Buddy Holly and Guns N’ Roses both wrote songs called “It’s So Easy” 30 years apart. Buddy’s was in 1958 and GNR’s in 1987. Both songs have lyrics about heterosexual relationship dynamics, more than one interlude with guitar noodling and background harmonies. 

Then there is all the other stuff. 

If you were to look at just the lyrics and where their lives ended up  — take away the names of the singers —  you would not guess which one died in a fiery plane crash and which one is still poorly playing music past retirement age. 

The guy half-cat shrieking, half cocaine dealer bariton-ing “Cars are crashin’ every night/I drink n’ drive everything’s in sight/I make the fire/But I miss the firefight/I hit the bull’s eye every night” is obviously reckless. He drives drunk, he starts fires and his dart reference is probably a heroin thing. That’s the kind of guy who chartered a plane, got the pilot shithoused and then crashed their party plane into the side of a mountain. 

While the man singing “It seems so easy/ Oh-oh, so doggone easy” must be the one advanced in age and struggling with a singing voice as he continues to perform way past his prime. I mean the guy used the word “doggone” genuinely. That’s when you know he’s old as shit. 

But as we know, Buddy Holly and his buddy The Big Bopper (helllllooooo plane craaaaaash) nosedove into an Iowa field on their way to a gig. On the one side they died, but on the other they never had to play Iowa again! Hey BUDDY! They call ‘em fly-over states, not FLY INTO states!

Axl Rose is the man sweating around arena stages at 60, his voice cramped into this very tiny vocal range that sounds like his diaphragm retired decades ago. 

Musically, Guns fuckin’ kick ass here. The song starts with this super unexpected solo bass riff. I’ve played in many bands as a bassist and would never think to use that kind of groove thing you put between root notes to compliment a riff as the intro to a song. 

Then the verse riff is just so sick. The reason Gun’s N’ Roses were a step up from othe Sunset Strip glam bands is they leaned more on sleazy punk bands of the 70’s like Johnny Thunders and The Dead Boys than they did pop and sugary-glam. The part has 3 chords the way it descends guitar part brings you to a sleazy alley behind the Whiskey A Go-Go. It’s the kind of riff that sounds like it leads to bad life choices. 

Then the chorus, GODDAMN! They lose the bass and second guitar and justs have an ascending lead guitar part backed up by a Gary Glitter-type clap beat featuring a fuckin’ wood block. 

It just fuckin’ rips. 

Buddy Holly and the Crickets have two modes in their music on this track.  Muted chords during the singing parts and noodly rock guitar solos that probably blew people’s minds in the 50’s. The song clocks in just over two minutes and it has 3 guitar interludes. Not a lot of meat on the bones! While it was surely influential at the time, now it just sounds…doggone easy. 

The clear winner here is Gun N’ Roses. This song is on fuckin’ Appetite for Destruction, man. I grew up in Indiana. That record means A LOT to me. 

But, not all that Buddy Holly research went to waste. It led me to this query: 

Over 6 million results…no answers…

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