How Buddy Holly opened up “new worlds” for George Harrison: The “greatest” the Beatle ever learned from
The rock and roll industry has never been known to have the friendliest brand of people.
Even if someone has their own unique bag of tricks to their sound, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would actually be willing to show the world their secrets and pass along their genius to the next generation of players. For all of the massive heights The Beatles had, George Harrison could still appreciate those who brought them to where he was by the time he reached the 1970s.
But looking at The Beatles’ rise to fame, there was really nothing that anyone could compare it to. Many rock and roll fans had been shaken up listening to Elvis Presley back in the day, but no one could have predicted having four of those engaging personalities together in one group, much less a band that wrote all their own material by the time records like A Hard Day’s Night came out.
What separated the Fab Four from being a flash in the pan, though, was their willingness to learn. There were already limits on where certain rock acts could go, but that was because they only had a foundation of blues and other rock and roll songs. But The Beatles listened to everything, and that meant Harrison internalising everything from jazz chords in their early years to fully immersing himself in Indian music halfway through their career.
There were still favourites from the rock sphere that every Fab could appreciate, though. They couldn’t have made it through the eight-hour gigs in Hamburg without knowing the discographies of Little Richard and Chuck Berry from back to front, and it wasn’t hard to see where Harrison was getting his ideas from when hearing his take on Carl Perkins on their later records.
If Chuck Berry gave them their rock chops, Buddy Holly gave them a crash course in how to write songs. Berry already had his own material down to a science, but aside from Holly putting his signature hiccup into every line, hearing him add in darker chords on tracks like ‘Peggy Sue’ practically gave the band permission to think outside the box when it came to making their own tunes.
Even after The Beatles called it quits, Harrison still thought that Holly was among the best teachers of rock and roll he ever had, saying, “I think one of the greatest people for me was Buddy Holly. Was the first time I ever heard A to F-sharp minor. Fantastic! He was opening up new worlds there. And then A to F, A, D, E, F and F# minor. He was sensational.”
But if Holly was showing them the ropes, it didn’t take long for Harrison to start stretching his own musical vocabulary. Looking through all of his songs for The Beatles and his solo career, Harrison never took the easy approach when it came to chords, usually throwing together the strangest progression he could think of and weaving a perfect melody around it like on ‘Beware of Darkness’ or ‘If That’s What It Takes’ off of Cloud Nine.
Holly may have simply been doing what came naturally to him, but Harrison’s musical lessons from him helped broaden the taste of every rock and pop fan. It was one thing to play bluesy tunes day and night, but once someone makes that strange chord work in the context of their tune, they know they hit on something powerful.
