“I kinda guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet”, says Marty McFly after rocking out in one of the most celebrated scenes in Back to the Future. “But your kids are gonna love it.”
One child – Moses Martin, son of Coldplay frontman Chris and the actor Gwyneth Paltrow – so loved it that the film’s star, Michael J Fox, joined Coldplay to recreate the scene in New Jersey on Monday.
On stage Martin described the 1985 adventure as his and Moses’s “favourite movie of all time”, before singing Earth Angel, the Penguins’ track which sees George McFly and Lorraine Baines finally get together.
Martin then introduces Fox, playing a Les Paul guitar, and they proceed to play Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode, with Fox lending impressive riffs.
As well as being one of the best-loved moments in the movie, the scene is also one of the most controversial. As McFly electrifies the crowd, the injured singer/guitarist Marvin Berry makes a phonecall backstage to his “cousin”, Chuck Berry, explaining that he may have stumbled across “that new sound you be looking for”. He then holds the receiver close to the stage.
The implication – that one of the key figures of rhythm and blues ripped off the work of a white teenager from the future – was judged by some to be in dubious taste.
