We often think of the Beatles in terms of the subsequent music they helped inspire, but before they were the Fab Four, they were being blown away and inspired by music themselves—like the American rocker that George Harrison said had the “greatest guitar solo of all time.”
In fact, the rock ‘n’ roll icon was so influential to the Beatles that the Liverpool musicians tried to use his full band outfit name for their own. (Paul McCartney, ever the straight and narrow Beatle, was the one to shoot down that idea.)
This American Rocker Greatly Influenced The Beatles
Before the Beatles, there was Buddy Holly. The American rocker influenced countless musicians before his tragic and premature death in a 1959 plane crash. And indeed, the future Fab Four was no exception. During a 1974 interview on Rock Around the World, the “Quiet Beatle,” George Harrison described how Holly shaped his love of music and his guitar technique.
“I think one of the greatest people for me was Buddy Holly. First of all, he sang, wrote his tunes, was a guitar player. He was very good—exceptionally good,” Harrison recalled. “But as a guitar player, I started trying to learn the guitar. I got a manual, and it showed me all the wrong chords. It showed like one or two fingers. It showed me C to G. A few months or a year later, I found, ‘Those stupid buggers have given me a manual that doesn’t show me all the notes!’ So, then I had to start learning again.”
“Buddy Holly was the first time I ever heard A to F-sharp minor. He’s opening up new worlds there. And then, Pretty, pretty, Peggy Sue. A to F. Buddy Holly was sensational. A little bit of that rubbed off in as much as I no longer have a fear of changing from A to F” (via Far Out Magazine).
George Harrison On The Greatest Guitar Solo Ever
George Harrison took significant inspiration from Buddy Holly in several areas of musicianship, including utilizing others to produce specific sounds on the guitar. In a 1987 interview with Guitar Player, Harrison remembered emulating a volume pedal by having John Lennon kneel on the ground and swivel Harrison’s volume knob.
Buddy Holly implemented a similar technique in “Peggy Sue.” In this instance, Holly had someone switch his Stratocaster pickup just before he started on the guitar solo. “That’s great stuff, isn’t it?” Harrison mused. “That’s still one of the greatest guitar solos of all time.” Holly’s band name was a point of admiration for the aspiring Liverpool rockers, too.
Back when the future Fab Four were cutting their teeth across the U.K. and Europe, the four-piece adopted cheeky stage names for themselves as a way to seem more legitimate. During that time, John Lennon posed a new band name to the group: The Crickets. This was the same name for the full-band outfit of Buddy Holly, which prompted Paul McCartney to shoot down the idea.
The Beatles might not have taken Buddy Holly’s band name, but they incorporated what they learned from him in their music—especially the guitar solo George Harrison called the greatest of all time.
Photo by Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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