Ronnie Wood And Bo Diddley

Ronnie Wood & Bo Diddley (a.k.a. the Gunslingers) - Live at the Ritz - 1987 - Victory Music

Bo Diddley and Ron Wood – a.k.a. the Gunslingers - finished a North American tour with this live show in New York, on 25/11/87. This is a raw, umpolished, no frills performance. from two rock 'n' roll greats. The album is a bit ragged at times. The vocals are not always "up to scratch.", and the playing could be tighter, but overall it's a great rock 'n' roll concert. Some critics maintain that Ron Wood tried to "steal the limelight" from Bo Diddley at this concert. A.O.O.F.C would be interested in comments on this. Anyway, if you're a Wood/Stones or Diddley fan, then this album will appeal to you. It's a very enjoyable album. A great atmosphere pervades the album, and it's not everyday that you hear a partnership of this quality in action. It is well worth listening to Bo Diddley's great "A Man Amongst Men" album, and the brilliamt Ronnie Wood album, "Gimme Some Neck."

TRACKS / COMPOSERS

"Road Runner" - (Ellas McDaniel/Harvey Fuqua)
"I’m a Man" - (Ellas McDaniel)
"Crackin’ Up" - (Ellas McDaniel)
"Hey! Bo Diddley" - (Ellas McDaniel)
"Plynth (Water Down the Drain)" - (Ron Wood/Rod Stewart)
"Ooh La La" - (Ron Wood/Ronnie Lane)
"Outlaws" - (Ron Wood/Jim Ford)
"Honky Tonk Women" - (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
"Money to Ronnie" - (Ellas McDaniel)
"Who Do You Love" - (Ellas McDaniel)

CREDITS

Sarah Dash - Backing Vocals
Bo Diddley - Guitar, Drums, Vocals
Debby Fink - Bass, Backing Vocals
Mike Fink - Drums
Faith Fusillo - Backing Vocals
Hal Goldstein - Harmonica, Drums, Keyboards, Backing Vocals
Debby Hastings - Bass, Backing Vocals
Mike Hastings - Bass
Eddie Kendricks - Harmonica, Keyboards, Vocals
Carol MacDonald - Backing Vocals
David Ruffin - Backing Vocals
Jim Satten - Guitar
Ron Wood - Guitar, Vocals
Martin Adam, Ron Wood - Producers

BIO (RON WOOD)

Guitarist Ron Wood has been a member of several "classic" British rock outfits, but the one that he's undoubtedly most associated with is the Rolling Stones, with whom he's been a member since 1976. Born on June 1, 1947, in Hillingdon, London, Wood made his first appearance on record during the late '60s, as a member of the oft-overlooked mod outfit the Creation (Wood only appeared on a smattering of singles, collected years later on the compilation Complete Collection, Vol. 1: Making Time). Immediately after his split from the Creation, Wood was invited to play bass in the Jeff Beck Group, a band that also included a then-unknown Rod Stewart on vocals. Despite high hopes for the group (they're often credited as one of the founders of hard rock/heavy metal), the band only managed to issue a pair of classic recordings, 1968's Truth and 1969's Beck-Ola, before splitting up just prior to an appearance at the legendary -Woodstock festival. Wood and Stewart opted to stick together, as they joined the Small Faces the same year (with Wood returning back to the six-string). Releasing one album under the Small Faces' name, 1970's First Step, the group then shortened their name simply to the Faces and soon after became one of rock's most notoriously party-hearty outfits of the era (influencing such future punk outfits as the Sex Pistols and the Replacements, among others). Further albums followed (1971's Long Player and A Nod Is as Good as a Wink...to a Blind Horse, plus 1973's Ooh La La), before the group split up in 1975. Wood also found the time to issue a string of solo releases during the mid-'70s: 1974's I've Got My Own Album to Do, 1975's Now Look, and a collaboration with ex-Faces bandmate Ronnie Lane, 1976's Mahoney's Last Stand, but this era of Wood's career is best-remembered for his enlistment into the Rolling Stones. With the exit of Mick Taylor in 1974, the Stones began auditioning replacement guitarists, but all along, founding Stones guitarist Keith Richards knew that Wood (a longtime friend) was the man for the job. Wood contributed to half of the Stones' 1976 album, Black and Blue, before becoming a full-time member and appearing on 1977's Love You Live and 1978's Some Girls. Although the Stones didn't issue any albums during 1979, the year was a busy one for Wood, as he issued his fourth solo release, Gimme Some Neck, and toured alongside Richards in a one-off side band, the New Barbarians. Wood and the Stones conquered the charts once more in the early '80s, with such hits as 1980's Emotional Rescue and 1981's Tattoo You, but tensions between Richards and Mick Jagger caused the group to not tour the U.S. between 1982-1988, while only managing to issue a pair of spotty studio albums (1983's Undercover and 1986's Dirty Work). During this time, Wood issued such further solo albums as 1981's 1234 and 1988's Live at the Ritz (the latter a collaboration with Bo Diddley), and became an avid painter. Jagger and Richards eventually buried the hatchet by the late '80s, as the Stones sporadically issued new studio albums and toured from 1989 onward (1989's Steel Wheels, 1994's Voodoo Lounge, 1997's Bridges to Babylon, etc.). Wood has continued to issue solo recordings throughout the '90s and beyond (1992's Slide on This, 1994's Slide on Live: Plugged in and Standing, plus a pair in 2002, Not for Beginners and Live at Electric Ladyland). Additionally, Wood has guested on countless recordings by other artists over the years, including albums by the Band, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, B.B. King, and his old pal Rod Stewart, with whom he taped a popular edition of MTV's Unplugged in 1993, resulting in the hit album Unplugged...and Seated. © Greg Prato, All Music Guide

BIO (BO DIDDLEY)

He only had a few hits in the 1950s and early '60s, but as Bo Diddley sang, "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover." You can't judge an artist by his chart success, either, and Diddley produced greater and more influential music than all but a handful of the best early rockers. The Bo Diddley beat -- bomp, ba-bomp-bomp, bomp-bomp -- is one of rock & roll's bedrock rhythms, showing up in the work of Buddy Holly, the Rolling Stones, and even pop-garage knock-offs like the Strangeloves' 1965 hit "I Want Candy." Diddley's hypnotic rhythmic attack and declamatory, boasting vocals stretched back as far as Africa for their roots, and looked as far into the future as rap. His trademark otherworldly vibrating, fuzzy guitar style did much to expand the instrument's power and range. But even more important, Bo's bounce was fun and irresistibly rocking, with a wisecracking, jiving tone that epitomized rock & roll at its most humorously outlandish and freewheeling. Before taking up blues and R&B, Diddley had actually studied classical violin, but shifted gears after hearing John Lee Hooker. In the early '50s, he began playing with his longtime partner, maraca player Jerome Green, to get what Bo's called "that freight train sound." Billy Boy Arnold, a fine blues harmonica player and singer in his own right, was also playing with Diddley when the guitarist got a deal with Chess in the mid-'50s (after being turned down by rival Chicago label Vee-Jay). His very first single, "Bo Diddley"/"I'm a Man" (1955), was a double-sided monster. The A-side was soaked with futuristic waves of tremolo guitar, set to an ageless nursery rhyme; the flip was a bump-and-grind, harmonica-driven shuffle, based around a devastating blues riff. But the result was not exactly blues, or even straight R&B, but a new kind of guitar-based rock & roll, soaked in the blues and R&B, but owing allegiance to neither. Diddley was never a top seller on the order of his Chess rival Chuck Berry, but over the next half-dozen or so years, he'd produce a catalog of classics that rival Berry's in quality. "You Don't Love Me," "Diddley Daddy," "Pretty Thing," "Diddy Wah Diddy," "Who Do You Love?," "Mona," "Road Runner," "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover" -- all are stone-cold standards of early, riff-driven rock & roll at its funkiest. Oddly enough, his only Top 20 pop hit was an atypical, absurd back-and-forth rap between him and Jerome Green, "Say Man," that came about almost by accident as the pair were fooling around in the studio. As a live performer, Diddley was galvanizing, using his trademark square guitars and distorted amplification to produce new sounds that anticipated the innovations of '60s guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. In Great Britain, he was revered as a giant on the order of Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. The Rolling Stones in particular borrowed a lot from Bo's rhythms and attitude in their early days, although they only officially covered a couple of his tunes, "Mona" and "I'm Alright." Other British R&B groups like the Yardbirds, Animals, and Pretty Things also covered Diddley standards in their early days. Buddy Holly covered "Bo Diddley" and used a modified Bo Diddley beat on "Not Fade Away"; when the Stones gave the song the full-on Bo treatment (complete with shaking maracas), the result was their first big British hit. The British Invasion helped increase the public's awareness of Diddley's importance, and ever since then he's been a popular live act. Sadly, though, his career as a recording artist -- in commercial and artistic terms -- was over by the time the Beatles and Stones hit America. He'd record with ongoing and declining frequency, but after 1963, he'd never write or record any original material on par with his early classics. Whether he'd spent his muse, or just felt he could coast on his laurels, is hard to say. But he remains a vital part of the collective rock & roll consciousness, occasionally reaching wider visibility via a 1979 tour with the Clash, a cameo role in the film Trading Places, a late-'80s tour with Ronnie Wood, and a 1989 television commercial for sports shoes with star athlete Bo Jackson. © Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide