The Indestructible Beat of Bo Diddley

To use the word "influenced" is an understatement to describe the effect of Diddley's first half-dozen singles and careening performances on rock music. In 1956, the Harlem newspaper the Amsterdam News, on first seeing Elvis Presley perform, claimed he had "copied Bo Diddley's style to the letter"; Buddy Holly borrowed Diddley's music for his biggest hit, "Not Fade Away" (some say Holly copped his horn-rimmed glasses from Diddley as well); the Stones, influenced as much by Diddley's guitar tremolo and tuning as his beat, recorded versions of "Not Fade Away" and Diddley's "Mona" for their early albums; the Grateful Dead covered Diddley and eventually played with him; De La Soul sampled his Seventies funk recordings; and everything from the Who's "Magic Bus" to U2's "Desire" to Bruce Springsteen's "She's the One" to George Michael's "Faith" is based on the ubiquitous Diddley beat.

"His chart successes may have been fewer than those of his contemporaries, but Diddley's innovations are now inextricably woven into the fabric of today's popular music," says George R. White, who wrote Diddley's only significant biography, Bo Diddley -- Living Legend. "The powerful amplification and driving rhythms he pioneered evolved into hard rock during the Sixties and continue to influence the heavy-metal bands of today. His clipped, string-scratching technique laid the foundations for funk. Jimi Hendrix picked up on his ideas. And, of course, the Bo Diddley beat itself is now probably the most famous beat in the world."

Dick Taylor will never forget where he was the first time he heard Diddley. Most people don't. It was the early Sixties, and a DJ on the radio announced, "This is Bo Diddley doing 'Bo Diddley.' "

"When I heard the first few bars of it, I leapt across the room and turned up the volume on the radio," he recalls. "My parents must have thought I was crazy. It wasn't long after that that Mick Jagger and I were digging for his albums at record stores."

Back then, there was no Rolling Stones. Just Dick Taylor, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, kicking around the bar scene as Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, playing covers of singles on the Chess label -- the Chicago home of Diddley, Berry and Muddy Waters. Taylor would go on to form and play guitar in the Sixties British rock group the Pretty Things, named after a Diddley single.

"[The British Invasion] wouldn't have happened without Bo," Taylor says. "When Bo Diddley's records came out, we'd try and copy them. We were great collectors of whatever we could find of his. It all seemed very glamorous, but we were quite surprised when we went to Chicago years afterward. Some of the people we thought were huge stars were living in pretty dire straits."

And perhaps that is why Diddley is still holding a grudge against Elvis Presley. Before he leaves his Manhattan hotel room, which is so small there is just enough space for a king-size bed and a small writing desk, Diddley recalls a television show he had seen that morning paying tribute to the pioneers of rock & roll.

"They started off with Elvis," Diddley says. He shakes his head sadly. "Elvis was not first. I was the first son of a gun out here: me and Chuck Berry. And I'm very sick of the lie. You know, we are over that black-and-white crap, and that was all the reason Elvis got the appreciation that he did. I'm the dude that he copied, and I'm not even mentioned." Diddley's voice grows louder and he gestures sharply at his chest, where the wounds have only grown deeper with time. "I'm still here -- seventy-six years old, feeling good and still working. But I don't know how much longer I can stand by and see somebody else get all the glory. I've been out here for fifty years, man, and I haven't ever seen a royalty check."

Diddley is wearing a brown three-button collar shirt with food stains and a chest pocket that bulges with papers and knickknacks. His standard black leather cowboy hat sits flat on his head, with a silver eagle medallion in the front, two small badges on the side and two toothpicks thrust into the brim.

"I tell young musicians, 'Don't trust nobody but your mama,' " he says as we leave the hotel and slide into the back seat of a car. "And even then, look at her real good."

As we run errands in Manhattan -- combing the street stalls of Fourteenth Street for bargain clothing and B&H Photo for discount video-camera accessories -- Diddley never stops trying to keep me entertained. Whenever a silence looms, he will ask, "What do you want to know?" or he will start singing one of his hits, or he'll just chuckle and say, "Rock & roll." His manner is easygoing, and despite the fact that the credit and royalties he wants will probably not come in his lifetime, he has not stopped caring or turned into a money-motivated hack, like many musicians on the oldies circuit. Every performance is just as much a battle to him as it was fifty years ago.

"I had a woman in the audience the other night in Oklahoma, sitting all stiff while everyone around her was moving and clapping," he booms as we drive through midtown. "She looked like she was married to some dude who had her stuck in the house for years. I told her, 'No, no, no, you can't sit on the front row and look like you swallowed a liver. You've got to smile, baby, because you are pretty.' " He concludes, "She started grinning, and she started clapping along with the music, man. I got her." He beams and claps his hands together. "I got through."

Though Diddley is known mostly for his recorded work, his early concerts and image were just as striking. He toured in a white hearse; his looks ranged from a square in black horn-rimmed glasses to a sinner in black leather; he had custom-made square Gretsch guitars with fur bodies and rocket tails. In addition to his high-kicking, hip-wiggling stage moves, his repertoire included pre-Hendrix flourishes like playing the guitar with his teeth and over his head. And he was one of the first rockers to put female musicians in places of prominence in his band. (In fact, decades before Jack and Meg White of the White Stripes would pretend to be siblings, he spuriously claimed his bandmate the Duchess was his sister.)

Ronnie Hawkins recalls seeing Diddley at his prime. Hawkins' version of "Bo Diddley" has often been cited as a pioneering rockabilly record, though he's best known for his cover of Diddley's "Who Do You Love" (backed by musicians who would later become the Band). "I saw Muddy Waters when he was still strong," he says. "I saw Howlin' Wolf at his peak. But Bo was the best. He could stir up a crowd with that rhythm. It went through you like a Holy Roller."

"I was out to destroy the audience," Diddley says, recalling the roots of his rhythm. "I wanted to destroy 'em, just make the toughest dude in the crowd pat his foot. I'd find a groove to get 'em by watching feet, and once I got one guy moving, I'd start working on the dude sitting next to him."

The car stops in front of Manny's Music in midtown Manhattan. Diddley always checks out local music stores when he travels. He is on a constant mission for new instruments and effects, since he was a teenager plugging his guitar into the back of a radio in the 1940s to amplify it.

"I first came here fifty years ago," Diddley says as we walk into the shop. "I was doing a show at the Apollo. I broke Sammy Davis Jr.'s record. He had a line halfway around the block. Mine wrapped all the way around the block. But I had to come here and get an amplifier. It was a 25-watt Magnatone, and back then they said it was too loud. Now you got everyone buying 650-watt amplifiers."

The sales staff at Manny's rushes to greet Diddley like an old friend. Diddley laughs and claps his hands together happily, then proceeds to grill the staff for forty-five minutes about new gear.

Gloria Jolivet, who sang with Diddley in the Sixties and married his nephew Ricky, said Diddley's band used to call him "the junkman" behind his back. "Every time we came to Chicago, we'd have to hit Jewtown, where you can get all kinds of screws and little junk," she recalls. "And he'd be trying to buy things to make a new machine or do something to an amplifier."

Lady Bo, who began playing guitar with Diddley in 1957, explains what some of those machines may have been. "This is a trade secret, but his guitar always weighed a ton because he put things in it," she says. "He had toys in there." She says that rather than adding pedals or modifying his amplifiers, he'd install various effects directly into his guitar.

"He was doing shit to that guitar ahead of Les Paul," Hawkins claims. "He's an inventor. I remember one time he had these three little boxes on top of the amps with motors, and he'd turn them on at a certain speed and get this humming going. So it would keep humming with the rhythm while he was playing the lead licks."

On the walls of Manny's, there are half a dozen autographed photos of Diddley at various stages in his career. "That picture there is from 1955," he says, pointing to one photo as he pays for his guitar pedal and a synthesizer for one of his twenty-two great-grandchildren. He cracks a mischievous smile. "And I'm still jumping."