BO DIDDLEY
Dec. 30, 1928–June 2, 2008
By Pete Townshend
Bo Diddley was a huge personal favorite of mine from 1962-1967 in my late teens. I listened to his albums all the time, ceaselessly, along with Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, Howling Wolf and John Lee Hooker. At that time only Chuck Berry was widely known in the UK. When the Who got serious, I shared the records with Roger and he loved them. All these guys influenced the UK R&B sound of the early '60s. You'd hear songs by them covered by the Tridents (Jeff Beck), the Yardbirds (Eric Clapton), The Animals, the Stones, Them (Van Morrison) and all of the early R&B guitar bands working to follow the Beatles.
Bo Diddley’s sound was different, his songs were very simple, but it was his rhythm that was so great to work with. Funnily enough the maracas were almost as important as the guitar, and Mick Jagger borrowed them, and so did the Yardbirds. For a while even Roger waved some maracas around. Chuck Berry had his own distinct rhythm, John Lee Hooker had his rhythm, but Bo Diddley's was the one that was really the most elegant mix of swing and onbeat rockabilly; you could dance to it whether you were a Mod or Rocker. Bo's rhythm was first borrowed by Buddy Holly, later by me for Magic Bus. It wasn't entirely original of course, its roots are in a form of Latin dance from South America, but Bo gave it teeth, first he developed it R&B, then Buddy Holly took it to pop, then the Stones and the Who took it to rock 'n' roll.
I met him when he performed in my honor at the UK Rock Legends awards in the mid-'80s, and it made it a special night for me. He was a shy man I recall, and as famous as he was, and as much a part of my teenage years of learning how to really get the guitar moving, he did seem unrewarded by our business as so often happened with the first wave of any new pop music form. You can't copyright a rhythm, but if you could, Bo would have passed on a richer financial legacy.
I was for many years primarily a rhythm player. There are still very few players who can equal my work on rhythm guitar. It is here that I owe so much to Bo. He managed to get chords to work on electric guitar, with a little distortion to give the some edge, it wasn't as easy as it seems today — and his work developing specialist guitars with Gretsch, and amplifiers too, certainly moved the technology along. His sound was a dirty sound whereas the Fender and Gibson sounds of the day were clean, often sharp and bright, as with Chuck Berry and Steve Cropper from Booker T & the MGs. Bo was like John Lee Hooker in this respect, and of course Link Wray, and Hubert Sumlin who worked with Howling Wolf. Bo got the guitar to sound bigger using distortion, so that on some of his records there are just one or two instruments.
Bo had a great voice too, mustn't forget that. It had a slight rebel yell quality to it, with an occasional small yodel, that made it great for party sing-alongs. His music was fun to listen to. He brought sunshine to the hard edge and underlying oppression of the blues that R&B was built upon. He wasn't afraid to dress up and have fun, and yet he seemed to me when I met him to be a quite serious and reserved man, someone who had worked hard to create a sound, an image, and a business.
Diddley, 79, died of heart failure in Archer, Fla.
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