The riff that keeps on giving
Ten great songs inspired by Bo Diddley's classic guitar rhythm
Last Updated: Tuesday, June 3, 2008 | 9:31 AM ET
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2...mous-riff.html
It was the riff that launched a thousand songs. OK, maybe not a thousand, but a whole lot. And maybe it wasn’t a riff at all, seeing as its true essence was less the notes than the rhythm that could be pounded out on a guitar. Whatever it was, it brought fame to one Ellas Otha Bates, a man who would spend most of his life under the more percussive handle of Bo Diddley.
Derived from the rumba and the hambone, the chugga-chugga “Bo Diddley beat ” was lean, powerful and highly contagious. Although the man died on June 2 at the age of 79, Diddley’s most famous invention will undoubtedly live on. Here are 10 songs that owe a debt to Diddley’s timeless rhythm.
(1) Not Fade Away by Buddy Holly (1957)
A signature hit by the ill-fated Texan rocker, this tune marked a milestone for primitivism in popular music. Crickets drummer Jerry Allison famously pounded out the beat on a cardboard box. A cover by the Rolling Stones was to be the band’s first U.S. single and would popularize the swaggering style of the Diddley-obsessed Keith Richards.
Buddy HollyBuddy Holly (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
(2) Willie and the Hand Jive by Johnny Otis (1957)
A carbon-copy take on the Bo Diddley beat fuelled the biggest hit by a seminal figure in ’50s rock and R&B. A pianist, bandleader, songwriter and producer, Otis discovered Etta James, Jackie Wilson, Big Mama Thornton and “Twist” king Hank Ballard before appropriating Diddley’s rhythm for his own purposes.
(3)His Latest Flame by Elvis Presley (1961)
Written especially for the King by Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus, this brisk number gives the Diddley beat a flamenco feel. The two-chord verses deliver a hit of pure staccato goodness, and you have to dig the hammering of those piano keys come chorus time.
(4) 1969 by the Stooges (1968)
Don’t get thrown by Iggy Pop’s wailing or Ron Asheton’s wah-wah-soaked guitar pyrotechnics — this anthem for the bored, the surly and the stoopid is Diddley through and through. Those handclaps help accentuate the lumpen chugga-chugga stick work of drummer Scott Asheton.
(5) I Want Candy by Bow Wow Wow (1982)
Though the Strangeloves first had a hit with the song in 1965, this British band’s scrappier rendition would supplant it in the popular consciousness, at least among the first generation of MTV addicts. Thanks to the beach-party video and the song’s adrenaline buzz, Bow Wow Wow would become one of the era’s most fondly remembered one-hit wonders.
(6) How Soon Is Now? by the Smiths (1984)
Featuring perhaps the trippiest incarnation of the Bo Diddley beat, this college-radio perennial married the fabled chugga-chugga to Johnny Marr’s heady wash of guitars and Morrissey’s inimitable wail.
(7) Faith by George Michael (1987)
The top-selling single in America in 1988, this unabashedly retro hit gave the former Wham! main man ample opportunities to shake his tush. And shake it he did.
(8) Mr. Brownstone by Guns N' Roses (1987)
Leave it to L.A.’s most hard-living sleazoids to find a home for Diddley’s rhythm in the rough and tumble world of ‘80s metal. Axl, Slash and Co. most prominently deploy the beat in the intro of this ode to the junkie lifestyle.
Bono, lead singer of U2.Bono, lead singer of U2. (Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
(9) Desire by U2 (1988)
After the world-conquering success of The Joshua Tree, these earnest Dubliners went looking for the soul of America. They found it in the form of the Bo Diddley beat. This single — the band’s first No. 1 single in the UK — was atypically brash and rhythmic, arguably foreshadowing U2’s more regrettable forays into dance music in the 1990s.
(10) Shake Ya Ass by Mystikal (2000)
The chart-busting production duo known as the Neptunes may not have much use for guitars, but their most minimalist-minded hits bear the unmistakable influence of Diddley. This 2000 smash by New Orleans rapper (and current prison inmate) Mystikal might be the leanest, starkest example, but they’d also repurpose it for Snoop Dogg’s Drop It Like It’s Hot. It’s there, too, in the shuffling rhythm and breathy gasps in I’m a Slave 4 U, which made Britney Spears the most unlikely artist to benefit from Diddley’s toil.
Jason Anderson is a Toronto writer.