Arena — Season 1, Episode 185: Three Steps to Heaven
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Classics like ' Summertime blues , 'C'mon everybody' and Three steps to heaven' made Eddie Cochran one of the all-time greats of rock 'n' roll. But for his tragic death, many think he could have become as successful as Elvis. In 1960, in the middle of a triumphant tour of Britain, the car carrying Cochran, his fiancee and Gene Vincent crashed on the A4. He died hours later in a hospital in Bath - he was 22. Tonight Arena examines the legend of Cochran and the enduring appeal of his music. Larry Parnes , the most successful promoter and manager of his time, describes the heady days of the 1960 tour. Adam Faith , Marty Wilde and Joe Brown recall the nursery slopes of rock 'n' roll and the enormous impact of Cochran on the British rock scene. Cochran's mother and his fiancee Sharon Sheeley talk publicly for the first time.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.