THAT'LL BE THE DAY

Just like you, I was always a bit off-put by Buddy Holly.

The dude had horn-rimmed glasses, sang in a hiccupy voice, and looked like the kind of guy who got pushed around in high school.

I saw the movie bio with Gary Busey, and I remember two things: (1) The movie was really good, with Busey doing a fine job, and (two) it didn't do much to change my estimation of Holly, except in regards to certain details of his life. But I still thought he was a geek.

Then I saw La Bamba, a movie that made Ritchie Valens seem like he was a stud. Take a look at any available photo of the real Ritchie Valens and you'll see that this is not so. The movie, as entertaining as it was, tended to stretch the truth concerning these rock gods from the '50s. They all looked too hip, way hipper than the archival documentary footage that I'd seen would suggest. Hollywood scored another victory for revisionism.

But I was intrigued by Marshall Crenshaw's small role as Buddy Holly. Crenshaw, up to that point, was better known as both a solo artist and the man who portrayed John Lennon in the stage production of Beatlemania! In the movie La Bamba, he plays "Crying, Waiting, Hoping" during his last concert. The guitar solo was a crackling, melodic bebop that stayed in my head for weeks afterward.

Seems that I'd never heard this Holly song. I was so used to hearing "That'll Be The Day" and "Oh Boy!" on the radio that I ruled out the possibility of Buddy Holly being capable of anything more.

Well, I'm here to tell you-- there's something else.

Don't know why I decided to Google the name "Buddy Holly". It certainly wasn't because of the funny Weezer song, and there has been nothing in the papers or the news recently that ties in with his birth or death. But I Googled him anyway, and I found The Apartment Tapes.

These were Buddy Holly's last recordings, made on a two-inch Ampex reel-to-reel in his apartment in New York weeks before The Day The Music Died. I found some playable audio files and listened to them.

I was fucking blown away, almost driven to tears at their brilliance, their pop simplicity, their perfect composition. And I realized right then and there that Buddy Holly was, perhaps, the most important figure in all of rock and roll history.

He was a songwriter of a caliber we will never know, due to his untimely demise. Towards the end, his songs were getting more sophisticated. They weren't the goofy, poppy singles that I grew to resent thanks to repetitive airplay on oldies stations. They were personal and illuminating mini-treatises that dared to pry introspectively into the mind of their creator.

He was ahead of his time in terms of recording music, the Brian Wilson of his day. He was one of the first artists to immerse himself completely in the studio process, making his recordings sound better than the rest of the rock and rollers of the era. Even the demos from The Apartment Tapes sound incredibly clean and crisp-- he only used one microphone for them, and yet they sound like modern studio tracks, with no analog tape hiss or noise. On those tapes, it's just Holly's voice and his guitar. Certain versions of these never-officially-released bootlegs contain cheesy overdubs done by members of Holly's backing band The Crickets, but otherwise it's Buddy's show, and he gets so down and deep on these tapes that it's a minor miracle they exist at all.

He was probably the biggest influence on The Beatles, more so than Elvis, Carl Perkins, or Chuck Berry. For starters, the name "Beatles" is a direct play on the name "Crickets". Another thing: Ever heard their version of Holly's "Words Of Love"? They sound like they studied Buddy Holly intensely. And the Lennon/Holly connection is not limited to Marshall Crenshaw; their birthdays were two days apart, and if you look at pictures of Holly with his glasses off he even resembles Lennon in a vague manner. And, they both had riveting, hair-raising voices that you either loved or hated.

So now I would like to rattle off some of my favorite Buddy Holly moments and/or trivia bits:

The switch to F during "Peggy Sue" where he sings "pretty pretty pretty pretty Peggy Sue" is so damn exciting to listen to that I am one day contemplating covering the song with an able backing band. "Peggy Sue" is also one bear of a rock song, with its marching drum roll cadence and swashbuckling rhythm-guitar histrionics.

The Apartment Tapes feature a cover of that gay-ass song from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, "Love Is Strange". I guess I shouldn't be so harsh, but I got played out over that song long ago. Too many rotations on KRTH 101 dulled the effect of that song, with it's "how do you call your loverboy" interlude and kinky guitar riffs. But Holly's version is fucking awesome, stripped down like a Velvet Underground song, solemn in its conviction, almost like a prayer. No gimmicky bullshit, no silly talking asides, just three chords and a hell of a voice.

I was always a fan of the song "Everyday" because of its delicate melody and wistful lyrics. It's one of the few times when his hiccup singing style actually transcended itself. "Love like yours will surely find my way, a-hey, a-hey hey..."

I guess I can count Don Maclean's "American Pie" as a Buddy Holly moment, because the song is meaningless unless you are moved by the imagery of the first and last verses. The part that always seems to kill me is the verse about his death:


"But February made me shiver
with every paper I'd 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..."


I'm a big pussy when it comes to dead rock stars-- I am literally tearing up as I write about this. I don't know why it kills me when cool rock stars die prematurely. Maybe it's because it seems like they still had something to offer the world, but they've been cut short. I mean, shit, I was pretty sad over Ol' Dirty Bastard dying recently, even if it wasn't The Day The Hip-Hop Stopped.

But back to "American Pie": Maclean takes us through a long and belabored summation of rock and roll up to the '70s, then travels back to what he considered the '50s equivalent of the JFK assassination...


"I went down to the sacred store
where I'd heard the music years before
but the man there said the music wouldn't play
And in the streets the children screamed
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken
And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The Day The Music Died..."


Maclean, of course, was referring to Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper when he invoked the Holy Trinity. And now I understand why that day was such a bummer for so many people, why it was called The Day The Music Died.

Like JFK's murder, like John Lennon's murder, like the untimely death of anyone with a shred of talent and soul, the loss cuts straight through the heart, to the bone. It's as if we can never go home again. The innocence is lost, the clock can no longer be turned backwards. Our heroes are proven to be fallible, and we as individuals must continue our respective journeys, with no further assistance from the people who made large portions of our lives both bearable and tolerable. Like growing up and throwing out your security blanket or your favorite teddy bear, you have to come to grips with the growth in your life and let go of the things that you once used as crutches. You have to learn to go it alone.

Holly's death was symbolic of the death of the '50s. The simple times were becoming more complicated, the illusions of prosperity and peace merely a facade, hiding the dark underbelly of the American Dream but not for long. The '60s came and turned everyone's minds inside out, and from there it's just been one stumbling block after another in our collective human path to progress.

Buddy Holly, you are my new hero. It took three decades for me to get it, but I know now what you meant, and I know what it means to me, right now, in this transitional time in my life, where so many things are pulling at me from different directions that I have no choice but to listen to your voice, to absorb every note from your guitar, every hiccup in your throat...

I leave you with the lyrics to the one song on The Apartment Tapes that truly converted me over to the Church of Buddy. The music is extraordinary, and the words are a peek into what Holly was planning in the future-- no more silly love songs, and more of an exploration of the sweet pain and joyous ache that accompanies growing older.

The song is a pretty little ditty entitled "Learning The Game":


Hearts that are broken and love that’s untrue
These go with learning the game

When you love her and she doesn’t love you
You’re only learning the game

When she says that you’re the only one she’ll ever love
Then you find that you are not the one she’s thinking of

Feeling so sad and you’re all alone and blue
That’s when you’re learning the game

Have a nice day, people.