Don't Forget Me: The Eddie Cochran Story - Hardcover

Mundy, Julie; Higham, Darrel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1840181613 ISBN 13: 9781840181616

Publisher: Mainstream Publishing, 2000

Synopsis

The story of Eddie Cochran, who started his recording career playing lead guitar and singing harmony with Hank Cochran in the hillbilly duet The Cochran Brothers. In the autumn of 1955, Eddie and Hank, who were unrelated, arrived in Dallas to play the Big D Jamboree, missing by days a young Elvis Presley's appearance. Inspired by rock 'n' roll, the 17-year-old Eddie moved away from country music to become one of the most sought-after guitarists on the West Coast of America. He wrote and recorded songs including "Summertime Blues", "C'mon Everybody", "Something Else" and "Three Steps to Heaven". In 1960, he embarked on a tour of Britain. Easter Sunday, four months later, the tour was to end in tragedy. This work contains contributions from Cochran's family, friends, associates and fellow musicians, along with 100 rare photographs.

About this title

Review

Eddie Cochran died in a car crash in April 1960, at the end of his only British tour. He was just 21 years-old, but already a rock'n'roll star, having recorded a handful of hits including C'Mon Everybody, Twenty Flight Rock, Summertime Blues, Cut Across Shorty and Somethin' Else. Cochran was also a brilliant guitarist, songwriter and producer: one of the true legends of 50s rock'n'roll, whose songs would later be covered by The Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Who, Rod Stewart and the Sex Pistols. Yet, incredibly, this is the first-ever biography. Don't Forget Me offers a thorough and engaging account of a teenager who had mastered country & western and the blues before he fell under the spell of rock'n'roll and embarked on a professional career that would last barely four years. It was while on tour with the late Gene Vincent that Cochran met his end. The two were received ecstatically on those 1960 UK dates--by, among others, Cliff Richard and George Harrison--and the authors are particularly good on these last few weeks of his life.

Cochran combined studio technique and guitar mastery with the rare ability to write really distinctive rock songs. Had he lived, he would surely have become a giant of popular music rather than merely a 50s footnote. Don't Forget Me goes some way to redressing the balance in our appreciation of the late, great Eddie Cochran. --Patrick Humphries

Review

"'Eddie Cochran had the whole package. He was a songwriter, he was a guitar player - boy, was he one of the first guitar players - and he had a natural voice that just rocked, plus he was good-looking but cool too. When I first heard "Somethin' Else" it blew my socks off? It was the hardest rockin' song that I still think I have ever heard. And hard rock doesn't just have to be your guitar turned up to eleven, it's the attitude.' Brian Setzer 'Unless you were lucky enough to know him and be able to sit backstage in his dressing-room when he would pick up his guitar and play what he felt, you never got to hear Eddie Cochran really play the guitar. People are so amazed by what they've heard on record. If you could have heard him, it was a million times better than anything they ever got on record. He was phenomenally talented. It was mind-boggling how a boy that young could play like he did.' Sharon Sheely"

Edition details

• Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1840181613
• ISBN 13: 9781840181616
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224