On the day the music died, in the twisted wreck of a 4-seater plane on a frozen winter morning in Iowa, there was (briefly) a smoking gun - Buddy's own pistol found in the snow, which appeared significant when the local sheriff reported that one chamber was empty. But it turned out that the person who found it had fired it, purely to see whether it was in working order. And that is the nearest we get to the conspiracy theory that people always want to seize on, in the aftermath of a sensational tragedy.
But scandal was writ large in the story. Blame immediately attached to the 21-year old pilot, not licensed for instrument flying, who had no business taking off at all in these conditions. The young fellow seems to have known it too, but he was at the mercy of forces stronger than himself. When the most popular rock-singer in America is in a hurry, you don't lecture him about the small print. And ironically - on this sellout tour - the singer himself was short of cash, owing to disagreements with two managers, one or both of them probably fraudulent. That's why he was touring the godforsaken Northwest in February.
But Villain No.1 has to be the agency promoting the tour. It looked like someone chucking darts at a map, with no semblance of a route-plan or an itinerary. Just a couple of unheated buses that kept breaking down (obviously rejects, picked up cheap) reducing the band to hunger, insomnia and frostbite as the temperature dipped towards forty below. And Buddy's patience simply snapped.
The story of who would be selected to join Buddy on-board the plane has been told too often to need re-telling. What we remember so profoundly is that something did indeed die that day, with a new decade full of disturbing rhythms waiting round the corner, and it would never be the tranquil sunny fifties again. For there has never been a more innocent, benign figure at the top of the charts than Buddy Holly - wholesome, family-friendly, able to inspire the young without alienating the old, and (as he would never know) astonishingly enduring in his appeal. In sixty years and more, his music has defied any suggestion of the dated or the nostalgic, still as sharp and fresh as we found it on the day the music was born.
But scandal was writ large in the story. Blame immediately attached to the 21-year old pilot, not licensed for instrument flying, who had no business taking off at all in these conditions. The young fellow seems to have known it too, but he was at the mercy of forces stronger than himself. When the most popular rock-singer in America is in a hurry, you don't lecture him about the small print. And ironically - on this sellout tour - the singer himself was short of cash, owing to disagreements with two managers, one or both of them probably fraudulent. That's why he was touring the godforsaken Northwest in February.
But Villain No.1 has to be the agency promoting the tour. It looked like someone chucking darts at a map, with no semblance of a route-plan or an itinerary. Just a couple of unheated buses that kept breaking down (obviously rejects, picked up cheap) reducing the band to hunger, insomnia and frostbite as the temperature dipped towards forty below. And Buddy's patience simply snapped.
The story of who would be selected to join Buddy on-board the plane has been told too often to need re-telling. What we remember so profoundly is that something did indeed die that day, with a new decade full of disturbing rhythms waiting round the corner, and it would never be the tranquil sunny fifties again. For there has never been a more innocent, benign figure at the top of the charts than Buddy Holly - wholesome, family-friendly, able to inspire the young without alienating the old, and (as he would never know) astonishingly enduring in his appeal. In sixty years and more, his music has defied any suggestion of the dated or the nostalgic, still as sharp and fresh as we found it on the day the music was born.
