12.1.22 You don't know what you've been a missing

 There was a rock'n'roll revival when I was nine or ten. Nostalgia for a scene that was only 17 years previous at the time. To be fair, the revival really starts in 68 with the appearance of She Na Na at Woodstock. (Again, this is memory, I may be making some or all of this up, who has time to research, this isn't the job, this is the sideline).

A beneficiary, or possibly a cause of this revival was the film That'll Be The Day. A fairly 'grim' take on the rock'n'roll dream and the things people will do for stardom. David Essex plays Jim MacLaine, a young wannabe star who escapes his life for the glory of a summer season playing drums (I think) in a 'beat combo' at a holiday camp. Ringo Starr is his best mate, the brilliant Billy Fury plays Stormy Tempest who definitely isn't based on Rory Storm honest to god, the whole thing's just a coincidence.

It's  great film, nobody comes out of it well. Everybody's fairly unlikeable, everyone's self centred - especially Jim who - SPOILERS for a fifty year old film - ends the story by deserting his new wife and child to bugger off to become a pop star. Which he does in the even better Stardust. SPOILERS for that one as well - nobody comes OUT of that film at all. It's between Stardust and Slade In Film for greatest British music film of the seventies. But That'll Be The Day makes the list.

Bit of an aside here, which may, as ever, be the actual point of the whole thing:

My dad went on holiday with his mates to Butlins in the early sixties. Bunch of scousers in a holiday camp. They took to hanging out with the scouse group who were plying their trade there at the time; the aforementioned Rory Storm and his Hurricanes. Whose drummer was a certain Mr Richard Starkey. Basically, my dad was hanging out with Ringo the week he got the call from Brian Epstein to join the Beatles. Which is pretty cool.

Anyway. That'll Be The Day (the film) comes out, and there's a soundtrack album. Advertised on telly, which I'm not entirely sure was usual at that point. And I decided, on the basis of those adverts that I wanted it. So, own money in hand, I went to Kirkby market and I found a copy of That'll Be The Day. The original Buddy Holly album, not the soundtrack. The first album I ever bought with my own cash. Somewhat by mistake. But I owned it, and the songs were great, it may not have been what I thought I was buying but it was wonderful. I loved it. That's what you're supposed to do with records.

And that remained the only Buddy Holly vinyl I ever bought. I saw no need for any more. I picked up a CD compilation years later which, I think, is currently in a box in the loft along with a few thousand other CDs which won't fit into the large racks of CDs next to my desk (bout 36 square foot of CDs there).

Then I found this in a £1 box:

Cover a little frayed, no inner sleeve for the vinyl but not a single mark on the record itself. Yeah there's some surface noise, quite a bit of crackle in places but... John Peel and all that (and if you didn't get that reference you weren't paying attention to day one).

How could I not? Seriously? 

Int is, of course, genius. It's one of the building blocks of everything that comes after. It's a young lad who decides he's going to write his own material, when most didn't, who's going to set off an endless quest to refine and redevelop his sound. He's going to be working with strings before rock'n'roll really thinks that's something you should do, he's going to be recording material at home before the rest of the world thinks that it's a good idea. And he's going to convince a generation or three that the Fender Stratocaster may be the most important item that's ever been constructed by human hands.

This album, this £1 album, is packed with his utter genius. All this material that you know deep down in your soul, all these simple songs - and making simple songs that people can easily sing along with is one of the most sacred missions there is. It's all here. From a man who changed the way the world sounds and inspired so many to do likewise - not least four lads from the South end of this city who took on the crusade.

A man who did all this despite the fact that he was dead at 22. Which is appallingly stark when you write it down like that.

Possibly the most important thing he did? He made skinny kids with glasses the world over realise that there was a way they could be cool. 

Which for me - a skinny kid with glasses - was just what was needed.