Beatle Bob: The World's Most Obsessive Fan

But surely there must be times he just doesn’t feel up to it?

“There have been nights I was a little tired, but here’s my motto: Drag yourself there, the bands will pick you up.”

Bob credits his decade-plus run of nightly gigs to his health regimen: He’s been a vegetarian since 1982, doesn’t drink, smoke or take drugs and says he requires just four or five hours of sleep a night. He’s endured injuries—at last year’s JazzFest in New Orleans, he sliced open his ankle dancing, then got it patched up at the first-aid tent and returned to action—and he reasons that only a serious medical problem could break his streak.

“It would have to be something really, really bad that put me in the hospital,” Bob says. “I mean, there will be a point where I’ll have to slow down. The way I envision it is I’ll dance a couple songs and sit down for a while longer. I can envision myself sitting down for some songs.”

So Bob remains determined to maintain his run—it has meant missing friends’ weddings, their kids’ graduations and many of the everyday social interactions most of us take for granted. Bob has never been married; he refers to nearly everyone he knows as a “good friend,” though it’s unclear how many of these people would describe Bob with the same superlative.

“On the face of it, the guy is more than eccentric,” says Jeffrey Arnett, a psychologist and the author of Metalheads: Heavy Metal & Adolescent Alienation. “You are within a normal psychiatric range when your activities do not interfere with your love and work. But Bob needs structure in his life. His whole life is built around the dancing. It seems to be all he has.”

But however it may look, Bob insists he lives a balanced life: “I squeeze other things in besides music, enough where it doesn’t completely consume me. Plus, I’m fulfilled. I’m doing a good thing there.”

On the third Thursday of each month, Bob hosts his own “Beatle Bob Presents” live show in St. Louis, and one night in November, Blender accompanies him to the venue, the Lucas School House. Despite the large ad for the show he proudly points out in the local alternative weekly, by 9 p.m. the place is still almost empty.  “There’s a lot of competition tonight,” Bob says. “Los Lobos are playing at the hockey arena. I bet that’s hurting us.”

After introducing the opening band, the noisy indie-rock outfit Laite, he takes up a position stage right, where he dances with equal enthusiasm to stormy, feedback-heavy rockers and solo guitar ballads alike.

After the set, Bob apologizes to the headliners—an electro-pop duo called Mad Happy­—for the meager turnout. Even so, the club’s owner, Dan Jameson, is satisfied with the “Beatle Bob Presents” series.

“He’s come up with some great shows,” Jameson says. “He’s this iconic figure. Even people outside St. Louis know that if Beatle Bob’s here, it must be a great show.” Jameson only met Bob, whom he pays a small fee for his work, last year—but as he’s gotten to know him, he’s been impressed.

“I’ve asked him a lot of questions, because he’s this mystery figure, and I want to know who I’m dealing with,” Jameson says. “Not a lot of people know that he’s a social worker. But I’ve found him to be down-to-earth and genuine.”

And at first, there seems to be little that’s really strange about Bob’s life during daylight hours. He does indeed say he’s a social worker at the Agape Academy & Child Development Center in St. Louis: “I work with kids, teenagers, sometimes with drug problems. Sometimes they need special training for comprehending school real good. There are so many people out there who feel like there’s no one helping them.”

As for home, he says he’s currently staying with a friend, because the basement of his house recently flooded: “The sewers backed up, and all the basements down the whole block flooded. It actually made the local news.”

Later that night, Blender drops Bob off at his mom’s house, about 40 minutes from downtown St. Louis. The following day, we spend a few hours driving between various landmarks in Bob’s life: his grandparents’ old house; the St. Vincent Home for Children, where he says he worked during the ’70s; Club 54, where in the mid-’80s James Brown invited him onstage to dance. As the sun begins to set, Bob agrees to take Blender by his home. Out in a lower middle-class suburb, we eventually stop in front of a slightly ramshackle house with an aging wooden porch and walk out onto the patchy front lawn.

“I’d take you in, but the smell is really bad,” he says and points to six garbage cans on the side. Bob is still explaining the house’s features when a stout, ­middle-age woman emerges from the front door. “Can I help you?” she asks.

Bob walks toward her. “How you doing? Is Dan around? I was looking for my uncle Dan, who lives next door.”

The woman looks confused. She points across the street: “Dan’s house is over there.”

Bob thanks her and motions us back to the car. We ask him what’s going on.

“She knows Dan, my uncle who lives here,” he says, pointing at the house next to the one where we were apparently trespassing. “That gal, Alisa, she works with the crew my uncle Dan hired to clean up in there.”

A few hours later, we return without Bob and discover that the woman who’d answered the door has lived there for 37 years, is not named Alisa and has never seen Bob before in her life. Later, a phone call to the Agape Academy reveals that Bob doesn’t work there and never has.