Even a legend can be late, and as Bo Diddley’s car drew alongside those parked on the narrow and sloping sidestreet next to the Portland City Auditorium, the volunteers of the Maine Festival were intent on getting their charge inside as quickly as possible. As the rear passenger door opened a large black guitar case came into view. It was "the hog," as Diddley fondly calls it, a battered eighty-pound handpiece held together by duct tape and wire, on which could be clearly read the words "BO DIDDLEY, GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA," stencilled in silver felt-tip marker. Next to that a printed sticker--a new one atop the dozens of more ancient vintage that covered the case--cautioned: "MY MOOSE IS LOOSE."
Then there emerged the unmistakable figure of Bo Diddley himself: the strong impassive face, the large eyes behind heavy glasses, on his head the familiar dark felt hat (you could call it a cross between a Stetson and a Homburg) with a silver Pegasus pin prominently displayed at front center and surrounded by satellite adornments, his broad shoulders projecting a South Side swagger as the volunteers ushered him forward. This was Bo Diddley, Big Bad Bo, the Rock and Roll Originator: a figure of instant fascination.
At that same moment Bo Diddley caught a glimpse of a tall, white-haired man running towards him, waving, calling out something like, "Say, Bo. . . !" Experience told Bo Diddley to keep moving. A dramatic entry into the theatre was, after all, part of the act, part of the appeal, part of the badness; he couldn’t squander that momentum now by getting caught up with some publicity hound. How could he know that the person approaching him had been a fan of his for over thirty years?
Bo Diddley dug for the stage door. Evidently the green-shirted volunteers knew their stuff, for he was quickly inside, and the glass door shut just in time, confronting the long-time fan with the reflection of his own gangling image as he punched the air in frustration.
The crowd at the auditorium entrance up the street had now grown larger, and the line had already begun to stretch a block or so around the corner and down Portland’s historic Congress Street. It was a mixed group, containing a sprinkling of tourists, but mainly a combination of local young people--to whom Bo Diddley was more a rock ën’ roll legend than a living performer--and older fans who had grown up on the Diddley beat. All of them were here for the closing show of the three-day Maine Festival, for an event that had been advertised as "a unique double bill" where "rock legend Bo Diddley meets African Juju master Ebenezer Obey." Obey--a genuine Nigerian chief--styles himself "Commander," an appropriate moniker that aptly reflects his country’s admiration for its foremost exponent of juju, an electrifying dance music with ancient African roots. For Commander Obey and his Juju Orchestra, this night was an American debut, but for Bo Diddley, Portland, Maine, was familiar territory. As a pharmacist from nearby Kennebunk recalled there had been one memorable jam some ten years earlier when Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, and Chuck Berry had played on and on into the night, ignoring the frantic appeals of the Portland City Auditorium management. "They had to douse every light in the house to get them to stop," he said, a proud witness to it all.
Even to those who missed the mini-drama at the stage door, it was clear that Bo Diddley had indeed arrived as the thumping sounds of his preliminary run-through with the back-up band began to filter down to the street in that tinny, monaural tone that live music has when heard from a distance or through half-open windows. Soon an announcement boomed over the P.A. for the concert-goers to form three lines for easier admission, and after some initial confusion the two thousand or so music lovers dashed in groups across the marble terrace of the entrance hall and into the Municipal-Ornate theatre beyond. Somehow in the midst of all this, the long-time fan from the stage door managed to find himself a seat in the third row.
The show begins. In Maine there is often a traditional disregard of ceremony in matters public, and sure enough, Beau Graves, the Festival’s dapper artistic director, starts by announcing that he thought tonight’s show would take the roof off the place, and straightaway he calls for the back-up band--Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson and his Magic Rockers--to come on stage. Johnson, a long-time sideman for Muddy Waters, had that very afternoon thrilled crowds at nearby Deering Park with a stirring set of the kind of Chicago-style blues, rock, and R & B that had earned him a share of a Grammy Award in 1984, so he receives a great reception. The band makes a casual entrance, the musicians filing to their places like soccer players spilling out onto the field at the beginning of a game.
And then comes Diddley. Still impassive, he strides across the stage in his urgent, demonstrative manner. Now "in uniform," he wears a cobalt-blue tunic, the sleeves of which are puckered at the shoulders in Elizabethan fashion and emblazoned down their length with jagged bolts of white or silver lightning, and pants made of some shimmering stuff. More flashes of lightning blaze from within the pleats set in the side of the trousers below the knee. Across his left shoulder is a leather and link guitar strap so colossal that it looks as though it might have equipped a Budweiser Clydesdale. And from this strap hangs the famous "square" or, more exactly, rectangular guitar, finished uniformly with a glistening tan varnish, except for a small patch where the gloss has been worn to a dull gray where the right wrist rests. Bo Diddley’s black hat remains as before, Pegasus still in flight. All is potency; all immensity: the Mighty Bo Diddley. Here in the land of the Northern Woods, the Mighty, Mighty, Lumberjack.
While they are absorbing this spectacle and probably before they know what is happening, the crowd finds itself swept up by a wave of sound as Bo Diddley hurls himself into his signature tune, its throbbing, vibrating rhythm propelling them instantly from their seats.
"Bo Did-dley bought his babe a dia-mond ring," he sings, his lips punching out the Southern-accented "Boh" with percussive power, his right hand pumping the flashing guitar almost faster than the eye can follow. "If that dia-mond ring don’t shine / He gon-na take it to a pri-vate eye." Luther and his group are right in sync, their eyes on the Legend’s every move. It is a splendid sound, this combination of cunningly interlocking rhythms and bluntly hollered lyrics, a sound that has proven itself over the years to be one of the wellsprings of rock and roll, and that has always been carried forward on that distinctive pulsating beat to which the performer has given his name: the Bo Diddley Beat--ecstatic, all-consuming, irresistible--the beat that launched a thousand hits, the beat that helped ensure Buddy Holly would Not Fade Away, that showed George Michael how to keep the Faith, that fueled the heart of U2’s Desire.
"Bo Did-dley caught a na-nny goat / To make his pret-ty baby a Sun-day coat." Around a dozen young dancers bop in front of the stage, but only for a moment. There is no room any longer for dancers as the press of bodies grows heavier and thicker with more and more fans leaving their seats and rushing forward. But the man on the stage is dancing. He has all the space in the world, up there in the spotlight. It is an incredible sight. As he continues to play his guitar, Bo Diddley hoists his massive frame into a moonwalk ‡ la Michael Jackson--but forward rather than backward--slipping and sliding across a patch of stage with effortless grace, then switching into a sort of quivering, bandy-legged shimmy in which his legs resemble the frantic opening and closing of the mouth of a hand-held puppet.
"Bo Diddley come to my house with a black-cat bone / To take my baby away from home." "Bo Diddley"--one of the tunes from the era where it all began, a song that for many Americans memorializes the year 1955, "when Rock ën’ Roll came alive." Lyrics: Ellas B. McDaniel (with a tip of the black hat to English folksong). Rhythm: out of Africa to the pounding heart of deepest Mississippi and from there to the sidewalks and clubs of Chicago, Illinois. "Bo Did-dley, Bo Did-dley, where you been? / A-round the world and gone again."
Bo Diddley brings his song to a close with a sort of orchestral crescendo, conducting with his upper body as he looks from side to side at his fellow musicians, and then indicating the final beat with a sharp downstroke of the guitar haft. The crowd’s response is joyous, genuine, and full-blooded; it echoes around the hall. Ignoring the cheers and composing his face into an even more impassive expression, Bo Diddley dives straight into the rest of his program. Deep, primal chords from his guitar announce the introduction of yet another of his signatures--"I’m A Man"--which remains, through successive versions, his most basic, most riveting expression of masculine power. At times he seems to be wrenching the word "Mayhn" from the sky with his clenched fist as he rolls off the talismanic spelling, "M. . . A. . . N," the guitar at work ripping out the accompanying chords like some titanic act of nature.
From there he plunges into "Who Do You Love?" a wondrous, sometimes chilling saga of braggadocio ("Just twen-ty-two, and I don’t mind dy-in’") set against thunderous rhythmic undercurrents. The music sounds like some relentless machine, its fury overridden only by occasional power-strokes from the turbo-driven guitar. In mid number, more dancing: this time Bo Diddley is leaning forward from the waist, his long arms swinging in front, with the guitar, now a dance partner, swinging in time in between. But his head is stiff and immobile: the whole body sways around this fixed head, its face pursed into an expression that is half-grimace, half-smile. The movements seem to begin somewhere deep within the shoulder blades and to lift the whole body from side to side in a rhythmic shuffle. Now his outspread fingers are breakdancing. Has he been watching the kids on "Soul Train"? Have the kids on "Soul Train" been watching him? After all, he did write the song called "Soul Train."
Following this display of fearsome energy, it’s time for something softer, and "Falling Deeper in Love With You" sets the crowd swaying to the lush Hawaiian tones of its staggered refrain, "deeper. . . deeper. . . deeper in love with you." In a comic talk-up he tries to play the dozens with Luther Johnson, but Luther knows a different set of dozens (or perhaps only half-a-dozen), and some of the responses go unstated. Later, after more heavy rockers (including the fabulous "Mona," which he delivers along with a toe-tapping clog dance), Bo Diddley brings Luther Johnson to center stage once more in a comic parody of one of his blues of domestic dispute. He looks towards a clearly innocent Luther and grinning broadly sings in mock seriousness: "I think Luther got something to do with this mess. ëCos I found Cadillac tracks all over my front lawn!" This, followed by a comic noise, a popping scream: "Gur-reh-hah!" Hilarious.
Clearly the finale is coming. To yet more cheers, Bo Diddley has taken off his emblazoned jacket to reveal solid black muscle--lots of it--and a white, sweat soaked singlet. But there is a surprise. Bo Diddley grips the mike firmly in one hand and raises the index finger of the other hand as though in admonition. He is stern. Whatever it is that is coming is serious.
"I don’t give a damn if what I say offends you," he bellows. "But, you know, America is being torn apart by drugs, and we gotta do something about it. We cain’t sit on our booty and wait for the government to act. We gotta help one another." He utters all of this with cadenced pauses between sentences. His eyes fix upon those young enough to tolerate the crowding and heat in front of the stage. "When they offer you that shit, you gotta look out for your buddy," he continues with even greater force, "and your buddy’s gotta look out for you. If the people won’t buy, the Pusher will die! Have mercy!"
It is a strange moment for such a speech. A pause of this kind would be guaranteed to kill many a performer’s show dead in its tracks, but Bo Diddley’s appeal is so heartfelt, so plainspoken, and so defiant that its effect is deep, immediate, and welcome. Few would guess that at the very moment he is making this life-saving appeal, the jacket that Bo Diddley has just set aside is being stolen by some unknown hand.
To sustained applause, Bo Diddley moves away from the microphone towards the relatively darker area close to the band. A seraphic smile has returned to his face. His left leg is held stiff, his right foot is raised at the heel and set slightly forward, his guitar rests across his thick thigh while his upper body is thrust forward. He makes a sweep of the hand across the arc of the crowd, like that of a shaman or a preacher, a potent gesture that silences the crowd and suggests giving. Indeed, giving (and fun) are the themes of the evening. He taps out the time with his left foot: "chink-a-chink, chink chink. . .chink-a-chink, chink chink," and then, sharply flipping his body upwards and back into the position that gymnasts call the lay-out, he signals both the band and the audience to join him in the infectious, joyous rumble known as "Hey! Bo Diddley!"
"Hey-eh, Bo Diddley!" sing the happy two thousand, jaws jutting upwards in unison. It’s a crazy, celebratory sort of song. "I got a girl who live on the hill / She rustle and tussle like Buffalo Bill." The number runs its merry, rocking course, and as it nears its end Bo Diddley unharnesses himself from his guitar. But instead of leaving the stage as most of the audience anticipates, he bounds over to the drum set, picks up a set of fat sticks, and dislodging the admirable Steve Brown, assumes the latter’s seat. As he takes up the beat, Bo Diddley attacks the drums with the fervor of a Gene Krupa or Keith Moon: his shoulders are held high in a sort of permanent shrug as his glasses slip forward slightly revealing eyes bright with intensity. He smashes at the hi-hats. His arms flail. Pink strobe lights flash around the hall in a crazy parody of his actions. Luther’s drummer wonders if there will be anything left when it’s all over.
But the tornado of Diddley drumming is relatively brief. The singer-guitarist-drummer abandons the set to its astonished owner and comes forward to take a final bow. He extends his arms sideways, acknowledging in robotic fashion each member of the band. He makes a sweeping bow, like that of a courtier, his hat fluffing specks of dust off the stage, and then completes his exit. The crowd howls for more. But Bo Diddley does not return. He has given Portland, Maine all the rock and roll he has, and there are other gigs tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. It will have to do. Until the next time.
The house lights come up. A contented buzz suffuses the auditorium as the excitement lingers. The long-time fan who had tried to collar Diddley at the stagedoor was still there, down in the third row, and as he jiggled the front of his shirt with both hands to cool off a little, he seemed to be engaged in the process of some serious cogitation. Or maybe he was just slower than most to recover from the hour-long bout of sustained Bo-Rhythmics. In any event, he was going over in his mind the still-smoldering images of what he had witnessed, and as something of a veteran of these Diddley affairs, he know just how good this particular session had been.
There was no doubt. It had been a virtuoso performance. Endlessly inventive, comedic and compelling by turns, Bo Diddley had turned in that famous concoction of vitality and vulgarity, of primivity and passion, of rock and of roll that he knew how to mix so masterfully. He had taken his listeners to the roots of a musical idiom that had fired the world’s imagination, that he himself had helped forge, and to which he was still contributing mightily. Behind all this must lie a galvanic personality, a powerful admixture of kindness and nobility, which would seem to belie the sometimes tough exterior that surfaced in certain of his songs or that blazed occasionally from the covers of his albums.
What was the source of it all: the richness, the joy, the musical fluidity, the mastery in performance? The long-time fan had to find out and it was then that he decided to go once more to Bo Diddley and seek, if at all possible, to find answers to these and perhaps other questions. He hoped, in short, to get to know Diddley.
This is what he learned.