1979, Cleveland — Bo Diddley opened for The Clash on their US tour — Image by © Bob Gruen. In 1979, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of the Clash asked that Diddley open for them on the band’s first American tour. “I can’t look at him without my mouth falling open,” Strummer, starstruck, told a journalist during the tour. For his part, Diddley had no misgivings about facing a skeptical audience. “You cannot say what people are gonna like or not gonna like,” he explained later to the biographer George White. “You have to stick it out there and find out! If they taste it, and they like the way it tastes, you can bet they’ll eat some of it!” via

The Clash where huge fans of Bo Diddley, as many of the formative British bands (and American too) of the ’60s and ’70s were– The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Beatles, The Yardbirds, and many more. Bo Diddley joined The Clash as their opening act on their 1979 US Tour– opening up a radical, young, new crowd to the sound of the man many consider to be one of the most important pioneers of American Rock & Roll music. Bo Diddley himself made no bones about stating that HE was THE beginning of Rock & Roll. Bo Diddley not only influenced sound– he also influenced the attitude, energy, and look of Rock & Roll for decades to come. Look at the pics here, I see the bold plaids that Diddley and other Rockers of the ’50s wore (Plaid was for hipsters, not squares, in the ’50s..), that emerged again strongly in the ’70s through the Sex Pistols (great credit due to Vivienne Westwood), The Clash and others. You can also see and hear where Jack Black got the lion’s share of his game from– no doubt Bo Diddley. The man is a legend and has never gotten his due, and the due that came, came too late. He had a well-earned chip on his shoulder, and even insisted The Clash pay him upfront, as he’d been screwed over so many times before.

“I was the cat that went and opened the door, and everyone else ran through it. And I said– what the heck, you know? …I was left holding the doorknob” –Bo Diddley

ca. 1950s — Norma Jean “The Duchess” Wofford in white blouse, Jerome Green squatting in front with maracas, and Bo Diddley with his signature rectangular Gretsch guitar. Bo and his crew were the badasses of their generation, just as The Clash were in theirs. — Image by © Michael Ochs

“If you can play– all you need is one amp, your axe, and you. “ –Bo Diddley explaining his feelings about The Clash’s monstrous wall of sound during their 1979 US tour.

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1979, Cleveland — Bo Diddley opened for The Clash on their 1979 US tour. I love seeing Mick Jones in his red tartan plaid shirt, and then looking down at the photo of Bo Diddley and crew rocking them back in the ’50s, and looking extremely badass. — Image by © Bob Gruen  

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ca. 1950s, New York — Bo Diddley, Jerome Green on left playing maracas. — Image by © Michael Ochs. Back in the 1950s, plaids like this may have been accepted among the Hipsters, but it was a different story in Middle America where it was still thought of it as the fabric of a counter culture movement– outlaw fashion. via

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“This group the Sex Pistols pukes onstage? I don’t necessarily like that. That’s not showmanship… They gotta get themselves an act.”  –Bo Diddley

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Bo Diddley opened for The Clash in 1979 on their US tour, here on their bus. — Image by © Bob Gruen 

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So how did Bo reflect back upon his 1979 US tour with The Clash? I think he summed it up pretty well when he stated that, “Every generation has its own little bag of tricks…” Watch the video below–

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No mention of Bo Diddley would be complete with a nod to The Duchess—

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Born Norma-Jean Wofford in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she began her career in 1962. After the departure of his first female guitarist, Peggy “Lady Bo” Jones, wherever Bo Diddley played, he would hear discontented whispers in the audience– “Where’s the girl? Where’s the girl? That’s when I got The Duchess,” he told his biographer. “I taught her how to play guitar, and then I taught her how to play my thing, you know. Then, after I hired her in the group, I named her The Duchess, and I says, ‘I’m gonna tell everybody we’re sister and brother.’ Part of the reason I decided to go with that little lie was that it put me in a better position to protect her when we were on the road.” via

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Lending her inimitable style to the grooves (and sleeves) of 1962’s “Bo Diddley & Company” and 1963’s “Bo Diddley’s Beach Party” albums, she accompanied him on his first tour of England that same year, where her guitar prowess created a stir equalled only by that of her skin-tight gold lamé cat suit. Asked by one dauntless investigator how she managed to get into it, Norma-Jean responded by pulling out an over-sized shoehorn. Eric Burdon later immortalised her in the Animals’ “Story Of Bo Diddley”. via

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