footage: cars, people, city views.
You do not see Berry perform the song in question. Instead while the song is playing you see segments from Berry's 1950s movies such as
Go, Johnny, Go! or
Jazz on a Summer's Day. Included are segments from an interview with Berry, though. I think I have seen this interview somewhere else before, but I don't remember where. It must have been recorded sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, I guess.
Berry makes some interesting comments on his view of how
Maybellene did
not change the world: "We played Rock&Roll long before ...", "That's just a label ...", "I had a producer who was a marketing genius ..."
The comments from all the other people interviewed are less interesting, although there are many of them. Next to historians, university professors, and music publishers you see and hear B. B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Paul Anka, Randy Bachman, Mike Love (Beach Boys), Joe Mauldin (Crickets), Bob Weir (Grateful Dead), Robbie Krieger (Doors), Justin Hayward (Moody Blues), Steve Howe (Yes), and very briefly Ron Wood. All this is not of any importance. The only one who really has something to say is director Taylor Hackford (
Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll!) who unfortunately did not direct this series.
The DVD is not very expensive and can be purchased
here. Buyers should be aware that the running time is just 35 minutes of which more than 10 minutes are excerpts from the remaining DVDs in this series. The documentary alone is no more than 25 minutes, i.e. very short. Fortunately it is not region coded even though offers may tell different.