Buddy Holly: Biography (24 page)

Bound for Sydney, the Crickets began a ten-thousand-mile trek on January 26, 1958, leaving New York aboard a Pan Am Constellation prop plane—international jet service would not begin until October—stopping in Los Angeles to pick up Jerry Lee Lewis and his entourage, which included Jay Brown, his bass player and the father of Jerry Lee’s thirteen-year-old bride. Sitting next to Buddy, Brown started cracking jokes. Buddy, unamused, withdrew into himself.

Across the aisle, Jerry Lee sat next to Paul Anka, referring to him as “Anchor.” Trying to be friendly, Anka showed Lewis some lyrics, including the ones he’d written for “Diana.” Jerry Lee scorned them, deciding he didn’t like “Anchor” or his No. 1 hit. Jerry Lee preferred the company of fellow Southerners like Elvis Presley, with whom he shared an Assembly of God background and a penchant for booze and outlandish pranks. Before Elvis’s induction in the Army, Jerry Lee once confided to record executive Joe Smith, Elvis and Jerry Lee took a naked motorcycle ride at 2:30
A.M.
in Memphis, “only for thirty-five or forty seconds, ’round the corner and back,” Jerry Lee said. “Anchor,” still sixteen and a teetotaler, did not seem a likely partner for such high jinks on the tour.

Though young, Anka was shrewd and fiercely competitive. He quickly seized the stellar position over the older stars in the package by agreeing to take a cut in his regular fee. Petty was present on the tour, but, unhappily for Buddy, he was not as wily a negotiator as Anka’s manager, Bill McCadden. Once again Buddy was the ranking star in terms of current chart hits, but Petty, instead of protecting Buddy’s interests in the dog-eat-dog world of show business, acted like a greenhorn tourist, snapping pictures from the plane window and enjoying a paid vacation, courtesy of the Crickets. It was increasingly evident that Petty would never be able to provide Buddy the kind of aggressive, combative management essential for survival in the top-heavy all-star rock packages.

The first stop was Hawaii, which was not yet a state of the Union. The Constellation landed on Oahu, and the group checked into a hotel at Waikiki Beach, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Their concert at the Civic Auditorium attracted such a large crowd—ten thousand—that the Crickets felt overwhelmed. Anka was the only singer on the show who impressed the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
critic, but Buddy felt good enough about the Crickets’ performance to write his sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Weir, in Lubbock, stating that he’d gone over better than expected. He was delighted to discover that Hawaiians liked rock ’n’ roll as much as U.S. mainlanders did. He played a free show, open to the public, at Oahu’s Schofield Barracks, the U.S. Army post immortalized in James Jones’s haunting 1951 novel
From Here to Eternity.
Elvis Presley’s conquest of Hawaii would not occur until 1961, when he filmed
Blue Hawaii
on location and gave a benefit concert at Pearl Harbor’s Bloch Arena for the U.S.S.
Arizona
national-shrine memorial fund, raising $62,000. The movie would prove to be one of his most popular, and in 1966 he would return to the Islands, filming
Paradise, Hawaiian Style,
in Oahu, Kauai, Maui, and along the Kona Coast.

In 1958, Ritchie Valens briefly joined Buddy’s tour in Honolulu, performing at the Civic Auditorium. His appearance was arranged by local promoters Ralph Yempuku and Earl Finch, who’d been putting on rock shows in Hawaii for the past few months. Only sixteen, Ritchie was a shy
guero
(light-skinned Mexican), the first rocker to emerge from the Chicano community, a striking youth with hazel-green eyes and thick dark brown hair styled in a waterfall with a ducktail in back. Even his pudginess was an asset, lending a teddy-bear appeal to his aggressively masculine appearance. His repertoire at the time included Little Richard’s “Jenny, Jenny” and Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen,” but when he sang them he substituted his own lyrics, improvised on the spot. Likable and enthusiastic, he seemed to have no ego whatsoever and plied the established singers with intelligent questions but appeared to have made no impression on Buddy at this time.

Leaving Oahu, the tour party flew 5,844 miles to Australia aboard a Pan Am Constellation that had sleepers in first-class, a far cry from the more primitive Greyhounds of the previous fall. Jerry Lee and Paul Anka started a pillow fight that got out of hand, and the stewardess even cleared everyone else out of the area and told Lewis and Anka to go ahead and clobber each other.

There was an altercation between Buddy and Norman Petty when Jerry Allison disclosed his decision to get married. Peggy Sue Gerron had accepted Jerry’s proposal. Petty, his own love life closeted and complex, suggested to Buddy that they fire Jerry and hire an unmarried drummer, since unwed rockers attract more fans. Turning to Jerry, Buddy said that, by the same token, they ought to fire Petty, a married man, and hire a single manager. Petty’s domineering attitude was becoming intolerable. Buddy would have married Echo had she been willing, but now she was irretrievably out of his life: after a brief engagement she’d married her college classmate in Nebraska. Though Buddy’s own marital plans were dashed, he staunchly defended Jerry’s right to personal happiness. If he ever had to choose between Jerry and Petty, Petty would go. Jerry had been with Buddy from the start and the connections between them, both personal and musical, ran deep.

The Crickets landed at Sydney Airport in New South Wales on January 30 and checked into the Chevron Hotel before starting a week of engagements in Australia. The man behind the tour was Lee Gordon, one of the fifties’ legendary rock impresarios, who the previous year had brought Bill Haley, the Platters, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, and Eddie Cochran to Australia. The Crickets again experienced difficulty playing to an arena-sized crowd—stadium rock was still ten years in the future for the United States. Australian rocker Col Joye later told Damian Johnstone, vice president of the Buddy Holly Appreciation Society of Australia, that Buddy was “electric—a fantastic performer,” yet others were unimpressed. Alan Heffernan, codirector of the Lee Gordon organization, who introduced all the acts from an offstage microphone, revealed that Buddy, like many American rockers at the time, was “overwhelmed” in his initial confrontation with eleven thousand hysterical fans. Buddy froze the first time he faced the big Sydney crowd.

Nor was the subsequent tour by any means a progression of uninterrupted triumphs. Roger Covell, the
Brisbane Courier-Mail
reviewer, found Buddy to be obviously “ill-at-ease” and “inexperienced.” Jerry Allison later acknowledged that they were not always at their best in Australia, especially during the first few shows. Since it was January, Australia was in the middle of its summer season. Allison cooled off by hitting a pub in Sydney with Anka and Jerry Lee where strong lager was served in foaming buckets. A nondrinker, Anka abstained, pointing out that, as the headliner, he had to remain sober for the evening performance. Bristling at the mention of the word
headliner,
the emulous Lewis encouraged Anka to have a beer. A few buckets later, as Lewis’s ex-wife Myra relates in
Great Balls of Fire,
Lewis drove Anka out to the bush and said that he despised headliners and was going to kill him. Upset and ill, Anka missed the performance that night. According to Myra, Anka scrupulously avoided the Killer from then on.

Johnny O’Keefe, a handsome young singer whose recording “Wild One” was the rage of Australia, didn’t care for Jerry Lee, either, but considered Buddy “a great fellow [with] an intangible quality as a performer.” O’Keefe was known as “the Wild One” because of his abandon on stage and his hit record of that title. Jerry Allison liked O’Keefe’s record and covered it later on, changing the title to “Real Wild Child.” Allison’s voice has a funky, freaky appeal—not in the least melodic but so catchy and engaging that it’s unfortunate he hasn’t done more solo work as a singer.

Following two Sydney performances, the tour was transported by bus to Newcastle, 105 miles northeast of Sydney, for two shows at the Stadium on January 31. The
Newcastle Morning Herald
reviewer wrote that the audience “rocked in the aisles and stamped their feet” but noted that the riots incited by Little Richard in Newcastle the previous year did not recur. After the performance, DJ Pat Barton from radio 2KO Newcastle asked Buddy how he got into rock ’n’ roll. He and Jerry were old friends, Buddy said, and they’d performed together for five years; Joe had joined them the previous January. Since they recorded on two labels, were there two sets of Crickets? Barton asked. It was the same band on both Brunswick and Coral, Buddy replied. Asked if he wrote all their songs, Buddy replied that all the Crickets were songwriters. Then Barton wanted to know if Buddy’s favorite singer was Elvis Presley. “I guess he’s one of them,” Buddy said, adding that he’d once known Elvis “quite well.”

Was there any truth to rumors of conflict between the singer and his band? Barton queried. Buddy denied it, though he did admit that Niki had “stayed behind.” As for Jerry and Joe B., Buddy stated categorically that he’d never split with them. The truth was perhaps too painful for Buddy to acknowledge, even to himself. His band was unstable. The Crickets were threatened from within by immature behavior that Buddy would increasingly have less tolerance of. Even more serious was the issue of his fast-growing fame, so disproportionate to Jerry and Joe B.’s that it would eventually threaten the continued existence of the Crickets.

By the time they played the Sydney Stadium on February 1, the group was accustomed to the large crowds. Jerry Lee later told Goldrosen that Buddy was the true star of the show and always left the Aussies in shock. Ken Taylor, an Australian record executive, christened Buddy and the Crickets the first gentlemen of rock ’n’ roll. In Brisbane, 310 miles northeast of Sydney, where they played the Cloudland Ballroom on February 3, Lee Gordon put them up at the luxurious Broadbeech Hotel fifty miles outside the city, on the gold coast of Queensland. The Australians appreciated Buddy’s “innate decency” and “ascetic” nature, Taylor later wrote in his autobiography
Rock Generation.
According to Myra Lewis, Jerry Lee insulted the natives by saying they were so dumb when inebriated that they couldn’t tell the difference between piss and beer. To prove his point, he urinated in an empty beer bottle in a Brisbane bar, placing it directly in front of an unsuspecting customer. The hapless man picked up the bottle and took a swig. Spitting and wiping his mouth, he yelled that he was going to murder the son of a bitch responsible for this outrage. Jerry Lee, an artful dodger, somehow made it out of the bar alive.

From Brisbane they flew 1,250 miles to Melbourne, where they were scheduled to appear at the Stadium (later renamed Festival Hall) on February 4. Buddy checked into Melbourne’s Chevron Hotel in St. Kilda and went into the foyer to have morning coffee with Melbourne’s only rock ’n’ roll DJ, Stan “The Man” Rofe. Since no one seemed to be waiting for him, Buddy settled in a little lounge off the lobby and ordered his coffee. Rofe later told Nigel Smith and Damian Johnstone of the Buddy Holly Appreciation Society that he did not recognize Buddy, and for half an hour they sat within fifty yards of each other, wondering if they’d been stood up. When they finally connected, they got along so well that Buddy returned with Rofe to 3KZ Radio and helped him broadcast his “Platter Parade” program, chatting for ninety minutes on the air, reminiscing about Eddie Cochran, and spinning the Top 40. Johnny O’Keefe popped in just as Rofe was playing two versions of “Oop Poop A Doo” back to back, one by O’Keefe and the other by Jessie Hill. Buddy committed a faux pas, dismissing O’Keefe’s version as “pretty horrible.” Rofe hastily advised Buddy that the recording artist he’d just insulted was sitting next to him. Laughing it off, the good-natured O’Keefe looked at Buddy and said, “You’re hysterical.”

At the end of “Platter Parade,” Rofe and Buddy shared a taxi to the West Melbourne Stadium, where Rofe, who had a large teenage following, emceed the 6:15
P.M.
show. After introducing Buddy, Rofe went backstage, but there was so much excitement in the audience that he went back out front to catch Buddy’s phenomenal set. The reviewer for the
Melbourne Herald
wrote on February 5 that Buddy “shook the stadium” with “Oh Boy” and “Rip It Up,” emerging the “undoubted star” of the tour. All of this was remarkable in Melbourne, a city with a prim Victorian heritage that was far more repressed in its taste and sensibility than Sydney to the east.

Though O’Keefe never caught on with U.S. fans, he was idolized in his native Australia. Several years later, O’Keefe met Sonny Curtis during a visit to the U.S. They went partying in Tijuana and when they decided they’d had enough and started to cross the border back into California, O’Keefe said, “There’s just one problem, Sonny. I don’t have any citizenship papers.”

“Oh, no,” Sonny said. “Well, just say, ‘I’m from Omaha, Nebraska,’ and maybe they’ll let us through.”

Recalled Sonny in 1993, “It worked. We got back into California and breathed a sigh of relief.”

Back in 1958, before leaving Melbourne, the tour party recorded a Colgate Palmolive radio show for the Macquaire Radio Network at the Nurses Memorial Center on St. Kilda Road, which had the best acoustics in town for recording a big live concert. There was no audience except for the doctors and nurses who wandered through the performance area and paused for a few minutes to listen to the rockers from America. MC Geoff Manion, the breakfast announcer at radio station 3AW, complained that Jerry Lee disrupted the rehearsal by banging on the piano with his feet while the show band tried to rehearse. Buddy, on the other hand, impressed Manion as unassuming and likable, qualities Manion had not previously noted among touring celebrities.

Buddy’s latest recording, “I’m Gonna Love You Too”/”Listen to Me,” was released back in the States during the Australian tour and received a
Cash Box
“Pick of the Week” designation. After noting that Buddy’s songs had been on the charts continuously for the past six months, the reviewer praised “Listen to Me” as “thrilling,” describing it as a C&W-inflected rock ballad with a Latin tempo. The B-side, “I’m Gonna Love You Too,” also received high marks. The reviewer lauded Buddy’s multiple-track performances on both sides, concluding, “Chalk up another hit for Holly.”