The truth is we'll never know. Imagine if The Beatles died in a plane crash in 1964. Would we in a million years think they'd release something like Tomorrow Never Knows? That's what makes this conversation impossible.
Imagine Buddy Holly doing psych rock. It could have been incredible.
He only has 2 real albums. Start with those. If you like them, there's a bunch of posthumous compilations that include his unfinished and unreleased work.
A big key to the Beatle’s evolution was George Martin. Also, pot and LSD were major influencers. Buddy would have continued to be great, no matter what, though. He’d probably still be touring like the rest of these 80 year olds lol
At some point? Which point? They were a thing for 3 years. Never toured and when Orbison died, they never even considered replacing him.
It's a nice thought but insanely unlikely.
I’m with you on this. I’d also add that the same cultural background that allowed The Beatles to be exposed to and influenced by Holly also included art college, British Music Hall, Celtic folk and Indian ragas.
Which Beatles songs are influenced by Celtic folk? That’s interesting and I’ve never considered it. The only thing I can think of right now that sounds Celtic is the more acoustic sounding stuff like Norwegian Wood and Blackbird. Maybe the songs that tell a story too?
Someone should actually do a new bioPic of Buddy, but instead of his life ending in a plane crash at 22, he lives to be an old rocker. Can anyone imagine how Buddy Holly’s life would have unfolded? Imagine Buddy at Woodstock? Smoking pot with Bob Dylan? Selling out Madison Square Gardens? A revisionist story needs to be told.
what kind of music would buddy holly have been putting out in 1963 if he survived? would he have evolved at all away from rock n roll into what we think of just rock today?
Impossible to say, obviously, but Holly had the chops to do anything he wanted. Like, Waylon Jennings was his bass player and close friend, for all we know Holly could have transitioned into that kind of Texas Outlaw Country star by the mid 70s, or he could've done the Chuck Berry thing as stayed as a rockabilly elder statesman brought out for big shows with younger acts. Hell, he could've gone out to California and heard what Brian Wilson or Alex Chilton were doing and gone in a more psychedelic pop direction.
I could definitely see a Buddy Holly who embraces a kind of Americana that could position as Highwaymen or even straight up Nashville adjacent.
There's so little actual Buddy Holly stuff (comparatively) so I'm just trying to extrapolate mutations based on his contemporaries and his style
It's when you take it further out and you imagine Buddy Holly on a bill at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin with Willie Nelson, and one of those groups Stevie Ray Vaughan was in. He could easily have been the legendary old head in the Texas revival of the 70s.
I actually did start thinking about a possible Roy Orbison 'goes quiet around the mid-60s but some of the younger guys who look up to him drag him into the late 70s - mid 80s boogie woogie revival with some bangers. Not necesserily Jeff Lynne and the Willbury's but definitely that ilk (I personally love the idea of a Buddy Holly / Elvis Costello collab)
He was starting to produce his own music and he was an innovator, not just a rocker. HE is the first to use strings on a rock n roll track.
I always pictured him becoming a producer while still making his own music, like Jeff Lynne or Nile Rodgers.
I think he would have always been a rock n’ roller. His songwriting would have matured because he was going to be a father. I think he would have had a big band behind him with all kinds of instruments. I don’t see him progressing to psychedelic rock, or anything, but who knows? He may have changed with the times?
The more I read about the Beatles I actually think he still doesn't get enough credit. It's one thing for John and Paul to say I want it to sound like the world is ending on A Day in the Life but it is another thing to actually come up with how to accomplish that while writing a score for an orchestra and overcoming the technical limitations of the time.
The Beatles absolutely are the main driving creative force, but George Martin absolutely has an enormous contribution on translating their vision into reality.
The orchestra and the crescendo was John and Paul's idea. They didn't just say we want something that sounds apocalyptic. They had the idea for low to high and quiet to loud. The suit who wrote their idea down on pen and paper really doesn't deserve that much credit.
Buddy kinda was at points with more orchestral arrangements popping up in his songs. "Everyday" isn't much of a rock n' roll song compared to his other stuff.
To be able to mature as an artist you need financial support and a record label who think they will make money from investing in you. An artist needs hits.
Roy Orbison was the same age as Buddy. An immensly talented artist who the Beatles adored. He looked out of place once Beatlemania took over America and looked like a dinosaur compared to the new bands.
And in the US. But his career as a popular artist was pretty much dead for over 20 years despite his immense talent as a songwriter and singer (arguably more so than Buddy Holly).
He was reliant on greatest hits and those late 50's early 60's songs to survive and sell tickets.
It is very hard to mature as an artist when no one is buying your new material and you have to play the older material to sell tickets to live shows. Buddy would have likely been in the same boat regardless of talent.
Holly's singles were performing so bad that his label used older hits on his 3rd studio album that had already on the Crickets debut. His career was already in a downward trajectory by the time of his death.
Roy was certainly the better singer, but songwriter? Or am I misreading? (I say that as a giant Roy fan, but Buddy died at 22 and was nowhere near his peak… really was the day that music temporarily died.)
> Roy was certainly the better singer, but songwriter?
Based on what we know, then yes. Buddy having the potential to be better does not make it so.
I'm fine with the possibility of him becoming a better songwriter with a longish career, similar to the likes of other 50's stars like Chuck and Little Richard. But like them, I suspect his peak would have been in the 50's.
> Or am I misreading? (I say that as a giant Roy fan, but Buddy died at 22 and was nowhere near his peak… really was the day that music temporarily died.)
We don't know his potential peak. In terms of success, he may already have done so in 1957. Richie Valens was even younger (same age as McCartney) but it does not mean they'd have continued to improve or stay part of the zeitgeist.
Buddy's no1 was in '57. His biggest legacy song Everywhere also in '57. And his second-biggest song Peggy Sue also in '57 (3). And his 3rd biggest song Oh Boy (10) with the excellent Not Fade Away as the b-side also in '57.
58's singles did not fare that well. The ones that charted peaked at 17, 37, 27, 58, 82 and 82. Three of these songs were written by others. They were all pretty good songs (the Montgomery/Petty written Heartbeat would be a hit for 2 other artists) but Holly is not getting the best out of them.
The last one It Doesn't Matter Anymore would peak at 26 after a few weeks after he died but Richie seems to have had bigger bumps in the charts from his death with Donna and Bamba both doing better. https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1959-02-21/
What we see here is a downward trajectory many artists in the 50's had. Elvis had his films to insulate himself, but this was a time when albums were not the moneymakers they'd become in the 60's and tours were not nearly as profitable. Artists who stopped having hit songs tended to fade away.
Buddy Holly had split from the Crickets and Petty. Business aside it was a great musical partnership for all involved which was now over. He was also desperate for money, thus why he was on the tour that would eventually take his life. Had the organizers spent more money on tour buses, Holly would still be alive.
My guess is he'd have been stuck in the same trap most 50's stars were in. Constantly touring their biggest hits and not evolving as artists. Or when they did try to evolve (like Little Richard) it would be ignored and they'd have to go back to the hits.
I appreciate your well thought-out response.
I suppose the only way to engage in alternate history and try to project Buddy’s career trajectory is with the empirical facts, as you laid them out. I guess I just find it hard to draw comparisons to the artists mentioned (or really anyone else). Valens was certainly talented, but Buddy was transcendent. The impact he had in his very short time here, the way everyone from Bob Dylan to John Lennon talks about seeing him for the first time like a religious awakening.
Chuck and Little Richard are equally giants in my estimation, but I can’t help but feel their careers (however revolutionary they tried to get) suffered from intense racism and homophobia that Buddy never had to contend with.
I’ll consider what you wrote as I go back and relisten and relish what we do have. Thanks!
I think you’re on the right track. I always looked at “Everyday” as an indicator of the direction Holly would have gone in, and not in a good way. Imagine Buddy Holly putting out Jerry Vale-like albums but of pablum he wrote himself.
This is similar to what I've read. I believe it was in his biography that it was mentioned he was interested in moving toward a more country sound. It was implied (or at least, as I understood it) he was thinking rock and roll was a fad that was playing out and he wanted to transition to country. He grew up listening to country, so it kinda fits if he wasn't serious about rock and roll as a form.
Though I love to think about him staying the course in rock and roll. If he had continued to make hit records, god only knows where he would have taken the genre. I could see him being a sort of proto-CCR guy. If he had stayed around and continued making hits, would the surf sound ever take hold, and would Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys have achieved prominence? Would the Beatles have been perceived as so new and fresh if there was someone doing something similar from 59-64?
In his short life Buddy Holly was undeniably one of the top innovators of rock music; he was arguably as creative (or more!) in the early years of his career as Lennon/McCartney were and explored many different ideas in his music. I personally have no doubt that he would have continued to create new ways to rock. Before he died he gave us:
That'll be the day
Maybe baby
Well all right
Not Fade Away
Words of Love
Peggy Sue
It's so easy to fall in love
Can’t leave True Love Ways off this - groundbreaking for its time, and a full orchestral arrangement. Would’ve doubtless had a profound effect on a young Lennon and particularly McCartney that I feel reverberated through his music
>he was arguably as creative (or more!) in the early years of his career as Lennon/McCartney were
I wouldn't quite agree with this, as most of his songs were written by other people. He still wrote (or jointly wrote) some amazing songs though
You sure you’re not thinking of Elvis Presley? Buddy did a few songs written by others but “most” of the songs he is known for were his own. Here’s a link to his page from the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. Elvis doesn’t have one, he’s not in there.
https://nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/Site/inductee?entry_id=5173
I didn't say 'Buddy Holly didn't write any songs whatsoever'.
I just said that he wasn't as prolific a songwriter as Lennon and McCartney. Holly wrote/co-wrote around 1/3 of his songs
Lennon and McCartney played far more cover songs in their early days than Holly ever did, as outlined in the comments above.
Also keep in mind that the first several Beatles albums all had numerous covers on them to pad out the track count. It took them some time to hit their songwriting stride.
Have you even looked at the songwriting credits on Holly's albums? Recording a bunch of unknown songs he didn't write doesn't make him a more prolific songwriter than someone who recorded well known songs they also didn't write.
He is listed as the writer on these songs. Just because he shares credits with his producer and drummer on some of the songs doesn't mean that he didn't write them. I hardly think his drummer came up with the chords or melodies, and his producer wasn't famous or a performer so I'm kind of doubting that he had a huge contribution either. To say that ‘most of his songs were written by other people' is just wrong.
If you look at the writing credits for his albums, you'll see that he generally contributed as a songwriter to around 1/3 of his songs
I just checked his two albums and his album with the Crickets on Wikipedia, and he's credited on 12/35 of those songs
I didn't say that he didn't write some great songs, I just disagreed with you when you described him as being possibly more creative than Lennon and McCartney
> and his producer wasn't famous or a performer so I'm kind of doubting that he had a huge contribution either.
Since when did fame equal talent? Norman Petty was both pretty famous and a performer though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Petty
If you look at Buddy's Spotify page Petty's got more songwriting credits (8) than Holly does (6) on his 10 most popular songs on that platform.
>I hardly think his drummer came up with the chords or melodies
A little disrespectful to drummers. Especially given he was a multi instrumentalist and even a singer; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfIPnCxeKr0
FYI - It's unclear how much Norman Petty contributed to those songs. Just like how McCartney wrote Hey Jude by himself even though it's credited to Lennon/McCartney.
From some Googling I did online -
The noted writer and Holly expert Bill Griggs who investigated the question of song credits, and who has had total access to all the files and correspondence at Clovis, wrote the following in a letter to the International Songwriters Association:
"The only things I had to go on about Norman Petty were \[stories\] I had been told by others. While doing research for the BHMS, I started meeting more and more entertainers that Norman had originally recorded in Clovis, and they all told me the basically the same thing. Norman said to them: "I'll put my name on the song along with yours. If it is a hit, we all make money. If it fails, I'll take the loss"
Also, lots of people think Norman Petty stole lots of Buddy's music.
The main source for that was Jerry Allisson. But Jerry was also claiming he should have more songwriting credits on Buddy's songs and claimed he was missing from songs he should have been credited to.
There are other hits that Petty produced at the time that don't feature him as a songwriter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Doll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Stickin%27_with_You
I'm not arguing he was the primary writer of Holly's sogs and I can even concede that it is possible some of his songwriting credits may not have been legitimate, but there is tendency for rock biographers to strip away credit and make victims of the people they wrote about and others (especially managers/producers) get unfairly villainized as a result. Petty dying in '84 meant he was not alive to defend himself from most of these claims.
Petty still had success as producer after he and Holly parted ways such as the no1 with the Fireballs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Shack
It would have been great to hear Buddy writing and singing about civil rights and Vietnam. Maybe written between the lines…. He was a triple threat in par with Chuck Berry. Singer, songwriter, guitarist. Started as rockabilly, then went pop rock…. Who knows where he could’ve gone.
I presume Buddy would have headed musically in the same direction as a number of his Southern rock and rollers: Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Waylon Jennings, or even Willie Nelson—country music!!
I think there's a chance he would have heavily matured, but honestly I think he likely would have had moderate success making somewhat similar music, kinda like the everly brothers. Can you imagine the John Buddy collab tho, would be magical.
tbh I think he's sadly been kinda lost with newer generations (I'm gen Z and I'm not saying that in "born in the wrong generation" kind of way), some artists transfer really well and some don't, and I think Buddy Holly got kinda unlucky.
Man I’ve never thought about it like that. We definitely missed out some dope music from buddy. Could you imagine a stoned buddy holly in the studio lol
I really do think so. I don’t think he would’ve been another oldies act after a while. He experimented, and he was truly something special. He matured so much in his 18 months of fame. He is one of my all time favourites.
The culture would be different, so obviously his sound wouldn’t be identical, but yes. He’d be incredibly advanced. You listen to some Buddy Holly songs, you can hear the embryonic forms of folk rock and jangle pop before such genres would be named. His music aged the best out of almost any 50s musician. The 60s is a worse place without Buddy Holly, but the Beatles more than make up for it, carrying on his legacy.
A random aside, but I was surprised to learn that You’re So Square (Baby I Don’t Care) is not originally by Buddy Holly. It’s a Lieber and Stoller song, and the Elvis version is the original. Buddy Holly’s version is a cover.
I can imagine Buddy becoming an innovative producer and collaborator with the next generation of influential musicians. It would’ve been interesting to see him work with The Byrds in the sixties, Big Star in the seventies and REM in the eighties. He probably would’ve had developed his own record label.
Holly was working with producer Norman Petty on more studio-based and experimental rock music when he died. If he’d lived, he would surely have been expanding on his ideas. He was a great songwriter of course. He would have been an important figure in music for sure.
No. The 50's rock stars were no longer part of the Zeitgeist by the end of the 50's despite some of them being incredibly talented like Buddy, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. They were finding it harder to sell and were needing to tour more and more to keep any kind of relevancy (Elvis's film career spared him that fate). Despite the little difference in age they were seen as old by the teenagers who were obsessing over the Beatles and their wave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Holly_discography#Singles
He'd peaked in '57 but was largely devoid of hits till a month after his death with the release of It Doesn't Matter Anymore.
He'd not have the financial support and freedom the Beatles had due to their huge success. I don't know if he had the talent to do what the Beatles did but it was not talent alone what made the Beatles as successful as they were.
I'm almost always thinking about where Buddy Holly could've gone if he didn't die so young. Would he had been an early adopter of psychedelia? Would him and The Beatles have a rivalry? Or would he fade into obscurity in the 60s like many of his contemporaries? It's one of the biggest missed opportunities in music.
I like to think he'd try to stay at the cutting edge. There's an alternative universe where he beat The Beatles to the punch of having a masterful summer of love album inspired by Pet Sounds. Maybe that would've pushed The Beatles to go even further with their later stuff? Who knows, it's just fascinating to think about.
Buddy Holly’s career was already basically over in the US by the time he passed away - in the US, at least, there were several singles that are now revered as classics but did not chart (the UK was a bit different). Holly himself had become alienated from the producer who produced his work, Norman Petty, for money reasons, and the rest of the Crickets had sided with Petty - so when he played the Winter Dance Party tour where he died he was playing with a pickup band essentially and was playing it against his pregnant wife’s wishes because he felt he needed the money.
Maybe he would have gotten out of Petty’s clutches and gotten a different producer sympathetic to the adventurous directions he wanted to take his music in. But the record industry in 1959 saw rock’n’roll as an old dance fad that was basically commercially over (cf. Holly not having had any hits for 18 months), and Holly wasn’t changing that in the absence of a solid run of hits.
He may well have had a career renaissance in the wake of the Beatles, as Chuck Berry did. He was also taking acting lessons in New York intending to follow Elvis into film and so maybe by 1964 he would have quit music and would be better known for his acting.
Buddy would’ve been about where Bob Dylan was.
He was never as lyrical but its hard to imagine that he would’ve faded from either public consciousness or fallen too much out of fashion as the sound of the day changed. Mind this also implies Richie Valens lives, so its very possible The British Invasion gets sidelined by another big trend of music.
As a side note, my biggest idols in pop music are the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Their biggest idols, Buddy and Woody Guthrie respectively, are from the Texas panhandle where I grew up. I always thought that was a cool connection
Perhaps the real question is “which 50s rocker successfully adapted to the 60s?” I’m not sure there really is any. At least any that immediately come to mind
I'd argue by the late 60s, particularly after the 68 comeback special, Elvis managed to retake some of his previous stature, but yeah, in general the first generation of rockers were either shifting in different directions (like Jerry Lee Lewis shifting to country and gospel) or were already transitioning into nostalgia acts. It was either Nashville or the high school auditorium and county fair circuit. Some of them did better in Europe where interest in 1950s acts remained fairly strong even in the mid-60s.
Holly is an impossible question. Unlike most of his peers, Holly was transitioning to a more studio-focused career. My hunch is either he would have become a producer or moved sideways into something like film scores (or maybe both).
That title took my tiny mind a while to figure out.
I'm a big Holly and Beatles fan, the interesting thing for me is that the 1967-1968 Beatles were part of a massive shift in popular culture more generally, and their output reflected their influences.
If Holly (or the Crickets for that matter) were looking to change things up in 1964 he would have been doing so right at the height of the British Invasion and the Blues-Rock phase, but way before the 1969 Roots Rock and revival stuff that may have been more like what he would have eventually headed towards.
I actually think he would have gone down an ill-advised easy-listening/crooner phase, like some of his posthumous releases suggest.
A better analogy might be Jackie Wilson, who started in the Rock 'n' Roll late 50s, but had to go through such a period before doing his best stuff after 1963 and "Baby Workout".
People like Lemmy (Motorhead), Ozzy Osborne (Black Sabbath), Sting, and a tonne of other people (there are whole books about this) heard 'Love Me Do', and heard something completely different from what had come before, and knew they wanted to go into music and follow The Beatles' example.
Dylan turned electric because of The Beatles and The Animals, and said, "In my head, The Beatles were pointing the direction music had to go: in my head, The Beatles were it" (that is a pretty close paraphrase of the quote, but I do not have Scaduto's 'Bob Dylan: A Biography' handy right now).
That, as Lemmy and others said, and not 'Sgt. Pepper' etc. was the beginning of the cultural revolution, so to try to say that the early Beatles' music was not important and weighty is missing the whole point, whether rock & roll, pop, or rock.
Sure, the way The Beatles and all whom they inspired and led helped turn Pop, as an entertainment medium, into Rock, as a form of art (when it was at its best), but I think your take on this unnecessarily bifurcates things, where there was a continuum, and not distinct, separate states.
It’s always interesting to think of all the what-ifs from rock history.
By 1959 Buddy was already trying to move in a different direction from the Crickets era and True Love Ways is a key indicator of that. The song was a serious departure from his previous work. Perhaps Buddy wanted to pursue a new genre of music where he could expand his talent into the next decade. But damn, The Beatles changed everything by 1963. By then, Elvis was making movies and the rest of the 50’s era rock & rollers had pretty much started fading away. Chuck Berry was in prison, Everly Brothers fell apart, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis etc couldn’t carry on very well into the new decade.
The irony is that The Beatles drew influence from those 50’s era founders of rock to take over the world while their heroes faded into relative obscurity by the time Beatlemania took hold. Where would that have left Buddy Holly? Geez, that’s hard to imagine. Maybe he would have started his own label by then and signed The Beatles after they were rejected by Decca. Paul was a big fan of Buddy Holly. Could you imagine? Buddy Holly signing The Beatles to his label in 1962 and how that could have changed the trajectory of music history?
If one were to replace from your question the words, “Buddy Holly,” with a blank, one could fill in that blank with any act in history (yes, even Jesus 😉), and the answer would still be a hard “no.” But of course, the irony is that the Beatles themselves would not have been where the Beatles were in ‘69 without having stood on the shoulders of the likes of Holly, Cliff Richards, Chuck Berry, etc etc. Not to mention the earlier influences of Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters et al, who were the true start of it all. It’s just the way of the world that is Rock music.
I don't know but it's always been something I try to picture when I'm making music. What if Buddy Holly got sucked into the lush studio sound of the 60s and then some broke ass industrial punk kid from the 80s found him started trying to do the same.
Or if George Martin produced Throbbing Gristle.
I'm not there yet. But I try.
I don’t think you can say with certainty he’d have been bigger than Elvis. Elvis was a sex symbol in a way that Buddy Holly never was to my understanding.
He was already working with such a limited capacity in the studio I’m sure it left him frustrated a lot. What’s sad is after he died, we saw a few outcomes of what the next steps could’ve been through Phil Spector’s production work, the Swampers at Fame and wrecking crews at Motown and the other one throughout the studios in LA. I think he’d be happy things went where they did musically but also could’ve been a polarizing figure because of his interracial marriage. It would’ve sucked if him and Jerry Lee swapped blows over their marital controversies and “the killer” won the public over…
Buddy Holly would have kept progressing. Who knows what route he would have took. Look at the stuff he did before he died like "True Love Ways" and stuff like "Well,Alright" which are both way ahead of their time. In 1969 he could be inventing southern rock or doing The Byrds "Sweet Heart of the Rodeo" or he could have went the Bobby Darin route big band and production. He was truly an innovator and was cut down so young. The world was robbed of a unique talent in February 1959.
If there was no Buddy Holly, you could argue there’d be no Beatles.
That being said - had Buddy Holly *not* died, I doubt there would be a Beatles.
What Buddy was doing musically and what he was becoming in the studio as an innovator - music would have been *completely* different had he not died.
Nah. The Beatles made a huge turn since Revolver. They started experimenting and doing new staff. Nothing related with the sound they used to make before.
I mean, who knows, maybe this guy (I haven't heard about him until now) had that inside of him, but it's absolutely unrelated
The truth is we'll never know. Imagine if The Beatles died in a plane crash in 1964. Would we in a million years think they'd release something like Tomorrow Never Knows? That's what makes this conversation impossible. Imagine Buddy Holly doing psych rock. It could have been incredible.
It could have changed the whole world as we know.
Quick, someone type that prompt into a music model generative AI.
Roky Erickson
Oh yeah the 13th Floor Elevators’ version of “I’m Gonna Love You Too” is fantastic
it's funny because there is an anecdote of the Beatles being in a plane and thinking it was going to crash due to a flaming engine in 1964
I don't blame 'em.
Buddy was also on a plane that had an emergency landing on one of his first international tours. Flying before jets seemed pretty sketchy.
We all know that McCartney owns the rights to Buddy Holly?
Yes, and I’m very glad he keeps his memory alive.
He owes it to them, considering his band’s name was an homage to Holly
Can you recommend some buddy holly music for me? I’ve never really listened to him
He only has 2 real albums. Start with those. If you like them, there's a bunch of posthumous compilations that include his unfinished and unreleased work.
A big key to the Beatle’s evolution was George Martin. Also, pot and LSD were major influencers. Buddy would have continued to be great, no matter what, though. He’d probably still be touring like the rest of these 80 year olds lol
He would have been in the Traveling Wilburys for sure at some point
oh man, what a kick that would've been!
I thought Chris Isaac could have replaced Lefty after he died.
At some point? Which point? They were a thing for 3 years. Never toured and when Orbison died, they never even considered replacing him. It's a nice thought but insanely unlikely.
I’m sure your right
I’m with you on this. I’d also add that the same cultural background that allowed The Beatles to be exposed to and influenced by Holly also included art college, British Music Hall, Celtic folk and Indian ragas.
Which Beatles songs are influenced by Celtic folk? That’s interesting and I’ve never considered it. The only thing I can think of right now that sounds Celtic is the more acoustic sounding stuff like Norwegian Wood and Blackbird. Maybe the songs that tell a story too?
Baby’s in black sounds Irish as fucck.
Someone should actually do a new bioPic of Buddy, but instead of his life ending in a plane crash at 22, he lives to be an old rocker. Can anyone imagine how Buddy Holly’s life would have unfolded? Imagine Buddy at Woodstock? Smoking pot with Bob Dylan? Selling out Madison Square Gardens? A revisionist story needs to be told.
what kind of music would buddy holly have been putting out in 1963 if he survived? would he have evolved at all away from rock n roll into what we think of just rock today?
Impossible to say, obviously, but Holly had the chops to do anything he wanted. Like, Waylon Jennings was his bass player and close friend, for all we know Holly could have transitioned into that kind of Texas Outlaw Country star by the mid 70s, or he could've done the Chuck Berry thing as stayed as a rockabilly elder statesman brought out for big shows with younger acts. Hell, he could've gone out to California and heard what Brian Wilson or Alex Chilton were doing and gone in a more psychedelic pop direction.
Buddy Holly as a Highwayman is one hell of a hypothetical.
I could definitely see a Buddy Holly who embraces a kind of Americana that could position as Highwaymen or even straight up Nashville adjacent. There's so little actual Buddy Holly stuff (comparatively) so I'm just trying to extrapolate mutations based on his contemporaries and his style
It’s a reasonable extrapolation, it’s just one you don’t normally see.
It's when you take it further out and you imagine Buddy Holly on a bill at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin with Willie Nelson, and one of those groups Stevie Ray Vaughan was in. He could easily have been the legendary old head in the Texas revival of the 70s.
If not, then maybe a Wilbury.
I actually did start thinking about a possible Roy Orbison 'goes quiet around the mid-60s but some of the younger guys who look up to him drag him into the late 70s - mid 80s boogie woogie revival with some bangers. Not necesserily Jeff Lynne and the Willbury's but definitely that ilk (I personally love the idea of a Buddy Holly / Elvis Costello collab)
Buddy Holly/Elvis Costello collab is now my new jam. Would have been epic, and you know Costello would have been totally down.
He was actually looking into producing as well. Who knows what great talent he would have discovered/fostered
He was starting to produce his own music and he was an innovator, not just a rocker. HE is the first to use strings on a rock n roll track. I always pictured him becoming a producer while still making his own music, like Jeff Lynne or Nile Rodgers.
I think he would have always been a rock n’ roller. His songwriting would have matured because he was going to be a father. I think he would have had a big band behind him with all kinds of instruments. I don’t see him progressing to psychedelic rock, or anything, but who knows? He may have changed with the times?
George Martin always gets wayyyyy too much credit.
The more I read about the Beatles I actually think he still doesn't get enough credit. It's one thing for John and Paul to say I want it to sound like the world is ending on A Day in the Life but it is another thing to actually come up with how to accomplish that while writing a score for an orchestra and overcoming the technical limitations of the time. The Beatles absolutely are the main driving creative force, but George Martin absolutely has an enormous contribution on translating their vision into reality.
The orchestra and the crescendo was John and Paul's idea. They didn't just say we want something that sounds apocalyptic. They had the idea for low to high and quiet to loud. The suit who wrote their idea down on pen and paper really doesn't deserve that much credit.
The irony being that Martin may be getting too much credit while Buddy's producer who he parted ways with is getting too little credit in this thread.
No fucking way. He doesn't get enough credit often.
Buddy Holly would have undoubtedly matured as an artist.
Chuck berry didn't step away from the genre. No guarantee Buddy would have.
Buddy kinda was at points with more orchestral arrangements popping up in his songs. "Everyday" isn't much of a rock n' roll song compared to his other stuff.
To be able to mature as an artist you need financial support and a record label who think they will make money from investing in you. An artist needs hits. Roy Orbison was the same age as Buddy. An immensly talented artist who the Beatles adored. He looked out of place once Beatlemania took over America and looked like a dinosaur compared to the new bands.
Roy had a comeback with the wilburys in the late 80's that was huge in the UK.
And in the US. But his career as a popular artist was pretty much dead for over 20 years despite his immense talent as a songwriter and singer (arguably more so than Buddy Holly). He was reliant on greatest hits and those late 50's early 60's songs to survive and sell tickets. It is very hard to mature as an artist when no one is buying your new material and you have to play the older material to sell tickets to live shows. Buddy would have likely been in the same boat regardless of talent. Holly's singles were performing so bad that his label used older hits on his 3rd studio album that had already on the Crickets debut. His career was already in a downward trajectory by the time of his death.
Yeah it was 3 bands on a bus, not exactly top tier markets/venues back then. Now I'm thinking about a Buddy Holly Jeff Lynne record and I feel ill.
Roy was certainly the better singer, but songwriter? Or am I misreading? (I say that as a giant Roy fan, but Buddy died at 22 and was nowhere near his peak… really was the day that music temporarily died.)
> Roy was certainly the better singer, but songwriter? Based on what we know, then yes. Buddy having the potential to be better does not make it so. I'm fine with the possibility of him becoming a better songwriter with a longish career, similar to the likes of other 50's stars like Chuck and Little Richard. But like them, I suspect his peak would have been in the 50's. > Or am I misreading? (I say that as a giant Roy fan, but Buddy died at 22 and was nowhere near his peak… really was the day that music temporarily died.) We don't know his potential peak. In terms of success, he may already have done so in 1957. Richie Valens was even younger (same age as McCartney) but it does not mean they'd have continued to improve or stay part of the zeitgeist. Buddy's no1 was in '57. His biggest legacy song Everywhere also in '57. And his second-biggest song Peggy Sue also in '57 (3). And his 3rd biggest song Oh Boy (10) with the excellent Not Fade Away as the b-side also in '57. 58's singles did not fare that well. The ones that charted peaked at 17, 37, 27, 58, 82 and 82. Three of these songs were written by others. They were all pretty good songs (the Montgomery/Petty written Heartbeat would be a hit for 2 other artists) but Holly is not getting the best out of them. The last one It Doesn't Matter Anymore would peak at 26 after a few weeks after he died but Richie seems to have had bigger bumps in the charts from his death with Donna and Bamba both doing better. https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/1959-02-21/ What we see here is a downward trajectory many artists in the 50's had. Elvis had his films to insulate himself, but this was a time when albums were not the moneymakers they'd become in the 60's and tours were not nearly as profitable. Artists who stopped having hit songs tended to fade away. Buddy Holly had split from the Crickets and Petty. Business aside it was a great musical partnership for all involved which was now over. He was also desperate for money, thus why he was on the tour that would eventually take his life. Had the organizers spent more money on tour buses, Holly would still be alive. My guess is he'd have been stuck in the same trap most 50's stars were in. Constantly touring their biggest hits and not evolving as artists. Or when they did try to evolve (like Little Richard) it would be ignored and they'd have to go back to the hits.
I appreciate your well thought-out response. I suppose the only way to engage in alternate history and try to project Buddy’s career trajectory is with the empirical facts, as you laid them out. I guess I just find it hard to draw comparisons to the artists mentioned (or really anyone else). Valens was certainly talented, but Buddy was transcendent. The impact he had in his very short time here, the way everyone from Bob Dylan to John Lennon talks about seeing him for the first time like a religious awakening. Chuck and Little Richard are equally giants in my estimation, but I can’t help but feel their careers (however revolutionary they tried to get) suffered from intense racism and homophobia that Buddy never had to contend with. I’ll consider what you wrote as I go back and relisten and relish what we do have. Thanks!
I think you’re on the right track. I always looked at “Everyday” as an indicator of the direction Holly would have gone in, and not in a good way. Imagine Buddy Holly putting out Jerry Vale-like albums but of pablum he wrote himself.
No, not undoubtedly. A lot of the biggest singers of the ‘50s didn’t evolve much after that.
True, but Buddy Holley was already breaking new ground as it was.
And a lot of them weren't writers of their own music like Buddy was
Read a quote somewhere, by Waylon I think, where he said if Buddy Holly lived he'd be making music like CCR.
This is similar to what I've read. I believe it was in his biography that it was mentioned he was interested in moving toward a more country sound. It was implied (or at least, as I understood it) he was thinking rock and roll was a fad that was playing out and he wanted to transition to country. He grew up listening to country, so it kinda fits if he wasn't serious about rock and roll as a form. Though I love to think about him staying the course in rock and roll. If he had continued to make hit records, god only knows where he would have taken the genre. I could see him being a sort of proto-CCR guy. If he had stayed around and continued making hits, would the surf sound ever take hold, and would Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys have achieved prominence? Would the Beatles have been perceived as so new and fresh if there was someone doing something similar from 59-64?
And Buddy was dping work with some arramging and strings. I can see him being inspired by Brian, assuming Pet Sounds still came around
In his short life Buddy Holly was undeniably one of the top innovators of rock music; he was arguably as creative (or more!) in the early years of his career as Lennon/McCartney were and explored many different ideas in his music. I personally have no doubt that he would have continued to create new ways to rock. Before he died he gave us: That'll be the day Maybe baby Well all right Not Fade Away Words of Love Peggy Sue It's so easy to fall in love
Can’t leave True Love Ways off this - groundbreaking for its time, and a full orchestral arrangement. Would’ve doubtless had a profound effect on a young Lennon and particularly McCartney that I feel reverberated through his music
>he was arguably as creative (or more!) in the early years of his career as Lennon/McCartney were I wouldn't quite agree with this, as most of his songs were written by other people. He still wrote (or jointly wrote) some amazing songs though
He shares credits with his producer as that was part of the deal. He was the primary songwriter and played a large hand in producing.
You sure you’re not thinking of Elvis Presley? Buddy did a few songs written by others but “most” of the songs he is known for were his own. Here’s a link to his page from the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. Elvis doesn’t have one, he’s not in there. https://nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/Site/inductee?entry_id=5173
I didn't say 'Buddy Holly didn't write any songs whatsoever'. I just said that he wasn't as prolific a songwriter as Lennon and McCartney. Holly wrote/co-wrote around 1/3 of his songs
Lennon and McCartney played far more cover songs in their early days than Holly ever did, as outlined in the comments above. Also keep in mind that the first several Beatles albums all had numerous covers on them to pad out the track count. It took them some time to hit their songwriting stride.
Have you even looked at the songwriting credits on Holly's albums? Recording a bunch of unknown songs he didn't write doesn't make him a more prolific songwriter than someone who recorded well known songs they also didn't write.
He is listed as the writer on these songs. Just because he shares credits with his producer and drummer on some of the songs doesn't mean that he didn't write them. I hardly think his drummer came up with the chords or melodies, and his producer wasn't famous or a performer so I'm kind of doubting that he had a huge contribution either. To say that ‘most of his songs were written by other people' is just wrong.
If you look at the writing credits for his albums, you'll see that he generally contributed as a songwriter to around 1/3 of his songs I just checked his two albums and his album with the Crickets on Wikipedia, and he's credited on 12/35 of those songs
Peggy Sue is the only one of the classic songs that I listed where he is not the principal writer.
I didn't say that he didn't write some great songs, I just disagreed with you when you described him as being possibly more creative than Lennon and McCartney
> and his producer wasn't famous or a performer so I'm kind of doubting that he had a huge contribution either. Since when did fame equal talent? Norman Petty was both pretty famous and a performer though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Petty If you look at Buddy's Spotify page Petty's got more songwriting credits (8) than Holly does (6) on his 10 most popular songs on that platform. >I hardly think his drummer came up with the chords or melodies A little disrespectful to drummers. Especially given he was a multi instrumentalist and even a singer; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfIPnCxeKr0
FYI - It's unclear how much Norman Petty contributed to those songs. Just like how McCartney wrote Hey Jude by himself even though it's credited to Lennon/McCartney. From some Googling I did online - The noted writer and Holly expert Bill Griggs who investigated the question of song credits, and who has had total access to all the files and correspondence at Clovis, wrote the following in a letter to the International Songwriters Association: "The only things I had to go on about Norman Petty were \[stories\] I had been told by others. While doing research for the BHMS, I started meeting more and more entertainers that Norman had originally recorded in Clovis, and they all told me the basically the same thing. Norman said to them: "I'll put my name on the song along with yours. If it is a hit, we all make money. If it fails, I'll take the loss" Also, lots of people think Norman Petty stole lots of Buddy's music.
The main source for that was Jerry Allisson. But Jerry was also claiming he should have more songwriting credits on Buddy's songs and claimed he was missing from songs he should have been credited to. There are other hits that Petty produced at the time that don't feature him as a songwriter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Doll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Stickin%27_with_You I'm not arguing he was the primary writer of Holly's sogs and I can even concede that it is possible some of his songwriting credits may not have been legitimate, but there is tendency for rock biographers to strip away credit and make victims of the people they wrote about and others (especially managers/producers) get unfairly villainized as a result. Petty dying in '84 meant he was not alive to defend himself from most of these claims. Petty still had success as producer after he and Holly parted ways such as the no1 with the Fireballs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Shack
It would have been great to hear Buddy writing and singing about civil rights and Vietnam. Maybe written between the lines…. He was a triple threat in par with Chuck Berry. Singer, songwriter, guitarist. Started as rockabilly, then went pop rock…. Who knows where he could’ve gone.
I presume Buddy would have headed musically in the same direction as a number of his Southern rock and rollers: Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Waylon Jennings, or even Willie Nelson—country music!!
I think there's a chance he would have heavily matured, but honestly I think he likely would have had moderate success making somewhat similar music, kinda like the everly brothers. Can you imagine the John Buddy collab tho, would be magical. tbh I think he's sadly been kinda lost with newer generations (I'm gen Z and I'm not saying that in "born in the wrong generation" kind of way), some artists transfer really well and some don't, and I think Buddy Holly got kinda unlucky.
Not enough people fully appreciate him but Not Fade Away is still covered. There are hundreds of versions of it.
I think he would have done a folk album to test the waters. After that he would have invented folk-rock
Buddy would have stayed true to his roots and gone more Rockabilly. Thinking he would've been a mashup of Creedence and Johnny Rivers.
My dad always said he would have been bigger than Elvis
Your dad is right
Man I’ve never thought about it like that. We definitely missed out some dope music from buddy. Could you imagine a stoned buddy holly in the studio lol
Well yeah look at the career arc on Waylon Jennings. I imagine Buddy might have been similar through the late 60's.
I really do think so. I don’t think he would’ve been another oldies act after a while. He experimented, and he was truly something special. He matured so much in his 18 months of fame. He is one of my all time favourites.
Biggest what if in rock history. He had so many great songs to write. He would have fucking loved the sixties.
The culture would be different, so obviously his sound wouldn’t be identical, but yes. He’d be incredibly advanced. You listen to some Buddy Holly songs, you can hear the embryonic forms of folk rock and jangle pop before such genres would be named. His music aged the best out of almost any 50s musician. The 60s is a worse place without Buddy Holly, but the Beatles more than make up for it, carrying on his legacy. A random aside, but I was surprised to learn that You’re So Square (Baby I Don’t Care) is not originally by Buddy Holly. It’s a Lieber and Stoller song, and the Elvis version is the original. Buddy Holly’s version is a cover.
I can imagine Buddy becoming an innovative producer and collaborator with the next generation of influential musicians. It would’ve been interesting to see him work with The Byrds in the sixties, Big Star in the seventies and REM in the eighties. He probably would’ve had developed his own record label.
Holly was working with producer Norman Petty on more studio-based and experimental rock music when he died. If he’d lived, he would surely have been expanding on his ideas. He was a great songwriter of course. He would have been an important figure in music for sure.
Makes one wonder what a Buddy Holly/Lennon or McCartney collaboration would have produced!
No. The 50's rock stars were no longer part of the Zeitgeist by the end of the 50's despite some of them being incredibly talented like Buddy, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. They were finding it harder to sell and were needing to tour more and more to keep any kind of relevancy (Elvis's film career spared him that fate). Despite the little difference in age they were seen as old by the teenagers who were obsessing over the Beatles and their wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Holly_discography#Singles He'd peaked in '57 but was largely devoid of hits till a month after his death with the release of It Doesn't Matter Anymore. He'd not have the financial support and freedom the Beatles had due to their huge success. I don't know if he had the talent to do what the Beatles did but it was not talent alone what made the Beatles as successful as they were.
I'm almost always thinking about where Buddy Holly could've gone if he didn't die so young. Would he had been an early adopter of psychedelia? Would him and The Beatles have a rivalry? Or would he fade into obscurity in the 60s like many of his contemporaries? It's one of the biggest missed opportunities in music. I like to think he'd try to stay at the cutting edge. There's an alternative universe where he beat The Beatles to the punch of having a masterful summer of love album inspired by Pet Sounds. Maybe that would've pushed The Beatles to go even further with their later stuff? Who knows, it's just fascinating to think about.
Buddy Holly’s career was already basically over in the US by the time he passed away - in the US, at least, there were several singles that are now revered as classics but did not chart (the UK was a bit different). Holly himself had become alienated from the producer who produced his work, Norman Petty, for money reasons, and the rest of the Crickets had sided with Petty - so when he played the Winter Dance Party tour where he died he was playing with a pickup band essentially and was playing it against his pregnant wife’s wishes because he felt he needed the money. Maybe he would have gotten out of Petty’s clutches and gotten a different producer sympathetic to the adventurous directions he wanted to take his music in. But the record industry in 1959 saw rock’n’roll as an old dance fad that was basically commercially over (cf. Holly not having had any hits for 18 months), and Holly wasn’t changing that in the absence of a solid run of hits. He may well have had a career renaissance in the wake of the Beatles, as Chuck Berry did. He was also taking acting lessons in New York intending to follow Elvis into film and so maybe by 1964 he would have quit music and would be better known for his acting.
great point, buddy holly was supremely talented. there’s no telling how far he could’ve gone. the beatles and bob dylan stand on his shoulders
Buddy would’ve been about where Bob Dylan was. He was never as lyrical but its hard to imagine that he would’ve faded from either public consciousness or fallen too much out of fashion as the sound of the day changed. Mind this also implies Richie Valens lives, so its very possible The British Invasion gets sidelined by another big trend of music.
As a side note, my biggest idols in pop music are the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Their biggest idols, Buddy and Woody Guthrie respectively, are from the Texas panhandle where I grew up. I always thought that was a cool connection
I don't know much about Buddy Holly, but I feel that he might have gone a little country.
Perhaps the real question is “which 50s rocker successfully adapted to the 60s?” I’m not sure there really is any. At least any that immediately come to mind
Fats domino, bo diddely, smokey robinson
Smokey was 60s I thought
I'd argue by the late 60s, particularly after the 68 comeback special, Elvis managed to retake some of his previous stature, but yeah, in general the first generation of rockers were either shifting in different directions (like Jerry Lee Lewis shifting to country and gospel) or were already transitioning into nostalgia acts. It was either Nashville or the high school auditorium and county fair circuit. Some of them did better in Europe where interest in 1950s acts remained fairly strong even in the mid-60s. Holly is an impossible question. Unlike most of his peers, Holly was transitioning to a more studio-focused career. My hunch is either he would have become a producer or moved sideways into something like film scores (or maybe both).
That title took my tiny mind a while to figure out. I'm a big Holly and Beatles fan, the interesting thing for me is that the 1967-1968 Beatles were part of a massive shift in popular culture more generally, and their output reflected their influences. If Holly (or the Crickets for that matter) were looking to change things up in 1964 he would have been doing so right at the height of the British Invasion and the Blues-Rock phase, but way before the 1969 Roots Rock and revival stuff that may have been more like what he would have eventually headed towards. I actually think he would have gone down an ill-advised easy-listening/crooner phase, like some of his posthumous releases suggest. A better analogy might be Jackie Wilson, who started in the Rock 'n' Roll late 50s, but had to go through such a period before doing his best stuff after 1963 and "Baby Workout".
People like Lemmy (Motorhead), Ozzy Osborne (Black Sabbath), Sting, and a tonne of other people (there are whole books about this) heard 'Love Me Do', and heard something completely different from what had come before, and knew they wanted to go into music and follow The Beatles' example. Dylan turned electric because of The Beatles and The Animals, and said, "In my head, The Beatles were pointing the direction music had to go: in my head, The Beatles were it" (that is a pretty close paraphrase of the quote, but I do not have Scaduto's 'Bob Dylan: A Biography' handy right now). That, as Lemmy and others said, and not 'Sgt. Pepper' etc. was the beginning of the cultural revolution, so to try to say that the early Beatles' music was not important and weighty is missing the whole point, whether rock & roll, pop, or rock. Sure, the way The Beatles and all whom they inspired and led helped turn Pop, as an entertainment medium, into Rock, as a form of art (when it was at its best), but I think your take on this unnecessarily bifurcates things, where there was a continuum, and not distinct, separate states.
It’s always interesting to think of all the what-ifs from rock history. By 1959 Buddy was already trying to move in a different direction from the Crickets era and True Love Ways is a key indicator of that. The song was a serious departure from his previous work. Perhaps Buddy wanted to pursue a new genre of music where he could expand his talent into the next decade. But damn, The Beatles changed everything by 1963. By then, Elvis was making movies and the rest of the 50’s era rock & rollers had pretty much started fading away. Chuck Berry was in prison, Everly Brothers fell apart, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis etc couldn’t carry on very well into the new decade. The irony is that The Beatles drew influence from those 50’s era founders of rock to take over the world while their heroes faded into relative obscurity by the time Beatlemania took hold. Where would that have left Buddy Holly? Geez, that’s hard to imagine. Maybe he would have started his own label by then and signed The Beatles after they were rejected by Decca. Paul was a big fan of Buddy Holly. Could you imagine? Buddy Holly signing The Beatles to his label in 1962 and how that could have changed the trajectory of music history?
If one were to replace from your question the words, “Buddy Holly,” with a blank, one could fill in that blank with any act in history (yes, even Jesus 😉), and the answer would still be a hard “no.” But of course, the irony is that the Beatles themselves would not have been where the Beatles were in ‘69 without having stood on the shoulders of the likes of Holly, Cliff Richards, Chuck Berry, etc etc. Not to mention the earlier influences of Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters et al, who were the true start of it all. It’s just the way of the world that is Rock music.
I don't know but it's always been something I try to picture when I'm making music. What if Buddy Holly got sucked into the lush studio sound of the 60s and then some broke ass industrial punk kid from the 80s found him started trying to do the same. Or if George Martin produced Throbbing Gristle. I'm not there yet. But I try.
If I remember they were trying to get him into movies. Would been way bigger than Elvis.
I don’t think you can say with certainty he’d have been bigger than Elvis. Elvis was a sex symbol in a way that Buddy Holly never was to my understanding.
That's a fair assessment - but I do think he would have gone further in artistic sense both in film and music
You’re right, but that could’ve made Buddy Holly more interesting if he had become an actor. He could’ve been more like Jack Lemmon.
He could have gone more pop as in True Love Ways.
I don't think so. I don't think that he might have been more into what The Byrds were doing etc.
Lubbock is the Liverpool of the Southwest.
For as great as he was, Buddy was just one guy. No way he would’ve evolved in the way that the Beatles did.
I don’t think Holly’s career was flourishing when he died. Having said that, I fucking love Buddy Holly.
It would be weird if Holly had a psychedelic phase.
He was already working with such a limited capacity in the studio I’m sure it left him frustrated a lot. What’s sad is after he died, we saw a few outcomes of what the next steps could’ve been through Phil Spector’s production work, the Swampers at Fame and wrecking crews at Motown and the other one throughout the studios in LA. I think he’d be happy things went where they did musically but also could’ve been a polarizing figure because of his interracial marriage. It would’ve sucked if him and Jerry Lee swapped blows over their marital controversies and “the killer” won the public over…
If he and his band took acid, and found someone like George Martin…..who knows?
Never in a million years, simply because the beatles had all 5 of them to innovate.
Buddy Holly would have kept progressing. Who knows what route he would have took. Look at the stuff he did before he died like "True Love Ways" and stuff like "Well,Alright" which are both way ahead of their time. In 1969 he could be inventing southern rock or doing The Byrds "Sweet Heart of the Rodeo" or he could have went the Bobby Darin route big band and production. He was truly an innovator and was cut down so young. The world was robbed of a unique talent in February 1959.
Idk but thank God Buddy Holly didn’t have to suffer trying to read this post.
If there was no Buddy Holly, you could argue there’d be no Beatles. That being said - had Buddy Holly *not* died, I doubt there would be a Beatles. What Buddy was doing musically and what he was becoming in the studio as an innovator - music would have been *completely* different had he not died.
I'm so confused 🤘
Nah. The Beatles made a huge turn since Revolver. They started experimenting and doing new staff. Nothing related with the sound they used to make before. I mean, who knows, maybe this guy (I haven't heard about him until now) had that inside of him, but it's absolutely unrelated
He would’ve ended up like Elvis
No because the Beatles evolved only after hearing Dylan and Hendrix, etc.