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Artist News Awards
Chuck Berry wins Polar Music Prize
By Aly Barchi | Published on Friday 9 May 2014
Grandaddy-of-rock-n-roll Chuck Berry has been confirmed as a recipient of the 2014 Polar Music Prize, the lifetime achievement-style award given annually by the Royal Swedish Academy Of Music. Berry and this year’s other Polar Music Prize Laureate, American opera and theatre director Peter Sellars, will accept their awards (and £100,000 each in winnings) at a ceremony in Stockholm on 26 Aug.
Past Laureates include Pink Floyd, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles and Sir Paul McCartney, who won the inaugural Prize in 1989.
Berry’s citation reads: “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 sixty years contains DNA that can be traced right back to Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry, born in 1926, was the first to drive up onto the highway and announce that we are born to run”.