Eddie Cochran

• 1. Introduction

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  Eddie Cochran played his last concert on the night of the 16th of April 1960, at the Bristol Hippodrome. He was 21 years old. Within hours, a cream-coloured Ford Consul was speeding toward London along the Bath Road when the teenage driver lost control. The car hit a concrete lamppost at Rowden Hill in Chippenham. Cochran was thrown from the vehicle. He never regained consciousness.

  He had already written songs that would be covered by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix. He had pioneered guitar techniques that reshaped how the instrument is played. He had packed more into his brief career than most musicians manage in a lifetime. The question the story keeps posing is simple: what had he only just begun?

• 2. From Albert Lea to Bell Gardens

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  Edward Ray Cochran was born on the 3rd of October 1938, in Albert Lea, Minnesota, to Alice and Frank R. Cochran. His family were of Scottish descent, originally from Oklahoma. Music arrived early. He took lessons in school but quit the band to play drums instead, and chose to teach himself guitar rather than take piano lessons, gravitating toward blues and country he heard on the radio.

  In 1952, the family relocated to Bell Gardens, California, and the move changed everything. Cochran's guitar playing sharpened quickly, and he formed a band with friends from junior high school. In January 1955, still in his first year of high school, he dropped out of Bell Gardens High School to pursue music as a profession. He was sixteen years old and had already made his choice.

• 3. The Cochran Brothers and Jerry Capehart

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  At an American Legion hall show featuring many performers, Cochran met a guitarist named Hank Cochran. They shared a surname but no blood relation. They recorded together as the Cochran Brothers for Ekko Records, and the singles did well enough to establish them as a performing act. Eddie also worked sessions on the side and began writing songs, cutting a demo with a man named Jerry Capehart, who would become his manager.

  When the Cochran Brothers split in 1956, Eddie launched a solo career alongside a songwriting partnership with Capehart that would produce some of the defining anthems of the decade. That same spring, filmmaker Boris Petroff invited Cochran to appear in the musical comedy film The Girl Can't Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield. Cochran performed "Twenty Flight Rock" on screen, and the exposure opened doors. He signed with Liberty Records shortly afterward, and his first single for the label, "Sittin' in the Balcony" - written by John D. Loudermilk - climbed to number 18 on the Billboard charts.

• 4. Summertime Blues and Studio Innovation

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  In the summer of 1957, Liberty Records issued Singin' to My Baby, the only studio album Cochran would release during his lifetime. The sessions produced original compositions including "Completely Sweet", "Undying Love", "When I'm Mad", and "One Kiss", all written by Cochran with Capehart.

  Then, in 1958, he co-wrote "Summertime Blues" with Capehart. Released as Liberty recording number 55144, it charted at number 8. The song was something genuinely new: it translated teenage frustration into a three-chord argument with parents, bosses, and congressmen that felt both specific and universal. Cochran was one of the first rock-and-roll artists to write his own material and overdub tracks. He is also credited as among the first to use an unwound third guitar string to bend notes up a whole tone - a technique he passed on to British guitarist Joe Brown, who went on to secure significant session work as a result. That bending technique has since become a foundational part of the standard rock guitar vocabulary.

  His instrument of choice was the Gretsch 6120, identifiable by its Wild West "G" branded into the body. In January 1960, he recorded his last session at Gold Star Studios.

• 5. Sharon Sheeley and the Road

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  Sharon Sheeley was a songwriter who worked in the music business with manager Jerry Capehart. She wrote "Love Again" and "Cherished Memories" for Cochran, and co-wrote the 1959 hit "Somethin' Else" with his brother Bill Cochran. She had been romantically interested in Eddie for two years before the feeling was returned. She originally had dark hair but dyed it blonde and bought a new wardrobe in an attempt to attract his attention.

  In 1958, after attending a New Year's Eve party Cochran hosted in New York, the two began dating. By 1960 they were secretly engaged. When Cochran left for the United Kingdom tour in January, Sheeley stayed behind at first, tracking his movements on a map using postcards and letters he sent from the road. She flew over and joined him in late March. Her presence on the tour is the reason she was in the taxi on the night of April 16.

• 6. The British Tour and Its Abrupt End

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  Organized and promoted by Larry Parnes, the 1960 United Kingdom tour ran from January through April. Cochran and Gene Vincent headlined. Joining them on the bill were British acts including Billy Fury, Joe Brown, Vince Eager, and Tony Sheridan. Cochran was backed throughout by Marty Wilde's band, the Wildcats. Georgie Fame, then a member of the Beat Boys who were backing Vincent, later said, "I remember Eddie playing guitar and we were astounded."

  Cochran had not wanted to make the trip. After the deaths of his friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash on the 3rd of February 1959, he was shaken and had developed what his family described as a morbid premonition of dying young. He had recorded "Three Stars" as a tribute to Holly, Valens, and the Big Bopper within days of the tragedy, and his voice broke during the spoken sections about Valens and Holly. He wanted off the road and into the studio. Financial responsibilities forced him to keep touring.

  On the evening of April 16, after the final show at the Bristol Hippodrome, the party gathered at the Royal Hotel and waited for a taxi to Heathrow Airport. Musician Tony Sheridan asked to ride along. Cochran and Vincent turned him down. The 19-year-old driver, George Martin - no relation to the record producer of the same name - lost control of the Ford Consul at about 11:50 p.m. near Rowden Hill in Chippenham. Cochran, seated in the center of the rear seat, threw himself over Sheeley at the moment of impact. The force of the collision opened the left rear door, and Cochran was ejected. He sustained a massive traumatic brain injury and died at 4:10 p.m. on April 17 - Easter Sunday - at St. Martin's Hospital in Bath.

  Sheeley suffered back and thigh injuries. Vincent fractured his collarbone and sustained severe leg injuries. Tour manager Patrick Tompkins, who was 29, sustained facial injuries and a possible skull fracture. Cochran's body was flown home and buried on the 25th of April at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California. Martin was convicted of dangerous driving and fined £50, with a 15-year driving disqualification.

• 7. The Beatles Connection and Lasting Reach

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  On the 6th of July 1957, Paul McCartney attended a garden fete at St. Peter's Church where John Lennon's skiffle group the Quarrymen were playing. McCartney performed several songs for Lennon, including Cochran's "Twenty Flight Rock". Lennon was impressed enough to invite McCartney to join the band. It is because McCartney knew the chords and words to that one song that he became a Quarryman - and eventually a Beatle.

  Jimi Hendrix cited Cochran as an early influence and performed "Summertime Blues" with the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967. Hendrix reportedly requested that some of Cochran's songs be played at his own funeral, stating he wanted the music loud. Pete Townshend of the Who was heavily shaped by Cochran's guitar style; "Summertime Blues" was a live staple for the Who for most of their career, and it appears on their album Live at Leeds. San Francisco band Blue Cheer recorded a version of the song that has been described as the first heavy metal recording. Marc Bolan had his primary Gibson Les Paul refinished in transparent orange specifically to resemble Cochran's Gretsch 6120. Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats not only plays a 6120 in the same manner but portrayed Cochran on screen in the 1987 Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba.

  In 1987, Cochran was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 84 on its 2003 list of the greatest guitarists of all time. "C'mon Everybody" returned to the charts as a number 14 hit in the United Kingdom in 1988, carried partly by a Levi's television commercial directed by Syd Macartney. His nephew Bobby Cochran - who grew up having lucid dreams of Eddie teaching him guitar - was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 2017 alongside his uncle. On the 10th of June 2022, Cochran's birthplace of Albert Lea, Minnesota, renamed James Street to Eddie Cochran Street in his honor.