Okay, back to Holly. If anyone is up for an extended quote, this may explain some of Holly’s long-lived appeal:
“For a young musician, all the Buddy Holly classics are a brilliant place to start. He played rhythmic chords in a lot of his solos, instead of over-flashy pyrotechnic guitar playing. There’s no doubt that he was innovative and ahead of his time. The recording technique that he used multitracking had only just been invented by Les Paul. Most people in those days would just record live, using justone microphone.
My favourite track is “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore”. It is a very beautiful and sad song but the chord structure is quite uplifting, and it has an amazing string section on it as well.
Right at the end of his life, Holly was moving away from simple rock’n’roll music to something far more complex, such as in the songs “Moondreams”, “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” and “Raining In My Heart”.
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Before him, artists didn’t write their own songs, and he was a complete holistic entity. He produced his own music, he performed it and he also wrote it. He was a brilliant songwriter; really simple, to the point, beautifully constructed two- or three-minute pop songs. That was a benchmark for bands such as The Beatles.
My kids enjoy the music as much as I do, and I am sure something in that music will appeal to the human race for ever, because its subject matter and delivery are so soulful. It’s something we all need to help us along.
From:
‘Buddy was way ahead of the pack’
By Richard Hawley
I put it simply thus....
When I had enough cash to buy my first (but by no means last) Stratocaster, it was never going to be anything other than a 1957 reissue. Two tone sunburst, maple neck.