The heartbeat of rock `n' roll

BORN in Lubbock, Texas in 1936, the youngest of four children in a conservative Baptist family, Buddy Holly is justifiably regarded as one of the cornerstones of rock`n'roll. He wrote his own songs, and recorded with a "real" group, as opposed to professional but indifferent session musicians.

He took a keen interest in recording techniques he was the first musician from a C&W background not only to use, drums properly, but to apply the heavy back beat of black R&B he also was the first to experiment with double tracking and overdubbing.

He gave his name to the British band The Hollies, while his backing group, The Crickets, inspired a Liverpudlian band called The Quarrymen to change their name to The Beatles. More importantly, he altered the perception of what rock'n'roll stars should look like, flying in the face of convention by refusing to change his bespectacled, boy next door image.

Despite his palpable influence on pop and rock music over the past 40 years, there haven't been many books on Charles Hardin Holley (the e in Holley was inadvertently dropped on his first record contract, a mistake he let stand throughout the rest of his short life it was posthumously inserted on his gravestone), a fact made all the more apparent by this excellent and minutely detailed biography. Lurid in anecdote and rich in observation, this is a terrific read that highlights glaring inconsistencies in Holly's public image and private life.

For example, Holly's gauche persona was far removed from reality. The boyish pranks of cheating at cards and carving his name on his school desk pale in comparison with later acts of cruelty such as shooting a coyote just to watch it die, and his first sexual encounter a gang bang, apparently, according to Amburn, a "common rite of passage to sexual maturity" in west Texas in the 1950s.

Holly also became friendly with Little Richard, symbiotically sharing with the Queen of Rock'n'Roll what the author terms a "kind of masochistic religious agony". It is Little Richard who provides the book with its most salacious tidbit prior to going on stage, Holly is having sex with a female fan while she gives Little Richard oral sex. Holly hears his name being called from the stage. "He came, "deadpans Richard," and then he went."

Yet this is no Albert Goldman type shattering of a pop myth. Holly's rise to stardom is well charted, albeit with little sense of dignity or acumen. He was no match for the businessmen, hooking up with record producer and eminence grise Norman Petty, an unscrupulous man who quickly became his manager and, inexplicably, his "co-writer".

(Petty ensured his name was on the credits of many of the soon to be recorded songs, on the basis that the records would get played naively, Holly viewed this blatant rip off as the price he had to pay for a chance at stardom).

In the long run, Petty called the shots, including the withholding of money in an attempt to "starve him [Holly] to death". Hence a gruelling winter tour in early 1959 that eventually led to Buddy Holly's demise at the age of 22.

Tiring of bus breakdowns and freezing travelling conditions, Holly opted to charter a small aeroplane to take him on a 500 mile journey from Iowa to Minnesota. The plane crashed minutes after take off, depriving the, rock'n'roll and pop world of one of its most talented and influential songwriters. The Real Story is a fitting, gritty testament to the man. It nudges you back to your record collection, too.