Rock stars invite him onstage, but he can't sing. He's been to more than 5,000 live shows in 11 years, but he may have nowhere to live.
On a cold, clear Friday night in November, a 55-year-old man in a blue pinstripe blazer, a red paisley shirt and black pants ducks into the cramped lobby of a nightclub called Off Broadway.
“This is one of my favorite spots in St. Louis,” he says, greeting the doorman and bounding into the club’s brick-walled main room. He strides across the dance floor until he’s standing on the far left side of the stage, at the feet of the evening’s performer, ex-major-label folk-rocker Garrison Starr.
“Hey, everyone!” Starr announces to the crowd, midsong. “It’s Beatle Bob!” Bob offers a quick wave to the audience, points a long finger toward Starr and begins dancing. He’s a tall, angular figure, and with his mop-topped head hunched forward, his arms bent sharply at the elbows and his hands bobbing and swimming awkwardly in front of his waist, he looks like a man rifling through a filing cabinet while waiting desperately to use the toilet. There is nothing smooth, rhythmic or graceful about his dancing. It seems to exist in its own world, completely divorced from the music inspiring it.
When the song ends, Starr looks down at Bob and smiles: “How you been?”
“Just staying in the groove,” Bob replies.
A version of this scene has repeated itself every night for more than a decade. Throughout the past 11 years, live music has been a singular obsession for Robert Matonis—or Beatle Bob. He claims to have been out to at least one show every single night since Christmas Day 1996, and nothing during that time—work, family, illness or sheer exhaustion—has broken his streak. For the last few years, Beatle Bob has been popping up, Zelig-like, at dozens of far-flung music festivals, often hopping onstage to introduce bands or just do his dance. For the bands themselves, simply having Beatle Bob appear at a show serves as a touring rite of passage: When Bob turns up to see you play, it’s a sign you’ve truly arrived.
“He’s known all over the place for having this passion for dancing at different shows,” says Tim DeLaughter of the Polyphonic Spree, who were joined onstage by Bob at Lollapalooza last year.
Indeed, once you know where to look, Beatle Bob is everywhere: In 2003, he was featured in a video for the Guided by Voices song “My Kind of Soldier”; in August 2006, he was dancing onstage as the New Pornographers performed “Bones of an Idol” at Lollapalooza; in June 2007, he introduced Franz Ferdinand at Bonnaroo; he’ll soon be the subject of a documentary scheduled for release this year.
But beyond his cartoonish profile—the novelty haircut, arrhythmic dancing and punishing nightlife schedule—rock’s most obsessive concertgoer is an enigma. Bob apparently doesn’t drive, yet manages to travel to venues around St. Louis every night and to festivals around the country; he claims to have a regular job, but nobody seems quite sure what it is; there are even those in St. Louis who suspect he may be homeless.
“I’ve known Bob for over 25 years, and he’s still a mystery,” says Joe Schwab, owner of the St. Louis independent store Euclid Records. “All I know is that he’s at every show I go to.”
Beatle Bob says that the first performer ever to invite him onstage was Chuck Berry, who spotted him dancing during an outdoor festival on the Fourth of July in 1977. By that time, Bob had already been dancing religiously at shows for two years, after watching a normally reserved friend cut a vicious rug at a concert by ’70s power-pop singer Dwight Twilley.
Raised in South St. Louis, Robert Matonis was christened “Beatle Bob” at Catholic boarding school—by a nun who caught him reading a magazine about the Fab Four concealed in a geography textbook. Living with his stepfather, who Bob claims was abusive, he found solace in dancing to old 45s by Gene Vincent and the Everly Brothers. He’s been fixated on music ever since—and dancing continues to provide him with indispensable physical release.
“It’s just an exhilarating feeling, a euphoria that’s hard to put into words,” he says as we drive the dilapidated streets of his old neighborhood. “It helps after a stressful day at work. You plug in to the music and it gives you an uplifting feeling.”
Since his current streak began in 1996, Bob estimates he’s seen well over 5,000 shows. His tastes lean toward guitar-pop, garage rock, rockabilly and anything related to the ’60s, but some nights, he admits, he can’t be that picky.
“Sunday nights, usually there’s no national acts; it’s the same local bands all the time. What makes it good for me is the overall experience. When I go to a club, I know the chef, the waitresses, the door guy, the sound guy, the security. I’ll talk to them before and after the show, and during breaks. I’ll talk to the bands and the fans, too. I’m usually the last person to leave.”