Eddie Cochran 50 years on

Next Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Eddie Cochran in a car crash on the A4 at Chippenham. His girlfriend and co-song writer Sharon Sheeley survived, as did Gene Vincent. Eddie's brief career had a great influence on early British bands and hits such as Summertime Blues, C'Mon Everybody, Something Else and Three Steps to Heaven still sound great today. Like Buddy Holly before him, we will never know how Eddie's career might have developed had he lived, but his short recording career and his excellent self-composed songs have left an amazing legacy. The Daily Express, of all papers, marked the anniversary of his death in today's paper: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/168664/Eddie-Cochran-The-day-the-music-died

A more recent death is that of Malcolm McLaren, often known as the King of Punk, whose brainchilds the Sex Pistols did so much to shake up pop music in the late seventies. OK it was exploitative and the band was designed to shock, but it was effective. After several years of being bored by the blandness of pop music at the time I came alive when the Pistols and others of their ilk came along. I remember visiting the infamous Sex shop on the Kings Road to gawp at the PVC and bondage trousers and seeing Jordan (the original one with face paint and swastika) serving customers. I felt a right nerd in my city suit. The Pistols may have been limited in terms of talent, but they had a certain edgy excitement about them and helped create the punk era which ushered in some excellent bands and musicians, including the Clash, the Damned, the Undertones, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and Blondie.