Classic Pop Icons

Chuck Berry will be awarded the Polar Music Prize at a ceremony in Stockholm on August 26. Berry and fellow recipient, US opera and theatre director Peter Sellars, will each receive £100,000 (~$169,000).

The Polar Music Prize was founded by ABBA manager Stig Anderson. It is regarded as the music world’s equivalent to the Nobel prize.

<

Berry’s Polar Music Prize citation reads as follows:

The Polar Music Prize 2014 is awarded to Chuck Berry from St Louis, USA. The parameters of rock music were set one day in May 1955, when Chuck Berry recorded his debut single “Maybellene”. Chuck Berry was the rock’n’roll pioneer who turned the electric guitar into the main instrument of rock music. Every riff and solo played by rock guitarists over the last 60 years contains DNA that can be traced right back to Chuck Berry. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and a million other groups began to learn their craft by playing Chuck Berry songs.

Chuck Berry is also a superb songwriter. In the course of three minutes he conjures up an image of the everyday life and dreams of a teenager, often with the focus on cars. Chuck Berry, born in 1926, was the first to drive up onto the highway and announce that we are born to run.

King Carl XVI of Sweden will be in attendance at the ceremony.

Past recipients of the Polar Music Prize have included Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Simon, BB King, Renee Fleming, Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles and Quincy Jones.