Then, after all that, you finally ended up in the Crickets anyway!
Well, basically, the Crickets split  just a year after "That'll Be The Day" hit. There were a few reasons I guess. Joe B always says it was because everybody got married, which is probably a bit true! But also, Buddy didn't much like the deal they had with Norman Petty and he thought they'd do better in New York. He asked J.I. and Joe B. to come along with him but at the end of the day,  they didn't want to move.  So Buddy went off to New York as Buddy Holly, and the boys stayed on in Texas and with Norman Petty,  as the Crickets. At that point, they called me up to join the group and at the same time, Earl Sinks from Amarillo who sort of sounded like Buddy, joined as lead vocalist.

After five hits in a row, the Crickets released "Love's Made A Fool Of You" as their first single without Buddy Holly and that flopped in the US, although it made the Top 20 in the UK. What happened?
I don't know. Obviously the fact that Buddy was not with us, made a difference to the sound. Secondly, although I was starting to write songs again, we didn't have anything ready for a single so we picked a song that Norman recommended - "Love's Made A Fool Of You" which was actually a Buddy Holly song (he had co-written it with Bob Montgomery), but one he hadn't released. However, he had done a nice recording of it with Bob but their version had a Bo Diddley beat on it, and since we didn't want to be copying their arrangement, we dropped the Bo Diddley beat without really putting anything as good in its place. Actually, the other side - "Someone Someone" - [later a hit for Brian Poole] was a better track really I think.

For a period, the Crickets seemed to be rudderless.
That's not a bad description of things. For example, the album that came out after Buddy died, ["In Style With The Crickets"] had a lot of good songs on it, but it was recorded all over the place - some of it in Clovis, some in New York, some in Los Angeles, and I think it really lacked any sense of direction. As musicians, we knew what to do - we just didn't know how to make it interesting, and the engineers and producers just didn't seem to know either. or else they just didn't seem to care too much.

Which brings me to the question of Norman Petty. Does it not mean that for all the criticisms levelled at him - the man was a visionary?
Well, let's say that Norman Petty was a very clever person. I would even be willing to say that he was a visionary. After all, he set up in Clovis, New Mexico, which is a nice place admittedly, but who would have thought that somebody from there would make it big in the music industry? I would also say that it's easy to knock a guy when he's no longer around, and recording-wise, he did know how to get a good sound, especially given the equipment they had in those days. That's where he really shone in my opinion - getting a good sound. But you know, all the early hits, "That'll Be The Day", "Oh Boy" and "Maybe Baby" were purely the Crickets, and Norman had very little say in the way they were performed, and they were huge. Funnily enough, when Norman got more control over the group, I thought the records began to suffer! For example, "Think It Over" was a great song, but Norman insisted on adding in that terrible piano solo in the middle and frankly I think that ruined it. OK - I see his point - it was probably very nice for Vi Petty to be on a Crickets single, but it had nothing to do with the song and nothing to do with the sound of the Crickets.

Buddy Holly died in February 1959 - where were you at that time?
Actually, all of us were in Lubbock the evening Buddy was killed. He had gone back on the road in January 1959, for the first time since the split, but the Crickets hadn't gone on tour since he had moved to New York. We were doing the odd gig, but basically, we were trying to get the new album together since Coral were looking for product. However by now we too were having problems with Norman Petty - in fact, the night Buddy died (February 2nd/3rd), we had just driven back from Clovis, and we were sitting around in Jerry Allison's mom's kitchen, and J.I. was trying to reach Buddy by phone. Our relations right then with Norman were real bad - my own relations with Norman were terrible - I don't think he liked me too much, and I guess I didn't like him very much either. Anyway, it didn't happen, we couldn't reach Buddy, and next morning, we heard that he had been killed in that air-crash with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper.

What happened next?
Well, we stayed for Buddy's funeral, but right after the funeral, we went to New York. I guess we just wanted to get away from Lubbock. There, we met up with the "other" Crickets - Waylon Jennings and Carl Bunch and Tommy Allsup, the musicians who had accompanied Buddy on that last tour. We also met Ronnie Self, who had gone in as lead singer after Buddy died so that these "other"  Crickets could complete the tour. And then the strangest thing happened. The tour organiser Irving Feld held a meeting with both sets of Crickets in his office, and at the end of it, the compromise was that  I was out again,  on my way back to Lubbock in J.I.'s car, along with Waylon,  Ronnie and Carl!  Meanwhile J.I., Joe B. Earl Sinks and Tommy Allsup were the new Crickets!

This must have come as a bit of a surprise to you?
Yeah, sure did,  but as it happened, a few weeks later, J.I. called me and invited me to go back into the group, and that was the line-up from then on.

Did the Crickets take on new management after your split with Norman Petty?
No we didn't. Things were a bit eerie - we were in a sort of black mood, and even though we were bookable, it was only a few month's after Buddy's death, and we were not really ready to go back on the road. And as we were not touring we probably felt we didn't need a manager immediately, but looking back on it now, we didn't really know enough about the business to effectively manage ourselves, and particularly to promote ourselves.  And anyway, we were not too sure if we were going to be the Crickets, or change our name, or whatever.

Were you writing?
Yeah - we were working on the album around then, so I was quite busy writing. I wrote "I Fought The Law" and "A Sweet Love", which we recorded in New York in May, and then J.I. and I wrote "When You Ask About Love", and "Deborah", which we also did in New York. Then when me moved down to Los Angeles to record, I wrote "Baby My Heart" and J.I. and I wrote "More Than I Can Say", all of which ended on the album. It was quite a productive period for me as a writer really.

Now just as the album came out, you arrived in Britain in April 1960, along with the Everly Brothers. How did this come about?
Well, I knew Don and Phil myself, but not that well, whereas J.I. and Joe B. knew them from way back. Actually, on one tour in Florida, the Everlies had trouble with a backup band, so the Crickets had backed them for a few dates, and apparently the two boys loved it, so when they were going to England in 1960, they phoned J.I. and suggested that he and Joe B. should come along too. And good old J.I. said - "Well we'll consider it, but you've got to include Sonny also, as he's with us now". And so that's how we all ended up in England in 1960.

While you were in England, the Crickets single "When You Ask About Love", charted. Of course that song also went Top 5 for Matchbox twenty years later, in 1980.
Well finding songs to record was always a problem in those days and J.I. and I had started to write songs simply to fill the gap as it were and we wrote that particular song one evening over at the Peggy Sue Garron's house in Lubbock. I think they were eating supper or something, and J.I and myself took a guitar into one of the bedrooms and wrote it in about an hour, I guess.

That song had a particularly catchy guitar solo in the middle. How difficult was that solo to record?
Well, I remember recording the song in New York, and I played rhythm behind Earl who was doing the vocals, then switched to the solo which I had worked out that same morning, and then back to playing behind Earl again, and I guess we did that song in one or two takes. It didn't seem difficult then! Funny thing is, a few years ago, I was asked to do it again on a new Crickets album, and you know, it was real hard!

After that 1960 tour, you ended up being drafted into the US Army.
Well, after England, we came back home first, because we were supposed to go on to Australia for about ten days. Now before I had left for England, I had gotten a notice from the Draft Board saying "If you leave the country, be sure and tell us", but in the excitement of making the trip, I had forgotten all about that!

Anyway, in those days, you didn't phone home from somewhere like England all that much, but of course, when I got back to New York, I phoned my folks to tell them I was back, and my mother said You better get down to the Draft Board real fast - they're looking for you"! So Joe B. and I flew to Lubbock, and the lady there was real nice about it, she let me go to Australia. But at the end of the tour, I had to report to the Army, and I was gone for two years - seventeen months of that time in France.

Now while you were in France, "Walk Right Back" was recorded by the Everly Brothers, and went on to be Number 1 almost everywhere in the world. How did that come about?
Well I wrote most of that one Sunday afternoon, while I was doing my basic training in California,  just after I went in the army, although I had the guitar riff for a while.  And then Lady Luck stepped in. I never was much for guns, and still am not really into them, but out of 250 men in our unit in basic training, six of us fired expert, and I was one of the six! Anyway, for firing expert, they gave me a three-day pass, and I went straight down to Hollywood, and the Crickets were there, and so were Don and Phil, who were doing some acting classes for movies - they had just signed for Warner Brothers. So J.I. told me to sing the song for Don - actually I had only one verse written - and Don called Phil down, and they worked out a gorgeous harmony part. So they said, "If you write another verse. we'll record it". Anyway, I went back to base, and wrote a second verse, and put it in the mail to them, and next morning, I got a letter from J.I. to tell me that the Everlies had already recorded the song before they got my letter - they had simply recorded the first verse twice! And that's the version that was released, and that's the version that was the hit! The joke is that Perry Como and Andy Williams and a whole bunch of others including myself, recorded the song with the second verse included, but when Anne Murray did it in 1978, she just did the same as the Everlies, just the one verse - and that was a big hit all over again - so maybe the second verse was never meant to be!




"Walk Right Back" was one of the biggest-selling songs of 1961. How did it feel to finally make it?
Well you know, it's hard to describe, it's almost like hoeing a field of cotton - you work and work and it's so hot out there, and you're tired, and that field looks so big, and then, suddenly you notice it's cooler, and next thing, you've it finished, and you think "Wow - I did it!". You know, I had been chasing the dream for so long, and through a lot of disappointments, and it was really nice to see it all work out. And of course, there were the other things too. For example, when I had gone into the army, I had owed by brother perhaps a thousand dollars, but now, when I came out, I had this bank account in Los Angeles, and the money was just rolling in, and all of a sudden, I had some breathing room. Then again, when I had gone to France, nobody had noticed, but now that I getting out, everbody seemed concerned about me. I was getting phone calls  to the base in France from music publishers in the US asking me what my plans for the future were - it sure was a different scene!

While you were in the Army, the Crickets had a UK hit with another of your songs, "More Than I Can Say", which was covered in the US by Bobby Vee. Had you sent it to Bobby yourself?
No. Of course, we had known Snuff Garrett back in Lubbock, and when he moved to Los Angeles in 1960, he had stayed in an apartment with J.I. and myself, and Trini Lopez. Soon after, he became  an A&R man at Liberty Records in Los Angeles, and he had actually signed the Crickets to Liberty while I was in the army.

Now he also handled Bobby Vee, who was really big at the time, with songs like "Devil Or Angel" and "Rubber Ball", and Snuff had always liked "More Than I Can Say". I remember that when J.I. and myself played on Eddie Cochran's last Liberty recording session in 1960 before he died, Snuff had thought of getting Eddie to do that song, but of course that never happened. However, Snuff always kept the song in mind, and Bobby liked the song too. They did a great record of it - I really do like their version.

That song, "More Than I Can Say" had a real great hook - the "wo wo - yay yay" part.
Well you know, that was not quite intentional. J.I. and myself wrote that song in an hour or so, and we just didn't have words for that section, so we just sang "Wo wo, yay yay/ Love you more than I can say", and  kept saying "We'll put something in there instead of 'wo-wo yay-yay'" not realising that we already had ourselves a real nice hook! Luckily we never found anything to put in there, and by the time we made it to the studio, we said - "oh heck, just leave it". I've been glad ever since that we were not smart enough to think up of some lyrics to fill that!

Continued