Bo Diddley's a Gunslinger

In Paris now to play the French Jeff Buckley Tribute tonight at the Hard Rock in Montmartre, word of the great rock innovator Bo Diddley's passing just filtering out through the French media more fixated on the death of YSL (but of course)...

Gary plays his instrumental "Rise Up to Be" (the basis for "Grace") at the French Tribute to Jeff Buckley, Hard Rock Cafe, Paris, 6/3/08

Mick Grondahl, Gary, and Israeli pop star Ninet rock out on "Mojo Pin" (co-written by Gary), French Tribute to Jeff Buckley, Hard Rock Cafe, Paris, 6/3/08

Click to enlarge

A Bo miscellania: I ran a contest awhile back to identify the player of the tremeloed guitar figure intro on Little Walter's "Roller Coaster", yep, 'twas Bo, same motif later appropriated by perhaps his biggest UK disciples The Rolling Stones on their live raveup "It's Alright", which also borrowed a lick or two from Bo's "Mumbling Guitar"--one of the greatest of all rock instrumentals...

Influential all the way down the line--Bo's self-mythologizing "The Story of Bo Diddley" was covered/retrofitted in a self-deprecating account by The Animals on an early album which details their encounter with the mythological Bo-beast in Newcastle ("that's the biggest load of rubbish I've ever heard in my life" says Bo on hearing his UK epigones at the Club a Go Go)...Bo's own version of this tune ("I'm a killer diller") later morphed into the Syndicate of Sound's circular recurring hypno-mantra "Hey Little Girl"...Captain Beefheart/Don Van Vliet's only charting single out of the box was his David Gates-produced cover of Bo's "Diddy Wah Diddy", a regional hit on the left coast which duked it out with Barry and the Remains simultaneous East Coast rival cover version (big in Beantown) for national chart supremacy (a good song is a good song, Lydia Lunch covered it years later)...Don also used to speak fondly also of marracca man Jerome Green's mush-mouthed "Bring it to Jerome", a boastful body advertisement later echoed in white rock come-on's such as Frank Zappa's "Motherly Love" and Grand Funk's "We're An American Band"...one of the greatest late Bo appearances on record is his star turn on "The Super Super Blues Band" album on Chess alongside Muddy and Wolf, where he plays genial straight man/referee between the 2 wary, antagonistic blues titans, with superb liner notes by the great R. Meltzer invoking Nietszche and Aristotle (best cut: "Diddley Diddley Daddy") (lots of contemporary hip-hoppers and BRC mavens make extravagant claims for "Electric Mud" as universally-scorned-upon-release but now legendary and inspirational audio Dead Sea Scroll... but really, that album suffers greatly in comparison to this one... yes Pete Cosey plays on them both...but it isn't the guitar work which makes it such a classic)...the most rock 'n roll moment in early 60's teen flick "Don't Knock the Twist" is an incendiary version of the eponymous Diddley theme song as performed by The Dovells, featuring Len Barry (nee Borisoff--any relation to Exotica's Andrey Borisov?)...and let us not forget Johnny Marr's fabulous slow-Bo guitar which kicks off The Smiths' "How Soon is Now?"...

and don't even ask what P. Diddy has to do with all this...

Let me also call your attention to the recent death of the fantastic David Gahr, old friend and mentor and force of nature (always On, constantly exhibiting a truly incredible elan vital), who was one of the best photographers of musicians ever, seek out a copy of his long out of print "The Face of Folk Music" with Robert Shelton's text (really someone should reissue this forthwith--come on, Backbeat Books!), he took some photos of me early in my career which accompanied some of the first articles on my work in Melody Maker (see here) and Guitar Player (see here)--in fact when I first met Jeff Buckley he told me he knew my work with Beefheart and had read about me in Guitar Player--and David went on to take some beautiful pictures of Jeff...

Hope all my French friends (and friends from all over, who happen to be in Paris today) can come to the Tribute to Jeff Buckley tonight at the Hard Rock, please come up and say hello...

Have to dash now as my old friend of 30 years Jacques Picoux, on shore leave from Taiwan, is about to serve a delicious home-cooked Chinese meal in his luxurious flat in Menilmontant to myself and photographer Ania Freindorf (an excellent photographer in her own right, Ania took the photo used for the cover of my "Coming Clean" album)...

xxLove

Gary