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A J Jenks as Buddy. Picture: Rebecca Need-Menear Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story Birmingham Hippodrome **** Sixty six years on, and Buddy is still as fresh as ever, which is quite an achievement for any jukebox musical, especially one about pop music from the end of the 1950s. But then again Buddy Holly was not just any old jukebox act anchored in his era. In a mere 18 months of major success since the release of That'll Be the Day in July 1957, he became a rock and roll phenomena, a pioneer whose influence inspired artists from The Beatles and The Rolling Stones to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen among many others. He is credited with creating not just the self-contained group, but the classic rock'n'roll four-man line up of drummer and lead, rhythm and bass guitars. Instead of songs created by others, which was then the norm, Holly wrote his own music and experimented and innovated with techniques such as double tracking – recording the same song twice and layering the two recordings together for vocal and musical depth and complexity. Commonplace now but unheard of in the late 1950s. Holly, from Lubbock, Texas, managed to blend country, rhythm & blues, and gospel music into a new style, a new sound and a new direction for rock'n'roll, and the musical chronicles not just Holly's change of direction from the country music dominated Texas to rock, but also his battles with recording companies to play his own music in his own way. But the musical is really about . . . well, the music. The secondary title of The Buddy Holly Story is perhaps a misnomer because this is more a rock concert than drama. The core story from Alan Jane's original back in 1989 is still there. It sees the meteoric rise to fame, Holly's battles for control of his music, his whirlwind marriage to María Elena Santiago, the Puerto Rican receptionist at the New York record company, then, at the height of their fame, in the days of 1950's overt racism, Buddy Holly and The Crickets were unwittingly the white band creating a sensation when they were booked into the black Apollo theatre in Harlem. The band had been booked in error, apparently, as their music sounded, strange as it might seem to us, but back then in the USA it sounded . . . black.
Miguel Angel as Ritchie Valens It was all leading to the ill-fated Winter Dance Party tour with what was to be Holly's final concert in Clear Lake, Iowa. But over the years the storyline has been trimmed, it still leads to February 3, 1959, the day the music died, but the balance has changed, the concert element now overshadows the drama with the second act almost a tribute concert, not that that matters, after all, the music is Holly's real legacy. Once he picks up a Fender Stratocaster, Birmingham's own A J Jenks is Buddy. The Mountview Academy of Performing Arts graduate brings every song to sparkling life with some classy guitar playing in the complex Holly style and he displays a fine voice especially in the gentle, acoustic love song to Maria Elena, True Love Ways. Marta Miranda gives us a wonderful Maria Elena, also doubling up as Norman Petty's wife Vi, and just to fill in those idle moments, belting out a mean sax in the Winter Dance Party orchestra. Thomas Fabian Parrish plays Petty, Buddy Holly and the Cricket's first manager, and he pops up again as the Clear Lake MC, engaging the audience, and, so as not to be left out, playing a second sax in the concert orchestra. The cast are a splendid example of the modern trend of all singing, all dancing cast members who can play a variety of instruments with Melker Nilsson as The Cricket's bass player, Joe, flinging his double bass around with gay abandon, while Buddy's old school friend Jerry, played by Stephen Alexander-Kerr keeps the beat going on drums and Joe Sterling wields his pick as rhythm and sometimes lead guitarist Niki to create a superb quartet awash with real rock'n'roll old school class. The dance party also featured J P Richardson, The Big Bopper, whose big hit was Chantilly Lace, and the 17-year-old Ritchie Valens, best known for La Bamba, with both songs featuring in the Act II tribute concert along with a rousing Brown Eyed Handsome Man from the trio. Joshua Barton as The Big Bopper had an earlier life as Hipockets Duncan, who ran the Lubbock radio station which gave Holly his first airing in Act I, while Miguel Angel as Valens had also slipped into Act I as Tyrone at the New York record company, The pair as Bopper and Valens were on the fateful flight Holly had arranged to avoid travelling on the unheated and unreliable tour bus in freezing conditions which was heading off to the next venue, Moorhead, Minnesota, some 365 miles away. All three, along with pilot Roger Peterson died when the chartered plane crashed minutes after take-off. Maria Elena was pregnant and learned of the crash from news bulletins, which incidentally changed the law so names could not be released until relatives had been informed. She miscarried shortly after the news. Holly was almost a hit factory, his 18-month career producing 21 top forty singles in the UK with hits such as Peggy Sue, Oh Boy, Rave on, Heartbeat, It Doesn't Matter Any More, Not Fade Away and on and on. For older audience members it is a walk down memory lane, their youth played out on stage, a time when music was not just changing, it was the start of a revolution, with the Swinging Sixties awaiting just around the corner. Elvis had arrived in the mid-1950s with the likes of Hound Dog and Blue Suede Shoes, Cliff Richard weighed in with Move It in 1958 and Living Doll the following year, then there was Holly with a new sound and new style – a sound that in its seventh decade still resonates, still sounds fresh and still gets feet tapping. If you knew nothing about Buddy Holly when you sat down at the start of the show you wouldn't know much more at the end, apart from the fact he wrote and played a phenomenal number of timeless hits which not only captured their own era but pointed the direction for future generations of rock artists to follow. As a musical it might be light on story and drama, but it makes up for that with brilliant songs and entertainment. To 30-08-25 Roger Clarke 27-08-25 |
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