Buddy Holly, a book tells its story

In that summer of 1955 everything was about to happen. Elvis Presley had not yet released the first album or overturned the spectators with his pelvic performance on national TV. He went on tour as part of a “package” of country artists, cities by city, 117 cities, and happened to Lubbock, in Texas, where to open the concert was a binding student, this Buddy Holly, just as tired of sitting on the laurels of the country. Buddy took a lot from Elvis but, as is written in the book “Words of Love”, published by Genesis Publications (in English, 408 pp): “The more he tried to resemble him the more he proved to be only Buddy Holly”. To the point that Elvis himself one day declared: “If I look back at the last twenty years, the person I have admired in Rock ‘N’ Roll is Buddy Holly”.

Buddy, as everyone called him, had formed the first duo at 12 years old. The parents gave him a violin and he: «What should I do? I want a guitar ». He needed the money to pay the auditions so he helped his father in carpentry, he adjusted roofs, collected cotton. He went to the area churches to listen to Gospel, dreamed of playing with Mahaalia Jackson and Ray Charles and in the meantime he did it in the parking lots, in schools, in the small clubs illegally (as a minor). He had heard Elvis in some local radio but had never seen him and he found him in front of the Fair Park Coliseum, a few isolated from home. In the February stage, Elvis had to lend him his acoustic Martin. In June, Buddy had just graduated and had now decided: he wanted to do that thing there. That thing that was not country and not even blues and that would be called Rock ‘n’ roll. Moreover, helped by an electrical carousel just thrown on the market: the Fender Stratocaster. He took her in his arms in the summer of 1955 and everyone did it after him.

The volume, wanted by the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation and the widow Maria Elena Holly, raises funds for two beneficial entities for cancer research that are headed by Pete Townshend and Roger Dalitrey, and is a well of memorabilia, anecdotes, shots never seen. Above all, it makes it clear how practically this artist has engraved on anyone: “Where would we all be without Buddy Holly?” summarizes Jeff Beck. In fact, there is no lack of nobody in this kind of chain of Sant’Antonio where everyone is immortalized in the photo with Buddy’s guitar and pays homage to him, starting from Bruce Springsteen: «I put his music every night before performing me. He keeps me honest “(his cover of” Rave on “is memorable). Little Richard remembers the tour together with Holly: “Every evening I was in one corner to look at it: it was on another planet”; Robert Plant writes: «At 11 I woke up and Bang! That type sang my life as a teenager, it seemed to do so only for me. Nothing was more the same ».

Brian Wilson’s contributions parade (the Beach Boys Refecto “Peggy Sue”), Dolly Pardon, Ed Sheeran, Nile Rodgers, Joe Bonamassa, Tony Iommi, Jools Holland, Youngblud, David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler (he counted “Learning the Game”), Sting. Noel Gallagher is also lent, influenced by Buddy plus in the High Flying Birds than in Oasis: «It is the king of the masterpieces for three minutes. He teaches to do simple things, without refined agreements or obtuse words. His songs are short and should be straight to the point, so I can’t say they have influenced “Champagne Supernova”! ».

If the female audience went crazy for Elvis, the male one hanging for Buddy, and not only because he did not constitute a threat to his girlfriends. Buddy was ordinary. He did not spread pheromones and sex, he did not care about making himself talk, he concentrated exclusively on music. John Fogerty says: “There was this group on the cover: a boy with the layer and three more. It was the first time I saw a group in the rock ‘n’ roll and thought: I will form a band ». Otherwise called Creedence Clearwater Revival. Brian May explains: «None of my generation has underestimated Buddy Holly. It made monumental harmonies that influenced both Freddie Mercury and Queen. The things later became more techniques, but in the 1950s the guitar was not central, it made it become Buddy. He made the guitar singing it. ”

The Edge, thanks to Holly, understood how to put the tool at the service of the melody and the importance of keeping the space between the notes instead of running and that’s it. Same lesson learned by Pete Townshend, who adds: «Buddy was written and produced the records. It was very rare at the time to maintain total artistic control ». In some ways, that ethics of do-it-yourself is the punk seed. Then there is Eric Clapton, among the many circles to the rescue: “I impressed myself listening to Buddy, so original, lonely, and with glasses. He gave hope to millions of kids as me. ” Elton John would probably never have worn them, if Buddy hadn’t done it first. The same goes for Elvis Costello (who often closed the concerts with “True Love Ways”) and for John Lennon.

Here, the story of the Beatles passes precisely for this Texan boy with the tie and the thick frame that covered him half a face. In addition to Ringo Starr’s statements: “For me it was the initiation to rock ‘n’ roll» and George Harrison: “I listened to Buddy and I had no more fear of going from a” la “to a” fa “”, Paul McCartney often appears, the most grateful always (already in 1985 co-produced and led the documentary “The Real Buddy Holly Story”). He admits it immediately, at the beginning of the book: «Yes, okay, the harmonies of the Everly Brothers, the energy of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, but Buddy Holly was the greatest inspiration for us Beatles. We wanted to be like his crickets, they also gave us the idea of the name with a double meaning (sport and crickets editor’s note). Buddy was our hero, also because he wore glasses and this allowed Lennon to keep them in public and if there were girls nearby ».

That’s right: the Beatles are called Beatles because crickets were called crickets. Which, at the meeting to find a name in a hurry that concerned the insects, also considers the hypothesis of being called “beetles”. An entire chapter of “Words of Love” is dedicated to “That’ll Be The Day”, the first big hit of Buddy Holly who was also the first incision of the Quarrymen, or the proto-beatles. In July 1958 they entered the study in Liverpool to record that cover on the A side A, the original song “In Spite of All the Danger” on the B side, in a quarter of an hour, without second attempts and with a single microphone in the center. The 78 rpm then had to pass out of hand in hand, in turn, but Lennon’s mother died in a car accident and the disc remained in the drawer of the pianist John Duff Lowe for years, until McCartney redeemed him to insert him in “Anthology 1” of 1995.

Debtors are also the Rolling Stones, their third single was the cover of “Not Fade Away”. Keith Richards explains: «In 1958 England Elvis and Buddy were solid in the same way. But Elvis did not write songs, while Buddy yes. It was his example that brought about writing all of us to write all of us ». Mick Jagger raises: «He was the greatest, and I really mean it. It is the number one lesson of songwriting. You can learn from Buddy Holly how to write a song ». Ron Wood even painted the cover of the book in question.

To close is Dylan, with the speech he did not hold when he was rewarded with the Nobel: “If I had to return at dawn everything, I think I should start with Buddy Holly” and via bobbacker on Buddy as archetype of rock, on his hypnotizing concert, on the fact that he lived on him something inexplicable and two days later he died.

The only really sensational thing about Buddy was the plane crash in which he lost his life at 22 years of age. The international echo was not proportional to the greatness of the character, there was no immediate tribute. “I learned to play the guitar from the Holly records,” Jimmy Page confesses “one morning I read the newspaper: he was dead. Nobody seemed to import to, and it was then that I understood that my passion for guitar was radically different from others ». Buddy’s glasses were not found among the scrap of the plane. I will recover a farmer months after the crash in Iowa, stuck under a corn plantation. For twenty -one years they were closed in a steel wardrobe in the warehouse of a court, now they are exhibited next to his lubbock layer.

There are those who listen to Buddy Holly and ask what he had so special. They look like simple songs, sentimental ballads, one does not realize their revolutionary charge. At the time they abounded interpreters and Crooner, he wrote, played and sang. More: followed the recording process and production. He was obsessed with the sound of the guitar, he did not hear him among others but pulled him out and put it in the center. He ventured unpublished agreements, invented a style. With his crickets he indicated the format of the future rock bands and hit every racial barrier, mixing black music to the country, and starting for the “black tour”, with black artists, performing in theaters for African Americans, in full segregationism. Before Buddy Holly, alone and with glasses, you would never have made it on stage. Isn’t it ironic? He was an educated, clumsy and nerd -looking teenager who generated the cursed children of rock.