Eddie Cochran car crash site

On the evening of April 17, 1960, a Ford Consul taxi carrying Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and their partners Sharon Sheeley and Jeanne Vincent blew a tyre on Rowden Hill on the A4 Bath Road just outside Chippenham, Wiltshire. The car skidded and hit a lamppost. Cochran, who had thrown himself over Sharon Sheeley to protect her when he felt the tyre blow, was thrown through the windscreen. He died in St Martin's Hospital, Bath, the following morning. He was 21 years old. Vincent survived with serious injuries; Sheeley and the others also survived.

Cochran had been in the UK on a successful tour and was on his way to London airport to fly home. He had been scheduled to return to the US several times but kept extending the tour at the urging of promoter Larry Parnes. 'Three Steps to Heaven' was recorded just before the tour; it was released posthumously and reached number one in the UK. Cochran's recordings -- 'Summertime Blues', 'C'mon Everybody', 'Something Else', 'Twenty Flight Rock' -- were as important to the British rock scene as they were to the American one; the Beatles and the Rolling Stones both covered him.

A memorial stone was erected on Rowden Hill near the site of the crash, accessible from the A4 Bath Road. Chippenham has embraced the connection and the town holds periodic commemorations. The A4 at Rowden Hill is still an active road; the crash site is marked by the stone and by the awareness among those who make the pilgrimage of what happened on this ordinary stretch of English road in April 1960.