The Chuck Berry Memento That Vince Gill Gained and Lost in Less Than 24 Hours (And How He Kind of Got It Back)

Elvis Presley might have the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll title, but even he knew that the real rock ‘n’ roll royalty was Chuck Berry. And a young Vince Gill walking through the halls of a booking agency in Los Angeles knew that, too, which is why he couldn’t help but stop Berry when he saw him one fateful day in the late 1970s.

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Speaking to Guitar Player in 2026, Gill remembered the only time his path ever crossed Berry’s. “It’s when I was living in Los Angeles,” he told the magazine. “I was up at the booking agency for a meeting, and I saw Chuck walking through the halls. I stopped him; I said, ‘Man, I’m a young guitar player; I don’t want to bother you. But can I get your autograph?’ The only thing I had to write on was my parking lot ticket.”

Although Gill didn’t clarify what Berry’s reaction was to the parking lot ticket, the young guitarist walked away with the “Johnny B. Goode” singer’s John Hancock. (We’d like to think Berry was empathetically amused at the idea that this was the one scrap of paper a young musician had on their person.)

Vince Gill Didn’t Have Long With His Chuck Berry Memento

Vince Gill must have felt infinitely richer walking away from his chance encounter with Chuck Berry. But it didn’t last long. Shortly after meeting the rock icon, Gill paid his parking ticket. “That was back when I was as poor as a church mouse,” he told Guitar Player. Gill asked the attendant if he could keep the ticket—which was about a dollar, since he only had an hour-long penalty—so that he could save his autograph. The attendant told him that he would have to charge Gill a lost-ticket fee of a little over $40.

“I said, ‘Well, dude, you just got a free Chuck Berry autograph,’” Gill recalled. That’s where the story ended for years, until Gill’s own star power (and the small-world nature of the music industry) inevitably landed him in a conversation with a friend of Berry’s. Gill told the friend about his lost autograph story, and the friend sent Gill an 8×10 framed photograph of Berry, complete with his autograph.

Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for CMA