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(Credits: Far Out \/ Bradford Timeline \/ Brunswick Records)<\/p>\n
Wed 29 October 2025 23:00, UK <\/p>\n
It\u2019s often been said that the rise of punk rock in the 1970s was revolutionary in how it gave every small-time musician, regardless of their background or skill level, the belief that they could \u201cmake it\u201d. Following that logic, one might argue that Buddy Holly<\/a>, the bespectacled good ol\u2019 boy from Lubbock, Texas, was truly the first punk.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that Holly wasn\u2019t a seasoned and highly practised songwriter and guitarist, but in a world where image was still an essential component of fame for most pop stars, including the earliest faces of rock, \u00e0 la Elvis Presley and Little Richard, he was an entirely different sort of entity for the next generation to hitch their wagons to. He was an ordinary-looking fellow churning out extraordinary songs, and he seemed to emerge fully formed as a new kind of icon, taking the charts by storm with his first hit single, 1957\u2019s \u2018That\u2019ll Be the Day.\u2019<\/p>\n Inspired by a line spouted repeatedly by John Wayne\u2019s surly Ethan Edwards character in the 1956 western movie The Searchers<\/a>, \u2018That\u2019ll Be the Day\u2019 actually had a bit of a complicated path toward immortality, as Holly\u2019s original 1956 recording of the track with his early band The Three Tunes didn\u2019t meet the satisfaction of his record label Decca. A re-worked version with the Crickets a year later met a far better fate, as its release in the summer of 1957 timed up perfectly with the nationally televised debut of the American Bandstand programme in the US, which featured the Holly track on its very first episode. <\/p>\n That exposure helped send \u2018That\u2019ll Be the Day\u2019 soaring up the charts to number one, and soon enough, Holly and the Crickets were invited onto American Bandstand and The Ed Sullivan Show to play their hit live, helping cement Buddy\u2019s image in popular culture; all this and he was still just a couple weeks shy of his 21st birthday.<\/p>\n His slightly twangier and more vulnerable take on jump n\u2019 jive rock n\u2019 roll had an enormous impact on up-and-coming bands all over the US, and that wave quickly reached across the ocean, as \u2018That\u2019ll Be the Day\u2019 hit number one in the UK and inspired thousands of young British musicians who\u2019d already been seduced by the skiffle sound to take the next logical step.<\/p>\n \u201cBuddy Holly was one of us,\u201d Graham Nash told MusicRadar in 2012, \u201cHe wasn\u2019t Elvis Presley, he wasn\u2019t James Dean, he didn\u2019t have slicked-back hair, he didn\u2019t swivel his hips. He was one of us, a fucking nerd with glasses.\u201d<\/p>\n