Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Guitar World
Guitar World
Entertainment
Janelle Borg

“I had the audacity to say, ‘Are we gonna rehearse, Mr. Berry?’ He whipped around and yelled, ‘We don’t rehearse rock ‘n’ roll!’” Session great Carlos Alomar on his time as Chuck Berry’s rhythm guitarist

Left- Carlos Alomar at club Le Bar Bat on October 1993 in New York City; Right-Rock and roll musician Chuck Berry poses for a portrait holding a Gibson hollowbody electric guitar in a scene from the movie "Go Johnny Go" which was released in June of 1959 in Los Angeles, California.

Session guitarist extraordinaire Carlos Alomar has shared the stage with a veritable list of icons, from David Bowie to James Brown and The Main Ingredient.

Later, he joined the ranks of Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney collaborators, contributed to Alicia Keys' album The Element of Freedom, and played on the worldwide hit Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars. However, before hitting his stride with Bowie, Alomar played second fiddle to none other than Chuck Berry.

“He came in with this guitar, a beautiful ES-335, and he would lift the headstock up and down and that would tell you what to play,” recalls Alomar in the latest edition of Guitarist.

“Depending on how he moved his headstock, you’d stop or start. That was it. And man, he walked in and said, ‘Okay, let’s go.’ But I had the audacity to say, ‘Are we gonna rehearse, Mr Berry?’ He didn’t turn around; he whipped around and yelled, ‘We don’t rehearse rock ’n’ roll!’ Let me tell you, I still give my musical cues to this day with the headstock, just like Chuck Berry.”

In the late '60s, Alomar had an eight-month stint with James Brown, which saw him tour the East Coat and pick up life lessons along the way.

“While I was playing with him, he kept saying, ‘We’re gonna take it to the bridge,’ but I had to wait for the cue. Finally, he whipped around and said, ‘Hit me,’ and, unfortunately, I did not hit him at all [laughs]. I missed the cue.

Alomar describes how he went to collect his money when he quickly discovered that some of his hard-earned cash was missing.

“I looked at the guy and said, ‘Hey, there’s $20 missing.’ He said, ‘Yeah, Mr Brown said you didn’t hit back.’ I was intelligent. My father gave me a mantra: ‘If you can’t explain it, defend it.’ So I learned to talk real fast and to explain exactly what I wanted… And I was fired.”

For more from Carlos Alomar, plus new interviews with Joe Satriani and Joe Perry, pick up issue 516 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.