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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice, and this is episode 30 of my podcast, Get Onto My Cloud.

[0:17] Tim Rice: After over half a century working in musical theatre, I still at times feel it's been a mistake or at least an accident. Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for the very good fortune I've had in musicals, both in theatre and film, but I showed precious little interest in them until I met Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1965. He was a musicals fan in the pram. But from the age of 12, I was obsessed with pop music, particularly, not surprisingly, through records.

[0:48] Tim Rice: Gramophone records. Almost no matter who the artist was, or even the song. Owning 45 RPM discs above all, that's 45 revolutions per minute. Two sides of two and a half minutes of heaven, A and B, top and flip. These were wonderful seven-inch diameter objects, wonderful to hold, to look at, to study the label of, wondering what every name, number, or symbol meant. And all this fun before you actually played the thing.

[1:27] Tim Rice: Singles, 45s, cost for most of my teenage purchasing career, a very convenient exactly one third of a pound, six shillings and eightpence. That's 33p. So on those rare occasions when one was actually in possession of a one pound note, that meant three singles and their B sides from the hit parade could be added to one's neatly filed, catalogued, and alphabetically arranged by artists' surname collection. Or maybe arranged by label and record number if you were a truly sophisticated or tragic collector.

[2:03] Tim Rice: There were, of course, more expensive platters that revolved at 33 RPM revs per minute. LPs, long players, but beautiful though they were, they were by and large out of one's financial range at anything up to £1.10 shillings a copy. Parents had a few, usually Johnny Mathis or show cast albums. But before the 45 RPM single came the 78. These were larger, 10 inches in diameter, and sad to say, very breakable. When the virtually unbreakable 45 was phased in during the late 50s, the cumbersome, fragile 78 was speedily consigned to history.

[2:44] Tim Rice: I began to collect records just before the changeover, so the first record I bought was a 78, Tommy Steele's cover of the Guy Mitchell original "Singing the Blues." This would have been late 1956. Both Tommy and Guy went to number one in the UK charts, and with great respect to Mr. Mitchell, who had a stellar recording career throughout the 50s, to this day I genuinely feel Tommy's version, certainly as far as the vocals were concerned, was the more exciting.

[3:12] Tim Rice: Our pocket money was modest, but somehow my brother Joe and I managed to build up a collection of singles. By the end of 1957, nearly all in the amazing new 45 RPM format. It was all but impossible then to hear teenage music on the radio. The BBC, the nation's sole radio network, gave rock a thin time, so Radio Luxembourg, cheerfully and commercially playing non-stop pop every night, assumed enormous importance. The generally appalling reception of the station on 208 meters somehow added to the excitement, and the feeling that its listeners were a persecuted, enlightened band, united and strengthened by the disapproval of the majority.

[3:56] Tim Rice: As a result of these radio obstacles, clearly assembled by the resentful older generation, waiting and longing for rock and roll to vanish as quickly as it came. Buying a single in the Aladdin's cave known as a record shop became a major event. A trip to a record shop was an excuse to spend as long as the shop would allow in the listening booth, usually with ten pals crammed inside, pretending that we hadn't made up our mind which hit we wanted. The B sides were a crucial factor when we discussed in which of half a dozen desperately desired hits to invest our six and eight months.

[4:34] Tim Rice: This is where Buddy Holly in particular always scored. For example, his first big solo hit, "Peggy Sue," was backed by another brilliant song on the flip, "Every Day." Both recordings were impeccable and innovative productions. Both songs to this day, standards.

[5:18] ♪ Musical number: "Every Day" — performed by Buddy Holly ♪

[9:23] Tim Rice: Buddy Holly and his group, the Crickets, were always far more popular in the United Kingdom than they were in America, at least during his lifetime. In the US, he only really had three big hits before his death in February 1959, whereas in the UK, he had nearly a dozen in the same 18-month period. Of course, since then, he's been rightly recognized in all English speaking lands as one of the great musical inspirations of his time. His songs, performances, and productions, all created before his 23rd birthday, loved and appreciated by millions, 60 years on.

[9:59] Tim Rice: Because I was only 13, I never saw Buddy Holly perform during his one British tour in 1958, compared by the late Des O'Connor. But as a result of my later friendship with a major American recording star who had many close connections with Buddy, I do have a musical link with him. The recording star I'm referring to is Bobby Vee. When Buddy Holly's plane crashed just outside Mason City, Iowa on a cold February night in 1959, he was in the middle of a very demanding and ruthlessly organized U.S. package tour. He was without his band, the Crickets, on a bill which included Dion, Waylon Jennings, Richie Vallens, and the Big Bopper. The latter two died with Buddy in the small light aircraft that Buddy chartered in order to get to the next town, Moorhead, Minnesota, in time to get his laundry done before the show the following night.

[10:52] Tim Rice: Unbelievably, despite the crash, the show had to go on the next day. And a call went out for a local act to step in to fill the tragic gaps in the program. The group that got the gig was led by a 15-year-old Robert Vellin, soon to become a big record star in his own right as Bobby Vee. Back to Bobby in a minute. Here's one more Buddy Holly cut, a song that became a posthumous hit, continuing the story of Peggy Sue.

[11:21] Tim Rice: Peggy Sue got married.

[13:18] ♪ Musical number: "Peggy Sue Got Married" — performed by Buddy Holly ♪

[13:25] Tim Rice: What I love about this song, apart from the delightful tune and Holly's sensitive performance, which he may not have intended to be the final commercially released vocal. What I love about this song, particularly, is the lyric, in which the singer is repeatedly emphasizing that the information he is imparting may not be accurate. Peggy Sue getting hitched is only a rumor. He's not saying it's true, the story could be wrong. This adds a level of sophistication to the song, which for my money shows why Buddy Holly is up there with Chuck Berry and Jerry Lieber as one of rock and roll's greatest wordsmiths.

[14:02] Tim Rice: Bobby V had a terrific run of hits, starting with "Susie Baby" in the US in 1959, and starting in Britain with "Rubber Ball" in 1960. He's probably best remembered for his number one hit written by Jerry Goffin and Carole King, "Take Good Care of My Baby," or for "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes," written by Benjamin Weissman, Dorothy Wayne, and Marilyn Garrett. And he recorded an album with the Crickets featuring many great Holly hits. Incidentally, Ben Wiseman, who co-wrote "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes," is not as well known as a songwriter as he should be, bearing in mind he wrote more songs recorded by Elvis Presley than any other composer. 57 in all, including "Rock-A-Hula Baby," "Follow That Dream," and "First in Line." That's 56 more than me and Andrew had recorded by Elvis.

[14:53] Tim Rice: One of the enjoyable spin-offs about doing this podcast each week is that I teach myself things I never knew before, such as that information about Ben Weissman, who died in 2007, aged 85. But I digress back to Bobby V. A fact possibly not known to many about Bobby is that a brief member of his backing band in the late 50s was a chap who called himself Elston Gunn with three N's in Gunn, as in G-U-N-N-N. Elston eventually became somewhat better known as Bob Dylan. Bobby and I became firm friends after he performed absolutely superbly at Andrew Lloyd Webber's 50th birthday party in 1998, an event at which Andrew and I actually sang with the great man. I can't remember what my showstopper was, but it was probably "That'll Be the Day."

We met on many occasions after that. That's me and Bobby, of course, me and Andrew also met on many occasions after that, when Bobby toured the UK, or when I had a show in the Minneapolis area where he lived, and I got to know his family. His sons, known collectively on stage as the V's, generally toured with him as his band, and I got to know his hometown St. Joseph, up amid the beautiful central Minnesota hills and lakes. And a lot of snow.

[16:07] Tim Rice: On one occasion, I told Bobby that I'd always been intrigued by the story of Peggy Sue, which had inspired two great Buddy Holly songs. I had this idea of making it a trilogy. Did Peggy Sue get married? Whatever happened to Peggy Sue. And that was the title of the lyric I gave to Bobby, "Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue." He loved it and wrote a marvelous tune and recorded it in 2002 on one of his last albums.

[16:18] ♪ Musical number: "Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue" — performed by Bobby Vee ♪

[20:27] Tim Rice: My take with the great Bobby V on what happened to Peggy Sue. The real Peggy Sue, who inspired Buddy's two songs, was the girlfriend and later wife of Jerry Allison of the Crickets. She even spent some time on the road with the Crickets as they continued to tour and perform after Holly's death. After she and Jerry divorced, Peggy Sue returned to her home state of California, went back to college, became a dental assistant, remarried, and had two children. None of that is in my lyric. She even became the first licensed woman plumber in California after her husband started a plumbing business. And that's not in my lyric either. In 2008, she published a memoir, "Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue." And I am the proud owner of a signed copy. Peggy Sue Gerron died in 2018, aged seventy-eight. I'll let my late friend Bobby V have the final word.

[21:54] ♪ Musical number: "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" — performed by Bobby Vee ♪

[22:53] Tim Rice: That was episode thirty of Get Onto My Cloud, written and presented by me, Tim Rice, and produced by Peter Holt.