Book Review: Buddy Holly: Words of Love

Disclosure: I received a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

How I got into Buddy Holly

Buddy Holly died 66 years ago in a plane crash in Iowa, but he’s still very much in our hearts to this day, and if you haven’t heard his music, you’re really missing out! I remember first hearing about him because of my dad’s love of the Ritchie Valens song “La Bamba”. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and Dion and the Belmonts were touring the Midwest in the winter of 1959 (a poorly organised tour, who in their right mind would zig-zag across the Midwest in the middle of winter?) and just as rock and roll was about to change, Holly, Valens, and Richardson’s lives were all cut short aged 22, 17, and 28 respectively.

While Buddy Holly may have lived to only 22, he lived a much fuller life than so many people who have lived multiple times as long. His impact can easily be seen in British Invasion groups The Beatles and The Hollies, both of whom have named themselves after Buddy Holly. Buddy Holly had his Crickets and The Beatles was a pun and well, beetles are also insects just like crickets. So it’s only fitting that Paul McCartney wrote the foreword to this book. The Hollies was just taken directly from Buddy’s last name.

Of course, I have to mention Buddy Holly’s influence on Joe Meek. Whenever I talk to people about my book Crime of the Century: Classic Rock & True Crime, I love to blow their minds with this story. In January 1958, Joe Meek’s fortune teller friend did a tarot card reading, drawing three tarot cards and writing down what came to mind. For one card, he wrote Buddy Holly; for the next, Dies; for the last, February 3. February 3 comes and goes, but that date is still on Joe Meek’s mind and in March of 1958, Buddy Holly toured in the UK. At a concert in London, Joe Meek warns Buddy Holly about February 3. Buddy Holly understandably waved it off and thanked him for his concern. February 3, 1959 turned out to be the day the music died. From that point onwards Joe Meek had this obsession with Buddy Holly and felt a connection to him and on February 3, 1967, he shot and killed his landlady before turning the gun on himself. His American counterpart Phil Spector killed Lana Clarkson on February 3, 2003. Wild!

Here’s one more mindblowing fact about Buddy Holly. Believe it or not, he played in more countries than Elvis and if you know about The Colonel, you’ll know why that is. Buddy Holly is one of those musicians I wonder the most about, like what would have become of him. I think he could have collaborated with The Beatles. I think he was always looking towards the future and was a true artist and musically he continued to inspire The Crickets. Even though he didn’t write it, I could totally see him singing “I Fought The Law”, originally by The Crickets and made famous by The Bobby Fuller Four, the namesake of the group being another rock and roll death much too soon. Bobby Fuller, like Holly was born in Texas, but he died at 23, still very young.

Anyway, when I got the opportunity to review Buddy Holly: Words of Love, I had to jump on it because I’m a huge fan of his music and his story is one of those that really impacted me.

Background – Buddy Holly: Words of Love

It’s a Genesis Publications book made in collaboration with the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation, so I know it’s going to be top tier and full of great photos and excellent commentary and my expectations are high. You can tell a lot of love was put in this book because there are contributions from Paul McCartney (foreword), Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (afterword), and with contributions from classic rock greats Brian Wilson, David Gilmour, Robert Plant, Bruce Springsteen, and Emmylou Harris and the proceeds are going towards Teen Cancer America and Teenage Cancer Trust. 

The Buddy Holly Story

As you may already know, Buddy Holly was born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock, Texas on 7 September 1936. Buddy was a childhood nickname and he was even called that at school. Lubbock is a city in the panhandle and not far from New Mexico. Now it’s a city with over a quarter of a million people, but back in Buddy Holly’s day it was a growing town – between 1940 and 1950 it went from almost 32,000 people to almost 72,000 people. As a kid, he loved to sing and play guitar and his mother bought him a cheap guitar when he was 5. 

While in secondary school, he performed at talent shows with a band. In an early band called The Rhythm Playboys, he played banjo and bandmate Bob Montgomery played guitar, singing old hillbilly songs. Before this, Buddy and Bob were a duo. Much like Elvis, he was inspired by gospel music. He would go to black churches and listen to the choir sing. His dream was to collaborate with Mahalia Jackson, but that would never materialise. He was also a big fan of Ray Charles and when Maria Elena met Ray Charles he said he would have collaborated with Buddy Holly. Bandmate Jerry Allison said “Black music was a massive influence; it was 95% of our music. We just loved Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, blues, rock, rhythm and blues.”

One of Buddy Holly’s biggest influences was Elvis and seeing him live was life changing. That’s when he knew he had to play rock and roll. He befriended him and later opened for him at the Fair Park Coliseum in Lubbock. Elvis stood out because of his colourful clothes and stage presence, and Sonny Curtis described seeing him as like “a motorcycle headlight in a hurricane”. Because of Buddy Holly’s more “nerdy” look, boys loved him because they didn’t see him as a threat to their girlfriends. What also made him different from Elvis is he actually wrote his own songs and was a better guitarist.

In 1956 he got a record deal with Decca Records after Nashville scout was impressed with their set opening for Bill Haley & His Comets, but this record deal would not last long. He was only 19. That same year he recorded the first version of “That’ll Be The Day”, inspired by a phrase John Wayne kept saying in The Searchers. His first two singles “Love Me” and “Modern Don Juan” didn’t chart. In 1957, Buddy Holly started working with producer Norman Petty, who had a studio in his hometown of Clovis, New Mexico. Because of his contract with Decca, he couldn’t release “That’ll Be The Day” as Buddy Holly, so he needed a band name. They were brainstorming insect related names and almost picked The Beetles, but instead they went with The Crickets. The version recorded in 1957 topped the charts. Follow-up single “Oh Boy!” was a Sonny West composition and it peaked at #10 and “Peggy Sue”, credited to Jerry Allison, Norman Petty, and Buddy Holly peaked at #3. 

Soon enough The Crickets were sharing bills with other big stars of the time, playing The Biggest Show of Stars ’57 with Fats Domino, Frankie Lymon, Chuck Berry, Paul Anka, and The Drifters. While in New York, he met Dion and The Belmonts and The Everly Brothers. Dion introduced Buddy Holly to egg creams and they all went to Phil’s Men’s Shop. The Crickets played “Peggy Sue” and “That’ll Be The Day” The Ed Sullivan Show in December 1957, but they had an awful experience because Ed Sullivan did not understand nor did he like rock music.

In 1958, Buddy Holly toured the UK and Australia and did package tours with his contemporaries in the US. Elvis was in the Army at the time, so Buddy Holly basically took his place. Unfortunately in the early days, touring as a rock musician was far from glamorous and the musicians would all travel together in really cold buses, miserable in the north in the winter, especially when they were travelling between cities overnight! They got a few big hits in the UK with “Rave On”, “Maybe Baby”, and “Think It Over”. He was even bigger and more recognisable across the pond than in the States. Not long after returning to the States he was back on the road with the Alan Freed Big Beat tour with Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Lymon, Screaming’ Jay Hawkins, Larry Williams, among other musicians.

On 15 August 1958, Buddy Holly married Maria Elena Santiago. He proposed to her five hours after asking her out. As soon as he’d seen her, he knew he wanted to marry her. He wrote “True Love Ways” for her. He moved to New York, splitting from The Crickets and Norman Petty, and he had a lot of plans. He wanted to start his own company, release music on his own terms, and find ways to take his music to the next level getting into production. He was always looking to the future. He also learnt how to fly a plane and he’d bought a Cadillac, the hottest car of the day. He was a real trailblazer with his DIY approach.

Buddy Holly needed money and when the opportunity came to tour again he took it because he needed money, especially because Maria Elena was expecting. He toured with a new band made up of Waylon Jennings, Tommy Allsup, and Carl Bunch. It was the disastrous Winter Dance Party Tour taking place in the worst possible region in the US to have a winter tour: the Midwest. I’m from the Chicago area and I remember how cold it would get every winter and the insane amounts of time people would spend salting their driveways and shovelling snow. The tour had been poorly organised with tour dates scattered across the Midwest in no logical order, so the tour bus would zigzag across the region, very inefficient and uncomfortable, especially in a school bus. Eventually, Buddy had had enough and chartered a plane. A coin toss decided the fate of Ritchie Valens and he took the flight even though he had a fear of flying. Remember that Joe Meek’s fortune teller friend accurately predicted that he’d die on 3 February and Meek had told Holly about his prediction. Here’s something even spookier, Maria Elena said the night before Buddy left for Chicago to rehearse for the tour, they both had similar dreams, waking up at the same time. She insisted he stay in New York because she was two months pregnant and she was worried something would happen. She miscarried after she had heard the news like everyone else did, on TV or radio. Buddy Holly’s family in Lubbock found out the exact same way. That’s why the practice in journalism changed to notify family first before broadcasting a death on television. In the book, you see a lot of reflections from musicians about their reaction to the Day the Music Died.

The final chapter of the book is dedicated to Buddy Holly’s legacy, discussing covers of his songs by legends like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles and places dedicated to Buddy like The Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts & Sciences and The Buddy Holly Centre in Lubbock as well as the annual tribute to Buddy Holly at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, posthumous honours and awards, and media based on Buddy’s life like The Buddy Holly Story biopic starring Gary Busey. 

Final Thoughts on the Book

Final thoughts on the book, I loved every moment of it and it really is the perfect, definitive tribute to Buddy Holly and his impact and I love how it was mainly about his life and his impact on rock and popular music. I loved reading the stories from his tours and finding out about his guitars and the production of the music. There are so many photos that I haven’t seen before and it’s a real treat for any Buddy Holly fan, or anyone who loves 50s rock and roll or has an appreciation for rock history. The perfect gift for any Buddy Holly fan and so much love and care was put into Words of Love. He’s truly universally loved and you can see it in the diversity of musicians involved in this tribute to Buddy Holly, both in identity and sound. Easily a five-star book! For more information, go to the Genesis Publications website.

While Buddy Holly’s career was short, the impact it had on rock and roll and music as a whole lives on. May his memory be a blessing. ❤️

10 Memorable quotes about Buddy Holly

Historically, I’ve done top 10 takeaways, but I felt like since this is a tribute book, I want to share what classic rockers had to say about Buddy, so here are some that I particularly loved, from his contemporaries to his disciples.

1. Little Richard on seeing Buddy Holly play:

“When we toured together, I used to stand in the wings every night to catch his act. He was something else!”

2. Duane Eddy on Buddy Holly’s guitar playing:

“I knew Buddy Holly’s music before I ever met him. We used to play his songs in the country band I worked with in Arizona; the singer loved the songs, and I loved playing the guitar solos. That was in 1957. His guitar licks were indelible, every guitar player that heard them never forgot them.”

3. Cliff Richard on “Oh Boy!”:

“When I heard ‘Oh Boy!’ it was instant. After listening to it for the first time, we could almost play and sing it, which is so unique. It’s a great song to sing on stage; people in the audience know it and will sing it with you. All of them.”

4. Hank Marvin on his lookalike:

“He was different. The expectation of a rock star changed when he came along, a guy that played guitar properly, not just using it as an ornament. His whole presentation was different, as was his playing and his singing, and his songs. Perhaps that’s why he stood out so much and why he was so much of an influence, because when something is good and different it hits you hard.” 

5. Dion DiMucci on the first time he’d heard Buddy Holly:

“One of Buddy’s songs came thundering through our radio one day. It was from outer space and so innovative; a new world was born for me in that moment, and it just opened everything up. It’s hard to explain what ‘Peggy Sue’ does to you when you hear it for the first time, how the music enters your body and moves around – it’s a sensation. I ran home and tried to learn it on guitar.”

6. Paul McCartney on Buddy Holly’s influence:

“…The Everly Brothers provided the harmony, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard provided the energetic rock and roll – but it was Buddy Holly and the Crickets who were the major inspiration to us in The Beatles.”

7. Pete Townshend on Buddy Holly’s influence:

“Buddy Holly was a hero to me. One of the great rhythm players like Eddie Cochran. Both were influenced by the blues, of course, but when I was a kid I didn’t really know that. Buddy was a bit of a geek, but so elegant and cool. No frills, just great songs and a great sound.”

8. Peter Asher on what could have been:

“If Buddy had not died so tragically early, he wouldn’t be fat and playing Vegas, he’d be writing programmes for Pro Tools, running a record label, and discovering new bands. He was intellectually and musically hungry, while wanting to be a star – which he did, no musician gets there by accident. He was one of the most brilliant of the bunch and would’ve gone on to have an extraordinary career beyond writing some of the best pop songs ever written.”

9. Peter Frampton on Buddy Holly’s influence:

“The first song I ever sang in public was Buddy Holly – and that means so much to me. It was really the very beginning of me learning to play guitar. At the same time as Buddy, there was Eddie Cochran and all these people that played guitar and wrote their own music or sang and played – which was the most important thing to me. Buddy was pretty techie , and he recorded a lot of his later stuff in his New York apartment on his own tape recorder.”

10. Robert Plant on Buddy Holly’s voice:

“That voice gliding and spiralling – one minute he was a tough guy, the next minute forlorn and broken hearted, hung out to dry. That sweet baby voice gets ominous and rock and roll bad. Rockabilly, rock and roll, ballad, and schmooze – all of his stories and characters over and gone in a little over two minutes. Genius…” 

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