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[Kevin]

Our little discussion about Elvis last night got me thinking about why some bands make it and others don't.
Take Buddy Holly & The Crickets v The Beatles.
Holly was a guitar band, like The Beatles, wrote their own songs like The Beatles, and in a similar style to The Beatles, were aiming for the same audience as The Beatles. I'm not saying they weren't successful (Understatement!) but they had nothing like the impact on the world  The Beatles did.
Any thoughts on why? What was missing? (I have some, but I'll save 'em to see if this generates any interest. Don't want to sound preachy or anything )

[Ivo]

Well, to be fair, Holly was only around for a short time before his death and was never given the opportunity to expand his skills.

[Kevin]

^ should have checked my facts a bit more. just checked a Holly discography site and was amazed at how poorly his singles did. Thought he had a string of #1's.
Still bit of a chicken and egg thing though - did The Beatles achieve all their chart success based on the quality of the music alone, or was it that missing "majic" ingrediant.
ps I'm talking 1864 beatlemania here.
And I agree with you about Holly's direction, I think all that "what would have happened if he hadn't have died" stuff is irrelevant. He was already branching off.

[Kevin]

1964 (obviously) :B

[Wayne L.]

Buddy Holly was only around a short time before the plane crash back in 59 but his impact on rock & roll will never be forgotten & the impact of the Beatles was much greater in the 60's.  

[adamzero]

Not Fade Away - True Love Ways - That'll Be the Day - Oh Boy - Rave On - Well Alright - Peggy Sue - Peggy Sue Got Married - Maybe Baby - Heartbeat - Words of Love -  Everyday - Rock Around with Ollie Vee -- just to name a few classics.

And he wrote all these (and much more) before dying at an age (23).  About the best John and Paul could do by that age was "Love Me Do."  

Any of the 13 songs listed above stand above or equal to anything the Beatles did.  For Crissakes, they took their name from the Crickets.  Paul owns Buddy's publishing.  

[lennonlemon]

It's So Easy and Think It Over are also 2 great Holly classics.

[john.k.walker]

A couple of posts I already made to the "Buddy Holly" thread on this board:

I'm a huge fan of the man from Lubbock as well.  It seems to me that until 1965 The Beatles as musicians and Lennon-McCartney as songwriters were just extending what he started (albeit brilliantly and prolifically), not the R&B-oriented strain of Rock 'N' Roll that Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and Little Richard originated.  (The Everly Brothers were the other big influences, but most of their songs were written by others, especially the Bryants.)  From then on The Beatles, Dylan, and, to a much, much lesser extent, The Rolling Stones created "pop/rock" as opposed to "R&R."  But Buddy might well have been able to do something like this himself if he had lived.  There are hints of this ability in such songs as "Well All Right," "Rave On," "Words Of Love," "Not Fade Away," "Learning The Game," and "Everyday"  (which is why all of these have produced cover versions which never sounded dated).  Certainly, NONE of the other 1950's rockers -- the ones who survived into the next decade and beyond -- showed any such capacity for artistic growth.

But, we'll never know....

BTW, all of you should watch Paul's documentary "The Real Buddy Holly Story," in which The Quarry Men's 1957 version of "That'll Be The Day" (later on ANTHOLOGY) was first played.

The Mary Tyler Moore reference above is actually to his bandmate Sonny Curtis, who wrote that theme song, along with "Walk Right Back " for the Everly Brothers and "I Fought The Law," the Bobby Fuller hit which Curtis originally recorded with the post-Buddy Crickets.  (Buddy died before any of these songs appeared and therefore had nothing to do with them.)

For that matter, my favorite Fab BBC track is "Don't Ever Change," which was a UK hit for the post-Buddy Crickets as well.

[Kevin]

Any of the 13 songs listed above stand above or equal to anything the Beatles did.

[adamzero]

I think a distinction needs to be made between a cultural phenomenon (which the Beatles obviously were) and a musical phenomenon (which both Buddy and the Beatles were).  A young Bob Dylan had Hollymania.  

[Kevin]

I think a distinction needs to be made between a cultural phenomenon (which the Beatles obviously were) and a musical phenomenon (which both Buddy and the Beatles were).

[adamzero]

I think it's good point.  I think buddy holly was at the beginning of being a cultural phenomenon--he was doing the ed sullivan show, his self-written songs were being widely played . . . he was the logical next step from elvis--a thinking man's rocker and singer-songwriter.  

the difference is buddy's death just at a point when he was expanding his musical vocabulary in the studio (as the beatles began to do in 1965-66) and the state of american mass communications in 1957-59 compared to 1964-1970.  rock'n'roll on tv was in its infancy when elvis and buddy started.  it had become mainstream by the time the beatles hit.  five years is a long time in entertainment years.  also, the death of jfk (a tv event--with death of oswald also a tv event) had primed the pump, so to speak, for the beatles to "take" america by storm.  the timing for the beatles was perfect.  If they'd come along six months later, everything might have been completely different.  

[pc31]

gene vincent was black balled.why isn't he listed as a driving force?

[pc31]

supposition can be deadly to a topic.....

[Kevin]

gene vincent was black balled.why isn't he listed as a driving force?

Sorry mate - don't see the connection

[apple sauce]

Well Mr. Holly seems to be confined to a certain era of music. He did have some noteable songs, but I don't know if he could have kept it up. Roy Orbison also comes to mind in he defines an era in early rock music. The Beatles define an entire generation spanning 40 years in music Just My opinion having been there!

Thank God the British picked up on Buddy Holly or he might not have had any legacy. He didn't chart well here and wasn't as much of a mover or shaker as alot of his contemporaries, but death, especially under ultra-tragic circumstances, is the best career move a musician can make.

[Heart]

Another way to think about it is the beatles may not have sounded like they do at all without the influence of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. To me, they are of equal importance.