Book excerpt: Drawing on interviews with almost everyone who ever associated with Buddy Holly, including his widow, this biography creates a vivid picture of a young man who took the American music scene by storm and then died suddenly in a tragic plane crash. Philip Norman is a journalist and a novelist who in 1968 was assigned to cover the Beatles’ own business utopia, Apple Corps, from the inside. He is the author of Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly and many other books.