Diddley

I had the extreme pleasure of seeing Bo Diddley open for The Clash on their first U.S. tour. The Clash made it a policy to open every show with a local band, followed by a generally forgotten or discarded rock & roll legend (on the London Calling tour I saw Lee Dorsey of "Workin' in a Coal Mine" fame, excellent but not as good as Bo). The Rentals sucked. Bo Diddley rocked the house hard.

It was easy to pigeonhole Bo Diddley as the guy with the Bo Diddley beat (shave & a haircut, two bits, but fast and repeated over and over) and that's what we expected. While we got it, we got a whole lot more.

Here was a middle-aged guy with a porkpie hat, big square tortoise-shell glasses with thick lenses, and a potbelly to boot. But he took he box-style guitar and on the slow blues he just grinded away like it was his best girlfriend. Vaguely obscene. Okay, not so vaguely. And full of l-i-f-e.

He had a little attitude when he played that fit better with the punk vibe of the headlining act than the more jovial, grateful-to-be-there Lee Dorsey a year or so later. He came out with what I recall was a small four-piece band, himself included, as if he had nothing and everything to prove. And he proved it.

The Clash performance was that much better for the audience having been primed by this living legend, who went on to a minor rediscovery into the early MTV years, no doubt thanks to Joe, Mick and the band's showcasing him. It's no fun learning that he just died, at age 79.

The New York Times has a nice long piece on Bo, which includes this important paragraph:

His original style of rhythm and blues influenced generations of musicians. And his Bo Diddley syncopated beat — three strokes/rest/two strokes — became a stock rhythm of rock ’n’ roll.

It can be found in Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” Johnny Otis’s “Willie and the Hand Jive,” the Who’s “Magic Bus,” Bruce Springsteen’s “She’s the One” and U2’s “Desire,” among hundreds of other songs.

There's a load of videos of Bo Diddley wannabe rock stars here.

Just a taste:



I mean, when you get right down to it, "Why Do You Love?"