BO DIDDLEY & RONNIE WOOD: LIVE AT THE RITZ (1988)
1) Road Runner; 2) I'm A Man;
3) Crackin' Up; 4) Hey! Bo Diddley; 5) Plynth (Water Down The Drain); 6) Ooh La
La; 7) They Don't Make Outlaws Like They Used To; 8) Honky Tonk Women; 9) Money
To Ronnie; 10) Who Do You Love.
Bo's recording activity throughout the late
Seventies and the Eighties was about as high as any activity you'd expect from
a bear in prolonged hibernation. He did record and distribute several cassette-only
albums, produced in his own home studio in Archer, Florida, and fairly hard to
locate these days (although they are sometimes offered as digital downloads): Ain't It Good To Be Free («...ain't it
a bummer that nobody really cares?») in 1983, and Breaking Through The B.S. («...because Ol' Man Bo can still do
better than goddamn Pump!») in 1989.
I have not heard them, know next to nothing about them, and have a deep
suspicion that neither is a masterpiece — but that suspicion don't amount to no
fact, so you might wanna be on the lookout if you think an Eighties' album from
Bo Diddley looks like a sufficiently kinky proposition.
The only Eighties' record with Bo's active participation
that is readily available today is this concert album, recorded in New York in
November 1987 by the short-lived «Gunslingers» project, involving Bo Diddley
and Ronnie Wood. Considering that 1987-88 was the only period in the history of
mankind during which The Rolling Stones had «ceased to be», the project
actually had a theoretical chance at longevity — purely theoretical, that is,
because already the first experiment showed that the matching was far from
perfect.
Technically, Live At The Ritz may, and should, be included into both artists'
discographies, but I prefer to review it under the Bo Diddley section, because
(a) Bo's the older one, (b) the ratio of Bo to Ron songs here is approximately
3/2 (and only if we formally count ʽHonky Tonk Womenʼ as a Ronnie Wood song; ʽMoney
To Ronnieʼ, despite the title, is a semi-improvised blues jam with Bo taking
control), (c) Bo starts off the show as well as closes it, (d) the event was
clearly of more importance to Bo than to Ronnie — it's one thing to simply fool
around on the stage with one of your idols, and another thing to get your first
major label record out in twelve years, even if you have to share it with some grinning
clown from England who prefers to jump around the stage rather than actually play
guitar (okay, so it wasn't nearly as bad in 1988 as it is now).
The problem is that a good live Bo Diddley show
needs a good live Bo Diddley backing band — and the people assembled on that
stage had fairly little to do with that. The rhythm section, consisting of
Debby Hastings on bass and Mike Fink on drums, is fairly flat-footed (they
can't even set up a proper Diddley beat on ʽHey! Bo Diddleyʼ); the keyboard
player (Hal Goldstein) occasionally switches from regular old piano — the only keyboard instrument suitable for
this kind of event — to state-of-the-art synthesizers, killing most of the joy
on ʽCrackin' Upʼ; and as much as the presence of two of the Temptations (David
Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks, the latter also playing harmonica and occasional
keyboards) could adorn the show... it didn't.
Above all else, the mix is quite poor: Bo's own
rhythm playing is rarely elevated from anything other than background din, and
Ronnie's leads (some, if not many, if not most of them actually supplied by
third guitarist Jim Satten) are sometimes barely audible against the huge drum
sound (remember, the late Eighties were a drummer's paradise — everybody used
to think that amplifying the drum sound gives you complete, absolute power over
the listener). All in all, the ambience just isn't that great for a real
sweaty rock'n'roll show.
The other side of the business is, of course,
that Ronnie has no business taking
part in Bo's stuff, and Bo has no business whatsoever to strut along on
Ronnie's material. As good as all that material is on its own, I fail to see
where it is that the two actually help out each other — unless we begin to count
harmony singing, and I'd rather we don't (everybody knows that Ronnie is the
only person in the world who sings even worse than Keith Richards, and using Bo
Diddley as the resident «Auto-Tuner» is hardly a good solution to the problem).
Ronnie gets a few of his trademark bluesy slide leads, e. g. on ʽI'm A Manʼ,
but Bo Diddley songs are not solo guitar vehicles, and the leads aren't
stunning enough to justify turning them into such vehicles. And whether Bo is
actually doing anything on Ronnie's
numbers, I have not been able to find out.
The Ronnie-led chunk part of the album is
actually better than the Bo-led majority part, if only because the backing band
is so clearly geared towards more «modern» numbers than the oldies. The
performance of Ronnie's ʽOutlawsʼ, for instance, approaches first-rate barroom-boogie
rock'n'roll, and he gets in a rough, but expressive slide-fest on ʽPlynth
(Water Down The Drain)ʼ, which also incorporates contrasting bits of ʽAmazing
Graceʼ and ʽProdigal Sonʼ. (The decision to also include ʽHonky Tonk Womenʼ was
either due to audience pressure — or, perhaps, Ronnie always had that secret
craving to finally wrestle the classic solo away from Keith. Spoiler bit: Keith
is still the winner).
Still, this is never really «bad» — it is
saddled with too many problems to reach «classic lost gig» status, but both of
the gig's protagonists clearly had themselves some fun; it simply failed to be
perfectly captured on the recording. Historically, it was important for the
effort to drag Bo, a little bit at least, back into the spotlight and show
that, at the age of sixty, he personally had not lost it at all: guitar chops intact,
powerhouse voice still well-powered. A little more sad is the realization that
he was actually dragged out of a deep freeze — having him play on that stage
with all those people is like watching some resuscitated pre-historical mammal
put in a cage with its modern descendants. But, on the other hand, he doesn't
seem to mind, bother, or show any serious discomfort about this — so let us
not look at this from pessimistic angles, either.
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