Since 1959, every February 3 is remembered as the day a strategically stuttering rock n’ roller with iconically-worn horn rims, a teen heartthrob who sung Spanish tunes into US radio hits despite not speaking the language himself, and a DJ/songwriter with one hell of a stage name chartered a flight that would change the fabric of music history.
In 1964, “four lads from Liverpool” who had been committed to playing exclusively within their European comfort zone until they had a Number One hit would touch down in the same country still reeling. Its brightest young stars-turned-fallen ones inspired this foreign quartet musically, and therefore spiritually, to take their flight as well.
On February 7, they landed at an airport then-recently renamed for the nation’s youngest President who also tragically perished, mere months earlier. These new arrivals would change music history, and history in general, two days later on TV for tens of millions to see.
The day Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper’s plane crashed may have been “The Day the Music Died,” as “American Pie” singer-songwriter Don McLean would eventually decree it. And February 9, 1964 – the day John, Paul, George and Ringo British-Invaded their Beatlemaniacs stateside live on The Ed Sullivan Show – was the day it came back.
Sixty-three years after the storm-caused Clear Lake, Iowa crash, the trio’s legacy is still felt in large. Touring together for a “Winter Dance Party” run of shows culminated in a bus with a broken heater, a flu outbreak amongst the musicians, and a collective desire to forgo dirty-clothed performances and restless nights. Per Holly’s directive, he, The Big Bopper and the winner of a quarter-flip would eschew bus travel on the night of February 3 in favor of the sky.
As chillingly documented in the National Film Registry-inducted Valens biopic, 1987’s La Bamba (starring Lou Diamond Phillips), not only did the ill-fated talent prove football isn’t the only entertainment industry where a simple coin-toss can change everything. He also had an eerie bout of flying anxiety manifesting in recurring nightmares due to a DC-7 and F-89 jet colliding mid-air over the playground at his Junior High School in 1957. The accident killed several students, and injured 75 others. Valens was actually out of school that day to attend his grandfather’s funeral.
Meanwhile, for all of the musical tributes and physical memorials that were to come in waves for the “Peggy Sue” and “Donna” singers – and “White Lightning” writer – as rock quickly went electric, the literal highlight of the flight-charter’s mythos had been presumed long-gone.
Originally discovered in the Spring of 1959 after the melting of snowfall, Holly’s famous glasses were found lens-less, turned over to authorities and placed in a station-secured envelope – unbeknownst to the public and the late musician’s estate. In the end, the Cerro Gordo County Sheriff’s Department would prove no match for his widowed bride. After learning the whereabouts of the glasses in March of 1980, María Elena Santiago reobtained them in a legal battle against Holly’s parents. The glasses are now on display at the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas.
Two decades after suit-and-tied debuting in black and white one fateful night, subsequently embracing psychedelia as the vibrant world of color emerged soon thereafter, The Beatles were inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Two years earlier, Holly earned the nod as part of the museum’s inaugural class.
According to fellow posthumously recognized John Lennon, “Buddy Holly was the first one that we were really aware of in England who could play and sing at the same time – not just strum, but actually play the licks,” (Anthology, page 11).
Lennon first formed The Beatles as “The Quarrymen” in 1957, with McCartney and Harrison joining during Holly’s peak. Shortly after his death, they renamed themselves “The Beatles” as an homage to Holly’s “Crickets” backing outfit.
Though devout followers of “The King” Elvis Presley, it’s to be noted the late ‘50s era was saturated with other acts who, like Presley self-deprecated, “wore the guitar better than he played it.”
“I still like Buddy’s vocal style. And his writing. One of the main things about The Beatles is that we started out writing our own material,” Paul McCartney notes pages later in the same Anthology chapter. “People these days take it for granted that you do, but nobody used to then. John and I started to write because of Buddy Holly. It was like, ‘Wow! He writes and is a musician.’”
This week, don’t spiral as you listen to Don McLean’s heartbreaking-with-context recollection of the day Holly, Valens and The Big Bopper unintendedly christened February the season of all things shivers and bad news delivered. As is always the case, don’t wallow in what you’ve lost; cherish what you had.
Without Holly, who could have countered Presley’s unmatchable persona with a burst of alternative style that could be replicated, expanded upon, and triumph ahead?
Elton John wears his big-rimmed glasses to honor Holly despite not requiring them. Bruce Springsteen told Rolling Stone in 1978, “I play Buddy Holly every night before I go on; that keeps me honest.” And Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, wee-ooh, looked just like him in the band’s breakout 1994 hit and music video. These artists, and infinite others, have helped carry forth the undying legacy of a man whose death temporarily made the whole music field die, too.
Moreover, his pop cultural preservation reminds us that, though just 22-year-old, he squeezed a lifetime’s worth of influence in short order. While the humbly-rooted, 17-year-old Richard “Ritchie Valens” Valenzuela and the 29-year-old “Big-Boppin’” Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr. were just coming into their own. All three had more years in them than they received; thus, it’s the duty of music lovers the world over to empirically trace the heroes of their heroes, and pay a multigenerational, well overdue thanks by giving them a listen.
They may be considered the “Number One Band of All Time” by many, but music didn’t start with The Fab Four. In fact, music had to die first before they could bring it back for good. In a perfect world, every plane could arrive at its intended destination unscathed. And art with the power to move a nation, to flip the world on its head, could be born solely from sunshine – and never from rain clouds, snowstorms, from death, despair and destruction.
That’ll be the day.
