BUDDY - THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY BACKSTAGE GUIDE 13 Unlike Presley and other guitar-toting idols of the mid-Fifties, Holly was a gifted instrumentalist who had grown up playing country music in his native West Texas. His playing style became as influential as his voice – the moody drama he could conjure from a shifting sequence of four basic chords, his incisive downstrokes and echoey descants. The deification of the rock guitarist, the sex appeal of the solid-body guitar, the glamour of the Fender brand: all were set in train by Buddy and his sunburst Strat. Pop music has become an endless recycling, each new generation believing they are the first to discover its repertoire of "cool" and limited palette of sentiments and chords. In the genes of almost every band, Buddy Holly has been there, either by conscious assimilation or via his disciples. "Listen to any new release," says Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, whose first killer riff was on the 1964 cover of “Not Fade Away”. "Buddy will be in it somewhere. His stuff just works." Holly's time on the world stage was pitifully short, lasting only from September 1957, when “That'll Be The Day” became an international hit, to February 3, 1959, when he and two fellow performers, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, fatally decided to fly from Clear Lake, Iowa, to Fargo, North Dakota, to avoid a freezing night on a tour bus. The crash of their chartered aircraft into a snowy stubble-field has become rock's most famous tragedy, enshrined by Don McLean's “American Pie” as ''The Day the Music Died''. In 16 crowded months, Holly had created a blueprint for enlightened rock stardom that every newcomer with any pretense at self-respect still aspires to follow. He was the first rock star both talented and strong-minded enough to insist on the artistic control his musical heirs now take for granted. He was the first not only to write his own songs but also to arrange them, directing his backup musicians to his own exacting standards. He was the first to understand and experiment with studio technology, achieving effects with echo, double-tracking, and overdubbing on primitive Ampex recorders which have never been bettered. He was the first rock star not to be a scowling pretty boy like Elvis – to be, in fact, angular and geeky-looking, with bad skin, discolored teeth, and glasses that did not acquire their stylish black frames until the last months of his life. He was the first to make it on sheer ability, energy, and personality, appealing to a male audience as much as a female one, redefining the perception of good looks and style much as John Lennon and Mick Jagger would in the next decade. The years since 1959 have seen many other great talents prematurely snuffed out. But Holly's death has a special poignancy. This was no rock and roll roughneck, hell-bent on self-annihilation, but an amiable (and deeply religious) young Texan whose life had not the least taint of scandal, discredit, or unkindness; who had recently married and was about to become a father; who went on tour through the snowy Midwest only because his ex-manager, Norman Petty, refused to pay his royalties; who took that fatal flight with his two colleagues only to snatch a few hours sleep in a hotel and get his laundry done. His fans are numbered in the millions, and grow in number with each passing year. And dying so young, and so pure, as he did, he left them an extra gift: they can never be disillusioned. Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison, and Joe Maudlin goofing around backstage (edited from TheTelegraph.co.uk)