The music biopic is one of the most clichéd laden genres of all time but there has been a few shinning lights throughout the years. My personally favourite is The Buddy Holly Story which stars Gary Busey as the rockabilly star from Lubbock, Texas. It perfectly sums out how his very singular sound which started in Buddy’s garage changed the shape of rock n’ roll forever.
One of the biggest reasons the film works unlike a lot of music biopics is down to the choice to have the actors play their own instruments and do the singing instead of relying on pre-existing recordings. There were some minor overdubs recorded by guitarist Jerry Zaremba who has a small role as Eddie Cochran in the film. The few music biopics over the years worth seeing like Control or Walk the Line took a similar approach while stuff like the unwatchable CBGBs uses pre-recorded music and the singers very poorly lip-synch the music.
People due to Busey’s antics over the years and the recent appearance on Celebrity Big Brother despite being entertaining as hell has tainted his image as a serious actor. His approach the role was serious to the core, he lost over 30 pounds to resemble the young Buddy. He perfectly captures his naivety, there is a wonderful subtle moment where he asks for a coke which shows the clean-cut kid from Lubbock.
Buddy’s backing band The Crickets sold their name rights to a rival biopic which never came to fruition so they names were changed due to legal reasons. The film plays fast and loose with the facts but so does any music biopics. You have condense characters, changed the location of one event to the other. Despite this one of the most Hollywood moments, when Buddy and the Crickets wins over the black audience of the Harlem Apollo did happen in real life and if you ask any black performer, it’s the one of if not hardest audience in the world. The Buddy Holly Story perfectly captures the first white rock n’ roller who took inspiration from R&B, country and mostly importantly Mexican music and created a new unique sound which changed the landscape of rock n’ roll. His sound would influence everyone from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello and even the angular new wave of Talking Heads.
The film came out in 1978 which was the peak year of Busey’s cinematic career with both Big Wednesday and Straight Time coming out the same year. Busey’s career since then may have nose-dived in quality with the occasional interesting bit role and has ended up appearing on a lot of reality TV in recent years. However it’s worth revisiting The Buddy Holly Story to show how good Busey could be and it’s full of the some of the most timeless rock n’ roll ever recorded.
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