Richard Syrett

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Richard Sayette wrote a book, and it was a book about rock and roll and the history of rock and roll, which is always fascinating to those of us of a certain age and a certain demeanor and of a certain male, uh, hair count and, uh, uh, who enjoy Propecia as a casual snack.

The smell of Rogaine in the air.

And Richard Sayette said in our conversation something that blew me away, and I'm like, "Whoa, this is not what I expected, and it's very...

This is a great mystery, and there must have been a conspiracy to cover this up." I always felt in my gut, and maybe you did too, that the day the music died, Buddy Holly, plane crash, Ritchie Valen, plane crash, the Big Bopper, plane crash.

I always thought there was something mysterious about that plane crash.

It didn't make a lot of sense, especially since some other people were supposed to take the plane, thought about taking the plane, and instead took a bus.

All of that makes me go, "Whoa, whoa." Now, it was w- Iowa in the winter.

If you're driving an eighteen-wheeler, Iowa in the winter is about as hostile a place as you could ever imagine, not to mention there's nothing there.

Why do people live in Iowa, by the way? Corn? Do they, do they like that much corn? Well, go to Jersey.

You want, you want corn, you go to Jersey.

Any grocer knows that if you want good corn, you go to Jersey.

Same thing with tomatoes.

You go to Jersey.

You don't go to Iowa.

What's that? But there was that horrible plane crash in Iowa, and then Richard Sayette told us something about that plane crash the last time we, he was on.

Is Richard there, my friends? Hello.

Hey, Richard.

Richard.

Well, yeah, I don't have that screen up.

Now I do.

Ri- [chuckles] Richard, uh, start by, uh, being a good author.

What's the name of that book I keep referring to?

It's called Tales From the Rock & Roll Twilight Zone.

An amazing book.

Sum up for the Midnight Misfits about the story I just told.

Tell them what the mystery was about that story, and then, then we'd like to hear from you about other mysteries and other conspiracies about rock and roll.

Go ahead.

Right.

So you're talking about the... one of the strangest mysteries in the Buddy Holly case, a gun that turned up at the crash site.

And according to my research and my interview with Peggy Sue Gerron, who was Buddy Holly's muse, the inspiration for Peggy Sue the song, and Peggy Sue Got Married.

The farmer who owned the field where the plane crashed, his name was Elbert Jewell.

He found Buddy Holly's revolver buried in the snow after the crash, and reports later claimed that one chamber was empty, and almost immediately the conspiracy theories took off.

You know, had there been an altercation aboard that plane? Had Buddy shot the pilot? Had he shot the Big Bopper? And those questions only grew louder because the Big Bopper's body was found nearly forty feet beyond the wreckage, far from where many expected him to be, because he was supposedly sitting in the back of the plane.

How does the Big Bopper's body end up forty feet in front of the crash site in a neighboring farmer's field, in fact, over a fence? Was he shot? Was he trying to, to crawl away to get help? Now, here's where the mystery meets the evidence.

Peggy Sue Gerron told me Buddy routinely carried the gun because, well, touring musici- musicians back then, they were paid in cash, and by the end of a tour, he could be carrying thousands of dollars.

She believed it was simply for protection.

Now, there's never been conclusive evidence the gun was fired on the aircraft or that it caused the crash.

But when you combine the revolver, the unusual location of the Big Bopper's body, Peggy Sue's premonitions about that plane crash, the payola scandal, which was happening at the time, which we can talk about, and Buddy's growing independence from the music industry, you begin to understand why the day the music died has become, I'd say, one of rock & roll's greatest unsolved mysteries and one of its most enduring conspiracy stories.

Now, in your opinion, Richard Sayette, and I love strong and clear opinions, my friend, what is your conclusion about this mystery? There's been seventy years to think about it.

What is your conclusion about this mystery? And nobody else in history has ever said the sentence, "People didn't expect the Big Bopper's body to be there." No one else has ever said that sentence before.

Uh, it was good to have it here.

I can isolate that and turn it into a promo.

Richard, what do you think was going on in that plane? Here's a gun.

Here's the biggest rock star of that moment, Buddy Holly.

Here's the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valen.

Whoa.

What do you think was going on?

on?Well, the, the gun absolutely fueled the mystery, and, and people wondered if there'd been a struggle in the cockpit, whether Buddy had, had fired at the pilot or whether the Big Bopper had been shot.

But after decades of investigation, there's no, again, credible evidence the revolver played any role in the crash.

Peggy Sue Gerron told me Buddy carried the gun, again, for one simple reason: protection.

So the gun, it didn't solve the mystery.

It became part of it.

It created, you know, this enduring conspiracy theory.

It never produced proof of a conspiracy.

However, we do now know that Albert Jewell, who found that pistol in the field at the crash site, later told police that when he found the gun, he picked it up, and just out of curiosity, I guess, to see if it was loaded, he fired it into the air.

That's why we have the empty chamber.

So the other interesting aspect of this is that nearly 50 years after, the Big Bopper's son, who was, uh, not born.

His, his, his mother was, uh, pregnant, uh, at the time of the plane crash, and he was born several months later.

He always wondered about that mystery, why the Big Bopper's body was found 40 feet in front of the plane wreckage when he was supposedly in the back seat.

Had he been thrown all the way over the, the farmer's fence into the next farmer's field? Had he maybe managed to crawl away to get help? The body was exhumed in Beaumont, Texas.

What's remarkable is the preservation of the body.

The Big Bopper had this famous crew cut.

He was a big hulk of a man.

The body was in remarkable condition.

The crew cut was still there.

All the hair on his head was still there.

The, uh, the suit jacket, everything, the skin, everything was in remarkable condition.

They performed a postmortem, uh, or examination of the body, and nearly every bone, every, nearly every bone in the Big Bopper's body from head to toe was shattered.

The conclusion was that he died instantly, and there were no bullet holes in the Big Bopper's body.

The, the best that we can figure is that, and this may have potentially contributed to the plane crash.

Perhaps mid-flight, and it was a short flight, the Big B- the Big Bopper decided that he was going to sw- switch seats with Buddy Holly and climb from the back seat into the front seat.

Is it possible that this big hulk of a man, uh, destabilized the plane as he was trying to change seats with, with, uh, with Buddy Holly? That's one theory.

If he was then now in the front seat, that might explain how his body was thrown clear of the wreckage 40 feet in front of everyone else.

Richard Sayette wrote an incredible book about the encyclopedia of rock and roll, which includes conspiracy theories that you and I have never heard before.

Richard Sayette, tell us the name of the book again.

Tales From the Rock and Roll Twilight Zone.

All right.

I don't believe anything that was later said about the crash.

I believe that was a revised historic timeline.

I believe the timeline was changed because nobody wanted to reveal the truth, which is there probably was a gunshot in that plane.

That would make a tremendous amount of sense.

If you and I think about the tension of rock stars on, on tour, they're miserable.

Now, they're in a tiny plane, probably arguing over which hotel to stay at, where to land, who they're gonna screw, whether or not they should charge this.

There c- a thousand different things those three guys could have been arguing over, and then let me be a horrible person and point out the fact that there may have been racial divides in that, in that cockpit.

There are many reasons those guys might not have gotten along and could have gotten to the point of gunplay.

It is possible, Richard Sayette.

Are there other mysteries in your book, other conspiracies we should explore?

Yes.

Uh, but one final thought on Buddy Holly, and, and that is that Peggy Sue Gerron didn't necessarily believe there was a gunshot, but she did believe that there was sabotage, and I mentioned the payola scandal earlier.

Uh, and, and that Buddy Holly was a, a maverick in the business.

He had just fired his, his manager, um, Norman Petty.

Was going out on his own.

Had a, had a run-in with Dick Clark, the host of American Bandstand, when he performed on his show in Philadelphia.

Uh, the producer came to Buddy and said, "We want the check back.

That's just how we do business here.

I know we paid you, but now we want it back." And Buddy Holly, Buddy Holly basically told Dick Clark and his producers to go pound sand.

So Buddy Holly immediately had a reputation as perhaps a troublemaker in this, in this recording industry, which was the Wild West.

It was run by gangsters and hoodlums.

And-

So that may have-

... and Richard Sayette, it's, uh, and then I'll shut up.

Richard Sayette, it is interesting that there were two Dick Clarks.

There was the Dick Clark before the payola hearings in front of Congress, and there was the Dick Clark after the payola hearings.

'Cause Dick Clark came about a millimeter away from being blown out of the business because he was as dirty as they come.

Before the payola hearings, he owned publishing rights, he owned writer's credits, he owned labels, all of which he promoted on his show, and the minute he put any of that, and minute he put a song on his show, it would climb up the chart.

It would be pouring money in, and there he was collecting a writer's credit, a management credit- Label credit, label ownership.

He was a crook.

And, uh, he immediately said, "All right, I'm sorry.

I'll never do this again." And he looked very earnest, and he stared at the congressman, and he got away with it.

Meanwhile, Alan Freed was destroyed.

Mm.

Dick got away with it.

But that was a crooked moment in history of rock and roll, a crooked moment in the history of music.

Well, when Buddy Holly performed on American Bandstand, the, the, the show was produced in Philadelphia at the time.

Coincidentally, a short time after his appearance in which he basically told Buddy Holly, you know, "Go fly a kite, I'm not..." Or when he told Dick Clark, "Go fly a kite, I'm not giving you your money back," they raided, the police raided a warehouse in Philadelphia.

And what did they find? Thousands and thousands of records in boxes, uh, b- including Buddy Holly's hit single Rave On, which should've been on Coral Records.

That was his label.

It wasn't on Coral Records, but he's...

The song had been stamped on Melody Lane records.

It was pirated.

Coincidence? Well, [laughs] or conspiracy.

People can make up their own minds on that.

All right.

Another story please, sir.

Let's talk about, uh, Jimi Hendrix, who passed away September 18th, 1970, in the, uh, basement apartment at the Samarkand Hotel in Notting Hill, London, a very posh area of London.

He was, uh...

He had just performed on the Isle of Wight Music Festival and in Germany.

Those would be his last concerts.

Uh, that night, he, um, allegedly, uh, took some barbiturates to, uh, to help him s- um, I guess, sleep or whatever they use.

I'm not sure about what barbiturates are used for.

But he supposedly consumed nine barbiturates, uh, and then was found the next morning unresponsive by his girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, Dannemann, uh, who promptly called an ambulance and then left the house.

And when ambulance attendants arrived, there was no one there except Jimi Hendrix.

They whisked him off to St. Mary Abbot's hospital, where the attending physician, Dr. John Bannister, found Jimi Hendrix had aspirated on his own vomit, uh, and, uh, asphyxiated, possibly due to the barbiturate poisoning.

However, he found an inordinate amount of red wine in Jimi's hair, in his clothing, and in his lungs.

Not his bloodstream, not his stomach, in his lungs.

It is apparent to me that Jimi Hendrix was force-fed these barbiturates and then drowned in red wine in a technique that we now refer to as waterboarding.

His manager-

Whoa

...

Mike Jeffrey.

Whoa.

His manager, Mike Jeffrey, was a member of the British Intelligence Corps.

He served in the Suez Crisis in 1956.

He could, he could kill a man quite handily, uh, if he wanted to.

People were afraid of-

Yes? Hello?

James, that...

Yes, I'm here.

Oh, there was a, a cutoff there.

We missed the last sentence.

Probably, uh, a conspiracy to cut you off from talking about the British intelligence community.

Go ahead.

Y- yes.

Mike Jeffrey was a member of British Intelligence.

Right.

He was Jimi's manager.

And his...

And Jimi's road manager, James Tappy Wright, who passed away several years ago, told me that, that Mike Jeffrey confessed to him that he had killed or had Jimi Hendrix murdered.

He had a life insurance-

Whoa

... policy on Jimi.

Jimi Hendrix was about to leave Mike Jeffrey.

He was his cash cow.

Mike Jeffrey was indebted to the, to the mob for tens of millions of dollars.

Had Jimi left him, he would've been left holding the bag and the debt.

He had, I believe, Jimi Hendrix murdered by pouring red wine into his lungs and drowning him.

For a life insurance policy.

For life insurance policies, exactly.

To deny the world Jimi Hendrix, the greatest guitar player who ever lived.

To this day, the greatest guitar player who ever lived.

You and I are talking to the great Richard Syrett.

Richard Syrett, I have a proposal for you.

Would you like to hear it?

I would love to.

These are the bedtime stories that Midnight Misfits like to hear.

We like to hear conspiracy stories.

We like to hear, uh, mystery stories.

We, we love these.

And if I knew that every Friday we were gonna hear a bedtime story from you about rock and roll and about the past, I would be more than happy to say to you, what's the name of that book?

Uh, Tale-

It cut out again.

Say it again.

Tales from the Rock 'n' Roll Twilight Zone.

Tales from the Rock 'n' Roll Twilight Zone.

It's a fun book.

It's terrific.

But it's the first time I've ever read a rock and roll book that isn't pandering to the image and the, the, uh, messaging of a given rock star.

You, you get to the truth.

You tell the truth.

And these are fascinating, wonderful stories.

I hope you and I get together every Friday night on the other side of midnight.

Richard, how does that feel?

That feels wonderful.

And, um, o- occasionally, I'm called to, uh, guest host on another late night radio show.

I don't care.

So.

I d- I don't care.

[laughs]

And, uh, guess what? Guess what, buddy? If, if there's a conflict, you know who wins.

You got it?

[laughs]

Richard Syrett, a terrific author.

Thank you very much for being on the Other Side of Midnight with Walter Sterling.

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