Somewhat of a triple-header this issue, with three giants of rock’n’roll in the frame, namely Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, and the recently departed ‘King Of The Surf Guitar’ Dick Dale…This year marks 60 years since the plane crash that took the lives of Buddy and his rock’n’roll comrades, and aside from Vintage Rock’s own commemorative special that covered his final fateful tour, we’ve heard whispers from some very good sources that there’s further tantalising plans afoot to toast the late, great bespectacled one this year – not least a glossy coffee table book, a reissue LP of The Crickets’ first album, The “Chirping” Crickets, plus a BBC documentary about the making of the album. Lucky us. But to keep you all chirping until then, we throw our hat into the ring with our own in-depth profile of that game-changing long-player with precious insight from Crickets’ drummer Jerry Allison.
It never ceases to fascinate me how the greats of early rock’n’roll cultivated their various styles and idiosyncracies. Continuing on a Buddy theme, we saw fit to examine his love affair with country music and those early heroes who had a lasting – and powerful – effect on his music in the all-important period prior to Elvis muscling his way into every young musician’s psyche.