From the moment I got that audition until my final performance more than two years later, I was blessed to live and breathe the great young Texan and his amazing music. Night after beautiful night, my hair permed and dyed black, I got to don those iconic black horn-

rimmed glasses and that equally iconic Sunburst Stratocaster and, alongside my

fellow performers, play and sing one of the greatest and most influential catalogues that any songwriting artist has ever compiled. Let alone one who was sadly given such an impossibly short window of time in which to make his mark.

From London to an extensive tour of the US and Canada, and then back to London, for well over 500 performances, I got to play 18 classic Buddy Holly originals every night. And every single night, decades after they were written, as they were being sung and played by a singer with the tiniest fraction of Buddy’s talent (yours truly) before a normally reserved theatre audience, Buddy’s music didn’t just connect – which it always did – it absolutely electrified. From the parents that remembered the songs with the greatest affection, to the kids that had never heard them before, no one was left unmoved. Audiences clapped, and sang along, and often, by the end of the night, literally danced in the aisles. And those songs were the reason why.

Again and again I was struck, and still am, by the unbelievable spark that runs through them all: their brash and attitudinal joyfulness, their brilliant simplicity, their

wildly infectious hooks and solos, their heartfelt but never cloying earnestness,

and perhaps most of all, their unusual timelessness. So much music from that great

handful of years, even the best, sounds very much like what it was – 1950s music. To me, Buddy’s songs – with and without the wonderful Crickets – have a unique freshness and thematic universality that can’t be confined to that or any decade. They don’t have an expiration date.

I even mean that in a personal way, as a guy that ultimately performed all of Buddy’s great songs longer than he ever had the chance to. You see, after all those performances of all that music, when it finally came time for me to take off the glasses and end my run, I was honestly able to say that never – not once – had I ever been bored for a single second of a single song. Every night was an honour. Every note was a joy.

I think I’ll go play some now!