On Learning How to Play Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode on Guitar by Shawn Pavey

The first thing to remember
when approaching this material
is that the “e” is silent.

The next most important thing to remember
is that the song is recorded in the key of B♭
because Chuck got tired of his piano player
bitching about how guitar players

always wanted to play
in E or G or D or A
because it’s easier to figure
out on the fretboard

but it’s hell on piano
trying to remember
whether to play the black keys
or the white ones.

The third most important thing to remember
when playing all those slippery little slides
and bends and hammer-ons and double-stops
is that this is the way he played it that day.

Fourth, but equally as important as anything,
one must remember to rest the index finger
on the B and E strings on the sixth fret
while the thumb rests above the bass E.

And this, this most important thing to remember
when attempting to play Johnny B. Goode,
is that to get it – to really get it –

one should learn every lick
that T-Bone Walker ever played
and then come back
and start over.

Shawn Pavey has delivered newspapers, mowed lawns, bagged groceries, cut meat, laid sewer pipe, bussed tables, washed dishes, roofed houses, crunched numbers, rented cars, worked in hotels, worn an apron at Kinko’s, and been paid to write everything from résumés to music reviews.  Currently, he earns a living as an Executive Recruiter in Mission, KS where he lives with his wife and two worthless but adorable cats.  He’s hosted poetry readings in bars, coffee shops, haunted houses, bookstores, libraries, front porches, seedy motel rooms, and abandoned warehouses.  He is the author of Talking to Shadows (2008, Main Street Rag Press), Nobody Steals the Towels from a Motel 6 (2015, Spartan Press), and Survival Tips for the Pending Apocalypse (Spartan Press, 2019). He is a Co-founder and former Associate Editor of The Main Street Rag Literary Journal, and a former board member and officer of The Writers Place, a Kansas City-based literary non-profit.  His poems, essays, and journalism appear in a variety of national and regional publications.  A graduate of the University of North Carolina’s Undergraduate Honors Creative Writing Program, he likes his Tom Waits loud, his bourbon single-barrel, and his basketball Carolina Blue.