60’s Teen Idol Bobby Rydell has died at the age of 79 from pneumonia.
About his passing Australian Rock and Roll star Lonnie Lee said, “So sad to hear from Fabian that Bobby Rydell has passed away just shy of his 80th birthday. He was an integral part of Rock’n’Roll history performing right to the end. I toured with him in 1960 and did TV shows in Las Vegas with him in the 80’s.
A lovely gentle man. RIP Bobby.. never forgotten. X”
Rydell was born in Philadelphia Robert Louis Ridarelli on 26 April 1942. He had 19 Top 40 hits in the USA between 1959 and 1964. He had 18 Top 40 hits in Australia starting with ‘Wild One’ in 1960.
Four of Rydell’s hits reached number two in Australia ‘Swingin’ School’(1960), ‘Sway’ (1960), ‘Good Time Baby’ (1961) and ‘The Cha Cha Cha’ (1962), two made it to number three ‘Volare’ (1960), ‘Forget Him’ (1963).
He also starred in the 1963 movie ‘Bye Bye Birdie’.
Paul McCartney said The Beatles’ ‘She Loves You’ was inspired by a Rydell hit. It has never been clarified by is said to be either ‘Swingin School’ or ‘Forget Him’. (‘Forget Him’ makes more sense). In 2000 in the book The Beatles Anthology (pg. 96), Paul McCartney said: “John (Lennon) and I wrote ‘She Loves You’ together. There was a Bobby Rydell song out at the time and, as often happens, you think of one song when you write another. We’d planned an ‘answering song’ where a couple of us would sing ‘she loves you’ and the other ones would answer ‘yeah yeah.’ We decided that was a crummy idea but at least we then had the idea of a song called “She Loves You”. So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it—John and I, sitting on twin beds with guitars.”
As a 60’s pop star Rydell also appeared on shows like The Red Skelton Show, The George Burns Shows, The Danny Thomas Show and The Milton Berle Show.
Rydell toured Australia is May 1960 with The Everly Brothers, Billy “Crash” Craddock, Marv Johnson, The Champs, and The Crickets. He last toured Australian in 2014 after cancelling a 2012 tour because of major surgery for his liver and a kidney.
His final hit was a disco version of ‘Sway’ in 1976.
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