Gary Busey

Life imitated art at an auction Saturday when actor Gary Busey, who played Buddy Holly in a film biography, paid $242,000 for an acoustic guitar owned by the late rock 'n' roll pioneer. In addition to the 1945 Gibson guitar with a cover hand-tooled by Holly, the 118 lots in the sale included a Fender Stratocaster guitar that netted $110,000.

Actor/musician Gary Busey continues his comeback from a near-fatal motorcycle accident with an evening of rock 'n' roll tonight at North Hollywood's Palomino. Along with keyboardist Rick Danko and guitarist Garth Hudson--both formerly of The Band--Busey will sing original songs and strum his guitar through a medley of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly material. Tonight's concert is the third of four appearances--the others are in San Diego, Redondo Beach and San Juan Capistrano--Busey's first public performances since December's accident that left him with severe head injuries and required months of physical therapy.

Gary Busey has been moved into the rehabilitation wing of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a move described as "a step forward" in his recovery from a nearly fatal head injury in a motorcycle mishap earlier this month. "This will be the final portion of his stay here," hospital spokesman Ron Wise said Wednesday after Busey moved to the physical therapy section of the hospital. "It is basically, for a lack of a better term, to fine tune him," said Wise. "This is a step forward.

As actor Gary Busey's condition improved Monday after a motorcycle mishap, police attributed the accident to rider error and said Busey's injuries would have been less severe had he been wearing a helmet. "It appears to be straight driver error," said Culver City Police Lt. Ellis Smith. Had Busey, a vocal opponent of laws requiring helmets, been wearing one, "I don't think even the helmet would have broken," Smith said.

Actor Gary Busey, whose 1978 performance in "The Buddy Holly Story" won an Academy Award nomination, was critically injured Sunday in a motorcycle accident in Culver City, police said. Busey, 44, of Malibu, was driving west on Washington Boulevard near Robertson Boulevard at 11:40 a.m. when his Harley-Davidson motorcycle fell to the ground, Culver City Police Sgt. Karin Reagan said. "He was thrown off, and the back of his head struck the curb," Reagan said. "He was not wearing a helmet."

"What's great about tonight is that I can see everybody, everybody is in focus and I haven't thrown up a bunch of times," announced erstwhile party animal Gary Busey from the Palace stage Tuesday as he celebrated his cleaned-up status, and his first break from acting for a musical performance in quite a while. You just know that Busey's going to be an animated guy, and he was suitably semi-hyper for the occasion.