C'mon Everybody!

[Diego_Sideburns]

C’mon everybody, try listening to somethin’ else.

 

Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the death of rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll legend Eddie Cochran.

 

He died from injuries sustained in a car crash during a tour in the UK. Following a performance in Bristol, the taxi in which Eddie was travelling with his girlfriend Sharon Sheeley, Gene Vincent and their tour manager, crashed into a lamppost outside Chippenham, Wiltshire, with no other vehicle involved.

 

The taxi driver was convicted of dangerous driving, fined £50, disqualified from driving for 15 years, and imprisoned for six months.

 

The car and other items from the crash were impounded at the local police station until a coroner’s inquest could be held. At that time, David Harman, better known as Dave Dee of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, was a police cadet at the station. He taught himself to play guitar on Cochran's impounded Gretsch. Coincidentally, earlier in the tour, the same guitar had been carried to the car for Cochran by a young fan called Mark Feld, later to become famous as Marc Bolan of T-Rex, who was also killed while a passenger in a car crash involving a tree and no other vehicle.

 

Tomorrow BBC Radio 2 is devoting the second hour of ‘Sounds of the Sixties’ from 9:00am to 10:00am to mark the exact 50th anniversary of Cochran’s death, by reflecting on that tour of the UK. It was the very first authentic rock tour and one which changed the sound of British music and the style of stage presentation. Promoted by Larry Parnes, it brought together Cochran and Vincent and had a profound and lasting influence on young British musicians and audiences alike.

 

The first wave of rock 'n' roll had passed and popular music in the UK had subsided into a gentle and genteel beat. A union ban on American musicians had meant there had been few previous visitors, so here were two real American rockers travelling around the UK and shocking lethargic theatres into life. They performed on TV and radio while touring and tomorrow’s broadcast includes rare live performances from Saturday Club and the TV show Boy Meets Girls.

 

On the programme friends and fellow musicians will share memories of backstage excess, Teddy boy riots, and Eddie's masterful musicianship, and it will look at the impact of the tour and remember a key period in 1960s’ musical history.

 

 

Artists covering Cochran’s songs include The Rolling Stones, The Clash, The Who, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes, The Sex Pistols, Van Halen, Motorhead and Jimi Hendrix.

 

When the season ends and there is that long wait until August

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do

But there ain't no cure for the summertime blues.