The return of Bo Diddley to the kind of public prominence he enjoyed in the 1950s and 60s was not an overnight phenomenon related to a chart event or a movie success, as with Tina Turner, say. It was a gradual process leading to the growth of a certain critical mass from which a sustained chain reaction would eventually begin.
Even during the years of his recording hiatus, Bo never left the road. He was always out there, at major arts festivals, at clubs around the country, or as opening act for the tours of younger rockers. He had his loyal following still, and as his visibility began to rise during the mid 80's, many remembered the rocker who had brought them joy and pleasure and they delighted in his survival. "I remember seeing him in 1955 at the Hartford Civic Center," recalled Chuck Bond during a recent Bo-Show at a club in a gentrified section of New Haven. "He has all the same facial expressions, the same body language as he had then. It's a thrill to see him. He was sensational then, and he's sensational now." From another generation comes different praise. "[His] is very primal, simple, urgent music," said one 19-year-old patron of New York's Lone Star CafÈ recently. "He's one of the fathers of rock."
Though he himself might disavow the title ("I don't say I was the only one," he often says), Bo Diddley could, if he so wished, quite legitimately call himself the father of rock.
From Chuck Berry to Nenah Cherry, Bo Diddley preceded them all. Elvis Presley's first hit, "Heartbreak Hotel," followed Bo's "Bo Diddley" by almost a year; neither Fats Domino nor Little Richard were on the scene until mid 1956; and it was not until 1956 that Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly had succeeded in inventing themselves. In a very real sense there is truth to one of Bo's favorite road stickers that puns "diddly" (American slang for "the least amount") with his longstanding nickname: "If you think that rock and roll started with Elvis, then you don't know Diddley!"
However, in the 1980s many were getting to know Diddley, especially through his increasing TV and film appearances. Bo came over particularly well in his cameo spot as a poolroom hustler in the George Thorogood "Bad to the Bone" video, a popular item on MTV. "George gave me a shot," he said at the time. "He knows the problems I'm having with the record business." In Trading Places, the Dan Ackroyd-Eddie Murphy comedy, he played a surly pawnbroker. "I was a little disappointed that it didn't scratch anybody's fancy to put Bo Diddley in something else," he says. "I'm pretty sure I can act, but I have to do it naturally. Tell me what you're lookin' for, but don't shove a script under my nose--then I know it ain't gonna work!"
And by 1985 Bo was again centerstage with George Thorogood on the day that the late Bill Graham and the enterprising Irishman Bob Geldof beamed their amazing Live-Aid Concert by satellite to a waiting world in what was the first intergenerational celebration of rock and roll for the cause of famine relief. Sandwiched between Wembley sets by Dire Straits and Queen, representatives of the music of the 80s and 70s respectively, Bo's performance with George Thorogood at Philadelphia's RFK Stadium resulted in what one report called "a steaming set of R and B classics." But, at first, Bo had wondered whether he should participate in the noble affair at all.
"George had requested me and Albert Collins to do sets with him," he recalls. "My immediate reaction was ëThat's good, I'll do it!' But then I remembered some of the times that I'd been burned with events like that, with the money going into somebody's post office box and never coming out. Mention the names of some promoters to me and it doesn't sit well. So I asked George, ëBut where's the money going? Is it going directly to these people, or are we dealing with something where everybody's gonna get fat and the people over there are still hungry? But George assured me that it was legitimate and that was good enough for me."
Later that summer Bo attempted to consolidate his re-emergence from the recording doldrums that he had described to Bill Braunstein by releasing a second album through the French distributor, New Rose. It was called Bo Diddley and Co. Live.
Recorded before a night club audience in the summer resort area of Woodstock in upstate New York, this release contains two extended tracks that pointed to Bo's essential singularity in the world of modern rock and roll at that time. The twelve-minute groove "Get Up to Get Down," illustrates his sureshot comedic talent, while the eleven-minute plus "He's a Hell of a Man" is surely the greatest one-man rhythmic assault on record, as much the work of a master-drummer as of a master guitarist. Even its cadenced pauses suggest musical genius.
"I wish that album had sold more," says Bo earnestly. "It was what Bo Diddley was all about at the time. I was selling copies right off the bandstand. But at least it helped keep my name in front of the public, and that's what counts."
Indeed, it could be said that Bo's name was especially relevant in 1985. If one accepts the majority opinion that rock and roll began life in 1955 (for the record it has to be noted that some dissenters suggest ë53, others ë56), then 1985 was, then, the thirtieth birthday of rock itself, and Ron Terry, the inveterate celebrator of rock anniversaries, intended to see that the occasion did not pass unnoticed. In cooperation with Major League Management, and Bo's manager, Marty Otelsberg, Terry put together a superb cast for an All-Star Jam at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Orange County, Los Angeles. Showtime was set for 7:30 p.m., on October 25 and the whole shebang was to be videotaped for a cable television special.
The plan was deceptively simple: Bo would star in the first half of the show, and Chuck Berry in the second. It was even hoped that the two pioneers would jam together, something that they had not attempted in a long, long while. Behind them was a momentous line-up of distinguished rockers: special guest Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, John Mayall of the Bluesbreakers, Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, John Lodge of the Moody Blues, blues ace John Hammond, and an especially fine guitarist named Carmine Grillo, as well as representatives from Vanilla Fudge, the Who, and the Doors.
Everything was set for a gala event. Bo did his part in setting the mood by assuming the pivotal role of chef at a pre-show barbecue for the one hundred or so musicians, event staff, and guests. "When I was a kid I never thought that Bo Diddley would be cooking m'blooming supper," said one appreciative English diner. "Great ribs, Bo!" was the general assent. ("There's never any left when I cook," says Bo with customary modesty. "I can make some barbecue make you slap your momma and look at your daddy funny!")
That evening, Bo turned in a magnificent eight-number set. He was augmented by superb riffs from the massed band of horns and strings, with other highlights consisting of a harmonica solo of unusual excellence by bluesman Hammond, and a stint on drums by Bo himself. The vibes were superb; the subsequent video footage confirms it. Anyone there could see how Bo felt truly complimented in being backed by such a power ensemble, and how they in turn were delighted to be doing him honor.
After sixty minutes of stupendous power-playing, Bo made his exit, squeezing his way between the sensational back-up singers, Barbara Paige and Aniyah Shockley. One wondered if such a first-half could possibly be topped. The star due on next was, after all, no less a figure than Chuck Berry, of whom Noel Davis has perhaps written the definitive compliment: "To imagine what rock would have been like without the influence of Chuck Berry is like contemplating life in the 20th century without the automobile."
But temperament, or lack of preparation, or perhaps the gorgeous full moon shining over the event, seems to have gotten the better of Chuck that evening. After keeping the audience waiting for thirty minutes, he appeared with what looked like a borrowed guitar, performed a cursory run-through of two less than impressive numbers, disappeared for a while, then reappeared guitar-less, slickly refusing Ron Wood's attempts to coax him into playing, and finally headed for the wings to a chorus of boos. "A One-Half Party Only," decried the next morning's Los Angeles Times in the absence of any explanation from Chuck; "Roll Over, Chuck Berry," chorused the Orange Counter Register.
At first Ron Terry must have thought he had yet another anniversary disaster on his hands, but subsequent viewing of that evening's footage proved to Terry that he had more than enough material to produce a compelling video special devoted to Bo Diddley alone. Besides the performance footage, there were scenes of Bo rehearsing the band earlier in the day; Bo giving Ron Wood an "audition" in the "Gunslinger" riff; Bo singing up an extemporaneous storm at the barbecue while beating the time with a huge butcher knife and skewer as a conga-line of horn-players joined in; and finally Bo caught delightedly off guard in the Green Room as Ron Wood pulled the wrapping off a life-size portrait he had drawn of Bo, gap-teeth and all. "I paint as well as play," explains Wood. "Holy shit!" spouts Bo "That's beau-tiful, man."
All's fair in love and war--and in rock and roll too, it seems--for when producer Ron Terry's completed video was sent to TV stations around the country, it came under the title "Bo Diddley's All-Star Jam." Not a mention or a glimpse of Chuck Berry. Bo's final words in the special are addressed to his fellow musicians at the barbecue, but they might just as well have been directed to his good friend, Chuck Berry: "I don't mean to be nasty about this, but if y'all want some ribs, y'all gonna have to go out and catch a pig!"
By 1986 Bo's schedule of appearances was fuller than ever: in the spring a full-scale tour of Europe; in the summer selected dates with Roy Orbison; in the fall a tour of England with Carl Perkins; and, as always, a host of one-niters in between the major stints. The travel was grueling, but Bo pressed on, aided and abetted by a seemingly "heartless" manager. "I had him working the very next day after he returned from Europe," recalled Marty with a chuckle, "but if there is anyone who's bionic, it's Bo Diddley, believe me!"
Despite this heightened activity and a consequent rise in his personal income, Bo still had what he felt was a justifiable gripe with the industry to which he had been a principal contributor, an industry whose history and origins, it should be noted, were being increasingly examined in print and on film. "A lot of people followed behind what I created," he once told Robert Palmer of the New York Times, "but I just wasn't recognized, and now in some of the books that have been written and in television programs that you see, they pass Bo Diddley by. They should at least mention my name, even if I don't get any bread out of it."
To make his point about being overlooked, Bo even resorted to installing an electronic "crawl line" onto the face of his guitar. "It's been so doggone hard for me to get my name in lights," he told his audiences, "that I decided to do it myself!"
The truth is there are probably only two surefire ways of getting a measure of recognition in rock and roll these days. One is to produce a chart-topping album or single, and the other is to be voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though one never knows for sure, it is perhaps too late to hope for the former event, with Bo's musical style having now crystallized into stormbursts of spontaneous rhythm-play matched with jocular ballads of marital disharmony (his "Ice Man" could be described as stand-up comedy, with guitar accompaniment), but as to the other possibility, admission to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whose facilities and displays are now open to the public in Cleveland, well, this did come to pass, as it inevitably would.
In its second year of public business Bo Diddley was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at glittering ceremonies at New York's Waldorf-Astoria on January 21, 1987. Decked out in a black tuxedo perfectly complimenting his black hat, Bo received his Famer's trophy (a naked Muse holding aloft a representation of a 12-inch disc) from the three members of the Texas rock dynamo, ZZ Top.
"He even taught us to put fur on our guitars and drums," quipped ZZ Top's Dusty Hill in his presentation speech. "I didn't realize that he always had pretty girls with him," said fellow band-member Frank Beard, referring to the vintage clip shown prior to the presentation showing Bo and his band in the 60s. "The goodies come late to those who wait," said Bo in reply. Then he led off a powerhouse rendition of "Bo Diddley" with a celebrity band that included first-year inductees Chuck Berry and Keith Richards, fellow second-year members Smokey Robinson, B.B.King, Roy Orbison, and Carl Perkins, and guest-presenters Bruce Springsteen and John Fogerty.
"I felt really good about things that evening. But to be honest with you I wasn't too happy with that whole Hall of Fame scene. Because I felt like I was indirectly ridiculed--quietly, you know--because I should have been the first thing in there, and that hurt, y'know.
"When I was inducted there were people already in the Hall of Fame who didn't have any business being there! And there were others who should've been in there before that person was in there. And I'll tell you who that person was: as much as I think of Buddy Holly, he doesn't have any business in there yet! And I think the only reason they put him in there was because he's deceased. But it was the politics of music, y'understand, and that's what hurt.
"Bill [Haley] had bigger records than mine, but he wasn't in there on the first go-round either, so I would back off any racial idea. It wasn't racial at all; it was political and that hurt because then I was shelved back into the second wave, and I shouda been in the first.
"I was the first dude, the first to play rock and roll for a living on the national stage. Not by much, it's true--Chuck was right on my heels, I acknowledge that--but I was the first! And it should've gone in chronological order. So the people who voted went for numbers of records sold--so, sure, they beat me there."
"But the goodies came my way another day! I like the way it went down that evening, with ZZ Top handing me the trophy, and all. Better late than never! And I got this new song called "A Little Bit of Love is Better than None," and that's the way I feel now about the Hall of Fame induction."
By the time all of these positive developments were taking place, another principal player had joined in the handling of Bo's career. This was Margo Lewis, a music business cognoscenti who had booked many of Bo's performance dates while working at the now defunct Banner Talent Agency. When Banner folded in the mid-eighties, Margo set up her own agency at offices in New York City and persuaded Marty to let her handle the Bo Diddley account. Nowadays she is Bo Diddley's sole manager.
"I started as a musician," says Margo, "so I was very in tune with the way things had been going for Bo with Banner, and quite honestly, despite some successes, I felt the agency had not been doing him justice. Playing with pick-up bands was not appropriate at any time for someone of his talent and stature. In that situation you can only be as good as the back-up band is. His music had made such a mark in history--he had created a foundation for rock and roll to move forward on--and yet, when I first connected with him in ë84, he was really getting no exposure to the younger people. I felt, therefore, that Bo needed to be totally re-identified.
"What Bo needed was to grow, and for us to find him the right niche, the right audiences, and just as importantly, the right band. So I made the case to Marty that I could handle Bo artistically, while he continued to handle him financially. And that is how our roles eventually emerged."
That Margo had the skills and experience to do this was more than evident from her background. She had first entered the business in her teens as the keyboard player with a sixties group called Goldie and the Gingerbreads, now thought to have been the first all-female rock band. While playing at the Wagon Wheel Club on New York's Forty-Sixth Street, they were discovered by the Animals, who at the time were on a flying visit to the States to promote their number one hit, "House of the Rising Sun." Margo and the Girls soon found themselves en route to England as an exchange group under the union rules of the time, and there they began a tour with a young, explosive group called the Rolling Stones. They worked on the European scene for a year and a half, before moving on to become a fusion band called Isis, yet another first, this time as the first all-woman horn band.
"It was a devastation when the time came to quit playing," says Margo, "but I was always interested in the business side and so when I eventually started Talent Consultants International, TCI, I went into it wholeheartedly.
"I approach it a little differently from what most of ëthe boys' do! I like to conceptualize. I like putting people together, arranging ëmusical marriages' in a way; I was pleased to take Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin out of retirement and put them together with Hall and Oates. We did it live at the Apollo. I think we gave something important to David and Eddie's fans before they passed on.
"So I used to go to Marty with ideas, and if it sounded like the right move then we would go for it. It's strange: in my playing days I toured with the Rolling Stones, and although Ron Wood wasn't with the Stones then, I knew that Ron and Bo would make an ideal pairing in a touring situation, and that it would bring Bo to an audience that might not otherwise have seen him, a Stones-type audience."
"I knew that Phil Carson, Ron's acting manager at the time, was looking for some activity for Ronnie while the rest of the Stones took a break, and when we made the connection together our original conversation probably lasted only five minutes--that's how easy it was to see what a valid relationship Bo and Ronnie could have, and that the kids would really love to see it. Then Mitch Karduna of my office came up with the title, and it was all set. It was a charm; it worked beautifully."
The outcome was the "Gunslingers' Tour", Bo Diddley and Ron Wood--the man who wrote the book, and one of those who had read that book most closely--working together in the re-forging and rejuvenation of some of Bo's earliest numbers. It was difficult to say which of the two was the more enthused about the pairing that Margo and Phil Carson had put together.
Said Bo, "The Rolling Stones always were one of the toughest bands. They were the Rolls Royce of sixties music which is real rock and roll. I knew they'd make a dent in it some day. But for a while Mick and them had a problem: you couldn't hardly speak to ëem--though I still counted them as my friends. Ronnie was different, very amenable right from the start. I love Ronnie and I love his family. Ron knew all of my old stuff and I enjoyed working with him."
The "old stuff" was what Ron Wood most wanted to concentrate on. When he and Bo gathered in New York at the Topcat Studios for rehearsals with the brilliantly renegade TCI house-band featuring bassist extraordinaire Debby Hastings, Wood brought along what he called "audio references," by which he meant MCA's re-issues of Bo's earliest albums. "Actually, it turned out to be my biggest stumbling block," an always affable Wood told the press. "I'd say to Bo, ëLet's play ëem like you recorded them,' and he'd say, ëI've played it different for thirty years! I'm not about to re-learn all that stuff now.'"
"Ronnie knew all of Bo's arrangements," says Debby Hastings, "just the way they were pressed on the records. He knew every little guitar nuance, he knew all the original words, he knew all the rhythm parts, and when Bo balked at doing them like that, Ronnie would sort of throw up his hands and look at us, and say--like he was poking Bo in the ribs, ëAlright, I don't know why I bloody came then!'
"Bo understood," continues Debby, "because they responded so well together. There was so much mutual respect--and a lot of goofing around on Ronnie's part! But Ronnie was also real serious about it. Because he admires Bo, he wanted Bo's numbers to be played right; you could see on his face how serious he was when he was soloing. He would really put on his guitar-face!"
For Wood this collaboration was clearly an important pilgrimage, an opportunity to repay a musical debt that ran deep. "I felt extremely complimented to be in the company of some one like Bo," said Wood at rehearsals, "because the Stones started doing all of those songs of his like ëCops and Robbers,' ëHey Bo Diddley,' ëI'm a Man.' The fact is they wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't for Bo. He was such an influence on the group. And on me too; the B-side of the first single of my first group, the Birds, was Bo's ëYou Don't Love Me (You Don't Care)'. He's long been an inspiration of mine."
Hearing Ron Wood talk this way is to be reminded that his own credentials for this undertaking weren't exactly minuscule either. Through the years his qualifications had included membership in the Birds, the Jeff Beck Group, the Faces (where, with Rod Stewart, he penned the worldwide hit, "Stay With Me," one of the most incendiary jams ever recorded), after which has come tenure for a decade and a half in the Rolling Stones, the world's greatest rock and roll band. All this, and a parallel career as a portraitist of considerable talent, as his book Ron Wood: The Works amply testifies. Bo himself was soon heaping compliments on his co-star. "I discovered that he was a hell of a musician. All of the Stones are--that's how they got so far. With Ronnie the music went great, right from the start. It just fell together. We were nasty just about every night."
The Gunslingers' Tour kicked off on November 5, 1987, for a three week trek of the premiere clubs and theatres in the East. Apart from an early-season snowstorm that caused confusion in the schedule for a day or two, everything went well. Final night, November 25, would find the duo performing a single two-hour show at the Ritz Club in New York City, a show that was broadcast live on the Westwood Radio network and videotaped for an MTV Special, Live at the Ritz. Yet that performance was regarded by some members of the band as being something of an off-night. That was because they had managed only a few hours' sleep since leaving, D.C. the night before. But Bo got even less. The roadies complained of fatigue, so he took over the bus-driving chores, all the way from D.C. to New York.
The highlight of that evening, and perhaps of the entire tour, was "Crackin' Up," one of Bo's finest early period songs, which the Stones performed on their 1977 LP, Love You Live. In mid-tune Bo and Ron engaged in a fierce pattin' duel on their guitars, Bo slipping and sliding across Ron's contrapuntal dips and dives in a superb rhythmic interplay. The published recording of that evening's performance (co-produced by Ron wood and Martin Adam, and released on cassette by JVC) confirms the magnificence of this former doo-wop slide transformed into pumped-up rocker for two guitars.
"Brother Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones," announced Bo proudly at number's end. "Mr. Bo Diddley, of himself," countered Ron sagely. It was all that needed to be said.
It was soon obvious that the Diddley-Wood combination deserved a longer run, and plans were immediately set in motion by Margo Lewis and Phil Carson to repeat the exercise in larger venues on the West Coast, and to move on from there to Japan and Europe. What had started as a club swing with relatively modest expectations had soon become a World Tour. Its new starting point was Ron Wood's own late-night club, "Woody's," a trendy masterpiece of neon extravaganza on Miami's Ocean Drive.
By now the friendship between Bo Diddley and Ron Wood had reached a new level of enthusiasm, with a dash of tomfoolery to provide laughs. "We have a flowing relationship," is how Ron Wood explained things to Long Island writer Adam Barbasso. "It was such a great surprise. I would have taken on any risk [to work with Bo]. If he was unreasonable I would have stuck it out and tried to make it work, but the fact that he's a gentleman has made it so much easier.
"He's got such a broad mind. He'll come up to me and say, ëWhat we gonna play?' I'll say, ëYou're supposed to tell me!' I'll say, ëDo "Mona",' and he'll start doing ëWho Do You Love,' He loves that kick of spontaneity. Give him a kick and he goes.
"You know, it's no B.S. that Bo is like a teenager. If I think that we've done enough press he'll say, ëLet's do another one!' If I come off stage and say, ëThat's enough Bo; let's finish up,' he'll say ëLet's do another one.' He's incredible like that. It makes me feel he's not getting old, he's getting young!"
Throughout his long career, Bo had been to most parts of the world, but the visit to Japan was a first, and it was something of a revelation to him. "They couldn't whup us in a war, but they're gonna beat our ass with a pencil! All the people are so orderly, and so educated. We could learn so much from them."
Food, always pre-eminent among Bo's interests, was also a marvel in Japan. In fact, Margo Lewis believes Bo discovered a new international commodity, "I could have negotiated his fee in Kobe beef instead of dollars, he was so hooked!" But Bo's reception in Japan, she notes, was also something of a psychological watershed. "I think Bo went through a period some years ago of doubting his own achievement, but when he went to Japan and saw all these young people in their twenties tossing his picture at him for autographs, and knowing all the words to his songs without knowing precisely what they meant, I think it finally sank in with him that he was valued."
"Ronnie knew what great form Bo was in," says Debby Hastings. "He wanted to capture this. It was while we were in Japan that he bought some materials from an art supply store. He was doing these numerous, quick, black ink on white paper drawings of Bo. He just fired them off as he sat at the side of the stage, and one of them became the cover for the ëLive at the Ritz' album. It's a great drawing of both of them, but it truly captures Bo's spirit."
By July, 1988, and now in its European leg, the Gunslingers' Tour was drawing to a close: Great Britain, Italy, and finally Germany, where at Frankfurt the closing curtain came down at the "Out in the Green" open-air jazz and rock festival when the guitar-slinging duo shared billing with Foreigner, Starship, and Jethro Tull. Throughout this time the reviews had been consistently high; from Turin to Tokyo, from Seattle to San Francisco the praise had poured in. Perhaps the San Francisco Examiner's banner headline expressed it best: "Hot Guitar Heaven!" Said Ron Wood as they came off the final leg of that exhilarating but exhausting tour: "Bo set some precedents in the early days, didn't he? But I found that he's just like me. He'll play music till he drops."
One of the cutest of Bo's recordings picturing southern life is called "Put the Shoes on Willie," an hilarious tale that tells in down-home style of his barefooted brother getting his first pair of shoes and of the teasing that goes along with this traumatic event. Bo could hardly have imagined when he wrote this song that one day he would team up with another man named Bo to put shoes--this time Nike Athletic Shoes, and surely not for the first time--on nearly every youngster in the country and at the same time launch the catch phrase "Bo Knows" into the American popular vocabulary.
"It materialized while we were on the Gunslinger's Tour in Japan," recalls Margo Lewis. "One night the promoters introduced me to people who said they were with Nike. So, of course, since I was serving as management, I gave them my card and took them backstage, and they were thrilled to meet with Bo and to watch the show. By the end of the night the Nike people said that they would send on shoes to our next site for everyone in the entourage, and when we arrived the shoes were there! We talked some at that time--it was my job as agent to accept these types of solicitations. We didn't particularize at that point but it was obvious that they wanted to do a commercial with Bo and Bo Jackson."
Bo Diddley and Bo Jackson might seem at first like an odd pairing for any enterprise, let alone the selling of shoes, but when they first met they hit it off right away. And there was every reason why the two Bo's would be instantly and personally sympatico: both were regarded as consummate in their fields, Diddley as musician, Jackson as athlete, but perhaps more important were their common backgrounds--rural Southern upbringings, fatherless childhoods, and a reliance on physical strength and mother wit to fashion potent personalities.
"It was a real pleasure doing the commercial with Bo because he's a funny man, and he takes his music seriously," said Bo Jackson whose real name is Vincent Jackson, the "Bo" standing for "boar-hog," a reference to his muscular build.
"Was there ever in the history of television, in the history of the universe, such a popular spot?" queried famed TV host Phil Donahue when interviewing Jackson and Dick Schaap on the occasion of their co-authoring of Bo Knows Bo, the story of Jackson's growth and development into All-Star performer in both professional baseball and professional football. "I don't know who at Nike dreamed this up," continued an astonished Donahue, "but no kiddin', this is television history."
The "dreamer" or devisor of this particular sixty-second piece was James Riswold, a widely acclaimed thirty-something copywriter with the Wieden and Kennedy advertising agency of Portland, Oregon. Reportedly the idea for the "Bo Knows" commercial came to Riswold as the result of a chance quip by a Nike marketer that they might do well pairing Bo Jackson, star athlete and hence a natural Nike pitch-man, with Bo Diddley, the venerable veteran rocker.
As negotiations went on between Marty Otelsberg and Marc Thomashaw, Nike's attorney, regarding the overall concept and the detailed scheduling that would be needed, Riswold had a brainwave of ad-man proportions. Why not show Jackson doing all the things familiar to an athlete of his stature, the moves Bo knows--running, weight training, and such (but not basketball: "I think I'm the only black man in America who can't play basketball!" jokes Jackson)--then undercut it all with the supreme ballplayer plucking painfully inexpert notes on one of Diddley's guitars, causing the mortified Bo Diddley to chide, "Bo, you don't know diddly!"?
The concept resulted in what was a quintessential anti-commercial. The finished product was enhanced by an additional artistic detail. A black and white title card announces "Music by Bo Diddley/Cross trainers by Nike." Then against his own furious rhythm track Bo Diddley himself is glimpsed in interspersed clips--"running," "cycling," and finally, in action with Jackson, "highkicking."
"I got him with my kicks," boasts Bo, referring to his higher elevation on the karate-style kicks that he and Jackson throw out horizontally from the left hip. In Jackson's case, this is the very same hip that proved vulnerable while he was playing football for the Los Angeles Raiders and to which he suffered a career-ending injury in January, 1991.
When the "Bo Knows" Nike commercial was broadcast for the first time during an intermission in the 1989 Baseball All-Star game, it became an instant national sensation. And it certainly didn't hurt the cause when, playing in that very game in the uniform of the Kansas City Royals, Jackson himself hit a towering home run in his first at bat.
More to the point perhaps, kick-for-kick, Bo-by-Bo, the Nike commercial proved to be potent and entertaining TV fare. As first presented, the spot ran for three months in every conceivable market, showing incredible durability for a TV commercial. Meanwhile a sequel--made with out-takes from the original filming--showed Jackson much improved and strumming a guitar quite tunefully. Says Bo to Bo at commercial's close, "So you do know Diddley, don't cha!"
With its witty copy and compelling images, the Nike ad brought the Bo Diddley beat into almost every living room in America. Jingle writers had long been exploiting the exciting beat of his music behind ads for products as varied as motor-scooters, soft-drinks, and perfumes, but this one had something more. It brought Bo Diddley himself--bopping, clowning and frowning--into those living rooms as well. Now, captured in all his eccentricity and originality, was the actual "character," the real Diddley, to go with the beat. "Great to see that Bo Diddley's still around," commented one of the broadcasters from the All-Star Game. And that was essentially the truth of the situation. The ad was great for Nike, it was great for Bo Jackson (word is, to the tune of $2 million for this and other Nike spots), but it was especially great for Bo Diddley, at least so far as popularity goes.
In the oddest of ways, by the most circuitous and unimaginable of routes, the Nike commercial was the making of a new kind of recognition for Bo Diddley. For those who were especially familiar with Bo's history, that minute-long span of Diddley chords, those brief clips of Bo in his element, must have said so much more. They were like a code, like the card that carries the imprint of a microfilm, that told the message of Bo Diddley's larger achievements: of his close to forty albums of recorded music; his five hundred or more tunes, not to mention numerous precedent-setting vamps and grooves; his skills as balladeer, as monologist, as jester; his technical and esthetic innovations with the guitar; his nurturing of young talent; his comic vision of life, sex, and human relations. Such indeed is the sum of Bo Diddley's contribution to American culture.
And what of the specific musical bequest? Without question, Bo's style created one of the few fundamental molds of the three to five minute rock and roll song: an introduction incorporating bold sonic statements, unhesitant lyrics that redraw the boundaries of propriety, a percussive solo.
Without Bo Diddley's contribution it would be difficult to imagine much of the great rock of the four ages since the 1950s. His "Mona" begat Bruce Springsteen's "She's the One." His "Bo Diddley" sired both the Who's "Magic Bus" and Guess Who's "American Woman." His "I'm a Man" sowed the seed for Sly Stone's "There's a Riot Goin' On," and Joe Walsh's "Rocky Mountain Way." His "Roadrunner" riff fathered Steve Miller's "Space Cowboy," and T. Rex's "Jeepster." His "Mumblin' Guitar" was the progenitor of ZZ Top's "Cheap Sunglasses." His vibrato figures from "When the Saints" form the essence of Credence's "Born on a Bayou."
And the list goes on and on, in chunks, quotes or traces of Diddlyisms, concentrated or attenuated, within the work of other artists: David Bowie ("Modern Love," "Jean, Jeanie"), Elvis Costello ("Lover's Walk"), Rod Stewart ("Infatuation"), Robert Palmer ("Sneakin' through the Alley with Sally"), Steve Winwood ("Back in the High Life Again"), and Little Feat ("Hate to Lose Your Lovin," and "Fat Man in the Bathtub").
And let us remember too that Bo Diddley was rapping long before any other Brother sang for his supper, or called for his mother ("Say Man," "Bite You").
Bo Diddley's true inheritors are not just those who absorb his influence in melodic or lyrical terms, but those who succeed to his true rock and roll feeling--its purity, its animation, its oceanic might--and who embrace that certain, indefinably genitallic attitude of his, artists such as the Rolling Stones, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Warren Zevon, Bob Seger, Joan Jett. Everyone's heard of Blond Ambition, but these are some of the things that Bronze Ambition has achieved.
Meanwhile, Phil Donahue is still trying to take it all in: "And Bo Diddley's getting more work now, isn't that so? I mean, he's always been hot--he's part of American popular music history. But this commercial. . . . Whull!"
This was an accurate and prophetic statement, for in truth from this moment on it seemed as if the phone would not stop ringing. "It was like overnight stardom," said Marty Otelsberg. "People knew Bo's name, even those not necessarily into rock and roll, but the Nike spot gave the total identity, a total ëfix' on the man. People liked it because here was a grown man, acting like a kid, doing a parody of the athlete and making people laugh. Maybe you can hear Bo Jackson's wife laughing on the soundtrack? It was as though he had made that commercial part of his act, part of his art."
"It was really weird, and I ain't understood it yet!" said Bo to Clint Holmes, host of Universal Nine's "New York at Night." "I've been out here thirty-seven years from the beginning of what we call rock and roll; I've been jumpin' up and down and spinning around, slidin' across the stage, wiggling my knees and using Ben Gay, and all I had to say was, ëBo, You don't know diddly!' and it turned into a whole new thing for me!
"And it was real scary, man, ëcos see, just about this time I was getting ready to quit and sit at home and play with my gran'kids! But now it looks like I'm starting all over again, and that's just great."