Today in motorcycle history, February 13, 2002

 Waylon Jennings dies from complications of diabetes.   He was 64. 

 To say Waylon Jennings was a hugely influential country singer, songwriter and musician of the genre’s “outlaw” movement of the seventies would be a vast understatement.  I know you're thinking what the hell does this have to do with motorcycles?  Everybody knows Waylon didn't ride, so how are you going to tie this into bikes?  Just watch me...

  First a bit of history...one of his first jobs in music was as a disc jockey at a local Texas radio station.   It was there that he met an up-and-coming rockabilly singer named Buddy Holly.  Before long, Jennings was playing bass in Holly’s band. 

  Waylon tells the story of during a tour in May of 1958 while in Lubbock, Texas, when Buddy Holly decides to buy a motorcycle.

  "... they went over to Miller’s Motorcycles, which specialized in English bikes. There, Joe B, and J.I. (Allison) bought a Triumph each, a TR6 and Thunderbird, respectively, while Buddy picked out a maroon and black Ariel Cyclone, with a high compression 650cc Huntsmaster engine. They paid cash, bought matching Levi jackets and peaked caps with wings on them, and rode home through a thunderstorm.”

  Buddy Holly’s father had kept the motorcycle until 1970, when he sold it to someone in Austin, Texas. Then in 1979 for Waylon’s 42nd birthday, the two remaining Crickets Joe B. and J.I. tracked down the same Ariel Cyclone, bought it back, and had it hand delivered to north Texas where Waylon found it sitting there in the middle of his hotel room after walking off stage that night.

  “What else could I do?  I swung my leg over it, stomped on the kickstarter, and it burst into roaring life.  First kick.  It was midnight, and it sounded twice as loud bouncing off the walls of that hotel room.  I knew Buddy wouldn’t mind.”