EDDIE COCHRAN In Person by Lee Bullman

“Eddie came by my apartment and we were having a rehearsal,” Jerry Capehart, Eddie Cochran’s manager and co-writer is quoted as saying in this book. “Recording was scheduled the next day, so I said, ‘Well, why don’t we write something? Summer’s coming, OK, there’s never been a blues song written about summer, call it ‘Summertime Blues’. So, Eddie says, ‘Hey, you know, I’ve got this really great riff on the guitar…”

Shouldering his orange Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins guitar, Eddie would have hit hard on his strings, an open E chord, followed by an open A, then an open B7 and back to the E, pretty easy, even for a beginner, but it’s thinking of the sequence, and its rhythm, in the first place that counts. “Maybe… you’ll think that what he did wasn’t so special, that any other kid with a guitar could have done the same, even down to you or me,” Lenny Kaye would write in the sleeve notes to a posthumous Cochran collection. “But that’s only because he was you or me, and any other kid with a guitar could have had the chance if he’d wanted, simple as that. In the years that Eddie worked and created, the secret of rock’n’roll lay in this clandestine knowledge, grasped by everyone within reach of a top-40 station, uncared about by virtually anyone else.” 

        “Everything Eddie Cochran ever did in his life had to have humour in it,” adds Capehart. “For example, his favourite performer at the time was the Kingfish from Amos’n’Andy days and the little voice you can hear on Eddie’s version of ‘Summertime Blues’ [presumably ‘I’d like to help you son, but you’re too young to vote’ – CC] was really his salute to the Kingfish. I think that ‘Summertime Blues’ was really indicative of Eddie’s imagine to his fans. That song gave him his individuality.”

        Capehart is right about the playful nature of Eddie’s songs. In so many of them there’s a light-hearted quality, like the guy who’s too tired to rock after climbing 20 stories to see his girl because the elevator has broken down, or Shorty who cuts across the field in the race to win Miss Lucy’s hand, or the guy in ‘Somethin’ Else’ who dreams of the girl and the car, and can’t quite believe he ends up with both. ‘Summertime Blues’ has a similar feel, teenage frustration mixed with eternal hope, and was first released on June 11, 1958, reaching number eight on the US charts that September, Eddie’s first hit. In the UK in November, it reached number six. It’s been a rock’n’roll staple ever since, covered by just about everyone who’s ever hung an electric guitar around their shoulders, perhaps most famously by The Who, as heard on Live At Leeds and at countless concerts during their heyday. 

Of course, The Who were by no means alone in trumpeting their fondness for Eddie Cochran. The first song 15-year-old Paul McCartney played to 17-year-old John Lennon, on 6 July, 1957, at Woolton Church Fete in Liverpool, was ‘Twenty Flight Rock’ and thereafter The Beatles included it and three other Cochran songs (‘Three Steps To Heaven’, ‘I Remember’ and ‘C’mon Everybody’) in their stage set, while their version of a fifth (‘Hallelujah, I Love Her So’), written by Ray Charles, owes everything to Eddie’s arrangement. Among countless other premier league acts who’ve recorded his songs are The Rolling Stones (‘Twenty Flight Rock’, on a live record from their 1982 tour), Led Zeppelin (‘Somethin’ Else’, from their 1970 Royal Hall show) and Rod Stewart (‘Cut Across Shorty’ on Gasoline Alley, 1970). Bruce Springsteen has a crack at ‘Summertime Blues’ on the 3-CD set recorded in 1978 at Cleveland’s Agora Ballroom, while US rockabilly band The Stray Cats, and their singer/guitarist Brian Setzer in particular, are virtually indistinguishable from an Eddie Cochran tribute act.

        Though a handful of Eddie Cochran’s most famous songs have been permanently wedged in my consciousness since pre-Beatles times, I knew next to nothing about Eddie until a double LP of his in UA’s Legendary Masters series, with those sleeve notes by Lenny Kaye, arrived in my desk at Melody Maker in 1971. Lenny’s notes were terrific, full of enthusiasm, written with a real love of Eddie’s music, but it wasn’t until I read Eddie Cochran In Person that I truly grasped all there was to know about the life of the handsome young rocker who tragically died on 16 April, 1960, in a car crash at Chippenham while on his way to Heathrow after a concert in Bristol. 

        Eddie Cochran books are thin on the grounds these days and this is a lovely, large format, illustrated one with 186-pages printed on art paper. It’s subtitled In Person because it benefits from photographs of the contents of a locker that contained all of Eddie’s possessions, collected by his mother and sister, that remained unopened until 2021 when it was offered for sale and bought by an English fan called Sonny West. Alongside an authoritative biography by thriller writer Lee Bullman, we get almost 100 photographs, both professional and personal, many seen here for the first time, press cuttings he collected, touching letters from fans (and one, extraordinarily heartfelt, from girlfriend Sharon Sheeley), cheques, royalty statements, posters advertising his concerts, records from his own collection and expressions of sympathy following the events in Chippenham. 

        In July 1963, Heinz reached number five in the UK with ‘Just Like Eddie’, a tribute song produced by Joe Meek that featured Richie Blackmore playing a catchy little phrase on guitar. Oddly, it’s the only tribute unmentioned in a final chapter that summarises Eddie’s gift to the world. Eddie Cochran In Person will make a fine gift to his fans.