“Buddy Holly, Yeah.‘That’ll Be The Day’ Was The Killer With Him. The Good Thing Was Anyone Who

“Buddy Holly, yeah.‘That’ll Be The Day’ was the killer with him. The good thing was anyone who wore glasses, like John, could hold their head up high when Buddy came out. Till then you wouldn’t be seen dead in glasses. John used to go round bumping into lampposts. But when Buddy came out it was ‘Sure! Pop them on.’ The big attraction as well with Buddy was that he wrote his own stuff. Whereas Elvis didn’t. Jerry Lee did, a lot of it, but Buddy seemed to write all his own stuff and it was three chords. For people looking at this idea of writing our own stuff, which we were starting to do, the three-chord idea was great, cos we didn’t know more than four or five. We got into Buddy and his songs were easy to learn: ‘Rave On’, ‘Think It Over’, ‘Listen To Me’, ‘Words of Love’, ‘I’m Gonna Love You Too’, ‘That’ll Be The Day’, ‘Oh Boy!’, ‘Peggy Sue’, ‘Maybe Baby’, we knew all of them. We did them at a talent contest in Manchester, only three of us and John didn’t have a guitar … That’s right, he borrowed one, don’t think he gave it back either. But that’s another story. Great days, cos obviously the excitement is mixed with your teenage-ness, which is exciting anyway. Going to Manchester for a talent contest, the nerves of it, and then the relief, and then the piss-off once you lost. We lost every bloody talent contest we ever went in. Never came anywhere.”

— Conversations with McCartney Paul Du Noyer.