Something in the Way He Moves

He has attained his unique identity not just by shunning conformity but by embracing popular culture to the extreme. He is a public spectacle, the uninvited actor who makes cameo appearances, the unpaid entertainer with a legion of admirers. Yet much of his life remains shrouded in mystery. Thousands of St. Louisans have viewed his antics, but few people know him outside the character he has created for himself. The vacuum has been filled with apocryphal tales spread mainly by insiders in the local music scene. Beatle Bob dances alone. This itself is enough to fuel rumors. He is the fan who, through sheer enthusiasm, can steal a show; the beguiling huckster who bypasses the box office and talks his way backstage; the rogue whose alleged pilfering has led some local record stores to bar his entry. On any given night he materializes, seemingly out of nowhere, and then vanishes, leaving a wake of speculation about where he lives and how he earns his living.

"I don't care what people think," says Beatle Bob. "I really don't. I don't care what the band thinks. I just want to go out there and move. I love dancing and music. If it moves me, I'm going to move. If the band's playing a really groovy dance style, hey, man, let's go for it. Let it all hang out. Let your hair down. Let's go for it, man! If I wait for other people to hit the dance floor, though, a lot of sets I'm going to be sitting a long time. I'm not going to wait for other people to get out there first. I would rather see a lot of people on the dance floor with me, (but) if you don't want to do it, don't knock me for it."

Robert Matonis was born in St. Louis on Jan 12, 1953. His parents divorced when he was young, and he spent much of his childhood shuttling between his mother's South Side home, his grandparents' house in the Baden neighborhood and Mount Providence, an all-boys boarding school in North County.

Matonis' most vivid early memory of music goes back to a party held by one of his uncle's friends in 1960, when he was 7 years old.

"I couldn't go to this because it was more of a teen thing, your boyfriend-girlfriend type of thing," he recalls. "I remember sneaking up to the house. I literally crawled up there like a soldier, peering through the bushes. It was one of those parties with the Chinese lanterns outdoors. They were spinning records. The teenagers were doing all these wild dances. I'd seen kids dancing on TV, but this, wow, it was just so electrifying to watch it. These kids were having fun. I thought, 'Somehow I've just got to be a part of this. Somehow I've got to be connected to rock & roll.'"

Mount Providence closed in 1996, and the property is now part of the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus. From its founding in 1933, the institution had been operated by the Sisters of Divine Providence, an order of Roman Catholic nuns. Eighty-four-year-old Sister Aurelia Fechte, Matonis' eighth-grade teacher and the school's principal, remembers the youngster as a cooperative student who was always considerate of others. "We used to have Mass every morning in our chapel," she recalls. "One time he sang loud so he could protect his fellow students from being reprimanded for not singing. He made up for the whole bunch."

One of his transgressions, however, was the origin of the nickname by which he later became known. According to Matonis, the christening took place in sixth-grade geography class, when Sister Celeste spied him sneaking a peek at a Beatles fan magazine during class. The nun raced down the aisle, snatched the magazine from behind the boy's textbook and exclaimed: "That will be enough of that -- Beatle Bob!" The class erupted in laughter, and Matonis received a new identity.

At school, Matonis helped serve Mass in the Gothic Tudor chapel alongside fellow altar boy Ed Zachow. The two shared an interest in Pogo and Peanuts, two popular comic strips of the day. Zachow, an aspiring artist, drew sketches of his favorite cartoon characters for Matonis. The two boys, who became close friends between the sixth and eighth grades, also had a mutual affinity for music. "We started our first rock & roll newsletter," says Matonis. "This was, like, in 1966. It was called U.S. -- the United Saviors. He did the artwork; I did the writing. I still have a picture that he did of Paul McCartney."

Zachow occasionally visited the Matonis family residence. "(Bob) was always really into music," recalls Zachow. "When we were kids, I think he would try to get an album every weekend with his allowance." Matonis' mother then lived on Michigan Avenue near Cherokee Street. "That's where I discovered the Beatles," says Matonis. "I bought my first Beatle record at a music store, Southside Music, that still exists there. We had a Beatles museum in a friend of mine's basement. We'd charge people a quarter to get in."