Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon

by Des Barres, Pamela

  A lot more touring in the Ford wagon followed, and in January 1959 his second single, the blazing “C’mon Everybody!” hit the charts, inviting all of teen America to come to Eddie’s party. As the record climbed the charts, he started filming his third movie, Go Johnny Go!, another classic gem of supreme rock-schlock in which he crooned “Teenage Heaven.” Ironically, he had to drop out of the Winter Dance Party Tour with Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, and his close pal Buddy Holly due to his film schedule. On February 3 their plane crashed in a field near Mason City, Iowa, and a big chunk of the music died. Deeply affected by the loss of Holly, Eddie recorded a tribute song, “Three Stars,” intending to donate the royalties to the three stars’ families, but due to some legalese with Liberty Records, the song wasn’t even released until many years after his own death.

  Though the success of “C’mon Everybody!” was making Eddie a bona fide teen idol, the panting girls and chartbusters weren’t swelling his head. Said his sister Pat, “He loved the success and adulation, but his feet were on the ground. He never lost sight of who he was.” I ask her about Eddie’s teasing nature and she laughs a little. “Oh yes, he used to drive me crazy,” she admits. “When I got married, we came out of the church, and he and his friend David really did a job on the car! I jumped in the front seat and landed in a pile of cornflakes. There were cornflakes everywhere! It was crunch, crunch, crunch!” I can tell the memory is bittersweet for Pat. “Eddie was six years younger than me. He was our baby doll. He was our baby. You know, Pam,” she says with a catch in her voice, “it really took a lot out of our little mother when he died. I wish you could have met her.”

  Jerry Capehart paints a very different picture of Alice Cochran—and a strikingly different picture of the Cochran family baby doll. “Eddie couldn’t stand to go home,” he says insistently. “When he was home he was there basically just to please his mother. He was still a kid, after all, but Eddie despised going home. He grew up with the refrigerator door always being opened with a cold beer inside. Eddie died an alcoholic.” I have never heard that Eddie had an alcohol problem. He liked a little beer, right? I ask Jerry. “No, what Eddie really liked were Black Russians.”

  In March 1959, when “C’mon Everybody!” hit the charts in England, Eddie wrote a “personal” message to his fans in a teen magazine, letting them know a little bit about his “private” life. As the youngest of five children, Eddie said that made him the “baby” of the family, adding, “It’s just something I have to accept although I’m not really the type of guy that likes to be babied.” Eddie told his fans about his passion for shooting and gun collecting, stating he was “unlike most youngsters of today” because his favorite car wasn’t a “sports model or a convertible” but a station wagon. “No doubt that fits in with the rest of my character, for I like to dress very casually and I’m not too happy in crowds.” Eddie ended his message by saying that he hoped to “fix a trip” to England and “say hello” to every one of his fans in person.

  The rest of 1959 seemed like one long tour for Eddie. He had become wary of flying, and the nonstop road travel, playing jukebox operators’ conventions, sock hops, and roller rinks in the toolies, was starting to make him crazy. He had pretty much decided to concentrate on writing and producing rather than spending so much time with his feet up on the dashboard. And according to Sharon Sheeley, Eddie was ready to settle down.

  The Cochran family has tangled-up feelings about Sheeley, a songwriter introduced to Eddie by his friend Phil Everly. “I know Sharon Sheeley says they were engaged,” says sister Pat, “but I don’t think so. The magazines say he sent for her to come to England, but I find that hard to believe.” Bill concurs. “I talked to Ed right before he went to England, we were pretty close, and I’m afraid that isn’t true. She says some things that are pretty fantastic, but that goes with the territory, with the entertainment business. I don’t feel bad about it. If she wants to think it happened, that’s okay.” Gloria says that Eddie wouldn’t have married Sharon. “Ed liked a home life and he liked to have a woman wait on him hand and foot. He liked to have a woman cook. Mother did it for him, I did it for him. He liked an old-fashioned girl.” Gloria then tells me that she believes Eddie was in love with blond starlet Connie Stevens. (Maybe she cooked up a pretty fair dish of beans and corn bread in between takes!)

  When I visit Sharon to do the interview, I like her right away. A true eccentric, she laughs wildly, shares willingly, has a zany sense of humor, and a cute little lisp. And I totally identify with her adoration for the long-gone rock boy-god. Black-and-white photos of Eddie adorn her apartment, and once again I’m struck how Eddie Cochran will always be twenty-one while the people who loved him just keep having birthdays. Thirty-eight years ago burgeoning songwriter Sharon Sheeley fell in love for the first time, and she fell hard. After seeing his picture on the poster of The Girl Can’t Help It, she “set out to get him,” spending the next two years “chasing Eddie Cochran.” When her songwriting started taking off (Rick Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool,” Brenda Lee’s “Dum Dum,” etc.), she signed with Eddie’s manager, thus securing herself a constant spot in his presence. Eddie treated her “like a kid sister” for a couple of years, even though she spent all her money on cute outfits and bleached her hair platinum blond so he might pay her some romantic attention. It was when she finally scrubbed off her makeup, put her hair in braids, and arrived at one of his parties in a pair of Levi’s that he took notice. She says he professed his love and asked her to marry him on a New Year’s Eve night in New York City.

  Capehart says he was there and does not believe Sharon’s story. “It’s so ludicrous I can’t even begin to tell you.” I ask Jerry if he thinks Eddie was wild on the road. “He sure was! As a matter of fact, he never even had to leave his room. They came to him. But he did care about a little redheaded Irish girl in New York,” he says. “Eddie probably fathered two different children. One would be with the Irish girl, and the other was with a girl in Pittsburgh. Hey!” he says as an afterthought. “If there’s anybody out there who thinks that Eddie was your father, I’d like for you to come forward! Tell them that Jerry asked you to print that.”

  “Somethin’ Else,” Eddie’s next single, co-penned with Sharon Sheeley, didn’t get too high on the U.S. charts, but over in England it was a smash. British kids were caught in the fervent grip of rock-and-roll fever and were especially mad for American rockers. Even though Eddie had decided not to travel as much, he couldn’t very well say no to a five-week British tour with fellow rocker Gene Vincent. After another session at Gold Star in Hollywood, during which he recorded a tender heartbreaker eerily titled “Three Steps to Heaven,” he left for England on January 9, 1960.

  Eddie Cochran made headlines all over Britain. Girls were fainting. There was chaos everywhere he went and, though he wasn’t used to it, Eddie enjoyed the attention. He even went so far as to have “breakaway” suits made because of the frenzied female attacks on his person. But Eddie’s humility was in full force when promoters suggested he take over Gene Vincent’s headline spot. “The people wanted more to see Ed, but Gene was still the headliner,” Little Ed tells me with satisfaction. “But Ed wouldn’t take top billing.”

  A young, unknown guitarist, George Harrison, followed him from Ipswich to Wembley, studying his fingers. “Eddie was an innovator of rock and roll,” Gene Ridgio told me with pride. “The way he strung his guitar [was] different than anybody. The two bottom strings were the same so that he could flex them, and they were tuned different.” When I asked Gene what made Eddie think he could do that, he said, “Honey, I don’t know.”

  The tour proved so wildly successful, the duo was offered an additional ten-week stint to begin two weeks later. Eddie accepted, then called his mother to tell her the news. “After this,” he told her, “I won’t have to go on the road anymore.”

  At the end of March Sharon went to visit Eddie in England: Her twentieth birthday was coming up and she wanted to celebrate
with him. She also wanted to see him play for passels of adoring fans. She got there just in time to be with him when he died. Legendary stories have grown up around Eddie Cochran’s gravestone like so many tangled weeds. Capehart says that Duane Eddy’s manager, who was staying in Eddie’s hotel in England, told him Eddie ran out of his room in the middle of the night screaming, “I’m gonna die and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.” Sharon told me she found him in his room playing Buddy Holly records, which was odd because listening to Buddy had always been too painful for Eddie. Apparently he spoke of how he might be seeing his friend Buddy sometime real soon—he had a lick he wanted to show him. Capehart recalled Eddie telling him that he had a feeling he wasn’t going to live very long. And that last song—“Three Steps to Heaven.” When he turned up late for the session to face a pissed-off Capehart, Eddie said, “Who’s gonna care? It doesn’t matter, none of it does.”

  Sharon and I are looking at a thirty-five-year-old black-and-white photograph of a ruined British taxicab. “I sat right there,” she says, obviously hurting. “If he had not pulled me over his lap … That’s why he died, you know. The autopsy broke my heart. He pulled me over,” she says, still amazed at the boy’s gallantry. “But of course he would.” We come to a shot of Sharon leaving the hospital. “Poor little honey,” she says. “Look at me. Dead eyes.” Tell me about it, I say gently. “The Virgin Mary came to me and said, ‘You will suffer greatly,’ and I didn’t understand. I knocked on Gene’s door and said, ‘What are you guys doing in there?’ Eddie woke up … . You have to understand, all that time in England we didn’t sleep together. You didn’t know that, did you? We had separate hotel rooms.” Perhaps it was the uptight times? I suggest. “It was him,” she insists. “I begged Eddie, ‘What’s wrong with me? Don’t you want to make love to me?’ I used to dream about it every day of my life. I was a virgin, I was waiting for this big seduction. He told me he loved me. The most beautiful line, which nobody has ever heard but you, Pamela: ‘Not tonight. You remind me of a beautiful piece of glass balanced on the edge of a table. If I touch it, it will shatter … .’ Wouldn’t you love to have somebody like that?” Her eyes shine with the memory.

  The British tour came to an end at the Hippodrome in Bristol, and instead of taking the train, Gene, Eddie, Sharon, and tour manager Pat Thomkins decided to share a cab to the airport. It was 10:45. The next morning they would fly home to Los Angeles to spend Easter Sunday with their families. On the A4 in Bath, the Ford Consul taxi, driven by nineteen-year-old George Martin, skidded backward into a roadside lamppost and crashed. Wreckage was scattered two hundred yards up the road.

  Sharon says that she and Eddie had been discussing their upcoming wedding as they headed for London that night. “He was saying, ‘Is so-and-so going to come?’ and I’d say, ‘Yes.’ We had talked to both of our mothers and he was singing, ‘California, here I come, right back where I started from! Whoa! I’m gonna kiss the ground when that plane lands!’ I asked the driver, ‘Don’t you think we’re going too fast?’ and all I remember is feeling like I was on a tilt-a-whirl , everything was spinning. I remember hearing this horrible scream, and thinking, Oh my God, stop that scream, then realizing it was coming out of my own throat. The next thing I remember is waking up in a cow pasture. I couldn’t move because my back was broken in four places, my neck in three. The back of my head was split wide open. I just kept thinking it had to be a dream. It was a second after midnight. I couldn’t move and I kept screaming, ‘Where’s Eddie?! Where’s Eddie!?’ Gene Vincent crawled over to me and said, ‘He’s fine, he’s in the car having a cigarette.’ And I knew. I knew Eddie would not be sitting in the car while I’m lying there bleeding to death, and with that I just went out.” On impact Eddie’s Gretsch flew out of the trunk and rested next to him in the pasture, his hand touching the frets.

  Eddie Cochran died at St. Martin’s Hospital on Easter Sunday from multiple head injuries. Some reports say that he lived sixteen hours. “He lived for eight hours,” says Sharon. “I kept going in and out [of consciousness] asking ‘How is he?’ ‘His condition hasn’t changed, it hasn’t changed, it hasn’t changed.’ At four o‘clock this stranger walked in my room, took my hand, and said, ‘I’m very sorry. He passed away.’ It’s not like in the movies,” she sobs. “You don’t scream. The scream is so deep in your guts that it won’t come out of your own throat.” Sharon starts to cry. “I remember like it was yesterday, and I want to say, ‘What do you mean he just passed away, for Christ’s sake?’ He was the kindest, most wonderful friend—not fiancé, not lover. He was my best friend and he just passed away. I wouldn’t accept that, but then I felt this chilling breeze go through the room. They pronounced me dead for four minutes, and I remember thinking, Oh God, this feels so good, but then I had to come back into this body that hurt and this heart that hurt.”

  I ask sister Pat to recall how she heard the dreadful news. “Oh gosh, Pam,” she begins, “I remember that like it was yesterday. It was Easter Sunday. I got up and turned on the radio and the first thing I heard was Eddie Cochran was in a horrible accident, but they didn’t say he was dead. I called my brother Bill but he hadn’t heard anything, so I said, ‘I’m heading out to Mom’s. We were all getting together that day—Eddie was coming home. By the time I got there, they had heard he was dead. The family never was the same. I always thought my family was invincible until that happened.” With thirty-five-year-old tears in her voice, Pat finds it hard to continue. “If I don’t expect it and turn on the radio and hear Eddie, it’s funny how it still affects me. But it’s part of life and you have to learn to live with it. I think if he had lived longer, Elvis would have had to move over a little bit.”

  Gene Ridgio weeps when recalling that Easter Sunday. “That was it,” he admits. “The bottom fell out. I gotta tell you, dear, there’s still a void there. When I talk about him, it brings it back.” He sniffles. “He was too young. I don’t think he deserved to die that way.”

  “Sometimes you wonder just how God is working,” says big brother Bill. “You have to take it and live through it, or you can drive yourself crazy.” He says with obvious difficulty, “I wrote a letter to Eddie. Maybe you can get a copy of that.” I called the Albert Lea Historical Society and they sent me a copy of Bill’s letter:

  Dear Brother … You were my buddy and constant companion … . I remember I would lay beside you at “nap time” and hum, sing or whistle to the records “Beer Barrel Polka” or “Hot Pretzels.” You would hold my thumb and calmly go to sleep … . Just before I went into the service in 1942, I bought a guitar. You promised to take care of it while I was gone. I received letters from home saying how you would dust it off every day. Maybe this is when you took your first interest in the guitar … . Remember how you would confide in me about your problems, your hopes for your future and many things? Remember our last get-together just before your fatal tour to England? I will always feel honored and will cherish your love for me … . May the angels in heaven softly hum the “Beer Barrel Polka” as you rest in peace, baby brother … . Bill

  When I ask Gloria about Eddie’s funeral, it’s hard for her to talk about it. “There was quite a few people there, but we didn’t publicize it,” she says softly, then, “Maybe we could go out and see the plaque.” But Ed is concerned about the condition of the gravestone. “The plaque isn’t very clean right now,” he reminds Gloria. I suggest we clean it off. Ed says he can pick up some cleaning fluid at Forest Lawn, and we head out to the neighboring town of Cypress. As we listen to Eddie wail, Gloria tells me her baby brother was one of the first to be interred. “They had just opened the cemetery up,” she says wistfully.

  When I ask Jerry Capehart how Eddie’s death affected him, he chokes up. “It’s still very, very hard to talk about it.” After pulling himself back together, he says, “I just want to tell the truth, let the chips fall where they may. I was the one who took him to the airport. None of his family went to see him off. None of ‘em. I’m t
he one who said good-bye to him. When he came home in that pine box, guess what? None of them were there to meet him. Not a one of ’em.”

  As we walk through clumps of flowers in various stages of dying, Ed wielding a rag and some fluid, it’s hard for me to fathom what Capehart has told me. He’s got to be mistaken. “He’s over there,” says Gloria, pointing through some trees, and soon Ed is down on his knees scrubbing the bronze plaque honoring his uncle Eddie. Was it fun having a famous uncle? I ask. “Yeah, but I didn’t really think of him that way,” he says, scrubbing in earnest, his face getting red. “He was the older brother I never had.” I sense this is extremely painful for these simple people, and I’m just about moved to tears myself. “Before I ever thought about having Ed,” Gloria says, “Eddie asked me one day, ‘If you ever have a boy, will you name him after me? And he was so happy that I did.” Ed is holding back a sob. Gloria isn’t as successful. When Ed pulls away the weeds and shines up the bronze, I see a lovely plaque of Eddie holding his beloved Gretsch, and a touching tribute poem, written by brother Bob, who died of cirrhosis in 1978.

  Heavenly music filled the air

  That very tragic day

  Something seemed to be missing tho’

  So I heard the creator say:

  “We need a master guitarist and singer

  I know of but one alone

  His name is Eddie Cochran

  I think I’ll call him home.

  “I know the folks on earth won’t mind