By : John Gribbin, Icon Books, $35
HALFWAY through this concise, immensely readable biography of Charles Hardin Holley, John Gribbin makes the astounding claim that ‘‘they were about to begin the most significant and influential tour in the entire history of popular music’’. He’s not referring to the Beatles’ conquest of the US in 1964, but Buddy Holly’s tour of the UK in 1958. After due consideration, I’m inclined to agree. It was, he claims, the genesis of the British pop explosion and Holly (not Elvis) was the detonator. The likes of Lennon, McCartney, Jagger, Richards and Clapton saw the shape of the future when Holly stepped on stage at the Trocadero Cinema at London’s Elephant and Castle. Free of rock hyperbole, this is an intelligent, sometimes wry, always informed compression of a short, staggeringly productive life that leaves the author and the reader wondering just what Holly might have achieved had he lived.
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