On this day (July 18), the Rolling Stones appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with “Not Fade Away.” The track peaked at No. 48. While they had already seen some chart success in the United Kingdom, the Stones’ previous releases had failed to reach the Billboard and Cashbox charts. They were finally able to break into the United States with a cover of a seven-year-old song originally recorded by Buddy Holly.
Written by Holly with writing credit given to Norman Petty, The Crickets released “Not Fade Away” as the B-side to their hit single “Oh, Boy” in 1957. It also appeared on their album The “Chirping” Crickets. The original version of the song featured a variation of the Bo Diddley Beat. Years later, the Rolling Stones created a new arrangement for the song and made it their own.
The Rolling Stones Transform a Buddy Holly B-Side
Buddy Holly and the Crickets chose to alter the classic Bo Diddley beat for the original version of “Not Fade Away.” Years later, the Rolling Stones, who had spent time on the road with Diddley, decided to use his signature beat in their arrangement.
According to Songfacts, this song convinced the band’s manager, Andrew Oldham, that the Rolling Stones would find success. “Although it was a Buddy Holly song, I considered it to be like the first song Mick and Keith wrote, in that they picked the concept of applying that Bo Diddley thing to it,” he said. “The way they arranged it was the beginning of the shaping of them as songwriters. From then on, they wrote. At that time, Mick, Keith, and I lived together. They were into the last half bottle of wine, and going through, it was one of those magical moments,” Oldham recalled. “There’s no way if someone had just said coldly, right, let’s do ‘Not Fade Away,’ that we would have wanted to do it without hearing the way that Keith was playing it on the guitar.”