Buddy Holly

In January 1957, a twenty-year-old kid from Lubbock, Texas, put a band together with three friends.

Two guitars, a bass and a drum kit. Four musicians, those instruments, playing songs they wrote themselves.

Today that is the obvious definition of a rock band. In 1957 it was not.

What came before

Before the Crickets, popular music was organised in other ways.

There were singers with an orchestra behind them. There were solo artists with hired backing musicians. There were formulas of every kind, and in almost all of them the performer and the musicians were separate categories.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets fixed something else: a self-sufficient group, with a name of its own, that writes its material and plays it.

The 1957 line-up was Holly on vocals and lead guitar, Niki Sullivan on rhythm, Joe B. Mauldin on bass and Jerry Allison on drums. Sullivan left a year later and they carried on as a trio.

Thousands of bands would copy that mould over the following decades, and they are copying it still.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame puts it in exactly those words: he pioneered and popularised that line-up.

Another claim that gets repeated needs qualifying: that he wrote his own songs when almost nobody did. That is not accurate. Chuck Berry and Little Richard were writing their own material in those same years. He was one of the first, not the first.

The Beatles' name

The most famous example of the mould is the one everybody knows: four boys from Liverpool who knew his records by heart noticed the name "The Crickets" — an insect — and decided to give themselves an insect name too, playing with the spelling.

It is worth saying carefully: the usual version is that it was "in part" a tribute to the Crickets. Lennon gave different explanations over the years, and there is also the trail of the "Beetles" gang from a film. It was not a single cause.

What is not in doubt is the devotion. The Beatles recorded Holly's "Words of Love" on "Beatles for Sale" in 1964. And the Rolling Stones' first big hit was a version of "Not Fade Away": number three in the United Kingdom and their first entry on the American charts.

Eighteen months

His career as a star lasted a year and a half. "That'll Be the Day" was number one in September 1957. By 3 February 1959 he was dead.

He had money trouble. After the split with his manager, Norman Petty, the royalties were frozen, and that is why he went back on the road with a winter tour of the Midwest, on buses that broke down in the cold.

He chartered a small plane for that night. It was not to get ahead to the next town: it was to rest and do his laundry.

Waylon Jennings gave up his seat to J.P. Richardson, who was ill. Ritchie Valens won his from Tommy Allsup on a coin toss.

Before they parted, Holly told Jennings, as a joke, that he hoped his old bus froze up again. Jennings answered that he hoped his plane crashed. He carried that for years.

The plane came down in a cornfield shortly after one in the morning. All three musicians died, along with the pilot, Roger Peterson.

Holly was twenty-two. His wife, María Elena, who was pregnant, found out from the television and lost the baby.

Twelve years later, Don McLean would write "American Pie" about that day.

A point about Weezer

It is often said that Weezer dedicated a song called "Buddy Holly" to him, and that it is a tribute.

The song exists, it is from 1994, and it is not about him. Rivers Cuomo wrote it defending a friend his bandmates were mocking; the title and the chorus come from Cuomo's physical resemblance to Holly. The original chorus mentioned Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire before it changed.

That a resemblance to Buddy Holly worked as shorthand for "the kid in glasses who doesn't look like a star" says plenty. But the song is not about him.

What to remember

Buddy Holly is the proof that the biggest contribution can be the one we no longer even notice.

Put on "That'll Be the Day", "Peggy Sue" or "Everyday" and you will hear simple, bright songs, made with four instruments and no fat at all.

Then look at any rock band of the last seventy years. Two guitars, a bass, a drum kit, their own songs. That was not there before: he left it behind, in eighteen months, before he turned twenty-three.

Remember him like this: not as the kid in glasses who died young, but as the one who drew the blueprint everybody else would use afterwards.

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Sources

Charles Hardin Holley, known as Buddy Holly, born in Lubbock, Texas, on 7 September 1936 and killed on 3 February 1959, at the age of twenty-two. The Crickets were formed in Lubbock in January 1957 with Holly (vocals and lead guitar), Niki Sullivan (rhythm guitar), Joe B. Mauldin (bass) and Jerry Allison (drums); Sullivan left the group the following year. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame credits Holly as a pioneer and populariser of the two guitars, bass and drums line-up. It should be qualified that he was not the only artist of his time writing his own songs: Chuck Berry and Little Richard did so as well. On the Beatles' name, the usual version holds that it was chosen in part as a tribute to the Crickets, although John Lennon offered different explanations over the years; the Beatles recorded "Words of Love" on "Beatles for Sale" (1964), and the Rolling Stones' first big hit was a version of "Not Fade Away", number three in the United Kingdom and number forty-eight in the United States. "That'll Be the Day" reached number one in September 1957. After the split with his manager Norman Petty, the royalties were frozen, which led him to undertake the "Winter Dance Party" tour. He chartered a small plane in order to rest and do his laundry, avoiding the bus journey. Waylon Jennings gave up his seat to J.P. Richardson, who was ill, and Ritchie Valens obtained his on a coin toss with Tommy Allsup; the exchange of jokes between Holly and Jennings before the flight is documented by Jennings himself. The plane crashed in a cornfield shortly after one in the morning, killing the three musicians and the pilot, Roger Peterson. His wife, María Elena Holly, who was pregnant, learned of it from the television and lost the pregnancy. "American Pie", by Don McLean, dates from 1971. A frequent attribution should be corrected: Weezer's song "Buddy Holly" (1994) is not a tribute to Holly; Rivers Cuomo wrote it in defence of a friend, and the title comes from his own physical resemblance to the musician. Ritchie Valens, Don McLean and Weezer have their own profiles in this series. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of his work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, American Songwriter, Songfacts and other press coverage.