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This programme contains some strong language | 0:00:02 | 0:00:03 | |
Now if you haven't heard of these young men then you must be | 0:00:03 | 0:00:05 | |
the wrong age because they're rock and roll specialists. | 0:00:05 | 0:00:08 | |
Now, no matter what you think of rock and roll, I think you | 0:00:08 | 0:00:11 | |
have to keep a nice open mind about what the young people go for. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:14 | |
Otherwise, the youngsters won't feel that you understand them. | 0:00:14 | 0:00:18 | |
Now, if we're ready for our rock and roll specialists, | 0:00:18 | 0:00:20 | |
we have Buddy Holly And The Crickets. | 0:00:20 | 0:00:24 | |
# Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue | 0:00:24 | 0:00:27 | |
# Oh, how my heart yearns for you | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
# Oh, Peggy | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
# My Peggy Sue | 0:00:32 | 0:00:34 | |
# Well, I love you girl | 0:00:36 | 0:00:37 | |
# Yes, I love you, Peggy Sue. # | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
It was less than 18 months between Buddy Holly topping the charts | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
with That'll Be The Day to the point of the plane crash | 0:00:46 | 0:00:51 | |
on the 3rd of February 1959. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
And he packed so many hit records, | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
so many a great songs, into that period of time. | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
# Heartbeat | 0:01:00 | 0:01:01 | |
# Why do you miss when my baby kisses me? # | 0:01:01 | 0:01:06 | |
It is remarkable to think that Buddy Holly | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
created this amazing body of work in just 18 months. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:14 | |
And not only that, but those songs continue to reverberate | 0:01:14 | 0:01:17 | |
in all the rock music that we hear today. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
# I want to love you night and day | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
# You know my love a-not fade away. # | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
He didn't produce his music, he expressed it. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
And there's a difference, you know. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:35 | |
There's a difference between being entertained | 0:01:35 | 0:01:38 | |
and having an emotional experience. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:40 | |
# Every day it's a-getting closer | 0:01:40 | 0:01:44 | |
# Going faster than a rollercoaster | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
# Love like yours will surely come my way. # | 0:01:47 | 0:01:52 | |
For those of us that love it and look at the full landscape of music | 0:01:52 | 0:01:56 | |
Buddy Holly was one of the guys that painted that picture | 0:01:56 | 0:02:00 | |
and allowed the rest to learn from him. | 0:02:00 | 0:02:03 | |
A genius in his way of cutting through all the thrills | 0:02:03 | 0:02:06 | |
and conventions and coming up with something so fresh | 0:02:06 | 0:02:10 | |
and so perfect at expressing the feelings of a whole generation. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:16 | |
He had hits and hits that we remember. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:27 | |
And it was a Buddy Holly sound. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:29 | |
And that was it. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:31 | |
# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye | 0:02:31 | 0:02:36 | |
# That'll be the day when you make me cry | 0:02:36 | 0:02:39 | |
# You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie. # | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
The '50s started around 1956, '57. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
Prior to that everything was black and white. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:49 | |
So to us, anyway, all the music was important | 0:02:49 | 0:02:52 | |
and then to have it taken away abruptly at such a young age | 0:02:52 | 0:02:55 | |
was a terrible shock. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
# That'll be the day. # | 0:02:58 | 0:03:00 | |
Lubbock, Texas, USA. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:08 | |
We're a busy, friendly town. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:09 | |
The hub of the vast territory known as the South Plains of Texas. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:13 | |
Buddy Holly comes from Lubbock, West Texas. | 0:03:16 | 0:03:20 | |
It's a real flat country. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:22 | |
We don't have many trees out there. | 0:03:22 | 0:03:24 | |
It's flat in Lubbock and it's flat outside of Lubbock. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:29 | |
If a tree grows, they run and cut it down real quick | 0:03:29 | 0:03:33 | |
so they won't spoil the view. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:35 | |
Lubbock is such a remote, isolated, desolate kind of area. | 0:03:35 | 0:03:41 | |
Just this flat little town in the Panhandle of Texas. | 0:03:41 | 0:03:44 | |
They say there was nothing between Lubbock and Amarillo. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:46 | |
A fence and it's down. | 0:03:46 | 0:03:48 | |
The wind blows. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:51 | |
Lifestyle in Lubbock back in the mid-1950s | 0:03:52 | 0:03:56 | |
would have been very, very small town. | 0:03:56 | 0:03:59 | |
It was safe. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:01 | |
Everybody was orderly and organised. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:03 | |
Nobody drank too much. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:05 | |
Lubbock was a poor place. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:07 | |
It was going through the great depression. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:10 | |
Daddy worked hard. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:12 | |
Sometimes he didn't bring in but four dollars a week. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:15 | |
A friend of mine, | 0:04:15 | 0:04:17 | |
me and him were sitting on the front porch over on 6th Street. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:21 | |
It was a dirt street. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:23 | |
And he said, "Your mother's going to have a baby." | 0:04:23 | 0:04:26 | |
And I said, "No, they'd have told me. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:29 | |
"I'm the oldest kid in the family." | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
They had Buddy and it got me so I cried. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:38 | |
We don't have enough to eat as it is | 0:04:38 | 0:04:40 | |
and now she's got another mouth to feed. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:45 | |
His mother told me, | 0:04:45 | 0:04:46 | |
"We want him to learn how to sing and play the guitar. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
"The only thing is we don't have the money to pay for his lessons." | 0:04:50 | 0:04:55 | |
He was very self-confident. Friendly. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:58 | |
He was kind of shy in a way. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
Sometimes he could be kind of smart and sometimes he'd be real shy. | 0:05:01 | 0:05:06 | |
Buddy came to me and said, "Larry, I need a guitar." | 0:05:06 | 0:05:12 | |
I said "You can't play one." | 0:05:13 | 0:05:16 | |
He said, "I can learn. A guy taught me some chords on the school bus." | 0:05:16 | 0:05:21 | |
Larry, I think it was, went down to Adair Music, paid for the guitar. | 0:05:21 | 0:05:26 | |
And then Buddy came in and picked it up. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:29 | |
He liked it right off the bat. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:32 | |
Soon as he got it in his hands | 0:05:32 | 0:05:34 | |
it sounded like a different instrument completely | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
and I said, "Buddy, I didn't know you could do that." | 0:05:37 | 0:05:41 | |
And he said, "Yeah, I've been learning." | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
My dad, Bob Montgomery, was childhood friends with Buddy. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:47 | |
They met when they were about 11 or 12 years old. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:49 | |
Learned how to play the guitar together and wrote songs together | 0:05:49 | 0:05:53 | |
and they were a duo called Buddy and Bob. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:56 | |
Buddy and Bob had a country or sort of swing band | 0:05:56 | 0:05:59 | |
or a country and western band and they did local gigs. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:04 | |
# I love you, I thought you loved me too | 0:06:04 | 0:06:06 | |
# But you said I'd never do | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
# Now you and I are through. # | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
Flower Of My Heart was the first song that Dad ever wrote | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
and that was one of the songs that they did as a duo, Buddy and Bob. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
# Please come back to me, my darling | 0:06:21 | 0:06:25 | |
# For I can't live while we're apart | 0:06:27 | 0:06:31 | |
# Come back, come back to me, my darling | 0:06:33 | 0:06:38 | |
# For you are the flower of my heart. # | 0:06:40 | 0:06:45 | |
Bob played rhythm guitar and Buddy played lead. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
So they wanted a bass player. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:53 | |
I borrowed the school bass and I was in the orchestra | 0:06:53 | 0:06:57 | |
so I could take it home and use it. | 0:06:57 | 0:06:59 | |
And that's what I did. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:01 | |
# Well, you may go to college | 0:07:01 | 0:07:03 | |
# You may go to school | 0:07:03 | 0:07:05 | |
# You may have a pink Cadillac but don't you be nobody's fool | 0:07:05 | 0:07:09 | |
# Now, baby, come back. # | 0:07:09 | 0:07:11 | |
When Elvis first came to town all of us went, of course, | 0:07:13 | 0:07:17 | |
and we had never seen anything like that before. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:20 | |
That was kind of when it first dawned on me | 0:07:21 | 0:07:25 | |
that music was, erm... | 0:07:25 | 0:07:27 | |
really a lot more than just about music. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:33 | |
There's sex involved in this music component, you know. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:38 | |
I mean, the girls were actually going nuts over Elvis. | 0:07:39 | 0:07:44 | |
Elvis had the sexuality and when you just looked at him | 0:07:44 | 0:07:47 | |
we knew none of us were going to be like Elvis. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
He owned that space and that was it. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:52 | |
He was James Dean with a guitar around his neck and away he went. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:56 | |
Elvis was the game-changer. | 0:07:56 | 0:07:59 | |
You know, we didn't have teenage music when I grew up. This was it. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:03 | |
The music was all brand-new, that's the thing. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
Everything was brand-new. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:08 | |
Elvis was a great guy, too. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:11 | |
He was as nice as you could be. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:13 | |
First time he came to Lubbock we opened up for him. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
At the Fair Park Coliseum in Lubbock. | 0:08:18 | 0:08:20 | |
And actually we went over to the motel where he was staying | 0:08:21 | 0:08:25 | |
and we heard Elvis singing in the shower, you know. | 0:08:25 | 0:08:28 | |
He was getting ready to go out. | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
We sang mostly country songs. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:35 | |
The hits of the day. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:37 | |
And the next day after Elvis left town | 0:08:37 | 0:08:40 | |
we started playing rock and roll. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:43 | |
He had a big influence on Buddy. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
# If you love me, honey Will you let me know? | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
# If you really love me never let me go | 0:08:49 | 0:08:51 | |
# Love me, love me, love me. # | 0:08:51 | 0:08:53 | |
And Buddy sang like Elvis. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:55 | |
# Baby, love me, love me, love me | 0:08:56 | 0:08:58 | |
# Oh, I love you. # | 0:08:58 | 0:09:00 | |
Then Elvis got a drummer, DJ Fontana. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:04 | |
And Buddy said, "We've got to have a drummer." | 0:09:06 | 0:09:09 | |
And so he said, "I heard about this kid, name of Jerry Allison." | 0:09:11 | 0:09:17 | |
Buddy Holly then went to JT Edson Junior High School | 0:09:17 | 0:09:20 | |
and I met him on the playground. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:22 | |
I was just 16 at the time. | 0:09:22 | 0:09:24 | |
So I started playing with that group and we started working | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
and Buddy would sing some rock and roll songs. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:30 | |
So Buddy signed a contract with Decca. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:34 | |
It's kind of funny Decca misspelt Buddy's last name, | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
missing out the "E" in "Holley" and that's how he became known. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
I'm sure it was hugely exciting and intimidating in a way | 0:09:42 | 0:09:47 | |
for Buddy Holly to get this record deal with Decca and to | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
go to Nashville and the idea of finally breaking in and making it. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:55 | |
Nashville would have been the big city and they would've been very | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
scared and very, you know, hopeful that they could have their big shot. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:05 | |
The Nashville sessions started January 26th, 1956. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:11 | |
It just became apparent that the powers that be | 0:10:11 | 0:10:14 | |
were more interested in Buddy as a solo artist and not Buddy and Bob. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:19 | |
And so Buddy came to him and they talked about it | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
and Dad just said, "Look, you know, go for it. This is your chance." | 0:10:24 | 0:10:29 | |
And I think that knocked him back a little bit | 0:10:29 | 0:10:32 | |
and I think he decided to focus on writing | 0:10:32 | 0:10:36 | |
and producing and publishing. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:38 | |
Dad wrote Heartbeat, Wishing, Love's Made A Fool Of You, Down The Line. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:43 | |
There's no telling what they could have done together if they had been | 0:10:43 | 0:10:48 | |
given that chance, but fate would have it that that didn't happen. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:52 | |
We recorded those first sessions at Owen Bradley's studios. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:58 | |
Owen Bradley was probably the biggest producer in Nashville | 0:10:58 | 0:11:02 | |
for many ,many years and one of the fathers of country music | 0:11:02 | 0:11:06 | |
and the whole Nashville sound. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
As good a guitar player as Buddy was, they didn't let him play. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:13 | |
I mean, he just stood at a microphone in the corner and sang. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
We were all so young and naive, we thought, "Man, we've made it." | 0:11:16 | 0:11:22 | |
Now all we've got to do is go back home and start acting like Elvis | 0:11:22 | 0:11:26 | |
and wait for the money to come in! | 0:11:26 | 0:11:28 | |
Which didn't happen, of course. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:30 | |
The record that first came out was Blue Days Black Nights. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:36 | |
# Blue days, black nights | 0:11:36 | 0:11:38 | |
# Blue tears keep on falling for you, dear | 0:11:38 | 0:11:42 | |
# Now you're gone | 0:11:42 | 0:11:44 | |
# Blue days, black nights | 0:11:44 | 0:11:47 | |
# My heart keeps on calling for you, dear. # | 0:11:47 | 0:11:51 | |
I came three times with Buddy and we recorded That'll Be The Day. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:57 | |
Buddy actually played on that and I played rhythm on that | 0:11:57 | 0:12:00 | |
particular session and we had Jerry Allison with us | 0:12:00 | 0:12:04 | |
who played drums on it. | 0:12:04 | 0:12:06 | |
We'd seen that movie, John Wayne, The Searchers. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:09 | |
He said, "That'll be the day" five times I believe somebody told me. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:13 | |
So Buddy and I were just sitting and practising | 0:12:13 | 0:12:17 | |
and he said we ought to write a song. | 0:12:17 | 0:12:21 | |
I'd never written a song before and I said, "That'll be the day." | 0:12:21 | 0:12:25 | |
# That'll be the day. # | 0:12:25 | 0:12:27 | |
And about 30 minutes later we got a song. | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye | 0:12:30 | 0:12:35 | |
# That'll be the day when you make me cry | 0:12:35 | 0:12:39 | |
"You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie | 0:12:39 | 0:12:43 | |
# Cos that'll be the day when I die. # | 0:12:43 | 0:12:48 | |
When Buddy was in high school, at Lubbock High, | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
there was an old black man across the street who would shine shoes | 0:12:51 | 0:12:55 | |
and he had a guitar. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:57 | |
He would play his guitar like... | 0:12:57 | 0:12:59 | |
Kind of a blues thing that Buddy really liked. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
So Buddy learned it from this black man and then he turned it into... | 0:13:06 | 0:13:11 | |
And this part here he learned from Sonny Curtis, I believe. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:31 | |
In that last session we did | 0:13:39 | 0:13:41 | |
the end result didn't match what we were kind of expecting, you know. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:47 | |
We wanted it to be somehow better | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
and we were so young and inexperienced | 0:13:50 | 0:13:53 | |
we didn't know how to do that. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
Owen Bradley said that was the worst song he ever heard. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
They didn't do any good there. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:00 | |
They had a big argument with the producer. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:03 | |
Buddy had been dropped by his recording label in Nashville. | 0:14:03 | 0:14:10 | |
They weren't going to finance any more of his recordings. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:16 | |
Again, we have to remember this was all brand-new. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
There was no concept of an artist | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
having control over their own careers. | 0:14:22 | 0:14:25 | |
That just didn't exist yet and he was sort of breaking ground there. | 0:14:25 | 0:14:30 | |
He comes back home, | 0:14:30 | 0:14:32 | |
he finds Norm Petty and he goes to this tiny little studio in Clovis, | 0:14:32 | 0:14:39 | |
which is another bump on the road in the middle of New Mexico, nowhere. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
Clovis New Mexico is just across the line from Lubbock. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:47 | |
It's about 93 miles. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:49 | |
And Norman Petty, who had a studio there, | 0:14:49 | 0:14:52 | |
was a great engineer and he had new equipment | 0:14:52 | 0:14:56 | |
and knew how to run it real well. | 0:14:56 | 0:14:59 | |
The role of the producer is to create a space | 0:14:59 | 0:15:01 | |
within which the artist is able to express themselves | 0:15:01 | 0:15:05 | |
with confidence and totally in their own way. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
And there's no doubt about the fact that that's what Norman Petty did. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:12 | |
He allowed Buddy to flourish for the first time. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
It didn't happen in Nashville. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:18 | |
Buddy called me one day and said, | 0:15:18 | 0:15:20 | |
"We're going over to Clovis and cut this thing. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
"You want to go and play bass for me?" I said, "Sure." | 0:15:24 | 0:15:28 | |
Larry Wellborn played on That'll Be The Day. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:30 | |
Really good bass player. Really good guitar player now. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:33 | |
That'll Be The Day, Maybe Baby, Looking For Someone To Love. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
Last night. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:38 | |
We did those four songs and we probably did them in two hours. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:43 | |
There was a group called The Spiders and they had | 0:15:45 | 0:15:47 | |
a record called Witchcraft and we really liked that record. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:50 | |
So we thought, OK, let's be an insect. | 0:15:50 | 0:15:52 | |
In that year in Lubbock there was this ton of crickets. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:55 | |
It was like a swarm of locusts showed up in Texas. | 0:15:55 | 0:16:00 | |
And one day they said a cricket got in there. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:03 | |
And they couldn't get rid of the noise | 0:16:03 | 0:16:06 | |
so they named us The Crickets. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
The people that Buddy had with him was Niki Sullivan, | 0:16:10 | 0:16:14 | |
Joe B Mauldin, Jerry Allison and himself. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:17 | |
That was the four. Buddy played lead. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:20 | |
Niki did the same thing that Bob did and played rhythm | 0:16:22 | 0:16:26 | |
and Joe B Mauldin was playing bass and Jerry was playing drums. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:31 | |
Norman became our manager and then we could... | 0:16:31 | 0:16:33 | |
There was an apartment at the back of the studio | 0:16:33 | 0:16:36 | |
and we would go to sleep for a couple of hours. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:40 | |
If you felt like getting up you'd go and practise. It was just great. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:45 | |
That'll Be The Day, we did two takes at it. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:48 | |
With Buddy and the Crickets they were so into with each other | 0:16:48 | 0:16:52 | |
that they could come over and within two or three takes they had it. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:57 | |
This is my little box from the day where I used to keep my 45s | 0:16:57 | 0:17:02 | |
and these were the most precious things in my life, really. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:06 | |
It starts off with Lonnie Donegan, Rock Island line. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:09 | |
But number seven is That'll Be The Day. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:14 | |
So the seventh record that I bought. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
And it comes in something that looks like | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
a piece of old brown paper and it did at the time. Very basic. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
And it's on Coral. That's a record label I'd never heard of | 0:17:23 | 0:17:26 | |
at the time until that point. | 0:17:26 | 0:17:28 | |
And there's your record. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:30 | |
So I took it home and put it on the record player I had at the time. | 0:17:30 | 0:17:35 | |
# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
# That'll be the day when you make me cry | 0:17:48 | 0:17:52 | |
# You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
# Cos that'll be the day when I die. # | 0:17:55 | 0:17:59 | |
His singing approach was quite different, you know. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:01 | |
This sort of hiccupping sound in is voice. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:03 | |
It isn't any standard way of singing | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
that I've ever heard before or since. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
# Well, you give me all your loving and your turtle doving | 0:18:11 | 0:18:15 | |
# All your hugs and kisses and your money, too | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
# Well, you know you love me, baby | 0:18:18 | 0:18:20 | |
# Still you tell me maybe | 0:18:20 | 0:18:22 | |
# That some day, well, I'll be through | 0:18:22 | 0:18:26 | |
# Well that'll be the day when you say goodbye. # | 0:18:26 | 0:18:29 | |
It still makes me go hot and cold, I tell you. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
You can hear the ingredients there. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
You hear that incredibly incisive guitar. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
It's really metallic. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:39 | |
He just bared down on that guitar the way he felt | 0:18:39 | 0:18:43 | |
and you could feel it come right off the record. | 0:18:43 | 0:18:46 | |
You know, into my head, my soul, my heart, my spirit. | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
It just plastered me against the wall. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
I've got my hand on here which is stopping the strings just after they start. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:56 | |
It's a damping effect, so it goes. | 0:18:56 | 0:18:58 | |
It's the difference between... | 0:18:59 | 0:19:00 | |
and... | 0:19:00 | 0:19:02 | |
It's very rhythmic and Buddy has this instinct to do it that way | 0:19:04 | 0:19:07 | |
and I don't know where he got it from but it was unusual at the time. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:10 | |
And it's given way to all sorts of heavy metal riffs | 0:19:10 | 0:19:13 | |
which do the same thing, you know. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:15 | |
# Yes, that'll be the day when you make me cry | 0:19:17 | 0:19:21 | |
# You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie. # | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
Now he's going to unleash himself on the solo. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:28 | |
GUITAR SOLO | 0:19:30 | 0:19:32 | |
Now he's back to the damping even in the solo. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:41 | |
Back out. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye | 0:19:50 | 0:19:54 | |
# That'll be the day when you make me cry | 0:19:54 | 0:19:58 | |
# You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie | 0:19:58 | 0:20:01 | |
# Cos that'll be the day when I die | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
# Well, that'll be the day | 0:20:04 | 0:20:07 | |
# Ooh-ooh, that'll be the day | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
# Ooh-ooh, that'll be the day | 0:20:10 | 0:20:14 | |
# Ooh-ooh, that'll be the day. # | 0:20:14 | 0:20:16 | |
Buddy's whole style was unique to him. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
Very unique to him, because Elvis wasn't really a guitar player. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:28 | |
You know, there was strumming and what have you, but Buddy made | 0:20:28 | 0:20:32 | |
inroads into that whole new rock and roll vibe, | 0:20:32 | 0:20:36 | |
and it was just...it was him. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:39 | |
# If you knew Peggy Sue | 0:20:44 | 0:20:47 | |
# Then you'd know why I feel blue without Peggy | 0:20:47 | 0:20:51 | |
# My Peggy Sue | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
# Oh, well I love you, gal Yes, I love you, Peggy Sue... # | 0:20:56 | 0:21:00 | |
Peggy Sue... | 0:21:03 | 0:21:05 | |
That was my first ex-wife, and she and I had dated in high school. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:11 | |
She didn't like me that good, but when Peggy Sue came out, | 0:21:11 | 0:21:13 | |
she liked me real good. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:15 | |
Buddy was writing a song called Cindy Lou, like... | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
# If you knew Cindy Lou... # | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
And anyway, I said, | 0:21:21 | 0:21:23 | |
"Oh, man, you know, there's this girl named Peggy Sue." | 0:21:23 | 0:21:27 | |
And I think he had met her. We changed it. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:29 | |
I wish we'd left it as Cindy Lou, to tell you the truth. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:33 | |
# Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue | 0:21:41 | 0:21:44 | |
# Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
# Oh, Peggy, my Peggy Sue... # | 0:21:47 | 0:21:52 | |
Drumming on the song was quite complicated, I mean it's... | 0:21:53 | 0:21:56 | |
on Peggy Sue, but it's amazing, the drumming. | 0:21:56 | 0:21:59 | |
You know, all the way through. And fuck! Excuse me. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:04 | |
-Er... Heavens! -HE LAUGHS | 0:22:04 | 0:22:07 | |
And it's such an eccentric thing to do. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:10 | |
# Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue... # | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
He would go to a guitar solo, and instead of playing single notes, | 0:22:25 | 0:22:29 | |
he would play a chord solo, which was kind of unusual then. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
GUITAR CHORD SOLO | 0:22:33 | 0:22:37 | |
To hear that guitar upfront on a record was really revolutionary. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:45 | |
You know, you're talking about... | 0:22:45 | 0:22:47 | |
You're coming out of the big band era and swing and Frank Sinatra. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:53 | |
The guitar, if it was there, would be in the background, | 0:22:53 | 0:22:56 | |
just chugging away acoustically. | 0:22:56 | 0:22:58 | |
You didn't have a guitar just kicking in | 0:22:58 | 0:23:00 | |
at the beginning of the record, electrified. | 0:23:00 | 0:23:02 | |
His style was unique. | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
That's the thing I learned from country artists, | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
and Buddy obviously did, too. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
You get your own style, your own sound | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
-and do it with authority. -HE LAUGHS | 0:23:15 | 0:23:18 | |
And feeling. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:20 | |
# Oh, well, I love you, gal And I want you, Peggy Sue. # | 0:23:20 | 0:23:24 | |
And I love the way it just ends. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:29 | |
The end. Cut the tape, it's finished. Off. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:33 | |
He was one of the very first to use a Fender Stratocaster, which I think | 0:23:33 | 0:23:38 | |
came out in, like, 1954. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
Buddy was really unique because he had that flat Fender Stratocaster | 0:23:41 | 0:23:46 | |
and everybody else had a big old Gibson. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:49 | |
Guitars were traditionally accompanying instruments, and put in | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
the middle of an orchestra you would almost not hear them. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
So they began to electrify them a little bit by first of all putting a | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
microphone on, but Les Paul pioneered this technique of putting | 0:23:59 | 0:24:03 | |
a magnet and a bunch of coiled wire under the strings and putting it | 0:24:03 | 0:24:07 | |
into an amplifier to actually electrify the guitar. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:09 | |
And you get the very first Fenders and the very first Gibsons. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:14 | |
Wow! I'd never seen a guitar that looked anything like that. | 0:24:14 | 0:24:18 | |
I loved the sound he produced, so later on, in 1959, Cliff said, | 0:24:18 | 0:24:23 | |
"Look, I'd like to buy you a really good guitar." You know, "Great." | 0:24:23 | 0:24:26 | |
"What do you fancy?" | 0:24:26 | 0:24:28 | |
And I said, "Well, the Stratocaster has to be it." | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
And the thing about the Strat is it's a very versatile guitar. | 0:24:31 | 0:24:34 | |
If you think over the years since the Strat's come into being, | 0:24:34 | 0:24:38 | |
it can sound like a rock and roll guitar, | 0:24:38 | 0:24:40 | |
you can play blues on it like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:45 | |
You can even play jazz on it. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:46 | |
There are some jazz players who use a Strat. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
Jerry was sitting in a chair in the reception room and he was slapping | 0:24:49 | 0:24:53 | |
his hands and knees, | 0:24:53 | 0:24:56 | |
and Norman walked in and asked him what he was doing, and Jerry said, | 0:24:56 | 0:25:01 | |
"I'm just practising the song we're going to do today." | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
Norman said, "Let me put a mic to that." | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
So he miked it, came back out, told Jerry, he said, | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
"Don't play the drums, just slap your hands and knees." | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
# Every day, it's a-gettin' closer | 0:25:13 | 0:25:17 | |
# Goin' faster than a roller coaster | 0:25:17 | 0:25:20 | |
# Love like yours will surely come my way | 0:25:20 | 0:25:24 | |
# A-hey, a-hey hey. # | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
Norman could hear things like that that most people would not have. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:31 | |
On Not Fade Away, the drums is a cardboard box. | 0:25:31 | 0:25:35 | |
HE IMITATES THE BEAT | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
# I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
# You're gonna give your love to me | 0:25:42 | 0:25:46 | |
# I wanna love you night and day | 0:25:47 | 0:25:51 | |
# You know my loving not fade away. # | 0:25:52 | 0:25:55 | |
OK, so this is Maybe Baby. | 0:25:57 | 0:25:59 | |
MUSIC: Maybe Baby by The Crickets | 0:26:02 | 0:26:06 | |
See, by then, you haven't heard Buddy yet, but it's all set up. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:20 | |
The magic is there. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:21 | |
You hear this incredible guitar, you hear the whole band going - | 0:26:21 | 0:26:24 | |
it's only a small band but it's big-sounding. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:26 | |
And then you hear this, "Ooooo-oooh." | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
And the harmonies are very carefully | 0:26:29 | 0:26:31 | |
chosen to have that kind of haunting quality to them. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
Bill didn't realise arrangements were important then. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
But they were. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:39 | |
They were really important. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:41 | |
And that was a very important part of it, part of the sound, and he | 0:26:41 | 0:26:47 | |
knew the record before he got to the first lyric. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
When Buddy comes in, the harmonies are with him. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:54 | |
# Maybe, baby, I'll have you | 0:26:57 | 0:27:01 | |
# Maybe, baby, you'll be true | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
# Maybe, baby, I'll have you for me | 0:27:04 | 0:27:09 | |
# It's funny, honey You don't care | 0:27:11 | 0:27:15 | |
# You never listen to my prayer | 0:27:15 | 0:27:18 | |
# Maybe, baby, you will love me some day. # | 0:27:18 | 0:27:23 | |
These sort of tours that Buddy Holly went on at that time were very | 0:27:25 | 0:27:29 | |
common in the United States then - | 0:27:29 | 0:27:31 | |
these revues that had a whole long list of artists. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:33 | |
One of the reason it happened is that a lot of these artists only | 0:27:33 | 0:27:36 | |
had one or two hits. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:37 | |
You might have a hit in a region, but outside of, say, Georgia, | 0:27:37 | 0:27:42 | |
nobody knew who you were and you | 0:27:42 | 0:27:45 | |
had to kind of take these tours to get your name out there, | 0:27:45 | 0:27:48 | |
to other parts of the country and to other radio stations. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:54 | |
Tours then are a lot different than what they are now nowadays. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
Nowadays they may last six months to a year. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
They weren't like today with the luxurious lounges | 0:28:01 | 0:28:06 | |
and beds and couches and televisions and... | 0:28:06 | 0:28:11 | |
It was just an ex-Greyhound bus, | 0:28:12 | 0:28:16 | |
with seats, you know. And... | 0:28:16 | 0:28:18 | |
We all just piled on there - 12, 14 acts, all of us, | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
singers and players, we'd get on one bus. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:27 | |
They had a backup orchestra, like about 25-, 30-piece orchestra on | 0:28:27 | 0:28:31 | |
another bus because people like | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 | |
Dion and Frankie Avalon and | 0:28:35 | 0:28:37 | |
The Platters, The Coasters who were some of... Sam Cooke. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:41 | |
They all had charts, arrangements, and they'd pass out their music | 0:28:41 | 0:28:46 | |
to the band and the band would back them up. | 0:28:46 | 0:28:49 | |
Now, I was an exception. Bo Diddley was, as well. | 0:28:49 | 0:28:52 | |
We took our own groups. | 0:28:52 | 0:28:55 | |
And the 14-piece band was not near as enthusiastic as | 0:28:55 | 0:29:00 | |
Buddy and Joe B and I were. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:02 | |
So you'd get a bus or two buses full of these acts, | 0:29:02 | 0:29:05 | |
send them out on the road. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:07 | |
The conditions were horrendous, usually, and they'd sometimes do | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
two or three shows in a town | 0:29:11 | 0:29:13 | |
and then overnight drive to the next town. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:16 | |
They were pretty gruelling, yeah. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:18 | |
But you didn't have to work that many songs, you didn't have to do | 0:29:18 | 0:29:21 | |
45-minute shows or 50-minute or 60-minute shows. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:24 | |
You just did two or three songs. | 0:29:24 | 0:29:27 | |
No sleeping arrangements, no bathrooms, freezing through some | 0:29:27 | 0:29:31 | |
states during the wrong time of the year, but here we were, living | 0:29:31 | 0:29:34 | |
together, singing together, getting to know each other. | 0:29:34 | 0:29:39 | |
MUSIC: Well Alright by The Crickets | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
Nikki Sullivan didn't like the road as much as everybody else did. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:51 | |
So he finally just quit. | 0:29:51 | 0:29:55 | |
After he left, then it became a trio instead of four of them. | 0:29:55 | 0:29:58 | |
It was Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison and Joe B Mauldin. | 0:29:58 | 0:30:02 | |
One of the Everly Brothers, when they really talked him into | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
wearing that type of glasses, the glasses became the issue. | 0:30:06 | 0:30:10 | |
When he got the horn-rimmed glasses he looked more contemporary, | 0:30:10 | 0:30:13 | |
and I think we inspired him to do that. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:16 | |
We told him that was a good idea. | 0:30:16 | 0:30:18 | |
He had the old wire-rimmed ones, which later became fashionable, | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
but then it wasn't fashionable | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
and the horn rims with the dark glasses was the best thing. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:30 | |
The fact that Buddy Holly looked like a math major | 0:30:30 | 0:30:34 | |
instead of a pop star was something else | 0:30:34 | 0:30:37 | |
that kind of changed the whole rule book. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
You know, Elton John never would've put on glasses | 0:30:40 | 0:30:43 | |
if Buddy Holly hadn't come along. | 0:30:43 | 0:30:45 | |
Elton John didn't need glasses, but he loved the way Buddy Holly looked. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:49 | |
I remember one situation in 1959, we were doing a gig | 0:30:49 | 0:30:53 | |
and one of the support acts said, | 0:30:53 | 0:30:56 | |
"Do not wear your specs on stage." | 0:30:56 | 0:31:00 | |
He said, "That's not showbiz. We don't wear specs on stage." | 0:31:00 | 0:31:04 | |
I said, "Denny, I'm almost blind. I'll fall over." | 0:31:04 | 0:31:07 | |
He said, "It doesn't matter. Don't wear your glasses." | 0:31:07 | 0:31:11 | |
And I thought, "No, if Buddy Holly can get away with it, so can I." | 0:31:11 | 0:31:15 | |
He was not a Rock Hudson or an Elvis Presley or whoever, | 0:31:15 | 0:31:19 | |
but he was so cool, and when he got up there, man, | 0:31:19 | 0:31:22 | |
he communicated with that audience, | 0:31:22 | 0:31:25 | |
he made them love him. | 0:31:25 | 0:31:28 | |
The first of the songs that I wrote was Oh, Boy! | 0:31:28 | 0:31:33 | |
And I came to the same studio in Clovis, | 0:31:33 | 0:31:38 | |
at the Petty Studio in Clovis, and I recorded Oh, Boy! | 0:31:38 | 0:31:42 | |
# All my love | 0:31:42 | 0:31:44 | |
# All my kissin' | 0:31:44 | 0:31:45 | |
# You don't know what you've been a-missin' | 0:31:45 | 0:31:47 | |
# Oh, boy! | 0:31:47 | 0:31:49 | |
# When you're with me Oh, boy! | 0:31:49 | 0:31:51 | |
# The world can see | 0:31:51 | 0:31:53 | |
# That you | 0:31:53 | 0:31:54 | |
# Were meant | 0:31:54 | 0:31:56 | |
# For me. # | 0:31:56 | 0:31:57 | |
And Norman played this demo that I had made of Oh, Boy! to Buddy, | 0:31:58 | 0:32:06 | |
and he really liked the song, so Norman called me and he said, | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
"He wants to do that song." | 0:32:10 | 0:32:12 | |
And, you know, Buddy had an excitement in his voice | 0:32:12 | 0:32:15 | |
that I didn't have or probably couldn't have, | 0:32:15 | 0:32:19 | |
so it was a big deal for me. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:21 | |
# All of my life | 0:32:21 | 0:32:22 | |
# I've been a-waitin' | 0:32:22 | 0:32:23 | |
# Tonight there'll be no hesitatin' | 0:32:23 | 0:32:25 | |
# Oh, boy! | 0:32:25 | 0:32:27 | |
# When you're with me Oh, boy! | 0:32:27 | 0:32:29 | |
# The world can see | 0:32:29 | 0:32:30 | |
# That you | 0:32:30 | 0:32:31 | |
# Were meant | 0:32:31 | 0:32:32 | |
# For me | 0:32:32 | 0:32:33 | |
# Stars appear and shadows a-falling | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
# You can hear my heart a-calling | 0:32:38 | 0:32:40 | |
# A little bit a-lovin' makes everything right | 0:32:40 | 0:32:42 | |
# And I'm gonna see my baby tonight | 0:32:42 | 0:32:44 | |
# All of my love | 0:32:44 | 0:32:45 | |
# All of my kissin' | 0:32:45 | 0:32:47 | |
# You don't know what you've been a-missin' | 0:32:47 | 0:32:49 | |
# Oh, boy! | 0:32:49 | 0:32:50 | |
# When you're with me Oh, boy! | 0:32:50 | 0:32:52 | |
# The world can see | 0:32:52 | 0:32:53 | |
# That you | 0:32:53 | 0:32:54 | |
# Were meant | 0:32:54 | 0:32:55 | |
# For me | 0:32:55 | 0:32:57 | |
# Ow! # | 0:32:57 | 0:32:58 | |
Buddy Holly is a great interpreter, a great singer. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:14 | |
He doesn't have to write the song. He sings it as if he wrote it. | 0:33:16 | 0:33:20 | |
It might as well be written by him because it's his now. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:23 | |
That's what an interpreter - a really good interpreter - does. | 0:33:23 | 0:33:26 | |
And Buddy Holly was first and foremost an excellent singer | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
and an excellent interpreter. | 0:33:29 | 0:33:32 | |
And then beyond that he had this vast genius talent as a songwriter. | 0:33:32 | 0:33:37 | |
And he was great at picking songs, you know, from other people. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:40 | |
Rave On was a little bit similar | 0:33:40 | 0:33:44 | |
situation as Oh, Boy! was. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
I was working on the song and I brought it over here to Clovis, | 0:33:47 | 0:33:52 | |
and it just wasn't right. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:54 | |
# I know it's got me reelin' | 0:33:54 | 0:33:57 | |
# When you say, I love you | 0:33:57 | 0:33:59 | |
# Rave on... # | 0:33:59 | 0:34:02 | |
A couple of months later Buddy Holly put it out. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:04 | |
The same thing happened as the one with Oh, Boy! | 0:34:04 | 0:34:07 | |
I thought his version was a totally different | 0:34:07 | 0:34:10 | |
rhythm and attitude than mine. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:13 | |
It's how he did stuff. | 0:34:13 | 0:34:15 | |
I mean, it doesn't really matter whether it's ones he wrote or not, | 0:34:15 | 0:34:17 | |
but his way of doing it, his songs, was unique. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:23 | |
It's all Buddy Holly, when you're listening to it. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
# The way you dance a-and hold me tight | 0:34:25 | 0:34:27 | |
# The way you kiss and say goodnight | 0:34:27 | 0:34:31 | |
# Rave on It's a crazy feeling and | 0:34:31 | 0:34:34 | |
# I know it's got me reeling | 0:34:34 | 0:34:36 | |
# When you say I love you | 0:34:36 | 0:34:39 | |
# Rave on | 0:34:39 | 0:34:41 | |
# A-well rave on a-it's a crazy feeling and | 0:34:42 | 0:34:45 | |
# And I know It's got me reeling | 0:34:45 | 0:34:48 | |
# I'm so glad | 0:34:48 | 0:34:50 | |
# That you're revealing | 0:34:50 | 0:34:51 | |
# Your love for me... # | 0:34:51 | 0:34:53 | |
He broke the nice barrier, for me. | 0:34:55 | 0:34:57 | |
All the music I was listening to was nice. | 0:34:57 | 0:35:01 | |
And to this guy it was like the kiss of death. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:04 | |
Nice was the kiss of death. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:06 | |
It was like, here we go, hold on to your ass... | 0:35:06 | 0:35:10 | |
# Hey, baby, baby | 0:35:10 | 0:35:12 | |
# Now the little things you say... # | 0:35:12 | 0:35:13 | |
You know, it was like, ah! | 0:35:13 | 0:35:15 | |
In the five months since That'll Be The Day was a hit | 0:35:17 | 0:35:21 | |
Buddy Holly And The Crickets had toured not only the US, | 0:35:21 | 0:35:24 | |
but Australia, and in March 1958 arrived for a tour of the UK. | 0:35:24 | 0:35:30 | |
# But now you're gone | 0:35:30 | 0:35:31 | |
# I've found I'm wrong | 0:35:31 | 0:35:32 | |
# And there's a-nothing I can do | 0:35:32 | 0:35:34 | |
# Except to change up all those changes | 0:35:34 | 0:35:37 | |
# That I made when I left you... # | 0:35:37 | 0:35:40 | |
We got to England, Joe B came in the dressing room with a big cigar, | 0:35:50 | 0:35:54 | |
Buddy and I were scuffling, trying to get it away from him and, | 0:35:54 | 0:35:58 | |
anyway, so he knocked a cap off. | 0:35:58 | 0:36:00 | |
"Oh, man, what a fun time for this, before the show." | 0:36:00 | 0:36:03 | |
And so we got some chewing gum and put it in there and did the show. | 0:36:03 | 0:36:06 | |
Chewing gum for a tooth. | 0:36:08 | 0:36:09 | |
Then we played at the London Palladium, | 0:36:11 | 0:36:14 | |
and Bob Hope was on the show, | 0:36:14 | 0:36:16 | |
and Bob Hope was about as big a deal | 0:36:16 | 0:36:18 | |
as you could get in the United States. | 0:36:18 | 0:36:20 | |
And Bob Hope actually came by and said, "How are you, boys?" | 0:36:20 | 0:36:25 | |
We said, "Fine, Mr Hope." | 0:36:25 | 0:36:27 | |
In the United States we did well in the north-east, like New York, | 0:36:30 | 0:36:36 | |
and the Midwest, | 0:36:36 | 0:36:37 | |
and weren't ever that hot in Texas or California. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:40 | |
In the United States, Buddy Holly's only number one hit | 0:36:40 | 0:36:43 | |
was That'll Be The Day. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:45 | |
It's hard to believe. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:47 | |
But in England, we had fans everywhere we went. | 0:36:47 | 0:36:53 | |
The specific group that had turned onto Buddy at that time | 0:36:53 | 0:36:57 | |
was the Quarrymen. | 0:36:57 | 0:36:59 | |
John Lennon, '57, with his group, The Quarrymen, | 0:36:59 | 0:37:02 | |
meeting Paul McCartney, | 0:37:02 | 0:37:04 | |
then George Harrison being added to the band, | 0:37:04 | 0:37:06 | |
the other guys in The Quarrymen beginning to fall away a little bit, | 0:37:06 | 0:37:09 | |
but by this time now you're beginning to get | 0:37:09 | 0:37:11 | |
the nucleus of The Beatles. | 0:37:11 | 0:37:13 | |
And what's the first song that they record when they go in | 0:37:13 | 0:37:18 | |
and make their first ever demo in 1958? | 0:37:18 | 0:37:21 | |
It was That'll Be The Day, | 0:37:21 | 0:37:23 | |
because they were totally turned on to what Buddy Holly was doing. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:28 | |
# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye | 0:37:31 | 0:37:35 | |
# Yes, that'll be the day | 0:37:35 | 0:37:37 | |
# When you make me cry | 0:37:37 | 0:37:39 | |
# You say you're gonna leave You know it's a lie | 0:37:39 | 0:37:41 | |
# Cos that'll be the day when I die. # | 0:37:41 | 0:37:45 | |
Later, The Beatles' cover version of Words Of Love is one of | 0:37:45 | 0:37:49 | |
the nicest covers of a Buddy Holly song ever. | 0:37:49 | 0:37:53 | |
Not Fade Away, which the Stones covered in '64. | 0:37:53 | 0:37:57 | |
I love the Stones version of it, actually. | 0:37:57 | 0:37:59 | |
# I wanna tell you how it's gonna be | 0:37:59 | 0:38:01 | |
# You're gonna give your love to me | 0:38:03 | 0:38:05 | |
# I wanna love you night and day | 0:38:07 | 0:38:09 | |
# Well, you know my loving not fade away | 0:38:11 | 0:38:15 | |
# Well, you know my loving not fade away... # | 0:38:15 | 0:38:18 | |
So, you know, that was the kind of deep influence that Buddy | 0:38:19 | 0:38:24 | |
was beginning to have on the UK music scene. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:26 | |
The first album I bought was The Chirping Crickets, | 0:38:26 | 0:38:29 | |
which happened to be the first album that Eric Clapton bought, too. | 0:38:29 | 0:38:32 | |
So, we were all influenced by that music around that time. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:37 | |
And of course there was the picture of the Stratocaster on the cover, | 0:38:37 | 0:38:40 | |
and I thought, "This guitar is from outer space. This is unbelievable." | 0:38:40 | 0:38:44 | |
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Eric Clapton, | 0:38:44 | 0:38:48 | |
all these people came over and, to a person, | 0:38:48 | 0:38:52 | |
they talked about the fact that Buddy Holly, | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
you know, sparked all this excitement in them. | 0:38:55 | 0:38:59 | |
One of the things that inspired The Beatles was the fact that | 0:38:59 | 0:39:03 | |
almost all of Buddy Holly's records sounded a little bit different, | 0:39:03 | 0:39:07 | |
one to the other. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:09 | |
The next one wasn't just a copy of the one that went before, | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
they were looking to bring different sounds into the mix. | 0:39:12 | 0:39:16 | |
-So they were prepared to... -SLAPS THIGHS | 0:39:16 | 0:39:18 | |
you know, experiment with thigh slapping. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:19 | |
"See what that sounds like on Everyday. Oh, it works. Oh, great," you know. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:23 | |
And they wouldn't know that four or five years later that | 0:39:23 | 0:39:25 | |
John and Paul would be listening to this going, | 0:39:25 | 0:39:27 | |
"OK, so, we're going to make each Beatle track... | 0:39:27 | 0:39:31 | |
"So that one had a lead guitar solo, | 0:39:31 | 0:39:32 | |
"let's put harpsichord on the next one, | 0:39:32 | 0:39:34 | |
"or let's put piano on the next one." | 0:39:34 | 0:39:36 | |
And they got that absolutely directly from Buddy Holly. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:39 | |
Everything in Lubbock and Clovis had become too small for him. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:46 | |
He actually knew that he didn't want to stay there because | 0:39:46 | 0:39:50 | |
he knew that he would not go anywhere, | 0:39:50 | 0:39:52 | |
and of course the only place that he would go | 0:39:52 | 0:39:55 | |
would be Norman Petty's home | 0:39:55 | 0:40:01 | |
to record. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:02 | |
And New York represented this new challenge. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:08 | |
# Words of love you whisper soft and true | 0:40:08 | 0:40:14 | |
# Darling, I love you... # | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
We were just as happy as kids could be. | 0:40:18 | 0:40:21 | |
That's what it was to go to New York. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:25 | |
My aunt used to work for Southern Music Publishing Company, | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
and then she became the one in charge of a department. | 0:40:37 | 0:40:43 | |
They had a receptionist and she quit | 0:40:43 | 0:40:48 | |
and my aunt thought of me. | 0:40:48 | 0:40:50 | |
And that day that Buddy came in | 0:40:50 | 0:40:52 | |
with Jerry and Joe B, they said, | 0:40:52 | 0:40:56 | |
"That's love at first sight." | 0:40:56 | 0:40:59 | |
That's how they called it. | 0:40:59 | 0:41:00 | |
Meaning that I saw him and I fell in love with him, | 0:41:00 | 0:41:03 | |
and he saw me and fell in love with me, without saying anything. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:07 | |
We went to PJ Clarke. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
At that time they used to have women selling flowers | 0:41:11 | 0:41:16 | |
and selling cigarettes around, | 0:41:16 | 0:41:19 | |
and Buddy said, "I'll be right back." | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
So he comes with his hands in the bag | 0:41:22 | 0:41:26 | |
and sat down and put the red flower | 0:41:26 | 0:41:29 | |
and said, "Will you marry me?" | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
I said, "Well, do you want to get married now or after dinner?" | 0:41:32 | 0:41:39 | |
-I said... -SHE LAUGHS | 0:41:39 | 0:41:41 | |
And he said, "Well, I'm serious. I want to get married." | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
And Buddy said, "I'll be here tomorrow to talk to your aunt." | 0:41:44 | 0:41:50 | |
He came in and Aunt said, "Who's there?" | 0:41:50 | 0:41:52 | |
I said, "Oh, it's Buddy, | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
"the young man that I went out with last night." | 0:41:55 | 0:41:58 | |
She said, "What is he doing here on Saturday?" | 0:41:58 | 0:42:03 | |
Buddy said, "Well, I need to tell you, | 0:42:03 | 0:42:07 | |
"I asked Maria Elena to marry me." | 0:42:07 | 0:42:10 | |
And my aunt looked at me, "Are you pulling my leg?" | 0:42:10 | 0:42:14 | |
He said, "No, ma'am. I want to get married, | 0:42:14 | 0:42:17 | |
"and I need to do it now because I'm going on a tour | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
"and I want to take her with me. | 0:42:20 | 0:42:23 | |
"I don't think you're going to let her come without being married." | 0:42:23 | 0:42:29 | |
And my aunt said, "Well, what about your parents? | 0:42:29 | 0:42:32 | |
"How do they feel about this?" | 0:42:32 | 0:42:34 | |
"Oh, they don't know anything yet. | 0:42:34 | 0:42:37 | |
"But if you give me permission to use your phone, | 0:42:37 | 0:42:41 | |
"I will be able to tell them." | 0:42:41 | 0:42:44 | |
And... | 0:42:45 | 0:42:47 | |
my aunt said, "Well, go ahead." | 0:42:47 | 0:42:49 | |
When I got married in his home, | 0:42:51 | 0:42:54 | |
Larry and Travis and just the family | 0:42:54 | 0:42:59 | |
that was there, | 0:42:59 | 0:43:00 | |
and Peggy Sue was there, and Jerry. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:04 | |
They were thrilled to be together | 0:43:04 | 0:43:06 | |
and you could see it written all over him. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
You couldn't get the smile off his face with a, you know, | 0:43:09 | 0:43:13 | |
with a fist. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:15 | |
He just kept that big goofy smile all the time. | 0:43:15 | 0:43:18 | |
My aunt lived on 10th Street and we lived on 11th. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:22 | |
And during the day Buddy would go to my aunt's apartment | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
and play the piano with the songs that he was writing. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:29 | |
And then at night he would continue writing and said, | 0:43:29 | 0:43:33 | |
"You know, we need to go and get some fresh air." | 0:43:33 | 0:43:36 | |
And this was just about 10.00 or 12 midnight. | 0:43:36 | 0:43:40 | |
I said, "Now?" He said, "Yeah." | 0:43:40 | 0:43:42 | |
I said, "But I have my pyjamas on." | 0:43:42 | 0:43:44 | |
He said, "Oh, don't worry. Just roll them up and put the... | 0:43:44 | 0:43:47 | |
SHE LAUGHS | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
"..your coat on and I'll do the same thing." | 0:43:50 | 0:43:53 | |
And we used to go and walk a couple of blocks down, | 0:43:53 | 0:43:57 | |
and that's Greenwich Village. | 0:43:57 | 0:43:59 | |
Sometimes he would go out with his guitar to sit down there | 0:44:00 | 0:44:06 | |
and start humming. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
And then all of a sudden you see a lot of kids coming over | 0:44:08 | 0:44:12 | |
and Buddy would show them how to play the guitar. | 0:44:12 | 0:44:16 | |
And then he re... | 0:44:18 | 0:44:21 | |
I hate the word "reinvents," cos he was just fine like he was, | 0:44:21 | 0:44:24 | |
but he comes with these beautiful string arrangements in these | 0:44:24 | 0:44:28 | |
last sessions that he did. It Doesn't Matter Anymore. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:32 | |
Moondreams, True Love Ways, | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
which just takes your breath away. | 0:44:35 | 0:44:37 | |
This was a very, very talented man who had tremendous breadth. | 0:44:37 | 0:44:44 | |
He'd moved away from that guitar-based rock and roll | 0:44:44 | 0:44:48 | |
into now orchestral, saxes, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:52 | |
a bigger band situation. | 0:44:52 | 0:44:54 | |
He was still growing into himself, in a sense. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:57 | |
But all of the sudden he had found, | 0:44:57 | 0:44:59 | |
probably found love for the first time in his life. | 0:44:59 | 0:45:02 | |
And he was up and positive and writing for a new world. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:07 | |
See, he's gone the whole circle here. | 0:45:07 | 0:45:09 | |
He's been a guy who's reacted against crooning | 0:45:09 | 0:45:12 | |
and his parents' generation, | 0:45:12 | 0:45:14 | |
but here he's come all the way back into something | 0:45:14 | 0:45:17 | |
which is very romantic, unashamedly, | 0:45:17 | 0:45:19 | |
and his voice is beautiful on it, I think. | 0:45:19 | 0:45:21 | |
And I could imagine Frank Sinatra singing something like that. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
# But soon these tears are bound to flow | 0:45:24 | 0:45:28 | |
# Cos it's raining | 0:45:28 | 0:45:30 | |
# Raining in my heart... # | 0:45:32 | 0:45:36 | |
Paul brought this song, It Doesn't Matter Anymore. | 0:45:36 | 0:45:40 | |
And the only thing he told Paul is that, | 0:45:40 | 0:45:43 | |
"I will do it if I do it my way, the way I hear it." | 0:45:43 | 0:45:48 | |
And Paul said, "Well, be my guest." | 0:45:50 | 0:45:54 | |
It was, I think, Buddy's first experience with a big band. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
You know, it was always the little rhythm section, | 0:45:57 | 0:46:00 | |
but, you know, he was always thinking ahead, obviously. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:03 | |
And there he was, in the studio with this huge string section and, | 0:46:03 | 0:46:06 | |
you know, I gave it my vibe and then they came up with all the | 0:46:06 | 0:46:09 | |
pizzicato strings and all of that. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:11 | |
And it was that simple. | 0:46:11 | 0:46:13 | |
# There you go and baby Here am I | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
# Well, you left me here so I could sit and cry | 0:46:20 | 0:46:25 | |
# Well, golly gee what have you done to me? | 0:46:25 | 0:46:29 | |
# Well, I guess it doesn't matter any more... # | 0:46:29 | 0:46:32 | |
True Love Ways. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:34 | |
This is a song that Buddy had written, | 0:46:34 | 0:46:37 | |
and he wrote that song for me. | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
And that's, of course, my favourite. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:43 | |
He went and got the guitar and sat right there, | 0:46:43 | 0:46:46 | |
just him and the guitar, | 0:46:46 | 0:46:48 | |
and I said, "You know, Buddy, I believe that's the best tune you've ever done." | 0:46:48 | 0:46:52 | |
He said, "I think so, too." | 0:46:52 | 0:46:54 | |
All of Buddy's songs are my favourite, but this was special. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:59 | |
# Sometimes we'll sigh | 0:46:59 | 0:47:03 | |
# Sometimes we'll cry | 0:47:04 | 0:47:08 | |
# And we'll know why | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
# Just you and I | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
# Know true love ways... # | 0:47:16 | 0:47:20 | |
I've thought about these New York records a lot | 0:47:21 | 0:47:24 | |
because the production and the whole sound on those four tracks | 0:47:24 | 0:47:31 | |
was so, so different from what Buddy had been doing before. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:35 | |
Did this represent the watering down | 0:47:35 | 0:47:38 | |
of the Buddy Holly rock and roll sound? | 0:47:38 | 0:47:41 | |
There's no answer to that question cos we simply don't know. | 0:47:41 | 0:47:44 | |
Buddy died a few weeks afterwards, | 0:47:44 | 0:47:47 | |
and so what direction he would have taken following those recordings, | 0:47:47 | 0:47:53 | |
I'm really not quite sure. | 0:47:53 | 0:47:55 | |
Certainly, they did represent a sea change. | 0:47:55 | 0:47:59 | |
Some people know they're going to die young, | 0:47:59 | 0:48:02 | |
cos that's how they function - | 0:48:02 | 0:48:04 | |
they're functional young people. | 0:48:04 | 0:48:06 | |
and so they get it all done in that period of time | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
and it's just a concentrated body of work. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:12 | |
Norman was handling the finances, | 0:48:12 | 0:48:16 | |
and I told Buddy, | 0:48:16 | 0:48:20 | |
"You know, we're married, | 0:48:20 | 0:48:23 | |
"we need to learn to manage our money. | 0:48:23 | 0:48:29 | |
"So we need to go to Norman Petty | 0:48:29 | 0:48:32 | |
"and tell him that we need our share." | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
So we went to see Norman. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:37 | |
Buddy said, "You know, I want my money." | 0:48:37 | 0:48:40 | |
And Norman looked and said, | 0:48:40 | 0:48:42 | |
"Well, you know, I don't know how much you're supposed to get." | 0:48:42 | 0:48:46 | |
The sour note in this story is that at some point, you know, | 0:48:46 | 0:48:49 | |
obviously Norm Petty did not do right by Buddy Holly. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:55 | |
Buddy was having cash-flow problems. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:58 | |
I think, had things worked out | 0:48:58 | 0:49:02 | |
and Buddy Holly not been on hard times financially, | 0:49:02 | 0:49:05 | |
he never would've gone on that fateful tour. | 0:49:05 | 0:49:09 | |
Ritchie Valens was starting with his career | 0:49:09 | 0:49:13 | |
and the Big Bopper, also. | 0:49:13 | 0:49:17 | |
They were doing this show and Buddy said, "That's fine with me. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:21 | |
"I'll go in." | 0:49:21 | 0:49:23 | |
I didn't go on this tour | 0:49:23 | 0:49:27 | |
because I was pregnant. | 0:49:27 | 0:49:29 | |
We were always cold, and it was the dead of winter, | 0:49:31 | 0:49:35 | |
30 below zero at some of these... you know, some nights, | 0:49:35 | 0:49:39 | |
with the wind-chill factor and everything. It was cold. | 0:49:39 | 0:49:43 | |
No problem, until the bus started breaking down, | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
and it broke down quite a bit. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:48 | |
And we were on the side of the road and in a blinding blizzard. | 0:49:48 | 0:49:53 | |
I mean, four in the morning. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:55 | |
Carl Bunch, the drummer, | 0:49:55 | 0:49:58 | |
his feet were frozen. | 0:49:58 | 0:50:00 | |
And he developed frostbite. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:02 | |
So we took him to the hospital | 0:50:02 | 0:50:04 | |
and we kind of get that fixed up, | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
but Buddy starts getting, "I'm chartering a plane." | 0:50:06 | 0:50:09 | |
I knew that if I would've been there, | 0:50:09 | 0:50:12 | |
Buddy would have not taken the plane because I would have said... | 0:50:12 | 0:50:16 | |
put my foot down and said no. | 0:50:16 | 0:50:18 | |
He calls everybody into a room and says, | 0:50:18 | 0:50:22 | |
"Listen, I've got a plane, | 0:50:22 | 0:50:24 | |
"but it has four seats. | 0:50:24 | 0:50:27 | |
"The pilot, myself, there's two seats." | 0:50:27 | 0:50:32 | |
And Buddy starts telling us it's 36. | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
I wasn't going to spend a whole month's rent on a flight like that. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:41 | |
We did a great show that night. | 0:50:41 | 0:50:43 | |
After the show Carroll Anderson pulled up with a station wagon | 0:50:43 | 0:50:48 | |
and Ritchie, the Big Bopper and Buddy | 0:50:48 | 0:50:53 | |
got in and they took off for the airport. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:55 | |
She said, "Is your name Holley?" | 0:51:06 | 0:51:10 | |
I said, "Yeah." | 0:51:10 | 0:51:12 | |
She said, "You'd better get in touch with your folks." | 0:51:12 | 0:51:17 | |
And... I knew then. | 0:51:18 | 0:51:21 | |
HE SOBS GENTLY | 0:51:29 | 0:51:31 | |
And... | 0:51:31 | 0:51:32 | |
I tried to call mother and them and I couldn't get the line. | 0:51:35 | 0:51:40 | |
So I went over there. | 0:51:40 | 0:51:42 | |
I thought if... | 0:51:42 | 0:51:44 | |
if Buddy is still alive... | 0:51:44 | 0:51:46 | |
..I can bring him back. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:50 | |
I turned the TV on and it was all on TV. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:56 | |
And they hit the ground full blast. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:02 | |
They really hit, | 0:52:05 | 0:52:07 | |
and they hit and bounced and came down the end. | 0:52:07 | 0:52:11 | |
And that's when they were... | 0:52:11 | 0:52:15 | |
There was a barbed wire fence that finally stopped it. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:20 | |
We pulled into Fargo - | 0:52:20 | 0:52:24 | |
I don't know - maybe 10.30 in the morning. | 0:52:24 | 0:52:29 | |
It seemed like a summer's day. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:31 | |
It was warm, the sun was shining, | 0:52:31 | 0:52:35 | |
Sam Geller, as usual, | 0:52:35 | 0:52:37 | |
just jumped off the bus into the hotel. | 0:52:37 | 0:52:41 | |
Sam asked, "Buddy Holly, JP Richardson, Ritchie Valens, | 0:52:41 | 0:52:48 | |
"what rooms are they in?" | 0:52:48 | 0:52:50 | |
They said, "They never made it." | 0:52:50 | 0:52:52 | |
And the locals in the town were sitting around | 0:52:52 | 0:52:55 | |
a black-and-white TV in the lobby and they said, | 0:52:55 | 0:52:58 | |
"Three rock and roll artists die in plane crash." | 0:52:58 | 0:53:01 | |
And it was all over the news. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:02 | |
I was a paperboy. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:10 | |
That's the only job I've ever had in my life, is a paperboy. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:14 | |
And I open the papers, and there it said, | 0:53:14 | 0:53:17 | |
"Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper killed in a plane crash." | 0:53:17 | 0:53:23 | |
I couldn't even move. | 0:53:23 | 0:53:25 | |
I mean, I read this story and the whole time I was just in shock. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
I hadn't had that kind of a shock in my life, | 0:53:29 | 0:53:31 | |
so it's something I will never forget. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:33 | |
And I just remember thinking, | 0:53:33 | 0:53:34 | |
"So there won't be any more?" You know, "How can that be? | 0:53:34 | 0:53:37 | |
"We won't hear him any more?" | 0:53:37 | 0:53:39 | |
I walked out to the bus and I sat in the bus, | 0:53:39 | 0:53:42 | |
I felt like I was maybe alone on the bus and I... | 0:53:42 | 0:53:47 | |
Like I said, it just didn't make sense. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:49 | |
I'm sitting there with Buddy Holly's guitar on one of the seats, | 0:53:49 | 0:53:54 | |
he'd told me to take care of it, | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
Ritchie Valens's clothes, | 0:53:58 | 0:54:00 | |
his little blue vest is hanging up, | 0:54:00 | 0:54:04 | |
the Bopper's hat is in the hat rack, | 0:54:04 | 0:54:06 | |
and I'm looking around the bus and I'm thinking, | 0:54:06 | 0:54:11 | |
"This..." | 0:54:11 | 0:54:13 | |
I don't know. I was in shock. | 0:54:13 | 0:54:14 | |
I remember taking to my bed, I remember going into my bedroom, | 0:54:14 | 0:54:19 | |
shutting the door and that was it for about two weeks. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:22 | |
I felt so bad, you know. | 0:54:23 | 0:54:26 | |
It was very trying and a very terrible feeling, you know. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:31 | |
I lost the baby. | 0:54:31 | 0:54:33 | |
The shock, I guess, of... | 0:54:33 | 0:54:37 | |
I lost the baby. | 0:54:37 | 0:54:39 | |
I started writing a song up in the | 0:54:48 | 0:54:52 | |
little room that I used to use. And I sang... | 0:54:52 | 0:54:55 | |
# A long, long time ago | 0:54:55 | 0:54:57 | |
# I can still remember how that music used to make me smile. # | 0:54:57 | 0:55:02 | |
The whole thing came out. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:03 | |
# And I knew if I had my chance | 0:55:03 | 0:55:06 | |
# I could make those people dance | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
# And maybe they'd be happy for a while | 0:55:09 | 0:55:12 | |
# But February made me shiver | 0:55:12 | 0:55:15 | |
# With every paper I deliver | 0:55:15 | 0:55:18 | |
# Bad news on the doorstep | 0:55:18 | 0:55:20 | |
# I couldn't take one more step | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
# I can't remember if I cried | 0:55:23 | 0:55:26 | |
# When I read about his widowed bride | 0:55:26 | 0:55:30 | |
# But something touched me deep inside | 0:55:30 | 0:55:33 | |
# The day the music died. # | 0:55:33 | 0:55:36 | |
That's all I had. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:38 | |
I thought, "What the heck is that? | 0:55:39 | 0:55:41 | |
"Where did that come from?" | 0:55:41 | 0:55:43 | |
And I had this thing, cos I really felt bad for Maria-Elena. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:47 | |
Up to this day, I kind of blame myself. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:52 | |
That I should have gone, | 0:56:01 | 0:56:03 | |
insist on going. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:06 | |
# Just you know why | 0:56:06 | 0:56:09 | |
# Why you and I | 0:56:12 | 0:56:15 | |
# Will bye and bye | 0:56:17 | 0:56:22 | |
# Know true love ways | 0:56:22 | 0:56:29 | |
# Sometimes we'll sigh... # | 0:56:29 | 0:56:32 | |
I think that in America everyone thinks that when John F Kennedy died | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
that was when America lost its innocence, | 0:56:35 | 0:56:38 | |
but this was really a precursor to that. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:40 | |
This was really, I think, | 0:56:40 | 0:56:42 | |
the first time that the youth of America felt a huge loss. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:48 | |
He had such a glittering, and such a tragically short, career | 0:56:48 | 0:56:53 | |
but, boy, he changed the world, Buddy, completely, in that time. | 0:56:53 | 0:56:58 | |
He was one of the key influential artists that | 0:56:58 | 0:57:02 | |
allowed and influenced rock and roll and pop music | 0:57:02 | 0:57:07 | |
and everything that we're at today, | 0:57:07 | 0:57:10 | |
that helped bring it to the forefront. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:12 | |
To me, Buddy Holly just works every time you put it on | 0:57:12 | 0:57:15 | |
just as well as it did in the first place. | 0:57:15 | 0:57:18 | |
And that's... | 0:57:18 | 0:57:20 | |
That makes it a masterpiece. | 0:57:20 | 0:57:22 | |
If I had an ambition for Buddy Holly's music, | 0:57:22 | 0:57:24 | |
it would be to see it embraced by the current generation | 0:57:24 | 0:57:29 | |
of emerging artists, particularly in Britain, | 0:57:29 | 0:57:32 | |
where I think we're blessed to have a fabulous generation | 0:57:32 | 0:57:35 | |
of new singer-songwriters. | 0:57:35 | 0:57:38 | |
I would love, for example, just to pull a name out of the air, | 0:57:38 | 0:57:42 | |
but if Ed Sheeran, let's say, covered a Buddy Holly song | 0:57:42 | 0:57:45 | |
and put it on his new record, | 0:57:45 | 0:57:47 | |
and therefore then introduced the music of Buddy Holly | 0:57:47 | 0:57:50 | |
to a generation that maybe doesn't know about him. | 0:57:50 | 0:57:53 | |
I would love to see that happen. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:55 | |
This is the beautiful thing about music. | 0:57:55 | 0:57:57 | |
To me, to my mind, it's the highest art form, | 0:57:57 | 0:58:00 | |
higher than any other art form, because it's invisible. | 0:58:00 | 0:58:03 | |
It exists in your mind and my mind. | 0:58:03 | 0:58:06 | |
It's not something tangible or physical, | 0:58:06 | 0:58:08 | |
it will always live | 0:58:08 | 0:58:10 | |
because it's inside people's minds and their hearts, | 0:58:10 | 0:58:13 | |
it touches their emotions, | 0:58:13 | 0:58:15 | |
it describes and expresses inexpressible feelings, | 0:58:15 | 0:58:20 | |
and nothing can do that but music. | 0:58:20 | 0:58:24 | |
Buddy said to me, | 0:58:24 | 0:58:25 | |
"I don't know how to succeed, but I know how to fail. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:29 | |
"Just try to please everybody." | 0:58:29 | 0:58:31 | |
# I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be | 0:58:41 | 0:58:44 | |
# Ooo-bop bop bop-bop | 0:58:44 | 0:58:46 | |
# You're gonna give your love to me | 0:58:46 | 0:58:49 | |
# Ooo-bop bop bop-bop | 0:58:49 | 0:58:51 | |
# A love to last more than one day | 0:58:51 | 0:58:54 | |
# Ooo-bop bop bop-bop | 0:58:54 | 0:58:56 | |
# Love is love and not fade away | 0:58:56 | 0:58:59 | |
# Ooo-bop bop bop-bop. # | 0:58:59 | 0:59:01 |