1964 – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the Dave Clark Five headlined the NME poll winner’s concert at Wembley Empire Pool, London.
1966 – Dusty Springfield was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me’, the singers only UK No.1. When recording the track, Springfield was not satisfied with her vocal until she had recorded forty-seven takes.
1969 – During the band’s second North American tour Led Zeppelin played the second of two nights at The Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco in California. It was during this show that ‘Whole Lotta Love’ was played live for the first time.
1976 – ‘Wings At The Speed Of Sound’ went to No.1 on the US album chart. Paul McCartney’s fifth No.1 album after The Beatles became his most successful American chart album, spending seven unconsecutive weeks at No.1. The album featured the hits ‘Let ‘Em In’ and ‘Silly Love Songs’.
1980 – Blondie were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Call Me’, the group’s fourth UK No.1, featured in the Richard Gere movie ‘American Gigolo’, the track was also a No.1 in the US where it became the band’s biggest selling single. Producer Giorgio Moroder originally asked Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac to help compose and perform a song for the soundtrack, but she declined.
1982 – Out on a day’s shopping, Rod Stewart was robbed by a gunman of his $50,000 Porsche on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.
1984 – Mike McCartney unveiled the £40,000 statue of The Beatles by John Doubleday at the new £8 million Cavern Walks shopping centre in Liverpool, England. John’s first wife, Cynthia, was also in attendance.
1988 – Mick Jagger appeared in White Plains, New York, Federal Court in the copyright infringement case brought by reggae singer Patrick Alley, who claimed the Mick Jagger solo track Just Another Night was a plagiarism of his own song of the same name. Alley was claiming $7m in profits from the track. During the case Sly Dunbar played drums to the court to show how the beats were different in each song and Mick sang and played demos of his song to show the court the development of the track. At the end of the week-long trial, Jagger won the case.
1990 – Nirvana appeared at the Pyramid Club in New York City. The bands label Sub Pop filmed the show and the performance of ‘In Bloom’ was later used as a promo clip.
1994 – Grace Slick pleaded guilty to pointing a shotgun at police in her California home. She claimed she was under stress because her home had burned down the previous year. She was later sentenced to 200 hours of community service and told to attend four Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week for three months.
1995 – Courtney Love reportedly turned down an offer of $1m from Playboy to pose nude for the magazine.
1997 – Ernest Stewart, keyboard player with KC and the Sunshine Band, died of an asthma attack. (1975 US No.1 single ‘That’s The Way, I Like It’,
1983 UK No.1 single ‘Give It Up’).
2001 – Destiny’s Child were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Survivor’, Janet Jackson was at No.1 on the US chart with ‘All For You’ and Shaggy and Ricardo RikRok Ducent had the Australian No.1 single with ‘It Wasn’t Me’
2008 – Amy Winehouse spent the night in custody after being arrested on suspicion of assault. Police said Winehouse had been “in no fit state” to be questioned when she arrived at the London station and she was kept in the cells. The 24-year-old was to be questioned about an incident said to have occurred 3 days earlier after a 38-year-old man claimed he was assaulted.
2009 – Tinchy Stryder feat N-dubz started a three week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Number 1’, the first time ever that a single called ‘Number 1’ has made it to the top of the UK charts.
2013 – US country singer George Jones who had a string of No.1 songs between the 1950s and 1990s, died aged 81. Nicknamed Possum, his signature song was He Stopped Loving Her Today, a track about love and death. He was married to Tammy Wynette between 1969 and 1975 and the pair recorded several songs together in the 1970s.
2016 – A list of tracks by a death metal band was accidentally printed on the back of a new album by UK comedian Bernie Clifton. The 80-year-old (who is famous for riding a yellow ostrich), said he was “fuming and furious” about the error, which saw songs by the group Abhorrent Decimation printed on his new CD.
