“It’s funny because I could never really picture Buddy Holly moving. To me, he was always just that guy with the bow tie on the album cover. I liked the picture because it made him a lot more real for me.” — Bruce Springsteen, The Inglewood Forum, July 5, 1978
Bruce never performed with Buddy Holly. How could he have–Bruce was only nine years old when Holly died in a tragic plane crash. But if you were at the Philadelphia Spectrum in August 1978 when Bruce brought the Darkness Tour to town, with a little suspension of disbelief, you could almost imagine it.
That summer, The Buddy Holly Story was generating some strong box office, and actor Gary Busey was garnering acclaim for his performance as the legendary rock and roller. (Busey would eventually earn an Oscar nomination for the role.) His performance was so strong, in fact, that it captivated Bruce–he could almost see his hero in the young actor.
The movie had just debuted when Bruce made the on-stage comment above, so Bruce must have been among the first to see it, and it obviously made a big impression on him. As it turns out, Busey himself was in the audience that night, and when he heard Bruce talk about the movie, the pretend rocker realized he stood a pretty good shot at being admitted backstage to meet the real one.
Bruce and Gary did in fact meet that night, and they hit it off enough for Gary to invite Bruce to join him for his brother’s band’s bar gig the following night, and enough for Bruce to accept the invitation.
The next night, Bruce and Gary joined Gary’s brother’s band, The Old Dog Band, at the Sundance Saloon in Calabasas, California, where the unlikely assemblage played a cover of “Carol.”
The very next night, with Buddy Holly still very top-of-mind, Bruce played his legendary show at The Roxy in West Hollywood, and if you’ve ever heard any Springsteen bootlegs at all, you almost certainly have heard this one. Bruce opened that night with his very first performance of Buddy Holly’s “Rave On.”
That performance became one of the most widely bootlegged Springsteen shows, but it was the second performance of “Rave On” that truly stood out.
Which brings us to Philadelphia.
Bruce returned to the Spectrum in mid-August (he’d already done one stand there at the start of the tour), and this time he invited Busey to join him on stage. On the night of August 18th, just when the show appeared over, Bruce invited Gary to the stage, and the two friends played a show-ending pairing of “Rave On” and “Quarter to Three.”
It was a strange and wonderful moment: the rocker who idolized Holly (in an interview the night of the Roxy show, Bruce confessed to playing Buddy Holly’s music “every night before I go on”) and the actor who portrayed Holly on screen, each channeling the legendary icon and for a few minutes returning him to life.
Gary reprised his Buddy Holly role one more time the following night, this time mid-set, and while that would prove to be the last time Bruce and Gary would perform together, Bruce would continue to perform “Rave On” throughout the remainder of the Darkness Tour and in one-off performances for a few years thereafter.
“Rave On” is closely associated with Buddy Holly, of course, but it was actually first recorded by Sonny West, who also wrote the song. West’s version swings more than it rocks:
Holly’s version debuted only two months later, and his version would be the one to permanently etch itself into rock and roll history, notching at 154 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Rave On
First performed: July 7, 1978 (Los Angeles, CA)
Last performed: September 7, 1984 (Hartford, CT)
I think I may have this on vinyl