Buddy Holly: Rave On

This programme contains some strong language

Now if you haven't heard of these young men then you must be

the wrong age because they're rock and roll specialists.

Now, no matter what you think of rock and roll, I think you

have to keep a nice open mind about what the young people go for.

Otherwise, the youngsters won't feel that you understand them.

Now, if we're ready for our rock and roll specialists,

we have Buddy Holly And The Crickets.

# Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue

# Oh, how my heart yearns for you

# Oh, Peggy

# My Peggy Sue

# Well, I love you girl

# Yes, I love you, Peggy Sue. #

It was less than 18 months between Buddy Holly topping the charts

with That'll Be The Day to the point of the plane crash

on the 3rd of February 1959.

And he packed so many hit records,

so many a great songs, into that period of time.

# Heartbeat

# Why do you miss when my baby kisses me? #

It is remarkable to think that Buddy Holly

created this amazing body of work in just 18 months.

And not only that, but those songs continue to reverberate

in all the rock music that we hear today.

# I want to love you night and day

# You know my love a-not fade away. #

He didn't produce his music, he expressed it.

And there's a difference, you know.

There's a difference between being entertained

and having an emotional experience.

# Every day it's a-getting closer

# Going faster than a rollercoaster

# Love like yours will surely come my way. #

For those of us that love it and look at the full landscape of music

Buddy Holly was one of the guys that painted that picture

and allowed the rest to learn from him.

A genius in his way of cutting through all the thrills

and conventions and coming up with something so fresh

and so perfect at expressing the feelings of a whole generation.

He had hits and hits that we remember.

And it was a Buddy Holly sound.

And that was it.

# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye

# That'll be the day when you make me cry

# You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie. #

The '50s started around 1956, '57.

Prior to that everything was black and white.

So to us, anyway, all the music was important

and then to have it taken away abruptly at such a young age

was a terrible shock.

# That'll be the day. #

Lubbock, Texas, USA.

We're a busy, friendly town.

The hub of the vast territory known as the South Plains of Texas.

Buddy Holly comes from Lubbock, West Texas.

It's a real flat country.

We don't have many trees out there.

It's flat in Lubbock and it's flat outside of Lubbock.

If a tree grows, they run and cut it down real quick

so they won't spoil the view.

Lubbock is such a remote, isolated, desolate kind of area.

Just this flat little town in the Panhandle of Texas.

They say there was nothing between Lubbock and Amarillo.

A fence and it's down.

The wind blows.

Lifestyle in Lubbock back in the mid-1950s

would have been very, very small town.

It was safe.

Everybody was orderly and organised.

Nobody drank too much.

Lubbock was a poor place.

It was going through the great depression.

Daddy worked hard.

Sometimes he didn't bring in but four dollars a week.

A friend of mine,

me and him were sitting on the front porch over on 6th Street.

It was a dirt street.

And he said, "Your mother's going to have a baby."

And I said, "No, they'd have told me.

"I'm the oldest kid in the family."

They had Buddy and it got me so I cried.

We don't have enough to eat as it is

and now she's got another mouth to feed.

His mother told me,

"We want him to learn how to sing and play the guitar.

"The only thing is we don't have the money to pay for his lessons."

He was very self-confident. Friendly.

He was kind of shy in a way.

Sometimes he could be kind of smart and sometimes he'd be real shy.

Buddy came to me and said, "Larry, I need a guitar."

I said "You can't play one."

He said, "I can learn. A guy taught me some chords on the school bus."

Larry, I think it was, went down to Adair Music, paid for the guitar.

And then Buddy came in and picked it up.

He liked it right off the bat.

Soon as he got it in his hands

it sounded like a different instrument completely

and I said, "Buddy, I didn't know you could do that."

And he said, "Yeah, I've been learning."

My dad, Bob Montgomery, was childhood friends with Buddy.

They met when they were about 11 or 12 years old.

Learned how to play the guitar together and wrote songs together

and they were a duo called Buddy and Bob.

Buddy and Bob had a country or sort of swing band

or a country and western band and they did local gigs.

# I love you, I thought you loved me too

# But you said I'd never do

# Now you and I are through. #

Flower Of My Heart was the first song that Dad ever wrote

and that was one of the songs that they did as a duo, Buddy and Bob.

# Please come back to me, my darling

# For I can't live while we're apart

# Come back, come back to me, my darling

# For you are the flower of my heart. #

Bob played rhythm guitar and Buddy played lead.

So they wanted a bass player.

I borrowed the school bass and I was in the orchestra

so I could take it home and use it.

And that's what I did.

# Well, you may go to college

# You may go to school

# You may have a pink Cadillac but don't you be nobody's fool

# Now, baby, come back. #

When Elvis first came to town all of us went, of course,

and we had never seen anything like that before.

That was kind of when it first dawned on me

that music was, erm...

really a lot more than just about music.

There's sex involved in this music component, you know.

I mean, the girls were actually going nuts over Elvis.

Elvis had the sexuality and when you just looked at him

we knew none of us were going to be like Elvis.

He owned that space and that was it.

He was James Dean with a guitar around his neck and away he went.

Elvis was the game-changer.

You know, we didn't have teenage music when I grew up. This was it.

The music was all brand-new, that's the thing.

Everything was brand-new.

Elvis was a great guy, too.

He was as nice as you could be.

First time he came to Lubbock we opened up for him.

At the Fair Park Coliseum in Lubbock.

And actually we went over to the motel where he was staying

and we heard Elvis singing in the shower, you know.

He was getting ready to go out.

We sang mostly country songs.

The hits of the day.

And the next day after Elvis left town

we started playing rock and roll.

He had a big influence on Buddy.

# If you love me, honey Will you let me know?

# If you really love me never let me go

# Love me, love me, love me. #

And Buddy sang like Elvis.

# Baby, love me, love me, love me

# Oh, I love you. #

Then Elvis got a drummer, DJ Fontana.

And Buddy said, "We've got to have a drummer."

And so he said, "I heard about this kid, name of Jerry Allison."

Buddy Holly then went to JT Edson Junior High School

and I met him on the playground.

I was just 16 at the time.

So I started playing with that group and we started working

and Buddy would sing some rock and roll songs.

So Buddy signed a contract with Decca.

It's kind of funny Decca misspelt Buddy's last name,

missing out the "E" in "Holley" and that's how he became known.

I'm sure it was hugely exciting and intimidating in a way

for Buddy Holly to get this record deal with Decca and to

go to Nashville and the idea of finally breaking in and making it.

Nashville would have been the big city and they would've been very

scared and very, you know, hopeful that they could have their big shot.

The Nashville sessions started January 26th, 1956.

It just became apparent that the powers that be

were more interested in Buddy as a solo artist and not Buddy and Bob.

And so Buddy came to him and they talked about it

and Dad just said, "Look, you know, go for it. This is your chance."

And I think that knocked him back a little bit

and I think he decided to focus on writing

and producing and publishing.

Dad wrote Heartbeat, Wishing, Love's Made A Fool Of You, Down The Line.

There's no telling what they could have done together if they had been

given that chance, but fate would have it that that didn't happen.

We recorded those first sessions at Owen Bradley's studios.

Owen Bradley was probably the biggest producer in Nashville

for many ,many years and one of the fathers of country music

and the whole Nashville sound.

As good a guitar player as Buddy was, they didn't let him play.

I mean, he just stood at a microphone in the corner and sang.

We were all so young and naive, we thought, "Man, we've made it."

Now all we've got to do is go back home and start acting like Elvis

and wait for the money to come in!

Which didn't happen, of course.

The record that first came out was Blue Days Black Nights.

# Blue days, black nights

# Blue tears keep on falling for you, dear

# Now you're gone

# Blue days, black nights

# My heart keeps on calling for you, dear. #

I came three times with Buddy and we recorded That'll Be The Day.

Buddy actually played on that and I played rhythm on that

particular session and we had Jerry Allison with us

who played drums on it.

We'd seen that movie, John Wayne, The Searchers.

He said, "That'll be the day" five times I believe somebody told me.

So Buddy and I were just sitting and practising

and he said we ought to write a song.

I'd never written a song before and I said, "That'll be the day."

# That'll be the day. #

And about 30 minutes later we got a song.

# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye

# That'll be the day when you make me cry

"You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie

# Cos that'll be the day when I die. #

When Buddy was in high school, at Lubbock High,

there was an old black man across the street who would shine shoes

and he had a guitar.

He would play his guitar like...

Kind of a blues thing that Buddy really liked.

So Buddy learned it from this black man and then he turned it into...

And this part here he learned from Sonny Curtis, I believe.

In that last session we did

the end result didn't match what we were kind of expecting, you know.

We wanted it to be somehow better

and we were so young and inexperienced

we didn't know how to do that.

Owen Bradley said that was the worst song he ever heard.

They didn't do any good there.

They had a big argument with the producer.

Buddy had been dropped by his recording label in Nashville.

They weren't going to finance any more of his recordings.

Again, we have to remember this was all brand-new.

There was no concept of an artist

having control over their own careers.

That just didn't exist yet and he was sort of breaking ground there.

He comes back home,

he finds Norm Petty and he goes to this tiny little studio in Clovis,

which is another bump on the road in the middle of New Mexico, nowhere.

Clovis New Mexico is just across the line from Lubbock.

It's about 93 miles.

And Norman Petty, who had a studio there,

was a great engineer and he had new equipment

and knew how to run it real well.

The role of the producer is to create a space

within which the artist is able to express themselves

with confidence and totally in their own way.

And there's no doubt about the fact that that's what Norman Petty did.

He allowed Buddy to flourish for the first time.

It didn't happen in Nashville.

Buddy called me one day and said,

"We're going over to Clovis and cut this thing.

"You want to go and play bass for me?" I said, "Sure."

Larry Wellborn played on That'll Be The Day.

Really good bass player. Really good guitar player now.

That'll Be The Day, Maybe Baby, Looking For Someone To Love.

Last night.

We did those four songs and we probably did them in two hours.

There was a group called The Spiders and they had

a record called Witchcraft and we really liked that record.

So we thought, OK, let's be an insect.

In that year in Lubbock there was this ton of crickets.

It was like a swarm of locusts showed up in Texas.

And one day they said a cricket got in there.

And they couldn't get rid of the noise

so they named us The Crickets.

The people that Buddy had with him was Niki Sullivan,

Joe B Mauldin, Jerry Allison and himself.

That was the four. Buddy played lead.

Niki did the same thing that Bob did and played rhythm

and Joe B Mauldin was playing bass and Jerry was playing drums.

Norman became our manager and then we could...

There was an apartment at the back of the studio

and we would go to sleep for a couple of hours.

If you felt like getting up you'd go and practise. It was just great.

That'll Be The Day, we did two takes at it.

With Buddy and the Crickets they were so into with each other

that they could come over and within two or three takes they had it.

This is my little box from the day where I used to keep my 45s

and these were the most precious things in my life, really.

It starts off with Lonnie Donegan, Rock Island line.

But number seven is That'll Be The Day.

So the seventh record that I bought.

And it comes in something that looks like

a piece of old brown paper and it did at the time. Very basic.

And it's on Coral. That's a record label I'd never heard of

at the time until that point.

And there's your record.

So I took it home and put it on the record player I had at the time.

# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye

# That'll be the day when you make me cry

# You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie

# Cos that'll be the day when I die. #

His singing approach was quite different, you know.

This sort of hiccupping sound in is voice.

It isn't any standard way of singing

that I've ever heard before or since.

# Well, you give me all your loving and your turtle doving

# All your hugs and kisses and your money, too

# Well, you know you love me, baby

# Still you tell me maybe

# That some day, well, I'll be through

# Well that'll be the day when you say goodbye. #

It still makes me go hot and cold, I tell you.

You can hear the ingredients there.

You hear that incredibly incisive guitar.

It's really metallic.

He just bared down on that guitar the way he felt

and you could feel it come right off the record.

You know, into my head, my soul, my heart, my spirit.

It just plastered me against the wall.

I've got my hand on here which is stopping the strings just after they start.

It's a damping effect, so it goes.

It's the difference between...

and...

It's very rhythmic and Buddy has this instinct to do it that way

and I don't know where he got it from but it was unusual at the time.

And it's given way to all sorts of heavy metal riffs

which do the same thing, you know.

# Yes, that'll be the day when you make me cry

# You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie. #

Now he's going to unleash himself on the solo.

GUITAR SOLO

Now he's back to the damping even in the solo.

Back out.

# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye

# That'll be the day when you make me cry

# You say you're going to leave, you know it's a lie

# Cos that'll be the day when I die

# Well, that'll be the day

# Ooh-ooh, that'll be the day

# Ooh-ooh, that'll be the day

# Ooh-ooh, that'll be the day. #

Buddy's whole style was unique to him.

Very unique to him, because Elvis wasn't really a guitar player.

You know, there was strumming and what have you, but Buddy made

inroads into that whole new rock and roll vibe,

and it was just...it was him.

# If you knew Peggy Sue

# Then you'd know why I feel blue without Peggy

# My Peggy Sue

# Oh, well I love you, gal Yes, I love you, Peggy Sue... #

Peggy Sue...

That was my first ex-wife, and she and I had dated in high school.

She didn't like me that good, but when Peggy Sue came out,

she liked me real good.

Buddy was writing a song called Cindy Lou, like...

# If you knew Cindy Lou... #

And anyway, I said,

"Oh, man, you know, there's this girl named Peggy Sue."

And I think he had met her. We changed it.

I wish we'd left it as Cindy Lou, to tell you the truth.

# Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue

# Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty Peggy Sue

# Oh, Peggy, my Peggy Sue... #

Drumming on the song was quite complicated, I mean it's...

on Peggy Sue, but it's amazing, the drumming.

You know, all the way through. And fuck! Excuse me.

-Er... Heavens!

-HE LAUGHS

And it's such an eccentric thing to do.

# Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue... #

He would go to a guitar solo, and instead of playing single notes,

he would play a chord solo, which was kind of unusual then.

GUITAR CHORD SOLO

To hear that guitar upfront on a record was really revolutionary.

You know, you're talking about...

You're coming out of the big band era and swing and Frank Sinatra.

The guitar, if it was there, would be in the background,

just chugging away acoustically.

You didn't have a guitar just kicking in

at the beginning of the record, electrified.

His style was unique.

That's the thing I learned from country artists,

and Buddy obviously did, too.

You get your own style, your own sound

-and do it with authority.

-HE LAUGHS

And feeling.

# Oh, well, I love you, gal And I want you, Peggy Sue. #

And I love the way it just ends.

The end. Cut the tape, it's finished. Off.

He was one of the very first to use a Fender Stratocaster, which I think

came out in, like, 1954.

Buddy was really unique because he had that flat Fender Stratocaster

and everybody else had a big old Gibson.

Guitars were traditionally accompanying instruments, and put in

the middle of an orchestra you would almost not hear them.

So they began to electrify them a little bit by first of all putting a

microphone on, but Les Paul pioneered this technique of putting

a magnet and a bunch of coiled wire under the strings and putting it

into an amplifier to actually electrify the guitar.

And you get the very first Fenders and the very first Gibsons.

Wow! I'd never seen a guitar that looked anything like that.

I loved the sound he produced, so later on, in 1959, Cliff said,

"Look, I'd like to buy you a really good guitar." You know, "Great."

"What do you fancy?"

And I said, "Well, the Stratocaster has to be it."

And the thing about the Strat is it's a very versatile guitar.

If you think over the years since the Strat's come into being,

it can sound like a rock and roll guitar,

you can play blues on it like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck.

You can even play jazz on it.

There are some jazz players who use a Strat.

Jerry was sitting in a chair in the reception room and he was slapping

his hands and knees,

and Norman walked in and asked him what he was doing, and Jerry said,

"I'm just practising the song we're going to do today."

Norman said, "Let me put a mic to that."

So he miked it, came back out, told Jerry, he said,

"Don't play the drums, just slap your hands and knees."

# Every day, it's a-gettin' closer

# Goin' faster than a roller coaster

# Love like yours will surely come my way

# A-hey, a-hey hey. #

Norman could hear things like that that most people would not have.

On Not Fade Away, the drums is a cardboard box.

HE IMITATES THE BEAT

# I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be

# You're gonna give your love to me

# I wanna love you night and day

# You know my loving not fade away. #

OK, so this is Maybe Baby.

MUSIC: Maybe Baby by The Crickets

See, by then, you haven't heard Buddy yet, but it's all set up.

The magic is there.

You hear this incredible guitar, you hear the whole band going -

it's only a small band but it's big-sounding.

And then you hear this, "Ooooo-oooh."

And the harmonies are very carefully

chosen to have that kind of haunting quality to them.

Bill didn't realise arrangements were important then.

But they were.

They were really important.

And that was a very important part of it, part of the sound, and he

knew the record before he got to the first lyric.

When Buddy comes in, the harmonies are with him.

# Maybe, baby, I'll have you

# Maybe, baby, you'll be true

# Maybe, baby, I'll have you for me

# It's funny, honey You don't care

# You never listen to my prayer

# Maybe, baby, you will love me some day. #

These sort of tours that Buddy Holly went on at that time were very

common in the United States then -

these revues that had a whole long list of artists.

One of the reason it happened is that a lot of these artists only

had one or two hits.

You might have a hit in a region, but outside of, say, Georgia,

nobody knew who you were and you

had to kind of take these tours to get your name out there,

to other parts of the country and to other radio stations.

Tours then are a lot different than what they are now nowadays.

Nowadays they may last six months to a year.

They weren't like today with the luxurious lounges

and beds and couches and televisions and...

It was just an ex-Greyhound bus,

with seats, you know. And...

We all just piled on there - 12, 14 acts, all of us,

singers and players, we'd get on one bus.

They had a backup orchestra, like about 25-, 30-piece orchestra on

another bus because people like

Dion and Frankie Avalon and

The Platters, The Coasters who were some of... Sam Cooke.

They all had charts, arrangements, and they'd pass out their music

to the band and the band would back them up.

Now, I was an exception. Bo Diddley was, as well.

We took our own groups.

And the 14-piece band was not near as enthusiastic as

Buddy and Joe B and I were.

So you'd get a bus or two buses full of these acts,

send them out on the road.

The conditions were horrendous, usually, and they'd sometimes do

two or three shows in a town

and then overnight drive to the next town.

They were pretty gruelling, yeah.

But you didn't have to work that many songs, you didn't have to do

45-minute shows or 50-minute or 60-minute shows.

You just did two or three songs.

No sleeping arrangements, no bathrooms, freezing through some

states during the wrong time of the year, but here we were, living

together, singing together, getting to know each other.

MUSIC: Well Alright by The Crickets

Nikki Sullivan didn't like the road as much as everybody else did.

So he finally just quit.

After he left, then it became a trio instead of four of them.

It was Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison and Joe B Mauldin.

One of the Everly Brothers, when they really talked him into

wearing that type of glasses, the glasses became the issue.

When he got the horn-rimmed glasses he looked more contemporary,

and I think we inspired him to do that.

We told him that was a good idea.

He had the old wire-rimmed ones, which later became fashionable,

but then it wasn't fashionable

and the horn rims with the dark glasses was the best thing.

The fact that Buddy Holly looked like a math major

instead of a pop star was something else

that kind of changed the whole rule book.

You know, Elton John never would've put on glasses

if Buddy Holly hadn't come along.

Elton John didn't need glasses, but he loved the way Buddy Holly looked.

I remember one situation in 1959, we were doing a gig

and one of the support acts said,

"Do not wear your specs on stage."

He said, "That's not showbiz. We don't wear specs on stage."

I said, "Denny, I'm almost blind. I'll fall over."

He said, "It doesn't matter. Don't wear your glasses."

And I thought, "No, if Buddy Holly can get away with it, so can I."

He was not a Rock Hudson or an Elvis Presley or whoever,

but he was so cool, and when he got up there, man,

he communicated with that audience,

he made them love him.

The first of the songs that I wrote was Oh, Boy!

And I came to the same studio in Clovis,

at the Petty Studio in Clovis, and I recorded Oh, Boy!

# All my love

# All my kissin'

# You don't know what you've been a-missin'

# Oh, boy!

# When you're with me Oh, boy!

# The world can see

# That you

# Were meant

# For me. #

And Norman played this demo that I had made of Oh, Boy! to Buddy,

and he really liked the song, so Norman called me and he said,

"He wants to do that song."

And, you know, Buddy had an excitement in his voice

that I didn't have or probably couldn't have,

so it was a big deal for me.

# All of my life

# I've been a-waitin'

# Tonight there'll be no hesitatin'

# Oh, boy!

# When you're with me Oh, boy!

# The world can see

# That you

# Were meant

# For me

# Stars appear and shadows a-falling

# You can hear my heart a-calling

# A little bit a-lovin' makes everything right

# And I'm gonna see my baby tonight

# All of my love

# All of my kissin'

# You don't know what you've been a-missin'

# Oh, boy!

# When you're with me Oh, boy!

# The world can see

# That you

# Were meant

# For me

# Ow! #

Buddy Holly is a great interpreter, a great singer.

He doesn't have to write the song. He sings it as if he wrote it.

It might as well be written by him because it's his now.

That's what an interpreter - a really good interpreter - does.

And Buddy Holly was first and foremost an excellent singer

and an excellent interpreter.

And then beyond that he had this vast genius talent as a songwriter.

And he was great at picking songs, you know, from other people.

Rave On was a little bit similar

situation as Oh, Boy! was.

I was working on the song and I brought it over here to Clovis,

and it just wasn't right.

# I know it's got me reelin'

# When you say, I love you

# Rave on... #

A couple of months later Buddy Holly put it out.

The same thing happened as the one with Oh, Boy!

I thought his version was a totally different

rhythm and attitude than mine.

It's how he did stuff.

I mean, it doesn't really matter whether it's ones he wrote or not,

but his way of doing it, his songs, was unique.

It's all Buddy Holly, when you're listening to it.

# The way you dance a-and hold me tight

# The way you kiss and say goodnight

# Rave on It's a crazy feeling and

# I know it's got me reeling

# When you say I love you

# Rave on

# A-well rave on a-it's a crazy feeling and

# And I know It's got me reeling

# I'm so glad

# That you're revealing

# Your love for me... #

He broke the nice barrier, for me.

All the music I was listening to was nice.

And to this guy it was like the kiss of death.

Nice was the kiss of death.

It was like, here we go, hold on to your ass...

# Hey, baby, baby

# Now the little things you say... #

You know, it was like, ah!

In the five months since That'll Be The Day was a hit

Buddy Holly And The Crickets had toured not only the US,

but Australia, and in March 1958 arrived for a tour of the UK.

# But now you're gone

# I've found I'm wrong

# And there's a-nothing I can do

# Except to change up all those changes

# That I made when I left you... #

We got to England, Joe B came in the dressing room with a big cigar,

Buddy and I were scuffling, trying to get it away from him and,

anyway, so he knocked a cap off.

"Oh, man, what a fun time for this, before the show."

And so we got some chewing gum and put it in there and did the show.

Chewing gum for a tooth.

Then we played at the London Palladium,

and Bob Hope was on the show,

and Bob Hope was about as big a deal

as you could get in the United States.

And Bob Hope actually came by and said, "How are you, boys?"

We said, "Fine, Mr Hope."

In the United States we did well in the north-east, like New York,

and the Midwest,

and weren't ever that hot in Texas or California.

In the United States, Buddy Holly's only number one hit

was That'll Be The Day.

It's hard to believe.

But in England, we had fans everywhere we went.

The specific group that had turned onto Buddy at that time

was the Quarrymen.

John Lennon, '57, with his group, The Quarrymen,

meeting Paul McCartney,

then George Harrison being added to the band,

the other guys in The Quarrymen beginning to fall away a little bit,

but by this time now you're beginning to get

the nucleus of The Beatles.

And what's the first song that they record when they go in

and make their first ever demo in 1958?

It was That'll Be The Day,

because they were totally turned on to what Buddy Holly was doing.

# Well, that'll be the day when you say goodbye

# Yes, that'll be the day

# When you make me cry

# You say you're gonna leave You know it's a lie

# Cos that'll be the day when I die. #

Later, The Beatles' cover version of Words Of Love is one of

the nicest covers of a Buddy Holly song ever.

Not Fade Away, which the Stones covered in '64.

I love the Stones version of it, actually.

# I wanna tell you how it's gonna be

# You're gonna give your love to me

# I wanna love you night and day

# Well, you know my loving not fade away

# Well, you know my loving not fade away... #

So, you know, that was the kind of deep influence that Buddy

was beginning to have on the UK music scene.

The first album I bought was The Chirping Crickets,

which happened to be the first album that Eric Clapton bought, too.

So, we were all influenced by that music around that time.

And of course there was the picture of the Stratocaster on the cover,

and I thought, "This guitar is from outer space. This is unbelievable."

The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Eric Clapton,

all these people came over and, to a person,

they talked about the fact that Buddy Holly,

you know, sparked all this excitement in them.

One of the things that inspired The Beatles was the fact that

almost all of Buddy Holly's records sounded a little bit different,

one to the other.

The next one wasn't just a copy of the one that went before,

they were looking to bring different sounds into the mix.

-So they were prepared to...

-SLAPS THIGHS

you know, experiment with thigh slapping.

"See what that sounds like on Everyday. Oh, it works. Oh, great," you know.

And they wouldn't know that four or five years later that

John and Paul would be listening to this going,

"OK, so, we're going to make each Beatle track...

"So that one had a lead guitar solo,

"let's put harpsichord on the next one,

"or let's put piano on the next one."

And they got that absolutely directly from Buddy Holly.

Everything in Lubbock and Clovis had become too small for him.

He actually knew that he didn't want to stay there because

he knew that he would not go anywhere,

and of course the only place that he would go

would be Norman Petty's home

to record.

And New York represented this new challenge.

# Words of love you whisper soft and true

# Darling, I love you... #

We were just as happy as kids could be.

That's what it was to go to New York.

My aunt used to work for Southern Music Publishing Company,

and then she became the one in charge of a department.

They had a receptionist and she quit

and my aunt thought of me.

And that day that Buddy came in

with Jerry and Joe B, they said,

"That's love at first sight."

That's how they called it.

Meaning that I saw him and I fell in love with him,

and he saw me and fell in love with me, without saying anything.

We went to PJ Clarke.

At that time they used to have women selling flowers

and selling cigarettes around,

and Buddy said, "I'll be right back."

So he comes with his hands in the bag

and sat down and put the red flower

and said, "Will you marry me?"

I said, "Well, do you want to get married now or after dinner?"

-I said...

-SHE LAUGHS

And he said, "Well, I'm serious. I want to get married."

And Buddy said, "I'll be here tomorrow to talk to your aunt."

He came in and Aunt said, "Who's there?"

I said, "Oh, it's Buddy,

"the young man that I went out with last night."

She said, "What is he doing here on Saturday?"

Buddy said, "Well, I need to tell you,

"I asked Maria Elena to marry me."

And my aunt looked at me, "Are you pulling my leg?"

He said, "No, ma'am. I want to get married,

"and I need to do it now because I'm going on a tour

"and I want to take her with me.

"I don't think you're going to let her come without being married."

And my aunt said, "Well, what about your parents?

"How do they feel about this?"

"Oh, they don't know anything yet.

"But if you give me permission to use your phone,

"I will be able to tell them."

And...

my aunt said, "Well, go ahead."

When I got married in his home,

Larry and Travis and just the family

that was there,

and Peggy Sue was there, and Jerry.

They were thrilled to be together

and you could see it written all over him.

You couldn't get the smile off his face with a, you know,

with a fist.

He just kept that big goofy smile all the time.

My aunt lived on 10th Street and we lived on 11th.

And during the day Buddy would go to my aunt's apartment

and play the piano with the songs that he was writing.

And then at night he would continue writing and said,

"You know, we need to go and get some fresh air."

And this was just about 10.00 or 12 midnight.

I said, "Now?" He said, "Yeah."

I said, "But I have my pyjamas on."

He said, "Oh, don't worry. Just roll them up and put the...

SHE LAUGHS

"..your coat on and I'll do the same thing."

And we used to go and walk a couple of blocks down,

and that's Greenwich Village.

Sometimes he would go out with his guitar to sit down there

and start humming.

And then all of a sudden you see a lot of kids coming over

and Buddy would show them how to play the guitar.

And then he re...

I hate the word "reinvents," cos he was just fine like he was,

but he comes with these beautiful string arrangements in these

last sessions that he did. It Doesn't Matter Anymore.

Moondreams, True Love Ways,

which just takes your breath away.

This was a very, very talented man who had tremendous breadth.

He'd moved away from that guitar-based rock and roll

into now orchestral, saxes,

a bigger band situation.

He was still growing into himself, in a sense.

But all of the sudden he had found,

probably found love for the first time in his life.

And he was up and positive and writing for a new world.

See, he's gone the whole circle here.

He's been a guy who's reacted against crooning

and his parents' generation,

but here he's come all the way back into something

which is very romantic, unashamedly,

and his voice is beautiful on it, I think.

And I could imagine Frank Sinatra singing something like that.

# But soon these tears are bound to flow

# Cos it's raining

# Raining in my heart... #

Paul brought this song, It Doesn't Matter Anymore.

And the only thing he told Paul is that,

"I will do it if I do it my way, the way I hear it."

And Paul said, "Well, be my guest."

It was, I think, Buddy's first experience with a big band.

You know, it was always the little rhythm section,

but, you know, he was always thinking ahead, obviously.

And there he was, in the studio with this huge string section and,

you know, I gave it my vibe and then they came up with all the

pizzicato strings and all of that.

And it was that simple.

# There you go and baby Here am I

# Well, you left me here so I could sit and cry

# Well, golly gee what have you done to me?

# Well, I guess it doesn't matter any more... #

True Love Ways.

This is a song that Buddy had written,

and he wrote that song for me.

And that's, of course, my favourite.

He went and got the guitar and sat right there,

just him and the guitar,

and I said, "You know, Buddy, I believe that's the best tune you've ever done."

He said, "I think so, too."

All of Buddy's songs are my favourite, but this was special.

# Sometimes we'll sigh

# Sometimes we'll cry

# And we'll know why

# Just you and I

# Know true love ways... #

I've thought about these New York records a lot

because the production and the whole sound on those four tracks

was so, so different from what Buddy had been doing before.

Did this represent the watering down

of the Buddy Holly rock and roll sound?

There's no answer to that question cos we simply don't know.

Buddy died a few weeks afterwards,

and so what direction he would have taken following those recordings,

I'm really not quite sure.

Certainly, they did represent a sea change.

Some people know they're going to die young,

cos that's how they function -

they're functional young people.

and so they get it all done in that period of time

and it's just a concentrated body of work.

Norman was handling the finances,

and I told Buddy,

"You know, we're married,

"we need to learn to manage our money.

"So we need to go to Norman Petty

"and tell him that we need our share."

So we went to see Norman.

Buddy said, "You know, I want my money."

And Norman looked and said,

"Well, you know, I don't know how much you're supposed to get."

The sour note in this story is that at some point, you know,

obviously Norm Petty did not do right by Buddy Holly.

Buddy was having cash-flow problems.

I think, had things worked out

and Buddy Holly not been on hard times financially,

he never would've gone on that fateful tour.

Ritchie Valens was starting with his career

and the Big Bopper, also.

They were doing this show and Buddy said, "That's fine with me.

"I'll go in."

I didn't go on this tour

because I was pregnant.

We were always cold, and it was the dead of winter,

30 below zero at some of these... you know, some nights,

with the wind-chill factor and everything. It was cold.

No problem, until the bus started breaking down,

and it broke down quite a bit.

And we were on the side of the road and in a blinding blizzard.

I mean, four in the morning.

Carl Bunch, the drummer,

his feet were frozen.

And he developed frostbite.

So we took him to the hospital

and we kind of get that fixed up,

but Buddy starts getting, "I'm chartering a plane."

I knew that if I would've been there,

Buddy would have not taken the plane because I would have said...

put my foot down and said no.

He calls everybody into a room and says,

"Listen, I've got a plane,

"but it has four seats.

"The pilot, myself, there's two seats."

And Buddy starts telling us it's 36.

I wasn't going to spend a whole month's rent on a flight like that.

We did a great show that night.

After the show Carroll Anderson pulled up with a station wagon

and Ritchie, the Big Bopper and Buddy

got in and they took off for the airport.

She said, "Is your name Holley?"

I said, "Yeah."

She said, "You'd better get in touch with your folks."

And... I knew then.

HE SOBS GENTLY

And...

I tried to call mother and them and I couldn't get the line.

So I went over there.

I thought if...

if Buddy is still alive...

..I can bring him back.

I turned the TV on and it was all on TV.

And they hit the ground full blast.

They really hit,

and they hit and bounced and came down the end.

And that's when they were...

There was a barbed wire fence that finally stopped it.

We pulled into Fargo -

I don't know - maybe 10.30 in the morning.

It seemed like a summer's day.

It was warm, the sun was shining,

Sam Geller, as usual,

just jumped off the bus into the hotel.

Sam asked, "Buddy Holly, JP Richardson, Ritchie Valens,

"what rooms are they in?"

They said, "They never made it."

And the locals in the town were sitting around

a black-and-white TV in the lobby and they said,

"Three rock and roll artists die in plane crash."

And it was all over the news.

I was a paperboy.

That's the only job I've ever had in my life, is a paperboy.

And I open the papers, and there it said,

"Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper killed in a plane crash."

I couldn't even move.

I mean, I read this story and the whole time I was just in shock.

I hadn't had that kind of a shock in my life,

so it's something I will never forget.

And I just remember thinking,

"So there won't be any more?" You know, "How can that be?

"We won't hear him any more?"

I walked out to the bus and I sat in the bus,

I felt like I was maybe alone on the bus and I...

Like I said, it just didn't make sense.

I'm sitting there with Buddy Holly's guitar on one of the seats,

he'd told me to take care of it,

Ritchie Valens's clothes,

his little blue vest is hanging up,

the Bopper's hat is in the hat rack,

and I'm looking around the bus and I'm thinking,

"This..."

I don't know. I was in shock.

I remember taking to my bed, I remember going into my bedroom,

shutting the door and that was it for about two weeks.

I felt so bad, you know.

It was very trying and a very terrible feeling, you know.

I lost the baby.

The shock, I guess, of...

I lost the baby.

I started writing a song up in the

little room that I used to use. And I sang...

# A long, long time ago

# I can still remember how that music used to make me smile. #

The whole thing came out.

# And I knew if I had my chance

# I could make those people dance

# And maybe they'd be happy for a while

# But February made me shiver

# With every paper I deliver

# Bad news on the doorstep

# I couldn't take one more step

# I can't remember if I cried

# When I read about his widowed bride

# But something touched me deep inside

# The day the music died. #

That's all I had.

I thought, "What the heck is that?

"Where did that come from?"

And I had this thing, cos I really felt bad for Maria-Elena.

Up to this day, I kind of blame myself.

That I should have gone,

insist on going.

# Just you know why

# Why you and I

# Will bye and bye

# Know true love ways

# Sometimes we'll sigh... #

I think that in America everyone thinks that when John F Kennedy died

that was when America lost its innocence,

but this was really a precursor to that.

This was really, I think,

the first time that the youth of America felt a huge loss.

He had such a glittering, and such a tragically short, career

but, boy, he changed the world, Buddy, completely, in that time.

He was one of the key influential artists that

allowed and influenced rock and roll and pop music

and everything that we're at today,

that helped bring it to the forefront.

To me, Buddy Holly just works every time you put it on

just as well as it did in the first place.

And that's...

That makes it a masterpiece.

If I had an ambition for Buddy Holly's music,

it would be to see it embraced by the current generation

of emerging artists, particularly in Britain,

where I think we're blessed to have a fabulous generation

of new singer-songwriters.

I would love, for example, just to pull a name out of the air,

but if Ed Sheeran, let's say, covered a Buddy Holly song

and put it on his new record,

and therefore then introduced the music of Buddy Holly

to a generation that maybe doesn't know about him.

I would love to see that happen.

This is the beautiful thing about music.

To me, to my mind, it's the highest art form,

higher than any other art form, because it's invisible.

It exists in your mind and my mind.

It's not something tangible or physical,

it will always live

because it's inside people's minds and their hearts,

it touches their emotions,

it describes and expresses inexpressible feelings,

and nothing can do that but music.

Buddy said to me,

"I don't know how to succeed, but I know how to fail.

"Just try to please everybody."

# I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be

# Ooo-bop bop bop-bop

# You're gonna give your love to me

# Ooo-bop bop bop-bop

# A love to last more than one day

# Ooo-bop bop bop-bop

# Love is love and not fade away

# Ooo-bop bop bop-bop. #