Paul Anka Wrote One of the Final Songs Buddy Holly Recorded, Released a Month Before His Death and Covered 20 Years Later by Don McLean

In the fall of 1957, Paul Anka and Buddy Holly found themselves on tour together, part of the  “Biggest Show of Stars for 1957,” also known as the “Cavalcade of Stars” bus tour, alongside Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, and Eddie Cochran. The tour was also a significant one for Holly since Phil Everly convinced the young star to switch from wearing his wire-rimmed glasses to the black horn-rimmed glasses that became part of his signature look.

Before the tour, Anka and Holly were more competitors than friends. That year, Holly’s hit ‘That’ll Be the Day” and the teen idol’s “Diana” were “neck-in-neck” on the charts. In 1957, “That’ll Be the Day” went to No. 1 in the U.S. and UK, while “Diana” peaked at No. 2 in the U.S. but bumped Holly from the top in the UK, where it remained for three weeks.

“In the beginning, I was Buddy Holly’s nemesis,” said Anka in his 2013 memoir My Way. “He’d look at my picture in record-shop windows and say, ‘Who is this kid Anka, pushing me off the charts?’ Like me, Buddy Holly wrote his own songs, so he wasn’t dependent on outside writers like Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, who wrote the Everly Brothers’ songs. Buddy also had his own group, The Crickets; he didn’t play with pickup bands like the Everlys.”

Despite their dueling chart success, the two formed a close friendship during the tour in ’57 after Anka apologized profusely after accidentally cutting the power to the equipment backstage, breaking Holly and the Crickets’ set.

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“It Doesn’t Matter Anymore”

Later that year, Holly confided in Anka about wanting to leave the Crickets and change his musical direction. A fan of Anka’s 1958 song “You Are My Destiny,” Holly asked his friend to write him a song. Anka obliged with the pop ballad “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” a sentimental love song of remembrance and letting go.

There you go and baby, here am I
Well, you left me here so I could sit and cry
Well, golly gee what have you done to me
Well, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore

Do you remember baby, last September
How you held me tight, each and every night
Well, oops-a-daisy, how you drove me crazy
But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore

Recorded on October 21, 1958, in New York City, with Anka in attendance, the song was released in January 5, 1959, with Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s “Raining In My Heart”—a song originally offered to the Everly Brothers—as its B-side, less than a month before Holly was killed in a plane crash on February 3, 1959, while on tour.

During Holly’s October session, he also recorded three other songs, including “Raining in My Heart,” the Norman Petty-penned “Moondreams,” and “True Love Ways,” co-written by Holly and Petty. Before his death, Holly also recorded another batch of songs on an Ampex tape machine at his New York City apartment in Greenwich Village, between December 3, 1958, and January 22, 1959, known as The Apartment Tapes.

A posthumous hit for Holly, “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” peaked at No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking his last Top 20 hit in the U.S., and topped the UK chart. It was also the first song Holly recorded with an orchestra, an18-piece ensemble conducted by Dick Jacobs and featuring members of the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

Anka donated his royalties from the song to Holly’s widow, María Elena. “’It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’ has a tragic irony about it now,” Anka told NME a month after Holly’s plane crash, “but at least it will help look after Buddy Holly’s family.”

Don McLean

Dozens of artists have covered the Holly hit over the past six decades, including Anka on his 21 Golden Hits album in 1963, along with friend Waylon Jennings, joined by the Crickets in 1974, Linda Ronstadt that same year, the Hollies in 1980, Vince Gill in 1987, and the band Lucius on their 2014 album, Wildewoman.

In 1978, Don McLean also released a cover of “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore” on his Chain Lightning album. Holly was a musical hero to McLean, and his death inspired the latter’s 1971 classic “American Pie.”

“It took 10 years to write ‘American Pie’ and to put that album together because, throughout those 10 years, I was harboring this yearning, I guess you could say, for Buddy Holly’s music and the sadness over his departure,” McLean told American Songwriter in 2022.

McLean, who grew up in New Rochelle, New York, remembers the cold winter morning when he opened the batch of newspapers he had to deliver and saw the news of the crash that killed Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson all over the front pages. “It was my guy who was killed,” said McLean in the 2022 documentary The Day the Music Died: The Story of Don McLean’s American Pie.’

“Buddy was now dead,” added McLean. “I was in absolute shock. I read the whole story. I think I might have actually cried. It was that personal.”

Photo: Steve Oroz/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images