BWW Previews: NEIL BERG'S 50 YEARS OF ROCK 'N' ROLL at Rockland Community College

With a cast of both stars from Broadway's greatest rock musicals, as well as incredible Rock & Roll singers, Neil Berg shares the often unknown stories from the fifty-year history of the music that changed the world forever!

As Mr. Berg puts it:

"Now some people say that Delta blues of Robert Johnson back in the 20s and 30s and that laid directly to the jump swing blues in the 40s and also to Hank Williams doing this country thing and Hank Williams, who led right to a guy named Bill Haley and his Comets. From Bill Haley we get Elvis Presley and then the great Buddy Holly writing his own songs and performing them, which inspired four young men from Liverpool, the Beatles, coming out in that Ed Sullivan Show and from there, there was the British invasion with the Rolling Stones!

We get to explore all of this, including what was going on in Detroit at the time, a thing called Motown! At the same time in upstate New York, freedom and love at Woodstock. And we look at a thing called hard rock - the great riffs of rock and roll in the beginning of the seventies. Then came the singer songwriters like Carole King how about Elton John and Benny and the Jets, or who can forget the piano man Billy Joel - that led to some other great country rock artists like the Eagles or the classic rock of the mid-70s like Fleetwood Mac.

But then something happened in the late 70s called disco who kind of took rock and roll away but if you ask me the real death of that first part of rock'n'roll was 1980 in New York City, when a madman went in front of the Dakota building and took the life of John Lennon.

Right after that MTV came in and made it more about appearance than the music and rock-and-roll as we first knew it was changed forever. But if you ask me, you've got to go back to a young man from St. Louis Missouri in the early 50s, he took a piano riff put it on to the guitar and told an autobiographical story about his life growing up on Good Street in St. Louis. His name was Chuck Berry and his song was Johnny B. Good.

That's 50 awesome years of rock and roll!"

From the progenitors of Rock and Roll in the 1940s, through the glory years of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, up until MTV in the early '80s, Neil Berg's 50 Years of Rock & Roll uses fascinating stories and groundbreaking music, with tributes to such important and iconic rock stars/groups/genres as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Frankie Valli, The Beatles, Beach Boys, Motown, Aretha Franklin, The Who, Janis Joplin, Woodstock, Simon & Garfunkel, Carole King, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Disco, New Wave, Journey, and others!

The show has been selling out across the country and finally Neil Berg brings it back home to his roots in Rockland County. The show is almost sold out so grab your tickets while you can.

Cultural Arts Center at Rockland Community College

145 College Road, Suffern, NY 10901

Tickets: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pe.c/10237656