Remembering When ‘The Buddy Holly Story’ Began the Age of the Rock Biopic in 1978

He was one of the most important figures in early rock and roll, overcoming humble beginnings to reach stardom before an untimely demise. All that drama made him an ideal subject for a biographical film about his life.

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We’re talking about Buddy Holly, memorialized in The Buddy Holly Story, a hit film released in 1978. For good and bad, it set the template for the rock biopic craze to come.

Busey as Buddy

If you’re going to devise a Mt. Rushmore of early rock and roll greats, you have to include Buddy Holly. (For our money, it would feature Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Holly cast that immense shadow despite dying at the age of only 22 in a plane crash in 1959.

Rock biopics hadn’t really materialized as a genre yet when The Buddy Holly Story debuted in 1978. Most of music’s biggest stars were still very much alive at the time, so the need to memorialize them wasn’t there. Holly was an exception. In addition, the success of the 1973 film American Graffiti showed that there was a market for films about the golden age of rock and roll.

Producers chose Gary Busey to play Holly, even though Busey was 33 when production began. Busey did have a couple of things in his favor, however, including a background in music and the fact that he was a native Texan. His electrifying performance turned out to be one of the main recommending factors of the film.

Inaccuracies Galore

The Buddy Holly Story follows the musician for the last few years of his life, years which witnessed his meteoric rise to fame from relative obscurity. It covers his whirlwind romance with wife Maria Elena and his occasionally tumultuous relationship with The Crickets. And it features a bunch of sterling performances from Busey doing his own vocals on Holly classics.

But it also foreshadows future rock biopics to come in that it took drastic license with the actual facts of the story. Many of the principals spoke out against it in the wake of it opening, including members of both The Crickets (whose real names were changed in the film) and Holly’s family.

In some cases, the producers just shuffled things around for a bigger impact. For example, Holly did have to perform once on TV with gum covering up a dental mishap due to a backstage scuffle, but it didn’t happen before The Ed Sullivan Show. Other changes were harder to understand, such as the complete omission of Holly’s producer, Norman Petty.

Prototype Biopic

The film did good business in ’78, especially considering its relatively low production costs. It received a boost in terms of its legacy when Gary Busey was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for Best Actor. (He lost both.)

But the film also set a template for rock biopics, playing fast and loose with the truth for the sake of a more entertaining story. As mentioned, Buddy Holly influenced so many with his music. Meanwhile, the film of his life did the same for future rock movies, for better or worse.

Photo by: Paul W. Bailey/NBC via Getty Images