The best No 1 records: The Crickets – That'll Be the Day

Everyone needs to start somewhere, and this was the song that a group called the Quarrymen first recorded, as a demonstration disc, the following year, shortly before they morphed into an outfit called – with a punning nod to their forebears – the Beatles. And the co-author of That'll Be the Day , Buddy Holly, was also a huge influence on Bob Dylan, who watched him perform live – from 3ft away – three days before his death together with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in that famous plane crash . In a small way, Holly's music was a beginning for me, too, growing up in a household where Dylan, the Beatles and Buddy were played. And even now, there's something about That'll Be The Day – with what's almost its punchline: "when I die …" – that sounds both more poignant and fresher than anything else.