Buddy Holly was a geeky-looking kid from Texas with thick glasses who held his guitar like a shotgun.
Angela Kershner / The Citizen
Erik Hayden as Buddy Holly, right, practices on the guitar as Michael Croiter, center, gives direction to the other musicians during rehearsal for the Merry-Go-Round's production of “‘Oh Boy!' Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.”
Erik Hayden as Buddy Holly, right, practices on the guitar as Michael Croiter, center, gives direction to the other musicians during rehearsal for the Merry-Go-Round's production of “‘Oh Boy!' Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.”
He became myth in the Don McLean's epic “American Pie,” whose death along with The Big Bopper and Richie Valens in a Feb. 3, 1959, plane crash, caused shivers on “the day the music died.”
He became a vintage pop cultural reference when Weezer's lead singer Rivers Cuomo opined that he looked “just like Buddy Holly” in the band's breakout hit of 1995.
But it is Holly as a musician who will be given center stage in the Merry-Go-Round playhouse's rollicking opening of “‘Oh Boy!' Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” Wednesday. The show, which first premiered in London in 1989 and became one of the city's longest running productions, runs through June 17.
An Americana score will include '50s chart toppers by Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper: “That'll Be the Day,” “Chantilly Lace,” “La Bamba,” “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” and “Peggy Sue.”
The show opens with Holly's 1956 performance with his band, the Crickets, on a Lubbock, Texas, radio program. Then it follows Holly through the brief and furious 18 months from his first recordings to his full-scale explosion within America's infantile rock ‘n' roll youth culture.
“When you think what an artist or band can accomplish in 18 months, maybe they can get a couple albums out. This guy gave the world
all these songs. This kid has
made such an amazing accomplishment in the world,” said
Steve Bebout, director of the Merry-Go-Round's production. “It's really sad. Who knows what could have come?”
Holly is a legendary founder of rock whose ideas formed how rock ‘n' roll bands work, said Erik Hayden, the actor playing Holly.
“There was no formula yet for rock and roll, what a rock band is and what they do,” Hayden said. “Most of the things we take for granted, the formula for a rock band, are what Buddy did.”
He established the guitar player and lead vocalist as the power source of bands.
The Crickets were one of the first power trios of rock, eliminating
the need for a second guitar. Holly was the first to figure out how to overdub his voice in the recording studio.
He also figured out how to create a reverberation with drums during the recording process. “Peggy
Sue” with its downstrokes and
three chords was punk rock before punk rock was created, Hayden
said.
When Holly toured Europe, he became a major influence on John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who later named the Beatles in honor of the Crickets.
Hayden wonders if the British Invasion would have happened without the Crickets going to England first.
In a time when the United States' racial segregation was first being challenged on a mass scale, Holly crossed racial borders when he married his Puerto Rican wife, Maria Elena (Their quick courtship is dramatized in the show). One of Holly's earliest friends in rock and roll was Little Richard.
While Elvis Presley was recording music with a black influence and popularizing it for white teenagers, Holly was writing his own music, music that crossed the segregated genres of black and white music.
Because the Crickets were only known on the radio, booking agents at the Apollo Theater in Harlem assumed they were black and booked them for several gigs at the Apollo. It was a surprise when the trio showed up at the Apollo, but they became the first whites to play extensively at the venue (The Apollo performances are collapsed into one night in the show).
The biggest impact of Holly was his fight to stay himself, to write and play the music he wanted, Bebout and Hayden said.
“Here is this lanky kid from Texas with these glasses,” Bebout said. “He really created the opportunity for any kid to be a rock star.”
Neither Bebout or Hayden are strangers to the show. Hayden, who has portrayed Holly before, became a Buddy buff through extensive research to be able to play the man. It's Bebout's third time directing this show. He also wrote a Buddy-related show, “The Night the Music Died.”
This show ends rocking with the night Holly died with his last concert at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.
“It's great for people who don't normally go to the theater,” Bebout said. “You get such great music you already know.”
Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net
He became a vintage pop cultural reference when Weezer's lead singer Rivers Cuomo opined that he looked “just like Buddy Holly” in the band's breakout hit of 1995.
But it is Holly as a musician who will be given center stage in the Merry-Go-Round playhouse's rollicking opening of “‘Oh Boy!' Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story” Wednesday. The show, which first premiered in London in 1989 and became one of the city's longest running productions, runs through June 17.
An Americana score will include '50s chart toppers by Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper: “That'll Be the Day,” “Chantilly Lace,” “La Bamba,” “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” and “Peggy Sue.”
The show opens with Holly's 1956 performance with his band, the Crickets, on a Lubbock, Texas, radio program. Then it follows Holly through the brief and furious 18 months from his first recordings to his full-scale explosion within America's infantile rock ‘n' roll youth culture.
“When you think what an artist or band can accomplish in 18 months, maybe they can get a couple albums out. This guy gave the world
all these songs. This kid has
made such an amazing accomplishment in the world,” said
Steve Bebout, director of the Merry-Go-Round's production. “It's really sad. Who knows what could have come?”
Holly is a legendary founder of rock whose ideas formed how rock ‘n' roll bands work, said Erik Hayden, the actor playing Holly.
“There was no formula yet for rock and roll, what a rock band is and what they do,” Hayden said. “Most of the things we take for granted, the formula for a rock band, are what Buddy did.”
He established the guitar player and lead vocalist as the power source of bands.
The Crickets were one of the first power trios of rock, eliminating
the need for a second guitar. Holly was the first to figure out how to overdub his voice in the recording studio.
He also figured out how to create a reverberation with drums during the recording process. “Peggy
Sue” with its downstrokes and
three chords was punk rock before punk rock was created, Hayden
said.
When Holly toured Europe, he became a major influence on John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who later named the Beatles in honor of the Crickets.
Hayden wonders if the British Invasion would have happened without the Crickets going to England first.
In a time when the United States' racial segregation was first being challenged on a mass scale, Holly crossed racial borders when he married his Puerto Rican wife, Maria Elena (Their quick courtship is dramatized in the show). One of Holly's earliest friends in rock and roll was Little Richard.
While Elvis Presley was recording music with a black influence and popularizing it for white teenagers, Holly was writing his own music, music that crossed the segregated genres of black and white music.
Because the Crickets were only known on the radio, booking agents at the Apollo Theater in Harlem assumed they were black and booked them for several gigs at the Apollo. It was a surprise when the trio showed up at the Apollo, but they became the first whites to play extensively at the venue (The Apollo performances are collapsed into one night in the show).
The biggest impact of Holly was his fight to stay himself, to write and play the music he wanted, Bebout and Hayden said.
“Here is this lanky kid from Texas with these glasses,” Bebout said. “He really created the opportunity for any kid to be a rock star.”
Neither Bebout or Hayden are strangers to the show. Hayden, who has portrayed Holly before, became a Buddy buff through extensive research to be able to play the man. It's Bebout's third time directing this show. He also wrote a Buddy-related show, “The Night the Music Died.”
This show ends rocking with the night Holly died with his last concert at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.
“It's great for people who don't normally go to the theater,” Bebout said. “You get such great music you already know.”
Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net
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