The Pause in Beatle Bob’s Long & Winding Road
In the darkest of musical Januarys comes word that Beatle Bob has stopped dancing.
Bob Matonis is the St. Louis-based fan that looks like an Ed Sullivan-era Beatle replete in black suits and black bangs.
Known as “Beatle Bob,” he has spent decades dancing a mosh-up of the Twist and the Frug in the front rows of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, South by Southwest in Austin, Tx. FitzGerald’s in Berwyn and hundreds of other music clubs.
Beatle Bob has claimed to have seen 9,439 days of concerts in a row.
That number was in an e-mail he sent out Sunday night announcing that his streak was coming to an end on Jan. 23, 2023. It began on Christmas Day, 1996 at a Brian Henneman (Bottle Rockets) show in St. Louis. Matonis acknowledged the streak was paused for 85 days because of pandemic shutdowns. In his announcement, Matonis called 2022 the worst year of his life.
“In February of last year I was diagnosed with ALS Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” wrote Matonis., who turned 70 on January 12. “My neck muscles are so weak I can’t lift my head straight when standing or walking. This past year my voice was so slurred it was hard to understand. Thank goodness for social media that allowed me to communicate. Also, I had great difficulty swallowing and had to give up eating a lot of my favorite foods. As a result, I lost about 25 pounds I didn’t need to lose. This weight loss severely left me in a weakened condition and even though I attended concerts for the past month I sat the entire time.”
Matonis said doctors were alarmed about his weight loss. They suggested an operation to insert a feeding tube in his stomach. He said the operation would take place on Jan. 23 at Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis where he figured to stay through Jan. 25. “It was a good concert run while it lasted and hopefully my weight will return fast enough to put me back on the dance floor,” he said.
I wrote back Matonis to wish him well. I asked him who he was seeing for his streak-breaking concert. It was the St. Louis rhythm and blues duo Jeremy Taylor and LaToya Sharen at the Dark Room in St. Louis.
Matonis has never been married. He does not own a car. I have seen my friends give him rides. He has kept a diary of every show he has attended. Matonis has hosted public radio shows in St. Louis and has claimed to do free-lance music writing, to the consternation of some members of the St. Louis music community.
But St. Louis area painter and former John Mellencamp bass player Robert “Ferd” Frank has already rolled out a Beatle Bob salute called “The 9439th Dance.” The work can be purchased as wall art, a puzzle, stationary, and a Beatle Bob beach towel through Ferdworks. The original acrylic on poly-metal piece is not for sale.
Robert “Ferd” Frank’s tribute.
The timeless Springfield, Mo. rock n’ soul band the Skeletons were also fine with Beatle Bob so that’s fine with me. A couple of the band members told me he had been a social worker in his distant past.
We asked Bob to pontificate on his love of the Skeletons in our Center of Nowhere documentary. On a hot afternoon in late summer 2015, my cameraman Tom Vlodek (one of the kind folks who drove Matonis around Chicago) and I interviewed him in a club near Busch Stadium in downtown St. Louis. We were sweating profusely. Matonis showed up in his black suitcoat and black dyed hair.
It was like talking to an extra from “Pulp Fiction.”
He told us he had seen the Skeletons and their precursor band the Morells 102 times. He dreamed about someday wanting to attend Skeletons guitarist Donnie Thompson’s summer backyard reel-to-reel movie parties in Springfield, which we caught for the film. And there was this Matonis story which we didn’t use, but that I found in the film transcripts:
“The Skeletons were doing a show at Off Broadway in St. Louis. The electricity went out. They had to put about 50 candles on the stage to keep it lit, but the band kept playing. (Keyboardist-vocalist) Joe Terry took a toy piano that was hanging up at Off Broadway and played it the rest of the concert. The show rolled on. That’s one thing I will never forget.”
Beatle Bob with myself (left) and Tom Vlodek (right.) 2015.
My favorite Beatle Bob memory was at the 1997 edition of the FitzGerald’s American Music Festival in Berwyn. The Skeletons invited him onstage to join guest vocalist Syd Straw for a sweet version of the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.’ I can still see Bob gazing into Syd’s eyes like a modern-day Sonny and Cher. It was the first time I wept at FitzGerald’s.
Later that summer I saw Matonis in St. Louis where he said he was named “Beatle Bob” in the sixth grade at Mount Providence grade school in St. Louis. “It was a Catholic all-boys school,” he told me. “We were supposed to be reading our geography book, but behind my book, I had a 16 Magazine all-Beatles issue. Sister Celeste flew down the aisle and said, ‘That will be enough Beatle Bob!’ The name stuck.” He also claimed to have seen 487 concerts in 1996. (Tom
Russell with Dave Alvin and Katy Moffatt was his favorite.) I’m no math major, but how could he have seen 487 concerts in 365 days? Matonis included sets at festival shows and double headers where he would see a happy-hour show followed by an evening gig.
Musicians besides the Skeletons don’t mind Matonis. Matthew Sweet invited him on stage during a show at the City Stages festival in Birmingham, Al. Robert Schneider of the Apples in Stereo said that “in a business that breeds pretension, it is heartwarming to see someone respond so honestly to the music.” That’s rock n’ roll.
On the flip side, critics have accused Matonis of scamming his way into shows and there have been published reports of him being banned from some St. Louis clubs. Hey, that’s rock and roll too. In the list of America’s problems, this stuff ranks about 932. Someone even took the time to establish a “Beatle Bob Sit Down!” website. It’s time better spent establishing an “Audience Shut Up!” website.
Good luck Bob.
May you continue to twist and shout.
Hi Dave Ferd here. The painting is for sale and will be exhibited at the Soulard Art Gallery in their next show which will open in a week or so. It will be available for purchase there, or thru my website at http://www.ferdworks.com. I did the painting last January after the news of his retirement was released.
Great article thanks for posting it
Thank you Ferd, I might be coming down your way in mid-August. Let us know of any memorial. Love the Venice Cafe, too.
We all miss Beatle Bob! He used to host the annual Skid-O-Rama Garage Fest in Kansas City, too.
Thanks Joey, I knew of that fest. He was the real deal.