All sorts of factors went into Bo and Kay"s decision to leave Los Angeles and move to Los Lunas, New Mexico, but the primary one was unquestionably the earthquake that registered 6.0 on the Richter Scale when it hit the San Fernando Valley in February, 1971. The truth is, the Great Rocker hates to be rocked.
"After the earthquake, nothing, nothing, was going to keep him in L.A.," said Marty. "He was so paranoid that when I came over to his house a couple of weeks after the earthquake Bo was sleeping on the floor in the living room. He managed to freak out Kay and the girls because they were sleeping there, too!"
"Daddy is so ditsy," says "middle" daughter Terri. "He put a boat in the back yard. He said that if the dam broke at the top of the Valley we could all get in the boat and be saved. He didn"t think that if the water came, it would come in a tidal wave and nothing would help us!" (Grumbles Bo in return, "Yeah, that"s what they told Noah, but the dude made out all right!")
"When the earthquake hit, we were petrified," says Kay, "me and him! It splashed like two feet of water out of the swimming pool. The china cabinet fell over, and just missed my kids. It had five thousand dollars worth of china in it, Haverlein china from my family--it was a museum piece before that.
"Bo had just made a movie with Dennis Hopper in Taos, New Mexico, and I had just been there also, with the girls and my mother. I had been there a lot as a kid because I had a great aunt lived there.
"My reason for taking the girls was to show them real-life American Indians. They had this stupid TV image of Indians, and here I was raising a mixed family who saw nothing but stereotypes. So I had to take them to see real Indians; it was a requirement!
"So both Bo and I had just been to New Mexico, and we had talked about it a lot, and then when the earthquake hit, we looked at each other and yelled, ëNew Mexico!""
Bo remembers that the Everly Brothers were interested in moving out to New Mexico too. "Yeah, the Everlys were supposed to move out to Taos where Dennis Hopper lived at. I"d hung out with Dennis for three or four days while making a movie, and Don and Phil had talked about going out there, and since we were all good friends, I said, ëI"m going out there, too!" But Don and Phil ended up falling out, or something or the other, and they didn"t go. So I went out there and I was out there by myself! At a place called Los Lunas. But it was sure okay: I would"ve been in some place like that a lot sooner if I"d listened to my Momma."
Says Kay: "Los Lunas was just two turns off the main highway from Albuquerque to Las Cruces. Pretty country: grazing land, distant view of the mountains. We started out with five acres, then we added five acres right in front, and then we bought ten at the side. So we ended up with twenty acres in all. It was just a small place, and we had the horse walker and hay barns, and a studio Bo never finished attached to the horse barn."
"The horses were for our daughters," says Bo. "Terri and Tammi were bad on them horses. They won a lot of big trophies. They were great in roping and quarter-horse riding. That was Kay"s idea, but heck, it weren"t cheap. Horse does this shit [makes a chewing motion]: that"s ten dollars! They"ll put you in the poorhouse."
"See, I was dealing with really spoiled brats as kids," explains Kay. "I had a situation with the kids where they"d be little assholes, and Bo would come in with presents off the road, ëcos he was Daddy and he wasn"t there, and he had this thing about not being there. They thought he walked on water until they figured out he wasn"t perfect. That"s why I went into the horses. It was my idea. I hired a Gestapo horse-trainer to work with them. They had to have some discipline, and it paid off because they both won State Championships. I just wish Bo could have been there to see it."
Bo remembers another aspect of the girls" rodeo work. "They used to call Terri and Tammi ëThe Chocolate Drops!" because there wasn"t too many black kids rodeoing, and not too many girls either. So that became their nickname, ëThe Chocolate Drops." All the other girls around Albuquerque and wherever Kay used to take ëem to, would say, ëForget it, the Chocolate Drops are here today. They"ll take it." Kay would take them and their horses around to ride in the shows, and Ben Lisbee, an ex-rodeo rider from Fort Worth, Texas, taught ëem. He was good.
"But one day they upped and found out about boys, and that did it!"
As a close observer of the relationship between Bo and Kay, Marty Otelsberg also had reflections on the girls and their upbringing. "It didn"t effect Tammi and Terri at all being the children of a mixed marriage. Kay always wanted them to be totally self-sufficient. In school they were tough. They were taught to be tough. And they never even thought anything about a color-line, because there were always plenty of whites in the house and plenty of blacks in the house. Kay did an extremely good job in bringing up those girls in one respect. But in another respect, there is such a thing as giving them too much. And both Bo and Kay have done that. You can"t justify that. Who knows how much damage was done?
"But the bottom line is that Kay did what in her own heart she felt was best for them. Like, for instance, the rodeo. She made sure that those kid could ride horses. She made sure that those kids could rope, and cut, and rodeo. And she made sure they looked good out there. They had the best horses, the best saddles. It was important to her for them to win medals, win ribbons, and by golly, yes, they were good horsewomen. Bo felt that way, too, and he was glad to pay for it all."
Bo and Kay"s spread at Los Lunas was a real working farm. They boarded and bred horses, and raised cows, sheep, hogs and chickens. Bo was as active with his hands as ever ("I didn"t just sit around and do nothin""), always working at some practical project or the other when he was at home. Once the animals had been raised, they also had to be sold, or, in some instances, slaughtered. Lori Otelsberg, Marty"s youngest daughter, now the president of her own talent agency but then the friend of Terri and Tammi, remembers visiting the ranch when she was about twelve or thirteen.
"One night Terri and Tammi called me outside. ëLori, come this way," they said. They had their cute little slippers on, and I didn"t think that it could be anything bad. But they had tricked me into watching Bo slaughter the sheep. I climbed over the corral fence, and I looked at what they were doing and said, ëAh," and tried to run the other way. But Terri and Tammi caught me and made me watch. They promised to slaughter the sheep the Kosher way! I watched them hang the sheep, and cut the throat, and I watched them skin it and cut it down. Bo had ranch hands, and he went out there and directed it all. The faces I made; I was sick to my stomach for days, but Tammi and Terri were in hysterics at my reactions, because they saw this sort of thing all the time and were hardened to it. They ate the sheep--that"s what they raised them for--they didn"t just kill them for glory.
"Bo had his own recipe for making donuts. But he decided to do these things at, like, midnight--there was no concept of time in their lives!--I don"t think there was a clock in the house: there was no alarm set, you got up when you got up, and that was it. Everyone fended for themselves, there were no systems in the house--you were happy to get the bathroom when you got it. Fortunately, they had this beautiful maid named Rosa. Rosa was great--she was a sweetheart. She would make special meals for me because I hadn"t grown up on Southern cooking--otherwise I"d have starved for four weeks.
"The first thing I discovered was that they were into bowling. This was amazing. They went bowling for a day! Most people would bowl for one or two hours, but Kay and the girls would bowl three or four sheets per person, each with their own lane.
"Then Bo gave us all go-carts. I had never driven, but Terri and Tammi by that age were driving trucks around the ranch. So to me it was heaven. They had a circular drive-way, and we drove around and around in the snow and slush. Bo had a go-cart too; he made one that he could fit into. Tammi and I used to go after him. He looked like a twelve year old kid. He"d be laughing like crazy and he"d go and get you. He was the worst influence on a twelve year old kid on how you should drive! When I came back, I think I talked about just that for a year.
"On Christmas Eve we sat around and watched home movies in the den. Bo was laying around, and we were all peeing in our pants from him making fun of everybody in his movies, including himself. He was very free-spirited, very open, very good-natured--he makes anyone and everyone feel a part of the family. That"s why there were always so many people in his home; ëBo told me to come over," they"d say.
"I had not experienced Christmas in my life, to that point, being Jewish and everything, so I didn"t know what it was like to wait up and wait for Santa to come. That night Tammi did not want to go to sleep at all: she was hyper, just could not wait. Then Terri and Tammi both zonked! About one o"clock Bo and Kay woke them up, and we went into the living room. It was amazing! I had never seen so many presents in my life. There were at least ten presents per kid. They bought me a purple bowling ball and purple-and-white bowling shoes which I still use!
"So after we got through opening all the presents Bo said, ëC"mon," and we went into this other music room attached to the house, and this whole room was full of brand-new instruments: brand-new drum-set for Tammi, brand-new keyboard for Terri. It was a complete band set-up for the kids: new amps, new mikes, everything! After that it was, ëSee you guys!" We couldn"t get them off the instruments for days."
"Yeah. We used to call it a state of Los Lunacy!" jokes Bo.
"Terri and Tammi were just about getting it together then as musicians, and I figured, ëLet them do it their own way. Give ëem the goodies so they could work on developing their own thing." Sure we indulged ëem, but something came of it. They called their first little group The Diddley Darlings! We had the neighbor"s little kid, Christy Hines, on tambourine, and Kay made them all some black and gold outfits and they looked good, man, like little female Michael Jacksons! They did a gig with me at the University of New Mexico--just nine and ten years old--sensational! Then about twelve years later they formed a professional group, Offspring, with Scottie Smith and Ronnie Haughbrook who still work for me. They did a whole tour all over Europe with me, and they were one of the best back-up bands I ever had.
"Shoot, I hated to leave the ranch back in them days and take that forty-minute ride to the airport in Albuquerque. That was the type of life I loved best, family and farming; that"s what my background is y"understand. But someone had to make the coins, and I still had a whole lotta people on my back. If I missed a week or two, or only had a few gigs a month, then I was no better off than a regular workin" dude."
In those days, as now, Bo"s quest for "coins" led him to many parts of the globe, from Los Lunas to Las Vegas, from Australia to Alaska, from Switzerland to Saskatchewan and one spring evening 1973 it led him to the Bronx in New York City where something very, very unpleasant occurred.
By chance, Bo was accompanied that day by Josh Mills, a writer for The Village Voice, who recorded their experience in a two-part article in his paper. Mills had called Marty in L.A. and told him he would like to do an interview. When would Bo be in New York? Mills was surprised when Marty told him that Bo would be appearing that very weekend at the Stardust, 3435 Boston Road, and could he, Mills, kindly pick up Bo at the airport, drop him off at a suitable hotel, then later in the day ferry him to the club uptown?
"By the time I got off the phone," wrote Mills, "I was sure this was a fraud, that somehow I"d gotten hold of some nut in Los Angeles who was pretending to be Bo Diddley"s manager. I had never heard of such haphazard plans for a musician--a star. . . . What was Bo, who I last saw at the Garden, doing at the Stardust--unannounced?" As he drove Bo to the hotel, and throughout the day, the writer pursued his interview. What he got from Bo was a digest of his life, and his views on his status in the music business of the time. "If you can"t be the very best, then you just keep doing the very best you can," Bo told him. Then they left for the gig. This is some of what Josh Mills had to say about that evening.
A COMMAND PERFORMANCE IN THE BRONX. This was going to be about why a rock star like Bo Diddley was performing in a remote bar in the Bronx last Saturday night. Then, near the end of Bo"s first set at the Stardust Room on Boston Road, a heckler pulled a gun on him.
"Watch it," the heckler yelled, but they couldn"t hear him up on the stage, even though he was in the first row. So he pulled a .38 revolver from his waistband where it had been tucked beneath his t-shirt, and waved it in the air. (One week before, a man waved a gun in the air at a Harlem bar, and when it was over three men were dead and seven wounded.)
His friends reached for his arm and yelled, "Put it down, Tony." I think his name was Tony. Instead he leveled it, in the classic Clint Eastwood pose, right at Bo Diddley.
Bo reacted cooly. He backed up a step in mock--at least it looked like mock--horror. Bo, the woman, and Tony froze. The backup band kept playing. The spotlight reflected off Bo"s guitar. No one in the audience was reacting. I felt like I was the only one who saw the gun. I couldn"t make eye contact with anyone else. Then Bo put his right hand into his pants pocket. Oh no, he"s reaching for the derringer he told me he used to carry. Instead he brought out his wallet, with a Nevada sheriff"s badge pinned to the outside, and grinned.
Tony smiled and reached into his pants pocket and flipped his wallet open in Bo"s direction "FBI," he said, though I couldn"t see what he was showing. He held the gun steady. Bo looked at him for a few seconds, then rolled his eyes. "What was that song you wanted to hear?"
Tony, who"d been screaming out requests all night, yelled, "Hey Bo Diddley," and Bo swung right into it. The band followed and the tableau broke. The woman got off the stage. Tony tucked his gun back into his waistband and pulled his blue mesh shirt over it. I could see its outline clearly.
I think Tony was just fooling around. But I kept recalling that other bar shooting, and all the bar-shooting stories I"ve written in five years as a newsman. I was sitting behind Tony. It flashed on me that I had a good angle for breaking a chair on him when he pulled the gun. But I was afraid. I thought I might get shot. But what if he had pulled the trigger? I don"t know if I could have done anything.
Bo and the band kept beating out "Hey Bo Diddley." The woman in the polka-dot suit jumped back on-stage. So did another woman at the table, while her husband looked on grimly. This time Tony jumped up with them and started shaking it too. The audience applauded.
They closed the set that way. . . .
And why was Bo Diddley, currently starring at selected theatres in Let the Good Times Roll, playing the Stardust, a 150-table club in a drab neighborhood ("This looks like a mean ën" nasty place," Bo said, looking down Boston Road while we waited for the manager to unlock the door about 7:30 so Bo could rehearse with the house band)? What it all came down to, when we talked about it, was, "I"ll play anywhere the price is right. . . . "
Bo"s been touring this route for 18 years; one night was enough for me.
Despite Mills" efforts (and concern), Bo declined to talk about the episode at the time, but today he "sorta remembers" something unpleasant happening in a "funky" bar uptown: "Funny thing is you"re more into watching your ass back-stage than on-stage. I"ve had dudes walk away from my dressing room with everything from my gee-tar to my toothpick! Yep, that time was scary--when the barrel of a gun"s that close it looks like you"re staring into the mouth of a wind tunnel. Ain"t pretty. Dude was drunk as far as I"m concerned. I just played it cool--ease off a little bit, let him think he"s winning, then do my thing.
"See, I got two things going for me in that kind of a situation: instinct, which I"ve got a lot of considering where I was brought up, and experience. A lotta people don"t know I"ve had training in dealing with dudes like that. Take a situation like this: If you mess with me too much, I might get on your tail. Either you gonna hurt me or I hurt you, you know. But if I can get away from a confrontation without going through this shit, I will. That don"t mean I"m scared; it means I don"t wanna be bothered with the problem. But if I say, ëHey man, I"m sorry," or ëExcuse me," and you can"t accept that, and I try to get away from you, then don"t try and catch me. If I try to run, then I might be scared and you gonna catch a tiger, a real wildcat!
"Hasn"t happened often, but when it does I don"t take it personally. I don"t know what kinds of problems the dude"s got. The one time I"ll get real mad is if you mess with my kids or my old lady. Then you"re in big trouble!"
Josh Mills was right. The scene at the Stardust Room could easily have become a real tragedy. Why was it that Bo Diddley could not rely on his record company, for instance, for a reasonable income, or at least a reasonable supplement to his income, rather than endangering himself like that? Since the day GRT had taken over the ownership of the Chess label, Bo had been producing close to an album a year. Surely income from those products would have tided him over the rough spots?
As ever in the record industry, nothing is as straightforward as it seems, as Marty Otelsberg explained: "The Chess label went first to GRT, then to All-Aluminium, then to Sugarhill, then to MCA. But we never got a single royalty check from anyone except MCA. When I re-signed Bo with Chess in 1969, we took a $50,000 advance--Bo needed it at the time. But when they sold the company the Chess books stated that Bo ëowed" Chess $150,000! They put down debits for things he never knew about, for things I never knew about. There was no reality to it: they claimed things like ëstudio time" or ëpromotion expenses" but this was for their own artist. Things were different then: you didn"t charge your own artist for things like that! So when they sold the catalogue, these new companies said, ëWhy do we have to pay Bo any money? He owed Chess, so now he owes us." And every year the bill went up inexplicably. It never went down, no matter how well Bo"s records did."
"But when we went to MCA in 1984, they said they would wipe the slate clean, and that Bo would get full royalties. And we weren"t with them for more than four weeks before I got a check for eight, nine thousand dollars, something like that. And it"s been perfect ever since.
"He"s getting paid for his re-issues now, whereas back then it was, ëYou owe us money." And I had lawyer after lawyer trying to get to the bottom of it, but there was just no way that could be done, the way that label was hawked around."
Adds Bo, "Until MCA came through, it was all R & B for Bo Diddley with the Chess label, Rip-off and Bullshit, all the way down the line. Some of these people were nothing but high-class thieves. But the people at MCA, they"re beautiful, baby."
Despite the uncertainties, Bo continued with GRT until 1974, when his contract expired. Although the owners of the Chess label could still promote and sell Bo"s past recordings, from that moment on he was free to record with whomever he chose. The years with GRT had proven to be an active period in his recording career, as active as any time since his heyday of the fifties and early sixties, but activity did not always translate into success in artistic terms.
Precisely one year after the appearance of Black Gladiator, GRT released Bo Diddley: Another Dimension. Of the album"s eleven numbers only one, "Pollution," a social commentary couched in a velvety soft funk, turned out to be a new Bo Diddley composition, and even that is attributed to Kay rather than to Bo. ("I probably added a line or two all throughout his work," comments Kay, modestly, "but I seldom wrote an entire number. These were collaborations that Bo put out in my name"). On the remaining numbers producer-guitarist Bob Gallo was eager to see how a prototypical rocker like Bo would handle the work of current songwriters such as Robbie Robertson, Al Kooper, Elton John, and John Fogerty.
While the results were by no means mediocre, some music critics of the day found the match-ups "inappropriate" or "uncomfortable." But Jon Tiven"s assessment for Rolling Stone may have been the most damning. "Bo Diddley is a true genius, an original," he wrote. "He never had to copy nobody. So how come all of a sudden he"s got to do ëI Love You More Than You"ll Ever Know," imitating Al Kooper"s voice somewhat and stealing licks from Steve Katz"s axe?" It was not that the composer himself raised any objections, for oddly enough Al Kooper played organ on this track, but Tiven did have a point. Bo Diddley was too idiosyncratic an artist to fit easily into the material of others, unless, that is, he was going to be permitted to treat that material in his own trademark style.
Another Dimension is an interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying, album. What is missing from the equation of grizzled veteran plays the work of younger songsters is consonance, the feasible mating of song with voice. Bo attempts three songs on the album that were written by John Fogerty, and while they are all songs of tremendous drive and atmosphere, the lyrics are overly crafted and metronomic for a singer of Bo"s unrestrained style, and there is little if any room for his characteristic treatment: the gutteral growls, the frequent extemporizing, the happily haphazard near-rhymes. As it is, he pulls off "Bad Moon Rising" magnificently, mixing subtle hesitations with storming crescendos to create the album"s stand-out track. But while Bob Gallo can hardly be faulted for attempting the experiment, the album as a whole fails, and John Tiven, for one lays that entirely at the feet of the producer: "Bob Gallo," he wrote harshly, "should stick to producing Kelloggs commercials but lay off rock ën" roll."
The 1972 release, Where It All Began, comes off much better. In an album made all the more sensational by the extraordinary fold-out cover of artist Doug Johnson, three numbers--"I"ve Had It Hard," "Look At Grandma," and "Bo Diddley-Itis"--are all in the vintage Diddley idiom: raw, unfettered, unpretentious delectations of voice and guitar. Bo"s producers on this occasion were Johnny Otis, a fine drummer (he can be heard to great effect on the tempo-tossed "I"ve Had It Hard") who years earlier had had much success with his own Diddley-style compositions, and Pete Welding, accomplished musician and reviewer for Rolling Stone. Their joint policy was to listen to Bo first before making amendments or squeezing him into some pre-conceived format. "Bo Diddley-Itis," for example, is a studio re-enactment of Bo"s closings on the revival circuit and a nice instance of rock-and-roll contagion. "Goin" to give it to you, baby!" Bo promises. And he does.
Then came the London Bo Diddley Sessions, no less that Bo"s twenty-first Chess album, or as the Library of Congress catalogue more formally describes it, "a 12 inch phonodisc, with Bo Diddley accompanying himself on guitar, with instrumental ensemble." Quite an ensemble it is too: an organist, three percussionists, and a six-piece vocal group on some numbers, with brass and sax on others. Recorded partly in London, partly in Chicago, Bo"s record was the pendant to the London Chuck Berry Sessions, the album that introduced Berry"s first and only number one hit, "My Ding-a-Ling."
London Sessions is among Bo"s best albums, certainly comparable to anything he produced during that entire decade. "Don"t Want No Lyin" Woman" is another tough-worded male/female dialectic with Connie turning the tables on Bo and telling of the dangers of a lyin" man ("he"ll stir up hell in your neighborhood"). "Sneakers on a Rooster" (as in "loving you is like putting sneakers on a rooster") exhibits the finest of Bo"s talking exits. But it is the two longest numbers on the album--too long for play in standard radio formats--that are the true stand-outs. The six-minute "Do the Robot" presents Bo in his familiar role of dancemaster, laying down an irresistible beat--superbly enhanced by bassist Roy Wood and the gritty licks of guitarist Ray Fenwick--and sending out an invitation for the whole world to get down and boogie ("Wiggle your back and wiggle your face/Before you know it, you"ll be all over the place!") "Make a Hit Record" is among Bo"s comic masterpieces, a stammered monologue in which he details, rather prophetically as it turns out, the difficulties for someone who has "a lot of good songs in my satchel" to get ahead in a connection-dominated, fad-oriented industry. Bo sings his (fictional) solution: "Gonna buy my own radio station/Play my own songs all over the nation."
The remarkable feature here is that at the end of "Make a Hit Record" Bo breaks out of the rapping mode and bursts into song of pure magnificence, floating and operatic in nature, not the operatic parody of "I Don"t Like You," but the real thing.
The fact is that, by any standard of measurement, Bo"s voice was at its prime in the 1970"s. Already a rich and natural baritone, his singing voice had gradually taken on an expanded flexibility by the time he came to record Black Gladiator. "I knew my voice was changing," says Bo, "not so much in the tone, or the volume--heck, I always had that voice as a kid in Sunday school! The teacher would put me in the back row hoping I"d disappear or something. But when I got to singing, she"d have to stop everything and tell me to hush up!
"No, my voice got more experienced--that"s how I explain it--it could handle different things, it could say more, get those inflections down pat."
The regrettable truth, however, is that for all their incidental glories, Bo"s albums of the early to mid-seventies were never "hits" according to the strict definition of the word, nor were they marketed or promoted as such, and you have to wonder how many people today still possess these records. Yet for all their relative obscurity and their virtual absence from the playlists of radio stations that follow the "classic rock" format (where they might logically be expected to be found), Bo"s recorded music of the seventies embodies many rich and commanding tracks that tell of the care and ingenuity that he continued to lavish on his craft.
Nor did his records necessarily sell poorly--usually a Bo Diddley album might sell between seventy-five thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand copies--quite respectable figures in their way, but certainly short of the supersales category that he and his handlers desired. In one instance he may have been doing far, far better.
At least one trade paper in 1972 gave a year"s end report that Bo Diddley: Got My Own Bag of Tricks, a "Greatest Hits" double-disc compilation of Bo"s earlier recordings, was "selling a ton. . . . some say up to a million copies." When viewed side by side with an earlier headline in Variety, "GRT In Black Under New All-Music Policy," this news must have certainly given Bo and Marty pause for thought. But as Marty explained, "If you never get a statement from the record company, then how can you tell how many records you"re selling? It was like dealing with a mirage."
Bo"s final GRT product came out under the title Big Bad Bo. This album of seven tracks featured photos front and back of a punky, poker-faced Bo Diddley sitting astride a heavy-duty Harley motorbike, a hog. Hank Dunning, the photographer, had taken care to capture the large orange and white sticker that is clearly visible on the bike"s gas tank. "Support your local Hell"s Angels," it urges. Bo had always been bad, but this was surely a major shift. Had the mellow Diddley Daddy become a biker, an "outlaw" like Willie Nelson, a leader of the pack? And what was the significance in these cover photos of the seven-pointed sheriff"s star set just to the left of the bike"s gas cap? Concerned buyers would surely want to know, especially since the cover carried no explanatory copy whatsoever, and none of its tunes, which included one of guileful intensity called "Stop the Pusher," seemed to bear any relation to that bunch of bikers with the notorious reputation. Well, according to Bo, for the most part the Hell"s Angels are a kinder, gentler breed than is commonly supposed.
"Angels have always been good to me," declares Bo. They"re my bosom buddies! They"re more into doing benefits--rehabilitation stuff--like me, than head-bashin". Anybody can get a bad rap in the press, ëspecially if there"s a few that I call ëtermites" in the bunch, but most Angels are regular dudes. Wild, but regular!
"See, back in the early 70s I did a lot of concerts with the Grateful Dead, and they were kinda tied in with ëem. Some of the Angels came to see me in this club one time and told me one of their guys was in jail on a bum rap. I made a contribution to get him out. Didn"t think nothin" about it. But the word got out, and from that time on it was strictly ëBo Diddley" all over the world. ëBo Diddley is our man."
"Then what happened was the Angels had this wedding on the Circle Line--that"s the boat that goes around Manhattan Island--and they booked me and Jerry Garcia for the gig. They called it the ëPirates Ball," or something. But some dude sold tickets for it to the regular public; the people thought they were going to see the Jerry Garcia Band, and Bo Diddley. They didn"t know they were joining a Hell"s Angels wedding party! There were about three hundred Angels on that boat, maybe more.
"Anyway, about mid-evening I step over to the counter to get some refreshment, and this cat"s punchin" on this chick--they were working back there together behind the counter. So I walked over, I said, ëHey man, why don"t y"all wait till you get home to fight?" ëCos beatin" on a woman is a no-no in my book. Cat looked at me and said, ëWhy don"t you mind your motherin" business?" I said, ëWell, don"t hit the woman in front of me, turkey." Cat called me sumpin" and I reached over the counter and grabbed him, and I proceeded to climb on over to where he was at. And I looked up, and the dude was gone! Mac, one of the Angels had ëim, and Mike the Bike, and all of ëem and . . . they . . . all . . . took . . . him!
"They said to the dude, ëYou, you, you fightin" Bo Diddley? What are you crazy? You don"t fight my partner, Bo Diddley, man! And they . . . took . . . the . . . dude . . . and threw him offa the boat . . . into . . . that . . . dirty, nasty water! The cat said, ëAaaah!" They didn"t care if he could swim, or not, and they threw his booty offa there right into the Hudson River!
"I heard the dude was picked up by the boat behind us. That was some boat ride. Whenever you meet someone who was on that ride, he says, ëYou were on that ride, too!" Like you was in a war or something together."
Not long after this event, the Hell"s Angels demonstrated their further approval of Bo by making him a gift of a customized Harley-Davidson. ("Like the PO-lice use," beams Bo). But for the Angels the occasion had to take place in just the right setting.
Recalled Marty Otelsberg, "The New York City chapter of the Hell"s Angels told me they wanted to present Bo Diddley with this motor-bike--a beautiful machine. Could they do it at one of Richard Nader"s concerts at Madison Square Garden? So I went to Richard Nader and I said, ëRichard, the Hell"s Angels wanna give Bo a present of a bike right on stage," and at the mention of the word ëHell"s Angels" Richard Nader panicked! He broke out into an instant sweat!
"Now I think about it, this was an understandable reaction, ëcos this was only a few years after that tragedy at the Rolling Stones" Concert in Altamont. But Bo had experience with the Angels--the Stones didn"t--and he knew how to cool ëem. If there is a problem brewing around Bo, then Bo is the first one to sense it and to squelch it. So I said, ëRichard, go along with it; it can only do you good. It"s not gonna do you any harm, ëcos they"ll watch out for you, you know.
"I worked it out with him and it went off perfectly. The Angels fired this thing up and rode it right out onto the stage and presented the bike to Bo, then delivered it to his home in New Mexico."
Jokes Bo, "I didn"t have to go through no initiation either!"
"I loved that bike, but my family wouldn"t let me ride it; said it was too dangerous. I kept it a long while before my son sold it off to another biker. It"s in good hands with that dude."
And the sheriff"s star?
"I had the sheriff"s badge on my bike because I was in police work at the time. Part-time, y"know.
"I went and put in an application just out of curiosity. Out in Los Lunas, I had moved into an all-white area, plus we had Indians and Mexicans, but I didn"t see any black people in law enforcement around those parts. So I said, ëI"m gonna go to the police station and see if I can join the Sheriff"s Department or do something in the community." So I went on over there, put in an application, let ëem take my fingerprints and then forgot about it. One day about six months later, my wife told me, ëPolice were here looking for you!" And I says, ëWhat!? What did they want? She said, ëI don"t know. They just said, ëWhen he comes in, have him come up to the station." Somethin" to do with some fingerprints." I thought to myself, ëHoly shit, what the hell they want with me?"
"Finally on a Thursday I went down there. I stood around in the lobby, and the Sergeant says, ëHey Bo, how you doin?" I said kinda softly, ëI"m okay." He said, ëYou"re here right on time." I said ëUh, oh, er, yeah!" I was waiting for him to charge me with something I never knew anything about! Then it hit me: this was about my application to join the Department, part time.
"I went into the meeting and I was sworn in. They had done a check on me, pulled out my record to see if I"d been into any heavy events. Being an entertainer they had to check that I wasn"t into no drugs or anything. I respected that, and of course I come up clean. Though it puzzled me why they won"t accept your word before, though they"d accept your word after they give you the badge. Anything you tell ëem after they give you that badge is gospel!
"There"s not many entertainers who"ve been Deputy Sheriff. And I had the keys to the jailhouse! I went on citizen"s patrols with the Valencia County Sheriff"s Department. I got into this law enforcement thing because I"ve always wanted to be a policeman or something so I could get a chance to talk to a lot of the young kids that I see going wrong. And since I had already got hung up in my teenage years from hangin" with the wrong bunch and got locked up, then it had me in the position where I could try to talk to ëem, because I had already been there. I already went and discovered that a jailhouse is not. . . a very nice place. . . t"be!
"I was always concerned about kids and drugs. Let me tell you about something I saw. We had a lot of those outdoor gigs in those days--festivals, you know. Well, one group of kids, somehow or the other, they had those things of nitrous oxide--tanks of nitrous oxide with ëem. That"s brain damage stuff. These dudes were suckin" on the tank! That"s right. They"d be standin" at the tank and have a guy behind to catch him as he passes out. Now, to me that don"t sound like fun. I never figured out how the law never went after people who use that stuff, because it"s a narcotic--the same thing as other stuff they"d lock you up for. You know what keeps ëem from with you? The dentist gives it to you, only he gives you oxygen along with it.
"Now you can still get that stuff today. In my opinion, it shouldn"t be available to the general public. I"ve seen that stuff do terrible things to a person.
"So I worried about that, and all kinds of drug taking, and I always speak up on issues. That"s because I don"t have no title or anything, I"m just a layman, and we"re the ones who always get hit with it first when there"s a problem. And I saw a problem everywhere I went, with drugs. So that"s why at that time me and Kay wrote "Stop the Pusher." The only way I can express myself is through my music, and I wanted to let the kids know that they could be cool without messin" with drugs. I saw the pusher as the real culprit, so that"s why I sang: Take my advice, and don"t buy
And the pusher will die.
If you wanna feel good, do some Bo Diddley!
I"m a different kinda pusher: I push soul!
That"s how it went, yeah. But dig this: the industry wasn"t ready for it then: no airplay, no recognition, no publicity, nothin". They were playing songs for drug-taking, not against it. I was whistling in the doggone wind.
"But the police work was very gratifying to me. I dug it so much I made Marty buy the Department a brand new police car! All done up in black and white; it was beautiful, man, as beautiful as that bike the Angels gave me."
Bo had been living in Los Lunas, New Mexico, for a little under two years when Dick Clark called to arrange for him to do some work in Las Vegas. Bo had been waiting fifteen years for that call from the famed producer and host of ABC-TV"s American Bandstand. It wasn"t that Dick Clark had never appreciated Bo"s talent--in the beginning, in the fifties, he appeared in fact to be shaping up as one of Bo"s principal boosters--it was just that back in those early days a "little unseen problem" had arisen that in all the intervening years Bo had never quite gotten around to straightening out, and that, consequently, had brought about a decline in Dick Clark"s interest in Bo Diddley. In a way, it was Mort, Dick Clark"s dog, who eventually restored contacts between them.
"People have always asked me over the years, ëWhy were you never on American Bandstand?" Well, the reason I wasn"t on American Bandstand was because of a misunderstanding that never got cleared up.
"You see, shortly after I first started my career as a rock and roller I did have a date to be on American Bandstand. I was working in this place called the Uptown Theatre--in Philadelphia, where Dick Clark did his show from. Now the owners of the Uptown were two brothers, and we had a line all the way around the block, and they decided they wanted me to do an extra show. But I was supposed to go and do Dick Clark"s show at that time. In other words, I already had two shows on the same night, but in different parts of town. Dick Clark and the cat that was managing me had already worked this out. Now I wasn"t in on the discussions, or anything; all I know is the agreement is that at such-and-such a time there"ll be a limo for me at the Uptown, that I get in it, go do American Bandstand, and come back and that"s that.
"But the brothers fixed it so that I would just about be coming off stage from the extra show when I was supposed to be at the TV studio. So I said to ëem, ëI gotta be somewhere else. I cain"t do it!" That"s when they started threatening me. They told me that I"d better not leave the theatre because I was under contract to them, and if I left I wasn"t gonna get paid, and worse! So with me being a new artist, quite naturally I was scared, y"understand. And then they went and posted two bur-ly dudes on the door, and now I"m really scared! And my manager was nowhere around, you dig.
"I was told that Dick Clark got very angry when I never showed up, and didn"t want no part of Bo Diddley, for which I could not blame the man.
"All the years until it was revealed to Dick what happened, I held this inside of me, this misunderstanding. But one night in L.A. I ran into Larry Klein, Dick"s assistant, on the street walkin" Dick"s dog, Mort. This must"ve been 1973, around there. And I was petting Mort--smart animal, old Mort--and talking dogs with Larry, and I says, ëYou know what, Larry, I gotta tell somebody this! So out of the clear of the sky I told Larry about that encounter in Philadelphia, all of it, got it right off my chest, why I never showed up that night. And Larry says real serious, ëYou oughta tell Dick that." I said, ëNo, you tell him, man, ëcos you know what: I been living with this all these years, and Dick never knew. He thought it was me being stuck-up or hard-nosed, see, but I needed American Bandstand at that time."
"So all of a sudden, Dick Clark calls, and he says he wants to take me to the Flamingo in Las Vegas. Larry evidently told Dick about that problem--and I"ve had lots ëem like that--because our whole relationship changed from then on, and believe me I love the man for it."
It was the year 1975. Rock and roll had been in existence as a distinct musical form for two decades now. Why not celebrate the occasion by bringing together, on record, a handful of the world"s major musicians for a musical encounter with one of the genre"s early, leading innovators? Such was the thinking of the brilliant Ron Terry, a California composer, arranger, and polymathic man of music and film. But how to achieve this aim when, given the nature of their profession, most big-name artists would be on the road for the greater part of each year, available only for limited amounts of time, in scattered locations? The solution devised by producer Terry was to make the fullest possible use of multi-tracking, the overdubbing of separately recorded tracks and their merging into a single recorded unit. Thus, while his principal recording sessions took place at the Kaye-Smith studios in Seattle, Terry also conducted recording sessions in six other studios, in places as far apart as Los Angeles, Miami, and New York. All the tracks were then brought together for the final mixing, or mastering, at the RCA studios in L.A.
The outcome of these efforts was the album known, appropriately enough, as The 20th Anniversary of Rock ëN" Roll. In essence, it was a "Bo Diddley and Friends" album, though the friends--who included Billy Joel, Joe Cocker, Keith Moon, Roger McGuinn, and Leslie West--were not necessarily all in the same place at the same time. Nor did each musician play on every track.
"It was conceived as a tribute album to Bo," says Terry. "That"s why I was able to enlist people like Billy Joel and Joe Cocker. They were eager to contribute when they knew it was for Bo. But at the same time as being a salute to Bo, I hoped the album would also illustrate rock and roll"s capacity for growth. I wanted to show how far the music had come, that it was not static, that it had progressed."
Ron Terry clearly intended this album to have stature. He enlisted an impressive line-up of session musicians that included the noted guitarists Albert and Alvin Lee, ace drummer Carmine Appice, and vocalists Daniel and Matthew Moore. When Terry went to the RCA Corporation, he had little difficulty in persuading them to offer Bo a contract for the project, Bo"s contract with GRT having recently expired.
The album"s A-side was the progressive side, devoted to the music of the day, compositions by Terry and others, and one surprising and ironic choice, Petty and Hardin"s "Not Fade Away," the Bo-beat song that had brought fame to Buddy Holly and that had been further popularized by the Rolling Stones. The B-side, by contrast, was the classic side, the music of the past brought into the present, a seventeen-minute jam given over to the uninterrupted interpretation of three of Bo"s best-known pieces--"I"m a Man," "Who Do You Love," and "Gunslinger"--delicious nougats of rock that Bo had fashioned during the genre"s birth and infancy.
It was this very bifurcation that most bothered Bo, however, for in asking Bo to perform progressive works such as "Ride the Water" and "Drag On," Terry was asking him to travel a road he had not taken, and a road that Bo had in fact resolutely declined to take over the years.
"I personally did not like it," says Bo. "They brought in a guy to play like me, and that screwed it up for me. What, ain"t I good enough to be heard on my own album? Ron Terry"s a heck of a guy and we"ve done work together since, but I don"t think he knew what to do with me at that time. I was singing his songs most of the time, and I was lost. It was not Bo Diddley. I"m a laid back rock ën" roller, and this was just too far out for me. Okay, give me a song, any song, and I"ll do it Bo Diddley"s way. At least stop and ask me, and I"ll do an interpretation. And if that"s no good, then I"ll do it your way."
"Bo feels he was taken advantage of on that record," said Marty Otelsberg, who until that time thought he had seen every side of Bo"s emotional make-up. "He felt destroyed in his mind that they didn"t do right by him. Ron knows that, because we"ve sat down and talked it over many times. The concept was good, but it didn"t come off. When Bo came back from the session, he sat down in his hotel room in Seattle and just cried, and when I saw him cry like that, my anger at Ron Terry became more outraged. I don"t think they even let Bo play his guitar on that album--maybe on a coupla songs. It"s not Bo--his beat was drifted away, y"know. It just wasn"t hip."
So the twentieth anniversary celebration didn"t exactly work out. But Bo and Ron Terry didn"t let that spoil a good working relationship. What did they do, but get together again ten years later to celebrate rock"s thirtieth anniversary, and that, as it happens, turned out to be one of the supreme collaborations of Bo"s musical career.
Their first project, The 20th Anniversary of Rock ëN" Roll, was by no means a total failure, either commercially ("I sure didn"t lose RCA any money on it," says Bo) or artistically: "Bo"s singing amazed everybody at that session," says producer Terry, "especially some of his notes on ëRide the Water." If anything, this album proved what a really great singer Bo Diddley is."
And they liked it in Australia. "As punchy as anything Bo"s ever done. . . a monster boogie," wrote Tom Zelinka, of The Sunday Telegraph. A reception of this sort was important, for in Australia Bo had found as especially strong following.
"BO"S A" COMIN"," "BO DIDDLEY STILL KING," "BO DIDDLEY GOES ON FOREVER." Headlines like these in city and regional newspapers across Australia revealed the extent to which the Aussies were real Bo Diddley boosters. Get out and see Bo, was the message. "Let"s hope that very vocal section of the rock ën" roll community which always complains about the lack of entertainment gets into gear for Bo," intoned the Sunday Examiner, warning earnestly, "for his show to bomb in Tasmania would spell disaster for the future of rock ën" roll in this State."
"We started going to Australia in 1972," explained Marty Otelsberg, "and Bo became very successful there. We worked with Peter Conyngham, an excellent promoter, and developed a very strong relationship with him. The first time Bo and I went to Australia together it was new territory. It meant being away from America for a month, but the reception we got in Australia made up for it. It was absolutely outstanding. The treatment was always first-class. We weren"t used to being mobbed by the press, y"know, thirty photographers waiting for you and headlines in the newspapers. The attendance was outrageous--we were sold out everywhere."
One of Bo"s most memorable Australian performances was the stupendous outdoor concert celebrating the inauguration of the new Sydney Opera House in 1973. John St. John, an Australian phenomenon who sang from a wheel chair, was a supporting performer. The show took place on a World War II landing craft moored alongside the waterfront park. It was reported that 300,000 spectators rimmed the harbor, overhead police helicopters (there to ensure Queen Elizabeth"s safety) buzzed from shore to shore, plus one other bird, the helicopter rented by Australian cinephotographer, Gordon Mutch, who had received special permission to film Bo"s performance. But didn"t Bo at least deserve an invitation to perform inside the Opera House? "Not with a band called Rat Salad working behind me," shudders Bo, "not in that place. Plus I never had my violin with me!"
"He told the press that someday he"d buy property and live in Sydney," explained Marty. "He was really so engrossed with the desire to go back every year. He loves the people. The way he was greeted, accepted, the enthusiasm was irresistible to him. And the folks in New Zealand have been the same way. He made a lot of new friends Down Under."
Says Bo, "It was in Sydney that I met the dude who makes some of my guitars. His name was Bill Kinsman. He came to see me and said, ëI can build you a great guitar." So I went up to his factory which was over a music store, and he showed me a block of wood, real exotic stuff, you know. But Marty spots this split in it. ëThere"s a split in it," he says. ëHow you gonna build a guitar out of that?" But Kinsman says, ëDon"t worry about it. I"ll handle it!" Sure enough he tried, but he couldn"t do it. The wood split on him. So I"m thinking maybe this dude doesn"t know what he"s doing. But then he found a new piece with a beautiful grain in it, and the guitar he was talking about starts to take shape. This was really interesting to me, having been a guitar builder myself. So I stayed with him every day, instructed him what I wanted him to do, what to put into it, what not to put into it, the electronics, you know. And when it was finished, that instrument was a masterpiece. The colors he got on it, the tone, I called it the ëFunk Machine," but I only use it for recording--it"s too valuable to take on the road. For road work I use the ëThe Turbo" made by Tom Holmes in Nashville.
"I"ve played some beautiful places in Australia," continues Bo, "but the most outasight place I ever played was Cairns in the North. It was in the rain forest where everything is so nice and green. The entrepreneur for the Cairns territory didn"t mind not making any money; he just wanted to bring Bo Diddley"s music to his people, to the jungle! It was an outpost of civilization, a tropical paradise. And the folks came barefooted, and were hangin" off the rafters! It blew my mind, man. And there they were thirty-five years ago calling my music ëjungle music." Maybe they were right!"
Said Marty, "One year we covered the whole country, and we did it all, all, on ground transportation! We did a trip from Port Augusta, which is near Adelaide, and we took a train. It"s called the ëMaribu Straight" because it happens to be the longest straight line in the world. We went on that train first-class, and by the time we got off the train twenty-four hours later, Bo knew everyone on it and invited them all to come to the concert. And they came: the pullman attendant, the driver, everyone! The club owner wasn"t too happy. It was in a town called Calgoorie, a gold-mining town, and the whole main street is lined with whorehouses.
"Our tour band was called Rat Salad, and while we were on the train they went by bus, and there was no way I could see them getting there before us. But these Aussies are so strong-willed, nothing, nothin, can stop them, and when our train pulled into the station, the Rat Salad band were right there waiting for us. The bandleader looked us right in the face, and he said, ëWhat kept you?""
There was another side to Bo"s activities in Australia, however, a side that perhaps few people other than those directly involved knew about, and yet it illustrates an essential part of his character. As Marty Otelsberg explained, "We did about four or five prison gigs in Australia. Their reaction was that they couldn"t believe that a famous American artist like Bo Diddley would exert himself to do free concerts in a prison, and so the prisoners and the prison officials were so appreciative. The reception was extremely warm, and we had a tremendous time. After the shows Bo would sit down and have lunch with the prisoners. Bo would speak to them individually, one-on-one, hoping it would have an impact.
"That"s something not many people know about Bo: that he does benefit work, and that"s because he does it quietly, and without any glamor!
"He doesn"t give a concert and say, ëOh, I"m giving all the proceeds to such and such," (though it"s true it would make more money). Instead he does the dirty work, the nitty gritty; he goes to prisons, visits juvenile centers, rehab centers, takes a group of troubled youth to Disney World and shepherds them around for a whole day--do you know how exhausting that can be?--pays for their rides and their treats and everything. Personal work, hands-on work. And you won"t get him to talk about it either. If they had invited him to Woodstock, he wouldn"t have gone. He was already booked that weekend to do a gig for the inmates in Washington State Penitentiary, and that would"ve come first, no matter who invited him!
"These things are very important to him, but he doesn"t make a fuss about them. In fact, the only time it ever got into the papers about him doing a prison benefit was when the guards wouldn"t let him out! They weren"t sure he wasn"t one of the prisoners! They forgot to put the "Visitor" stamp on his hand, and when he got to the exit gate they said, ëHow do we know you"re not an inmate?" This was at the State facility in Rhode Island. But we worked it out, thank God!
"But back in Australia we did have something bad happen to us once. It was when we were working in Adelaide in 1978. We had a week with this promoter who gave his name as Dennis Charter. He gave us some money up front, like he should, but he owed us about nine thousand dollars. Because we had to hit the road late at night to get to other engagements, I wouldn"t be able to get to the bank the next morning, which is where he told me he had the money. But I would be back in town on Monday. I said, ëI want a letter from the President of the bank that when I get there Monday morning I will have no problems taking that money out in U.S. funds." Dennis Charter provided me with a letter on bank stationery confirming the fact that, yes, he did deposit the funds and that these funds are retractable. Monday morning I get to the bank, all dressed up--brief-case, bank book in my hand and the letter--and I feel confident everything will be fine. The teller says to me, ëI"m sorry. The funds that are in there are not collectible funds." I said, ëI have a letter here says they are. Let me speak to the senior officer." The bank manager looks over the situation with me, and the bottom line is that Charter did deposit a check drawn on another bank, but the check was no good, and before this was discovered the account showed, incorrectly as it happens, that there was money there in my name. This Charter had forged the signature on the bank letterhead and had pulled off a crooked deal.
"Now to add insult to injury, I told Dennis Charter before this happened that we had a day off and that Bo would like to give a free concert at a nearby prison. So he said, ëGreat idea." So we worked the prison before this happened, never realizing that the guy who arranged all this deserved to be in there himself along with the other inmates!
"When I found out the funds were not collectible, I went straight to the police, straight to the press. We held a press conference, and Bo displayed the bad check. But as they say, ëOut of the bad comes some good." I went to Peter Conyngham, our Australian promoter, and I said, ëThis is your responsibility," and he agreed. And he paid us every dime that was coming to us. That was pretty magnificent, but that"s how strong our relationship was. Peter checked out this Charter guy and discovered that he was wanted by the police in three states. So he"d ripped other people too. I never heard if they caught him."
Meanwhile, back at the ranch in New Mexico the mail had not been too good. "Around 1978 I started receiving nasty letters from the Savings and Loan that held my mortgage," says Bo. "Something about being behind in my payments. But I was maybe only a month behind, no more. It was the oil crisis that was behind it. Which wasn"t no doing of mine. The system created that mess, and anybody who was anybody was about to lose their shirt, and so they tried to get ahold of every dollar they could."
"Expenditures were exceeding income," says Kay pointedly. "We realized we"d have to sell the ranch, but we scored a decent profit on it and that enabled us to buy our new place in Florida."
Marty had told Bo and Kay of some beautiful land that was available in Northern Florida, at a place called Hawthorne in the Interlachen region. It had a seventeen-acre spring-fed lake, graceful live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, and a little knoll where they could build a house while they lived in the motor home Kay"s mother had given them.
When it came time to move, Bo had to fly off to a week of concerts in the North-East. He would meet Kay in Florida. So Kay packed up the house, hitched the horse trailer to the motor home, and drove across country. It sounded as if Bo, Kay, Terri, and Tammi were headed for yet greener pastures, but the road to Hawthorn would in fact lead to personal disasters for each of them.