Which group most influenced The Beatles & The Stones?
When asked about key early influences The Beatles usually cited individual names: Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. All but one followed the tried and tested formula of a star with an essentially nameless backing band.
The exception was Buddy Holly. His group, The Crickets, created a template for what became known as the ‘guitar group’. This which would be adopted by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and countless other British bands.
In January 1962 The Beatles failed an audition for Decca Records. Company boss, Dick Rowe, famously told Brian Epstein that ‘guitar groups were on their way out’. In fact they were about to conquer the world.
1. They lowered the beauty bar…
The first American pop stars seemed impossibly glamorous to British teenagers. Their local counterparts — Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Cliff Richard — had charm and talent but could not compete with the beauty of Elvis or other-world exoticism of Little Richard.
The Crickets were the first group to level the playing field. In Buddy Holly — with his gawky gait and bank manager glasses — there was now a realistic role model to aspire to.
2. Friends having fun…
Though they officially formed in 1957, three of the bandmates — Jerry Allison, Buddy Holly, and Joe B. Mauldin — had been friends for several years. Observers were impressed by the personal chemistry between them. Five years later a similar group dynamic won ever a doubting George Martin when The Beatles auditioned at Abbey Road.
It was also significant that Allison and Holly wrote together. Their songwriting partnership created an example that Lennon/McCartney and Jagger/Richards would follow.
3. Drum, bass, guitar
“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” ( John Lennon quoted in Anthology)
The Crickets were the first group to create a distinctive sound, with features that other musicians could adapt. One of these elements was Allison’s driving percussion. Another was Holly’s switching of vocal styles (from regular to falsetto to stuttering repetition.
Admiration for Holly & the Crickets was an early bonding point for Lennon and McCartney. The Beatles and The Quarrymen formed in the same year (1957) and with the latter openly copying their Texan peers. This hero worship intensified when The Crickets performance at the London Palladium was broadcast on British TV in 1958. In fact the first song The Beatles ever recorded was That’ll Be The Day.
4. The more we play, the better we get…
A more subtle influence on later bands was the Crickets adherence to what Malcolm Gladwell’s dictum: ‘Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.’ Though success came early to them, it followed three years of relentless local gigging. This earned them a recording contract which in turn got them onto a national tour.
One barrier the Crickets did come up against was geographical. From Lubbock they could achieve a certain level of success. To advance further they needed to be located in one of the major centres of the music industry. It helped Elvis to emerge out of Memphis — Buddy Holly needed to move to New York. The other Crickets were not ready to leave their lives in Lubbock behind.
The Beatles faced a similar choice in 1962. But the journey between Liverpool and London is 200 rather than almost 2,000 miles.
5. The day the music died…
Leaving the Crickets proved to have tragic consequences for Buddy Holly. In January 1959 he was sent out on an ill-prepared and logistically unfeasible tour of twenty-four Midwestern cities in as many days in freezing weather. The tour bus kept breaking down and to avoid another exhausting coach journey Holly chartered a plane to fly from Clear Lake, Idaho to Moorhead, Minnesota.
The plane took off in poor weather conditions and crashed soon after take-off, killing Holly and two other young stars, Richie Valens and J.P (‘The Big Bopper’) Richardson.
The death of Buddy Holly came eight months after that of John’s mother, Julia, and two years before that of former Beatle, Stuart Suctliffe. At one level it was a remote event but it was one that Lennon and McCartney repeatedly referred to in interviews.
Legacy
When The Beatles came to America in 1964, they were thrilled to appear on the Ed Sullivan TV Show.
During breaks …. Lennon asked CBS coordinator Vic Calandra about Holly’s performances; Calandra said Lennon and McCartney repeatedly expressed their appreciation of Holly.[77
They quizzed as they knew they were following in Buddy Holly’s footsteps. Later that year they recorded (‘Words of Love’) for Beatles for Sale and John Lennon chose Peggy Sue for his album of sentimental covers, Rock and Roll. In the early 80s, McCartney bought the rights to the Buddy Holly catalogue.
