If you're an actor who loves rock 'n' roll, how could you not relish the chance to play Buddy Holly? Mention the roots of rock, and Holly is at the forefront. He was a small-town Texan with lofty visions who, unlike Elvis, wrote his own songs, cut his own deals, fought his own battles. He became a global success before a plane crash stilled him at age 22 in the first rock tragedy. His joyfully simple, guitar-based songs later inspired the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor and virtually anyone who puts words to melodies in hope of a hit single.

Actor Chip Esten, familiar with the Holly songbook of '50s hits -- "That'll Be the Day," "Rave On," "Peggy Sue," "Not Fade Away," "It's So Easy" -- couldn't believe his luck when he was selected last year to play Holly in a London run of "Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story." The show begins a two-week engagement at the Colonial Theater on Tuesday.

"I've been blessed to get this role. In some ways, it's the role of a lifetime," says the 26-year-old Pittsburgh native. "The comment that people make the most is: `Boy, you sure look like you're having fun up there.' And that's so true."

After auditioning in Los Angeles 18 months ago, Esten flew to San Francisco to catch the complete production, "which traces Holly from his humble roots in Lubbock, Texas, to a brief stint in Nashville, where producers tried to slicken up his sound; to surprise recording success in the nonmusic biz town of Clovis, N.M., with producer Norman Petty; and to storied success in New York, where Holly was among the first rock acts to play the Apollo Theater.

"The show was pre-Broadway when I first saw it. But once I saw what it did to the crowd, I was hooked. I went all out to get the role," says Esten, who first played in a college rock band at William & Mary. "I went out and rented a guitar. I got the black bowtie, penny loafers and glasses with thick frames that Buddy wore. Then I got a call-back and went to New York about the time of the Broadway opening. In fact, the day after I had another audition. And by the time I got back to LA, they said, `We want you to go to London in three days.' "

There are now four productions of "Buddy" around the world. There's the London show, where Esten stayed for a year to mostly rave reviews (Rod Stewart was there one night, cheering). There's also a touring company in Britain, another in Australia, plus the American one that's coming to Boston.

Esten performs many Holly hits in the show. How faithfully does he sing them?

"I take some liberties because I know darn well that Buddy did. I've heard different recordings of his," he says. "I don't take as much liberty as he might have, but I'm certainly not trying to do a strict impersonation of any of the songs. I think that might get real boring, real quick. I mean, this isn't an Elvis-type impersonation. Because Buddy was not as hugely hyped or well-known to the media, you're given certain liberties in the way you do these songs. Although, having said that, I do obviously try to sound like Buddy."

Asked what appeals the most about Holly's music, Esten quotes John Goldrosen, the Boston-based Holly biographer who penned the exquisite "Remembering Buddy." Notes Esten: "One thing Goldrosen said was that Buddy's songs had a string going through them of an almost brash kind of optimism. He sang `That'll be the day when you say goodbye,' and `My love's real, not fade away'; and `I'm going to tell you how it's gonna be, you're gonna give your love to me'; and `Maybe baby, I'll have you.' His songs really go on and on with a positive tone.

"The greatest compliment I get is when some people of that era say, `Boy, you took us right back!' And then they say, `We went with our kids,' and they later bought a Buddy Holly tape or CD. Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it, when you say a Buddy Holly CD! But that's the great thing about this. His music really is timeless. Some people's songs are stuck in the year they were made -- whether it's a '60s song or a '70s disco song. To understand them, you really have to go back to that year. But with this music, I don't think that's the case at all. It's still a fresh sound."

"Some people ask us, `Are you up there playing live?' And we're like, `Yeah, there's no other way to do it but live. How could you lip-synch this music?' The audience would really feel that."

The reported highlights of "Buddy" are a reprise of the Apollo Theater concert and of Holly's last show, in Clear Lake, Iowa, in February 1959 with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. All died when their small plane crashed in a frozen Iowa cornfield -- "the day the music died," sang Don McLean on his hit, "American Pie."

"A couple of weeks ago, I went to Clear Lake -- and that was very moving," says Esten. "We went to the Surf Ballroom, where he played. We went to the airport he took off from. And we went to the crash site. It hit me really hard because every single night of the play, we go to Clear Lake and pack up his last suitcase. In the context of the play, I'm not thinking of those things because Buddy certainly wasn't thinking, `Hey, this is my last suitcase.' So if I let on to that, I'm doing something wrong. The best way to play it is to be completely natural. But when I went there, it all hit me. I saw the phone where he called Maria-Elena {his wife} for the last time. I'd already felt a sense of responsibility, but this gave me an even more heightened sense of responsibility to Buddy and his music.

"And when we drove to the crash site, that hits you more. Buddy's story can so easily turn into a myth because of the epic quality of it all -- the rock 'n' roll star, the first rock 'n' roll death, the first real rock 'n' roll band, you might say. He can seem very much like an icon. But at the crash site, you go, `Wait a second. This was a man, a very young man who really did live and breathe.' There you are in a cornfield half a mile from the nearest road. The simplicity of it really brings it home."

Article from:The Boston Globe (Boston, MA) Article date:April 26, 1992 Author: Steve Morse, Globe Staff