Factual error: When Buddy and the musicians tour bus is towed to the Clear Lake Auditorium for the final concert before the fatal air crash, the canopy states that the concert is on the 3rd of February. The fatal accident that took Buddy, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens occurred at 1am on 3rd February 1959 so the canopy should have read 2nd February.
Factual error: In the final concert scene, Buddy is shown playing a 1965 Fender Stratocaster, a CBS model with the large headstock. Needless to say, it didn't exist in 1959.
Factual error: The name of the venue where Buddy played his last concert was the Surf Ballroom, not the Clear Lake Auditorium .
Factual error: When Buddy and his girl are in his father's pickup, she turns the radio off, A few minutes pass, and when Buddy turns it back on, music starts playing instantly. However, even after a couple of minutes off, that old tube radio would take time to warm up.
goofyfootFactual error: Throughout the film, Gary Busey plays a Fender Stratocaster, but with a rosewood (dark-colored) fretboard / neck. Buddy Holly played a Fender Stratocaster with a maple neck, however, (light-colored natural maple wood neck) as Fender only came out with the darker rosewood neck in mid-1959, months after Buddy Holly's tragic plane crash.
Factual error: Although actor Gary Busey was a professional rock and roll musician portraying one of the pioneers of Rock and Roll, Busey almost never plays a rock and roll riff in the entire movie. During his biggest scene in the Apollo Theatre sequence, for example, he holds a steady chord all the way through three songs, even as the music is rocking.
Charles Austin Miller
