The day the music died, Chip Esten was not yet alive.

On Feb. 3, 1959, when a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, Esten was still several years away from being even a twinkle in his parents' eyes. Hardly surprising then that the 26-year-old Esten, who portrays the spectacled star in "Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story," had mixed emotions when he visited both the Iowa crash site and the still-standing Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, site of Holly's last concert.

"Buddy," which opened at the Kennedy Center last week, was playing in nearby St. Paul, Minn., a few months back, and on a free day, Esten made the journey to Clear Lake - by car, just in case.

"It wasn't really a pilgrimage but something I wanted to see," he says. "Somebody pointed out that {in the show} we go to Clear Lake every single night, sometimes twice on weekends, but I wanted to see what it was really like - the phone Buddy actually used to call {his wife} Maria that last night, the spot where Ritchie Valens stood when they flipped the coin {for a seat on the plane}, the dressing room, which is where one of our final scenes takes place.

"It really brought it home because if you weren't around when it was happening, the mythology takes over. Buddy Holly becomes an icon, and you lose the fact that he was an actual guy who wrote these songs and played them."

Ah, those songs! "That'll Be the Day." "Maybe Baby." "Every Day." "Rave On." "Not Fade Away."

The songs, says Esten - who sings and plays guitar on two dozen - reveal so much about Holly, who was 22 when he died. "They're about love - losing love and winning it back - `That'll be the day when you say goodbye' ... `My love's real, not fade away' ... `All my lovin', all my kissin', you don't know what you been missing' ... `Maybe baby I'll have you' ... `Think it over what you just said, think it over in your pretty little head, are you sure I'm not the one?' ...

"That thread of attractive arrogance is there, and it's amazing," says Esten. "Maybe that's something that people get ahold of, even beyond the fresh sounds."

Charles Harden Holly, a native of Lubbock, Tex., fueled a revolution by writing his own songs and performing with a self-contained band, the Crickets, that virtually defined the rock form - two guitars, bass and drum. Stateside, he had only three Top 10 hits, but in England (where "Buddy" originated in 1989), Holly was a near-mythic figure with nine Top 10 hits. He only toured there once, for less than a month, but his influence was immediate and lasting. Paul McCartney and John Lennon once said the first 40 songs they wrote were Buddy Holly songs, and the first tune their pre-Beatles Quarrymen group recorded was "That'll Be the Day."

In fact, the British Invasion got a toehold in America through Holly. The Rolling Stones' first hit single was "Not Fade Away." The Beatles - their very name was an homage to the Crickets - recorded "Words of Love." Freddie and the Dreamers insisted "It Doesn't Matter Anymore," while Herman's Hermits recorded "Heartbeat." Peter and Gordon had a hit with "True Love Ways," and when Peter Asher turned to production, he shaped Holly hits for James Taylor ("Every Day") and Linda Ronstadt ("It's So Easy"). The Hollies named themselves after Buddy.

"Buddy Holly influenced the people who influenced everybody else, and that might be the most important thing," says Esten, pointing out that the Mersey Beat bands appropriated Holly's vocal excitement, jangling guitars and stinging melodies and then sold them back to America. The same thing happened with "Buddy."

Esten actually made his debut in London's West End, where "Buddy" refuses to fade away four years on. For Esten, it's certainly been a roundabout route to the Kennedy Center, which is only a few miles from his home. Though he was born in Pittsburgh, Esten and his mother moved to Alexandria when he was 10, and his education roots are pure Virginia: T.C. Williams High School and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.

At T.C. Williams, Esten was not involved in music - "it was more sports like track and riding the bench in football. I took piano lessons for a while, and played just enough guitar to busk a song or two, like `Kumbaya.' " At the senior talent show, he performed "adequate" versions of the Everly Brothers' "All I Have to Do Is Dream" and "Runaround Sue."

At William and Mary, he would pick up a degree in economics ("it's called hedging your bets in case nothing comes through") and became more actively involved with music in his sophomore year when he and three other fraternity brothers started playing for fun and, eventually, for a little profit. They called themselves N'est Pas, "one of the worst names I could think of, but an expression we used at the time {it's French for `is not'}. We named ourselves before we were even remotely popular."

In fact, N'est Pas did well enough for Esten to hang around Williamsburg for a year after graduation - "I thought, when else will I get a chance to do this in my life?" - after which point the other N'est Pas'ers went off to postgraduate studies (one to med school, two to law school, "though if you ever saw us at a party, you never would have imagined that."

Esten himself decided to move to California and look into acting, supported by his girlfriend, his parents and the example of two T.C Williams buddies, Dermot and Kieran Mulroney."They were both out there making a living at it a year after going out there - Dermot was in `Young Guns,' Kieran in `Heart Condition' - so it could be done."

Confident without being cocky, Esten took acting classes and stepped into the firing line of local comedy clubs. "It was a way to get out there and get seen by people. Who knows who's out there on any given night? More than anything, it really tests your nerve. Once you've done that, not much else is really scary."

Funny in school - "I was voted wittiest at T.C. Williams, probably more for the quantity than the quality" - Esten says he quickly realized "I wasn't going to be the next Billy Crystal, but I had people laughing." Soon he joined the Groundlings, an improvisational comedy troupe whose alumni include not only "Saturday Night Live" members Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz but Pee-wee Herman. That in turn led to a spot on a Nickelodeon series, "On the Television."

When "Buddy" came to San Francisco in 1989, the producers held auditions for new Buddies and Esten drove up from Los Angeles. "Once I saw the show I knew for a fact I wanted to do it, so I went all out. I got a bow tie and glasses {which he's never worn before}. I didn't own an electric guitar so I went out and rented one and worked hard on some of the licks." A series of auditions brought Esten to New York for the Broadway opening, and eventually he landed a role in the London production, doing several minor characters before stepping into Buddy for 10 months (Esten joined the stateside touring company three months ago).

"Buddy" has been described as a "scrapbook revue" highlighting Holly's music while skimping on the details of the life, but Esten feels it strikes a good balance. The two acts each end with re-creations of major concerts - at the Apollo and at the Surf Ballroom - along with such events as a studio session, Buddy meeting his Maria (and asking her to marry him the same day) and the breakup of the Crickets. "Slowly but surely, the audience lets itself be taken back to that time and starts to believe that might be Buddy Holly and the Crickets up there, and by the end of the show they have such a stake in it, they really let go, let loose and enjoy it for what it was. They're applauding someone they never got a chance to applaud, hearing the last encore everybody wanted to hear and he never got to give."

As for Chip Esten, he says he'd like to come out of "Buddy" "a good guitarist in general, not just for those 20 songs." His stamina will certainly be improved as well: Esten is on stage almost the whole time. "It's a real physical show," he says with a chuckle. "Buddy was a young guy, and there's a whole lotta shaking going on."

---Article from: The Washington Post Article date: May 17, 1992 Author: Richard Harrington