I had a song going through my head the other day and identified it as The Sweet's Blockbuster from 1973. In those days watching Top of the Pops was practically an obligatory requirement for all high school and university students. I remember the Junior Common Room at my hall of residence being packed for half an hour each week, in the Sweet's case while a variety of lewd comments which would undoubtedly be seen as extremely homophobic today were directed at the glam rock band. The loudest heckles always came when bassist Steve Priest pouted to camera in his silver platform boots and delivered the line "I just didn't have a clue WHAT to do". But then Alex Petridis's 2020 obituary of Priest quoted Julie Birchill saying he was "built like a hod carrier" and "looked like a navvy who'd stolen all your make up". And he would have used it all too: David Bowie told Priest backstage on ToTP "you know you really are putting too much make up on". (You can see for yourself: the link to the ToTP video and other songs are on buttons at the bottom).
But the basic riff (da de da dum / dum dum and repeat) was haunting me, reminding me strongly of another well known song. But which song? Reassuringly quickly I realised it was Bowie's Jean Genie. So why hadn't I noticed that before and who blagged it off who?
Well Blockbuster was released in January 1973 and Jean Genie in late November 1972. Probably a bit too close together for plagiarism. A Google search quickly revealed that loads of people have noticed the similarity - it just took me nearly 50 years... Google's occasionally helpful "people also ask" feature had questions like "which came first - Blockbuster or Jean Genie?" which me took to an eye catching bit of click bait linking both recordings to Bo Diddley.
"Darren's Music Blog" tells me the songs were recorded within a month of each other and were developed contemporaneously, the Sweet's songwriter Mike Chapman playing the Blockbuster riff to Steve Priest backstage at Top of the Pops in mid September, while Mick Ronson's biography says Jean Genie was developed from an impromptu tour bus jam in the USA in the same month. Direct copying seems unlikely therefore. Indeed, the Sweet's Andy Scott was horrified when he heard Jean Genie pre-release at RCA's office (both artists were with the same label). "We're coming out behind it, it's got the same riff, we've got no chance". Nevertheless, in due course Blockbuster was at number one in the UK singles chart while Jean Genie reached number two.
The Wikipedia entry on Jean Genie notes the controversy over the similar riff to Blockbuster, with the co-writer of Blockbuster, Nicky Chinn, describing it as an "absolute co-incidence". Chinn also described a meeting with Bowie at which the latter "looked at me completely deadpan and said 'Cunt!' And then he got up and gave me a hug and said, 'Congratulations...'" The two songs were in the top five of the singles chart together for three weeks in January 1973.
Darren also goes on to claim both songs may have been influenced by the Yardbirds 1965 version of Bo Diddley's 1955 song I'm A Man. Though Bowie may equally have picked up on I'm A Man as Iggy Pop, a collaborator of Bowie's, covered it in 1972. That could well be, though the riff of I'm A Man is really a very conventional blues. It goes:
Da Deeee da Dum/ tap, tap, tap, tap
with a long bluesy second note and four very short, light taps on the snare drum, compared with Blockbuster/Jean Genie riff which basically speeds up the riff and adds punch by replacing the four short drum beats with two heavy beats. Jean Genie and Blockbuster both have a tempo of about 128 beats per minute while I'm a Man is a languid 105 (andante, apparently). So the writers of Blockbuster and Jean Genie both simplified the rhythm and made it rockier.
But then I listened to the Sweet's ToTP performance once more and, before the drums come in with the two thuds, Andy Scott's guitar is indeed strumming da de da dum / de dum de dum with four short chugs at the end just like the snare drum in Diddley's I'm A Man. As the song progresses this subtlety is soon blocked out by the two big drum thuds (four dainty taps just wouldn't work). Bowie's song just sounds like it has the two thuds on guitar and drums to me, a slightly more brutal simplification.
So yes, for me it's definitely Diddley's riff, especially on Blockbuster. But interestingly it's not THE Bo Diddley riff. Self evidently that's on the eponymous song Bo Diddley, also from 1955.
An obituary of Diddley on the website Premier Guitar led me to a fact I was oblivious to but should have known: the Bo Diddley beat is used in Buddy Holly's 1957 song Not Fade Away covered by the Rolling Stones for their first top ten hit in 1964. Holly's version is more staccato, interestingly. But the same beat has been much much more widely imitated, used in the Who's Magic Bus, George Michael's Faith and the Clash's Hateful as just a few examples. Premier Guitar quotes a musician saying that the beat works "over a funk or a two beat groove, it's a really universal feel". So universal that Diddley would say to his drummers "whatever you do, don't play the Bo Diddley beat" as he must have been worried about his songs getting too samey.
This made me catch up on some education on Spotify - and wow! On The Red Rooster (so that's where the Stones got their title from...) you can hear echoes of not just the Stones, but Jimi Hendrix's Red House. Infatuation sounded like Marvin Gaye to me and some of Eric Clapton's influences burst out of Hot Buttered Blues. Diddley Daddy, played with Muddy Waters, sounded quite like Captain Beefheart (and I didn't think anything else sounded like Captain Beefheart). And the song titles - like Bad Trip, Gun Slinger and Fireball - presaged rock'n'roll turning into rock by a couple of decades.
Diddley and Chuck Berry are often credited as rock 'n' roll's originators as guitarists. But Diddley's earthy rhythms feel more primitive than Berry's "swing-meets country" as Premier Guitar puts it. Indeed, when outraged American parents lamented their children's affection for "jungle music" they were most likely referring to Diddley rather than Berry.
I'm reassured that no-one ever tried to claim plagiarism in any of this. Rock music is derivative, it all draws from what has gone before. I'm still gobsmacked by the ludicrous decision in the Marvin Gate estate v Robin Thicke court case, when Thicke's Blurred Lines was found guilty of copying the "feel" of a Marvin Gaye song, not even it's melody, rhthym or lyrics.
I'd like to think Diddley was flattered by the similarity of songs such as the ones discussed above. And anyway he would probably have been the first to admit that he blagged the rhythms from elsewhere himself. His Wikipedia page says:
The "Bo Diddley beat" is essentially the clave rhythm, one of the most common bell patterns found in sub-Saharan African music traditions. One scholar found this rhythm in 13 rhythm and blues recordings made in the years 1944–55, including two by Johnny Otis from 1948.
And, if Blockbuster and Jean Genie were derived from Diddley' I'm A Man, well according to Wikipedia* that song was inspired by Muddy Waters's Hoochie Coochie Man written by Willie Dixon. Maybe I should check that out on Spotify sometime too.
Either way, I can only agree with Michael Ross's summary in his Premier Guitar obit:
By combining “jungle” rhythms with the modern technology of the electric guitar, Bo Diddley created a sound that thrilled the youth of post-WWII America, terrified their elders and still resonates today.
Diddley, whose monicker may have derived from a "diddley bow", a homemade one string guitar of African origin, was an innovator. He melded blues, Caribbean calypso and doo-wop ballads, always experimenting with new tunes and feels. His early rhythmic style, with its rapid scratching of a few strings, came from violin bowing, an instrument he played as a child. With his equipment he pioneered the use of rectangular shaped guitars, as in this 1957 publicity pic:
He had a variety of oddly shaped guitars made for him with an increasing number of gizmos as the years went on: circuit boards for "onboard effects" for example. In later years he played a synthesiser guitar.
He certainly was the man, the genie of the blockbuster.
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Darren's music blog (link below) has video clips of Yardbirds and Diddley's I'm A Man and others but I've inlcuded links below for you to listen to many of the above songs. I've given the full link in case the buttons I've included don't work
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Links for listening:
You can see the Sweet's hilarious ToTP performance of Blockbuster here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNXFtVWB47E)
And Bowie's Jean Genie here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7atHoLxow9k)
Bo Diddley's I'm A Man from 1955 is easy to find but here's a youtube link : (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKlAiuaYdoI)
The Yardirds version of I'm A Man is possibly a link between the Diddley and Sweet/Bowie songs as it's the same riff as Diddley's with the four short drum beats, but much faster - a breakneck 144 beats a minute. Hear it here
Bo Diddley plays Bo Diddley on the Ed Sullivan show at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLcYuuljrD4. You'll surely recognise the similarity to the Stones Not Fade Away though it's much faster. The song was written of course by Buddy Holly whose version is much more staccato: hear it here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2L84dvoag). The Clash's wonderful Hateful featuring just the same riff can be heard here,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQjoayRUvTs&list=RDBQjoayRUvTs&start_radio=1
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Sources:
Alexis Petridis's obituary Steve Priest: the outrageous Sweet bassist who presaged heavy metal was in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jun/05/steve-priest-the-sweet-bassist-heavy-metal. It makes an interesting (and credible) case that the "low glam" Sweet were just as influential as "high glam" David Bowie
https://darrensmusicblog.com/2016/12/04/the-sweet-versus-bowie-the-riff-in-blockbuster-and-gene-jeanie-origins-and-influences/
https://www.premierguitar.com/bo-diddley-was-a-guitar-slinger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_a_Man_(Bo_Diddley_song)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_a_Man_(Bo_Diddley_song)
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