Who wrote the book of rock? No. 4: Buddy Holly

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This article was published 15/07/2012 (5181 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In this 10-part series, we pay tribute to the rock ‘n’ roll-era visionaries who came up with the musical vocabulary we’re still hearing today – the ones without whom the language of rock ‘n’ roll would not sound the same.

 

MONTREAL — Rock ‘n’ roll obsessives and scholars need little persuasion and only a few drinks to begin speculating on how Buddy Holly’s career would have played out.

The future of a man who died when he was only 22 gives us virtually a blank cheque to wonder. Would he have ended up on oldies package tours singing medleys of his hits? Or would he have evolved into a restless experimenter, changing the vocabulary of rock even before The Beatles?

One thing is not up for debate: the astonishing number of classics left behind by Charles Hardin Holley. (His name was misspelled on his first recording contract and he never had the error corrected.)

Few artists were covered by both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but those British disciples gave their all to, respectively, Words of Love and Not Fade Away. Without the Holly catalogue, in fact, the repertoire of the British Invasion bands that idolized him would have been radically different.

When Bob Dylan accepted a Grammy for Time Out of Mind in 1998, he spoke of seeing a Holly concert in Duluth two nights before Holly died. “He looked at me,” Dylan said, noting he had felt Holly’s spirit during the recording of his award-winning album.

Holly’s recording sessions barely spread out over three years and his public profile, while he was alive, lasted less than two. But during that heartbeat of a career, the Lubbock, Texas, native released song after song — with and without The Crickets — that inspired future generations to write their own material. It seemed possible to them because, for the most part, Holly’s songs were simple enough for a fledgling garage band to wrap its rudimentary chops around.

But if writing easy-to-play rockers had been Holly’s only virtue, we wouldn’t be talking about him more than 50 years after that famous plane crash in 1959 ended his life. Nor would there have been two tribute albums in 2011 with the likes of The Fray, The Black Keys, Modest Mouse and Cee Lo Green all showing their love for Holly’s music.

There’s more than simplicity: there’s an indefinable sadness that adds depth to Holly’s work. Accessible, teen-friendly love songs like Listen to Me, Maybe Baby, Learning the Game, Heartbeat, Everyday and Well… All Right all transcend their catchy melodies to somehow hint at the broken heart that motivates all great writers.

That special extra dimension is what made these songs part of rock ‘n’ roll’s essential canon. It’s why musicians haven’t been able to stop themselves from singing Peggy Sue, It’s So Easy, That’ll Be the Day and other Holly evergreens for all these decades. The special melodic magic Holly could work with three or four chords lies somewhere behind the music of every rocker who ever put pen to paper.

Innovation magnifies the legacy: Holly was the first high-profile auteur, writing and performing his own material and even showing keen interest in the studio. He tinkered with primitive overdubs on Words of Love. Not long before his life was cut short, he had started to work with an orchestra, producing rapidly maturing material like the magnificent True Love Ways.

A lifetime of nostalgia packages? Seems unlikely, doesn’t it?

 

— Postmedia News

CRAIG MORRISON

ON BUDDY HOLLY:

In my childhood, his hits were ingrained. In my teens, I heard his repertoire from The Beatles and The Stones on down. In my 20s, I performed his songs in a rock ‘n’ roll revival band. In my 30s and 40s, I researched his music and wrote about him in my books. And here in my 50s, I presented That’ll Be the Day: Buddy Holly and Friends Remembered, a tribute concert on the 50th anniversary of his death.

For that show, I wrote a song called The Same Only Different:

 

While my buddies and I were learning their songs

Some of our heroes were already gone

The singer’s passed on and the time is past

The heart recognizes so the songs still last

But it makes us all notice how the time goes fast

The singer’s passed on and now the song is passed on

 

Alone or in bands, I’ve always played his songs. I’ve been doing That’ll Be the Day for so long, I can’t remember when I didn’t know it. When I do Everyday, I’m a teenager again. With Not Fade Away, we rock out. I sang True Love Ways to my wife at our wedding. Every time I do Wishing, I think of my daughter. I sing Blue Days, Black Nights on Mondays at Hillbilly Night. When I learned Maybe Baby for the tribute show, it felt like rediscovering an old friend. I sang Raining in My Heart at a memorial service. All are on my CDs.

I know songs survive when people love them, and I’m a soldier in the worldwide army of people keeping this music alive.

You can dislike Holly, call him “the patron saint of all tall geeky guys with glasses,” or parody him by hiccuping while singing. But you can’t imagine rock and pop music without him.

 

Craig Morrison is an ethnomusicologist who teaches about rock and its roots at Concordia University, and plays guitar in the band Vintage Wine. He is the author of Go Cat Go! Rockabilly Music and Its Makers, and American Popular Music: Rock and Roll.

 

KEY TRACKS:

 

1. Peggy Sue

2. Oh Boy!

3. Well … All Right

4. True Love Ways

5. Crying, Waiting, Hoping