February 4th, 2019

1965, The Righteous Brothers were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with the Phil Spector song ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’. Also a US No.1 at the same time. In 1999 the PRS announced that it was the most played song of the 20th Century.

1966, The Rolling Stones released ’19th Nervous Breakdown’ it reached No.2 on both the US and UK charts, while topping the NME charts and was the fifth best-selling single of 1966 in the UK.

1966, Bob Dylan and The Band played at the Convention Center in Louisville, Kentucky. This was the first date on a world tour which would become noted as Dylan’s first that used electric instruments, after he had ‘gone electric’ at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

1967, The Monkees self-titled debut album started a seven-week run at No.1 on the UK chart.

1968, Working at Abbey Road studios, London, The Beatles recorded ‘Across The Universe’. John and Paul decided the song needed some falsetto harmonies so they invited two girl fans into the studio to sing on the song. The two were Lizzie Bravo, a 16-year-old Brazilian living near Abbey Road and 17-year-old Londoner Gayleen Pease.

1972, During sessions at Trident Studios, London, England, David Bowie recorded ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’, ‘Starman’ and ‘Suffragette City’, the last songs recorded for the The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars album.

1975, American jazz, blues, songwriter and saxophonist Louis Jordon died aged 66. Known as “The King of the Jukebox”, between 1942-1950 he scored eighteen No.1 singles and fifty-four Top Ten hits on the US R&B chart.

1977, Fleetwood Mac released Rumours. The songs ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘Don’t Stop’, ‘Dreams’, and ‘You Make Loving Fun’ were released as singles. Rumours is Fleetwood Mac’s most successful release; along with winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978, the record has sold over 45 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time.

1978, The Bee Gees started a four week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Staying Alive’. From the film soundtrack Saturday Night Fever, it gave the brothers their fifth US No.1, also No.1 in the UK.

1978, ‘Up Town Ranking’ by Althia and Donna was at No.1 on the UK singles chart. It was the Jamaican duo’s only hit, making the teenagers One Hit Wonders.

1982, Scottish singer Alex Harvey died of a heart attack while waiting to take a ferry back to shore after performing a concert with his new band, the Electric Cowboys. In an ambulance on the way to the hospital, he suffered a second heart attack, this one fatal. It occurred on the day before his 47th birthday, in Zeebrugen, Belgium. Formed Alex Harvey Big Soul Band in 1959 and then mid 1960s band Tear Gas. Had the 1975 UK No.7 single with Sensational Alex Harvey Band ‘Delilah’ and 1973 album ‘Next’.

1983, Karen Carpenter died aged 32 of a cardiac arrest at her parent’s house in Downey, California; the coroner’s report gave the cause of death of imbalances associated with anorexia nervosa. The Carpenters 1970 album Close to You, featured two hit singles: ‘(They Long to Be) Close to You’ and ‘We’ve Only Just Begun.’ They peaked at No.1 and No.2, on the US chart. In 1975 – in Playboy’s annual opinion poll; its readers voted Karen Carpenter the Best Rock Drummer of the year.

1983, The Smiths appeared at The Hacienda, Manchester, England.

1984, Culture Club started a three-week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Karma Chameleon’ the group’s 5th US Top 10 hit, also a No.1 in the UK.

1995, Celine Dion started a seven-week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Think Twice’. The song peaked at No.95 on the US chart. ‘Think Twice’ received an Ivor Novello Award for the Song of the Year in 1995.

1996, Former Milli-Vanilli member Rob Pilatus was hospitalised after a man hit him over the head with a baseball bat in Hollywood, California. Pilatus was attempting to steal the man’s car at the time of the attack.

2000, Bjorn Ulvaeus confirmed that the members of ABBA had turned down a $1 billion (£0.58 billion) offer by American and British consortium to reform the group. “It is a hell of a lot of money to say no to, but we decided it wasn’t for us,” band member Benny Andersson told the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

2003, Courtney Love was arrested at Heathrow airport for ‘endangering an aircraft’ on a transatlantic flight. The singer was said to have hurled abuse at the cabin crew on the flight from Los Angeles to London after her nurse who was in an economy seat was barred access to sit with Love in the upper class cabin.

2004, Police questioned Noel Gallagher after a photograph of him trespassing on a railway line appeared in a newspaper. The Oasis guitarist was in a studio in Cornwall recording the bands new album when he took a walk along the railway line. British Transport Police said ‘he was setting a bad example.’

2007, A Razorlight’s gig in Lyon was halted mid-set because of an altercation between singer Johnny Borrell and bassist Carl Dalemo. The pair exchanged insults before they came to blows onstage. Borrell then stormed off leaving the French crowd amazed and unsure about what was going on.

2009, Lux Interior, (Erick Lee Purkhiser) singer and founding member of The Cramps died aged 62. He met his wife (better known as Poison Ivy, a.k.a. Ivy Rorschach), in Sacramento in 1972, when he and a friend picked her up when she was hitchhiking. The couple later founded The Cramps.

2009, Robert Plant said he felt Led Zeppelin couldn’t reunite for a full tour because the band feels incomplete without drummer John Bonham. In an interview on Absolute Radio Plant stated, ‘The reason that it stopped was because we were incomplete, and we’ve been incomplete now for 29 years,’ he said. He admitted: ‘I think the thing about it is really, is that to visit old ground, it’s a very incredibly delicate thing to do, and the disappointment that could be there once you commit to that and the comparisons to something that was basically fired by youth and a different kind of exuberance to now, it’s very hard to go back and meet that head on and do it justice’.

2013, Reg Presley lead singer with the Sixties rock and roll band The Troggs, died aged 71. Hit singles, included ‘Wild Thing’, ‘I Can’t Control Myself’ and the UK No.1 ‘With a Girl Like You’. He also wrote the song ‘Love Is All Around’, which featured in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral and was a No.1 hit for Wet Wet Wet in 1994. Presley used his royalties from that cover to fund research subjects such as alien spacecraft, lost civilisations, alchemy, and crop circles, and outlined his findings in the book Wild Things They Don’t Tell Us, published in October 2002.

2016, Van Morrison described becoming a Sir as “amazing” and “exhilarating” after receiving a knighthood from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace. He received his knighthood for services to the music industry and tourism in Northern Ireland.

2016, American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, arranger and bandleader Maurice White died. With Earth, Wind & Fire, he had the 1975 US No.1 single ‘Shining Star’, and the 1981 UK No.3 single ‘Let’s Groove’. White won seven Grammys,and was nominated for a total of twenty Grammys and also worked with Deniece Williams, The Emotions, Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond.

2017, Black Sabbath the band credited with inventing heavy metal music, played their last concert. The two-hour gig at the NEC Arena in their home city of Birmingham saw the rock veterans play 15 songs ending with their first hit, ‘Paranoid’. Ticker tape and balloons fell as singer Ozzy Osbourne, 68, thanked fans for nearly five decades of support. Sabbath’s The End Tour began in the US in January last year and took in 81 dates across the world.

(This Day is Music)