Whatever Fairchild’s contribution, the performance was all Eddie. In the film, he appears on television, performing a song he co-wrote (with a woman, by the way, named Nelda Fairchild – who wrote under a pen name) called “Twenty-Flight Rock”. There were some hits or misses – and movies like Rebel Without a Cause or The Wild One – even though they’re not explicitly about music – are more “rock ‘n roll” than any of these films, but never mind, a lot of them are really fun time-capsules and Cochran appeared in a couple, the first being Frank Tashlin’s movie-musical-rock-n-roll extravaganza The Girl Can’t Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield. The Twin Peaks episode – deemed surreal and incomprehensible by many – while also being revered as experimental cinema – makes total almost literal sense if you watch it as a metaphor for the cultural upheaval – good and bad – created by one atomic-bomb-blast named Elvis Aron Presley.)īack to business: Hollywood struggled to get a hold of the maniacal youth explosion, the birth of modern pop culture, really. Lynch said, on what it was like when Elvis arrived: “It wasn’t there, and then it was there.” IT. (See, that’s why I say episode 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return was actually a metaphor for the Arrival of Elvis. That year, rock ‘n roll spread like an unstoppable wave of debris from ground zero. In 1956, the same year Elvis went global, Cochran came out with a single, “Skinny Jim” (co-wrote with Capeheart), which didn’t do much chart-wise, although it’s now recognized as a classic track of the era, pure undiluted rockabilly. So he was into country music, rhythm and blues, and he was still a teenager when he started writing songs, as well as collaborating with other songwriters (Jerry Capeheart the main one). He soaked up all different kinds of music at a young age, as so many young people did then during that very specific time in history post-WWII when radio waves reached longer and farther than they ever had before. He’s not forgotten, but it’s almost like he’s become a niche interest to rockabilly fans, as opposed to understanding his importance to the wider culture.Ĭochran taught himself blues guitar in high school. I know, I know, he’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well he should be. Still, though, Cochran’s name doesn’t get the “play” it should. So people like Mick Jagger (up above) were watching him and learning. Those who were THERE at the time in the 50s, those who went on to become the superstars of the 60s and 70s, name-check Cochran as an influence all the time: he was the epitome of cool AND hot, he was handsome, he had a striking sense of style (those COATS), and he had that mix of rebellious/bad-boy/sexy that will never grow old and will always be “in”.
You know who DOES talk about it? Brian Setzer! People don’t talk about this smokin-hot picture of Cochran and Gene Vincent nearly enough. People don’t talk about Eddie Cochran nearly enough. Sob.) Cochran’s performance is earnest and sorrowful, prayerful, solemn.
Eerily, after Buddy Holly’s plane went down, Cochran recorded a song about the Big Three (all of whom he knew personally) called “Three Stars” (three new stars in the sky. Cochran was only 21 years old when he died. The only comparison I can think of for my generation was the one-two punch of Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix, their deaths six months apart. When Cochran died the following year – just as suddenly only this time in a car crash – it had to have felt like a cruel joke to the kids. The deaths of Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly in 1959 was, in retrospect, just the horrible jump-start to the exodus. Obligatory, perhaps, but that song is a stone-cold classic.)
EDDIE COCHRAN MOVIE
( I just reviewed a movie in August which had Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” on the soundtrack. The only ones you hear on the radio for the most part are “Suspicious Minds” and maybe – MAYBE – “In the Ghetto”. Elvis’ 1950s hits aren’t still in rotation. Eddie Cochran’s songs still get play everywhere, all the time, on the radio no less! 1950s hits still in rotation.
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