Review: Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley Is A Lover (1961)

Tracks: 1) Not Guilty; 2) Hong Kong, Mississippi; 3) You’re Looking Good; 4) Bo’s Vacation; 5) Congo; 6) Bo’s Blues; 7) Bo Diddley Is A Lover; 8) Aztec; 9) Back Home; 10) Bo Diddley Is Loose; 11) Love Is A Secret; 12) Quick Draw.

REVIEW

The scarce-as-heck assessments of Bo Diddley Is A Lover (the music, that is, not the actual potential of Bo Diddley as a lover, which is a bit hard to judge based exclusively on his songs), from the brief raving review of Bruce Eder at the All-Music Guide to anonymous comments on RYM and the like, would all make you believe that Bo Diddley Is A Lover is some unjustly forgotten and seriously underrated masterpiece. Even my own original review of it gave the album a thumbs up, concluding that "the man is still willing to combine brains, brawn, soul, and ego to good effect", a rather meaningless phrase that could describe a thousand ships. I guess I was in a good mood and wanted to say something nice, so don’t judge too harshly.

Now that I took a couple more listens to this, surprisingly the only LP that Bo put up in 1961 after his triple punch of 1960, I think that the only correct positive recommendation to make is an Amazon-style formula: «If you liked Bo Diddley, Go Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley In The Spotlight, and Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger, you might like Bo Diddley Is A Lover». Then again, maybe not. At the very least, Spotlight had one immortal classic (‘Roadrunner’), and Gunslinger had an amusing semi-concept that came through only occasionally, but was still a fun concept. Bo Diddley Is A Lover does not have a single song that would have its own strong identity, and the concept... well, emphasizing the fact that a big black guy playing the Devil’s music and singing about hot chicks since 1955 is a «lover» would be the same as, say, a certain guy from Pink Floyd announcing his next album as Roger Waters Is An Asshole. What’s the big surprise?

Perhaps we might be expected to admire «The Originator» simply for sticking to his guns at an age when rock’n’roll was temporarily going out of style and the wild men of the Fifties were expected to «mature», soften up, and re-orient their output at audiences that craved craft and gloss over aggressive energy. Looking at the album from that point of view and in that particular musical context of 1961, Bo Diddley Is A Lover does indeed rock harder than almost anything else put out in the States that year. But Bo Diddley’s blessing-and-curse is a lot like Lemmy’s: he is just what he is, and changing too much is impossible for him on a physiological level. What could he have turned into if he ever decided to sell out — Ben E. King? Impossible. Admiring Bo Diddley for refusing to change his spots is a waste of admiration mana.

Let’s just look at a few of the songs instead. The album opener and the album’s only single was ‘Not Guilty’, whose main point of interest are probably the lyrics and a little bit of theatricality — this time, Bo arranges the usual call-and-response vocals between himself and his backup singers, The Impalas, as a mock-trial session, where The Impalas impersonate the jury ("why do women bow at your feet?") and our man himself puts up his defence ("just to hear me holler ‘hey Bo Diddley’!"). The gimmick is a bit amusing, but music-wise, there is nothing going on here that we have not already heard half a dozen times. Perhaps Bo thought that people would be amused, but those few who did buy the single must have been pretty befuddled with dialog like "Did you kill a man named Bob?" – "To make my baby a Sunday coat". It’s good to know Bo Diddley has a sense of irony, but it feels a bit... misplaced, perhaps. I mean, when we’re on the subject of famous people subjected to public scrutiny, Britney Spears’ ‘Piece Of Me’ sort of makes sense in 2007, but Bo Diddley’s ‘Not Guilty’ hardly makes any in 1961. It’s not even an Elvis-type situation.

Much more interesting was the B-side: ‘Aztec’ takes the Latin-influenced side of such Bo Diddley’s songs as ‘Crackin’ Up’ and expands it to a full-fledged foray into Mexican territory (cue the name), with an experimental solo that is mostly composed of disjointed, choppy, twangy, sliding licks creating a proto-psychedelic feel. Rumor has it that the song, despite being credited to Bo as usual, was actually written by «Lady Bo» — Peggy Jones — and that she played all the rhythm and lead guitar parts herself; I am not sure that the sources are credible but surely there would be nothing impossible about it, given Peggy’s overall musical reputation. Given that ‘Aztec’ is unquestionably the album’s most creative composition, settling this question some day would be important, but since both involved parties are already dead, we’ll have to wait until we join them both in Heaven to conduct a proper confrontation. Until then, we can only guess how all those albums might have sounded like if the Bo Diddley / Peggy Jones partnership was more of an actual partnership and less of a «look-at-me-I’m-so-cool, I-have-a-chick-playing-guitar-in-my-band» sort of situation.

Anyway, speaking of instrumentals, they are arguably the most interesting songs on the album: in addition to ‘Aztec’, there is also ‘Congo’, which threatens to be just an instrumental recreation of ‘Roadrunner’ in the opening bars but then quickly turns into a piece of exciting twangy rockabilly that probably does not have much to do with ‘Congo’ but has everything to do with, let’s say, Bo Diddley playing Chuck Berry with a typically Bo Diddley sound (well, maybe a little Duane Eddy for good measure as well). The same approach is later applied to ‘Quick Draw’ which ends the album, although the sound on that one is less deep and more thin than on ‘Congo’.

Alas, when we return to the vocal numbers, they all follow the formula of ‘Not Guilty’: more theater, more story-telling, more (questionable) humor, fewer fresh musical ideas. ‘Hong Kong, Mississippi’ is a variation on ‘Who Do You Love’ with new lyrics that tell the story of Bo picking up a girl from «Hong Kong» only to find out, in fact, that we’re talking cotton fields instead of rice paddies. If the idea was to send up both Chinese and Southern stereotypes at the same time... well, as a famous Chinese philosopher once said to his opponent, "the teacher’s goals are noble indeed, but the teacher’s methods leave a lot to be desired". ‘Bo’s Vacation’ is the next-in-line (seriously, I’ve long since lost count) in the endless series of ‘Say Man’ retreads, this time, though, trading in the mutual insult lines with a bunch of insinuations on conjugal infidelity — not funny and not memorable. And the title track is ‘Diddley Daddy’ with lyrics that show the well truly running dry: "I’m a lover like they say / I can love my baby both night and day" seriously does not tell you anything about Bo Diddley that you haven’t already been carrying around in your head for six years.

The only redeeming aspect of it all — and probably the one aspect responsible for Bruce Eder and others’ kind words — is that Bo keeps on launching into those endless streams of self-repetition with so much verve and energy, you’d almost swear that he himself does not realize even for one moment that there is a problem. So perhaps this album leaves me, the listener and critic, a little depressed; but if there is one place from which that depression does not come, it is the communicative signal sent out by the artist. Even if the world of rock and roll was crumbling all around Bo Diddley, you would never ever notice it from listening to tracks like ‘Bo Diddley Is Loose’, which recycle the licks, the words, and the moods of past Bo Diddley songs with such total joy and abandonment, it would seem like self-repetition is simply the most natural and predictable thing in the world.

In light of this, I wouldn’t make too much fun of that pseudo-Amazon recommendation. There are times in life when an artist repeats himself out of boredom and desperation, and you can sense that boredom in his playing and singing. And then there are times when the artist simply runs out of fresh inspiration, and says, fuck it, why should I keep on inventing stuff? why can’t I be allowed to simply make a record that sounds totally like the one before it, just because I love that sound so much? (And I’m not talking about AC/DC, as those guys always strove to come up with new riffs — even on their worst records; I’m talking about total self-recyclement where you abandon the very idea of new chord combinations). This is the case of Bo Diddley Is A Lover, a record that thrives on sounding exactly like its predecessors while still somehow managing to kick ass against all odds.

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