‘Eddie spent a lot of money on Italian cardigans and on repairs to his gun’

On January 14th, 2021, Lake Gregory’s Self Storage in Crestline, California auctioned off the contents of lock-up E207. The tenant was overdue with his rent and so – as permitted by state law – the owner sold the job-lot. The contents were bought for $300 by two young Latinos, who took to the local flea market what they thought was valuable (some antique knives) and left the rest. The next day, the pair returned with a dumpster to clear the remaining contents, which consisted of old household furniture, alcohol bottles and personal belongings. As they worked through the loot, one of them spotted a gold disc at the back. The name on the disc was Eddie Cochran.

Despite not knowing who Cochran was, they contacted an antiques dealer from Pasadena, but he hadn’t heard of Eddie Cochran either, so dismissed the offer. However, the next day the dealer happened to be passing by to look at a collection of Russian coins, so he made a visit. The dealer Googled Eddie Cochran, and promptly bought the lot.

Across the Atlantic, word was spreading in rockabilly circles that Eddie Cochran items were appearing on eBay. “You never see Cochran stuff,” says Sonny West, a musician, owner of Killertone Records and lifelong Cochran fan. “So I contacted the seller and started verifying everything. It took three or four weeks of conversations until he agreed to sell me the whole lot. I had to buy it because I couldn’t bear to see this collection being broken up and sold off in bits.”

Now, the contents of Cochran’s life, from cheque stumps to unheard recordings, are in a room in Kent. “When I first saw all those boxes I was totally overwhelmed. There was just so much stuff and nobody – other than his family – had ever seen it. The first box I opened contained his clothes  –  they were shoved in a box like a jumble sale.”

Cochran was killed in a car crash on April 17, 1960 in Wiltshire. He, his girlfriend, the singer/songwriter Sharon Sheeley, and rockabilly star Gene Vincent were being driven to Heathrow Airport for a short visit home during Cochran and Vincent’s UK tour. Vincent and Sheeley survived the crash, Cochran died from head injuries.

“His mother was so traumatised by his death that she left his room exactly as it was,” said West. “She didn’t touch anything.” The Cochran family had lived in California from 1953 after leaving Albert Lea, Minnesota, in search of a better life. The house and its contents were later passed to Cochran’s sister, Gloria. “Apparently she also kept the bedroom as a sort of cocoon but after she died the house fell into the hands of a family member who sold the property and put the contents in a storage unit but fell behind on rent.”

The collection offers an insight into the personal and professional life of the artist whose music influenced Led Zeppelin, the Sex Pistols and Jimi Hendrix among many others. (It was Paul McCartney’s rendition of Cochran’s Twenty Flight Rock that led to John Lennon inviting him to join his skiffle band, The Quarrymen, which later became The Beatles.)

It includes acetate (aluminium) pressings of working versions of his one and only album, Singin’ To My Baby (1957), which have never been publicly heard. West also has Cochran’s personal record collection, about which he is tight-lipped. “We’re organising a very special radio show with some rock and roll royalty so I have to keep that under wraps for now.”

West has catalogued, cleaned and re-packed all the Cochran memorabilia. “I’ve learned so much about him,” he says. “We have all the cheque stubs so I can see what he spent his money on. Eddie didn’t make a fortune but he did spend a lot of money on Italian cardigans and repairs to his gun - he was a proper American country boy. He was also a very generous person who loved and looked after his family. Throughout his short career he was paying cheques from $25 to $300 to his parents on a regular basis.”

West’s hoard also includes all the Cochran family photo albums. One photograph shows a young Cochran playing guitar in the family’s California living room. “I love that photograph because it says so much: the bedding piled up on the sofa suggests they were using the living room as a bedroom and Eddie looks so happy. He’s obviously stayed up late to play his guitar and his sister has caught him unawares with the camera.”

Cochran started out as a young multi-instrumentalist session musician, predominantly working at Gold Star Studios, where he was spotted and asked to appear in the 1956 film The Girl Can’t Help It. He played himself in the film and performed his own song, Twenty Flight Rock, which catapulted him to superstardom with a record deal and his first single release, Sittin’ in the Balcony, the same year.

By 1957, his fame was such that he was receiving a constant stream of fan mail. There are hundreds of neatly scripted letters addressed to Cochran from teenagers (mainly girls) of all ages. “He and his sister ran the Eddie Cochran fan club from Gloria’s bedroom at the family home. He replied to as many fans as he could, which shows real integrity.” The fan club was a serious enterprise with official branding, stationery and membership cards. There are several untouched boxes of newly pressed Eddie Cochran badges and sealed boxes of fan club membership cards, all packaged up as if freshly collected from the printers. There is also a questionnaire for prospective fans. Questions range from the bizarre - 'do you drink milk?’; ‘how often?,’ - to the serious: ‘what do you think should be done to encourage and promote education?’.

But perhaps the most personal items in the collection are the love letters from Sheeley. “They reveal a very complex relationship. In one letter, Sharon gives him an ultimatum and suggests they might be better going off in their own directions. I think it was a serious relationship but she was concerned about him always being on tour.” Sheeley co-wrote Somethin’ Else with Cochran, a song that was later covered by Led Zeppelin and the Sex Pistols. “He was obviously very fond of her because he flew her out to the UK for that final tour. You don’t do that when you’re a 21-year-old heartthrob unless you’re in love.”

It is well documented that Cochran was fearful of flying. West says: “Eddie had premonitions about dying and didn’t want to fly because he lost his friends Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly in a plane crash.” Eerily, one of the family albums contains a photograph of Cochran’s mother at Valens’ funeral. “Eddie often signed things with, ‘Don’t forget me’, which is a strange thing to say for a 21-year-old.”

Cochran was archiving his own life long before West. “This is the reason there is so much stuff because he kept everything. He only had one guitar and that was in the taxi when he was killed.”

West will not disclose how much he paid for the collection but admits he has used his life savings to preserve and share it with the public. “I really want people to see this stuff and I am looking for backing  to enable me to do so - I didn’t buy it to sit in boxes.” Cochran’s wish to never be forgotten has been granted, thanks to an unpaid invoice for a storage unit, a dealer in Russian coins and a musician from Kent.

A book, Eddie Cochrane in Person (Omnibus), and a documentary, Don't Forget Me, both of which will tell the story of the discovery, will be released next autumn