Buddy Holly’s death is the day the music died.
Not quite.
He is directly remembered in one English band of the sixties who called themselves “The Hollies”. He – or at least his band the Crickets – is indirectly remembered in another English band of the sixties who called themselves “The Beatles”.
On 8 December 1968 – the 27th birthday of Hollies drummer Bobby Elliott – the Hollies finished a charity concert at the London Palladium and Graham Nash announced that he was leaving. Moving to LA he joined up with two other musos to form one of the first supergroups, Crosby, Stills & Nash. On the same day, Richard Goldstein’s famous review of the Beatles’ White Album appeared in the New York Times:
But this album is so vast in its scope, so intimate in its detail, and so skillful in its approach, that even the flaws add to its flavor.
On 8 December 1980, Beatle John Lennon was shot dead by Mark Chapman at the entrance of the Dakota Building in New York.
“Let it be”, “Hey Jude” and Lennon’s own “Imagine” have been called secular hymns, songs for the ages. A work called just that, carmen saeculare, was commissioned by Augustus and penned by Horace in 17BC. Horace, born 8 December 65BC, is best remembered for the line in one of his odes, carpe diem, or seize the day.
