1958, Buddy Holly kicked off the first night of a 43 date tour at Brooklyn Paramount Theatre in Brooklyn, New York. The Alan Freed’s Big Beat Show also featured Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Frankie Lymon, The Diamonds, Billy Ford, Danny & The Juniors, The Chantels, Larry Williams, Screaming Jay Hawkins, The Pastels, Jo-Ann Campbell and Ed Townsend. On most days the acts played two shows.
1964, Madame Tussauds, London unveiled the wax works images of The Beatles, the first pop stars to be honoured.
1967, Working on sessions for the new Beatles album Sgt. Pepper at Abbey Road studios in London, John Lennon recorded his lead vocal for ‘Good Morning Good Morning’, and Paul McCartney added a lead guitar solo to the track. Lennon had decided he wanted to end the song with animal sound effects, and asked that they be sequenced in such a way that each successive animal was capable of scaring or eating the preceding one.
1968, Pink Floyd recorded a performance for the BBC 2 TV Omnibus – The Sound of Change show from Barnes Common, London, England. The special, which was produced by Tony Palmer, also featured performances by The Who, Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The show was later broadcast in September of this year.
1970, Simon and Garfunkel were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, the duo’s only UK No.1. Only Art Garfunkel sang on the track.
1973, Led Zeppelin released Houses Of The Holy in the UK. The album title was a dedication by the band to their fans who appeared at venues they dubbed ‘Houses of the Holy’.
1974, Delta blues singer and guitarist Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup died of a stroke at the age of 69. He wrote ‘That’s All Right (Mama)’ covered by Elvis Presley and ‘My Baby Left Me’.
1976, Genesis began their first North American tour since Peter Gabriel left the band, appearing in Buffalo, New York, with Phil Collins taking over as lead singer.
1981, Blondie started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Rapture’, the group’s fourth US No.1 and the first No. 1 song in the US to feature rap and its lyrics, notable for name-checking hip-hop pioneers Fab Five Freddy and Grandmaster Flash.
1982, David Crosby was arrested after crashing his car on the San Diego Highway. Police also found cocaine and a pistol in the Crosby Stills & Nash stars car. When the police asked Crosby why he carried the gun, his reply was, “John Lennon”.
1992, Over a $100,000 worth of damage was caused at The Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, California, when Ozzy Osbourne invited the first two rows of the audience on stage. Several others took up the offer and the band was forced to exit the stage.
1995, Singer Jimmy McShane died of Aids. He had the 1985 UK No.3 single and European hit ‘Tarzan Boy with Italian dance outfit Baltimora.
2000, Jimmy Page accepted substantial undisclosed libel damages from a magazine which claimed he had caused or contributed to the death of his Led Zeppelin bandmate John Bonham. Page’s solicitor, Norman Chapman, told High Court Judge Mr Justice Morland that the feature in Ministry magazine printed in 1999 claimed Page was more concerned with keeping vomit off his bed than saving his friend’s life, and that he stood over him wearing Satanist robes and performing a useless spell.
2001, The artist formerly known as both Puffy and Puff Daddy said in an interview on MTV he now wanted to be known as P. Diddy. In August 2005, he changed his stage name to simply “Diddy.”
2005, After playing a warm-up date the night before at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, U2 kicked off their Vertigo tour at the iPay One Center in San Diego, California. The 131 date world tour would see the band playing in North America, Europe, South America and Japan. By the time it finished, the Vertigo Tour had sold 4,619,021 tickets, grossing $389 million; the second-highest figure ever for a world tour.
2006, Tina Brown the sister-in-law of Whitney Houston sold pictures taken in her bathroom to the National Enquirer claiming Whitney Houston had been taking crack cocaine. The pictures showed drug paraphernalia including a crack-smoking pipe, rolling papers, cocaine-caked spoons and cigarette ends strewn across the surface tops of the bathroom.
2013, Justin Bieber ran into some trouble at Munich airport when customs officials detained and quarantined his monkey. Bieber had recently been given the capuchin monkey as a pet by record producer Mally Mall. Bieber apparently brought the monkey along to join him on the Austrian and German leg of his European tour, but he didn’t have the documentation required to bring his new friend into Germany. Bieber went on to perform in Munich while the monkey was kept in the custody of authorities.
2013, American rock guitarist and session musician Hugh McCracken died of leukemia in New York City at the age of 70. He appeared on many recordings by Steely Dan, Donald Fagen, Billy Joel, Roland Kirk, Roberta Flack, B. B. King, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, The Monkees, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, James Taylor, Phoebe Snow, Bob Dylan, Carly Simon, Graham Parker, Eric Carmen, Loudon Wainwright III, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, The Four Seasons, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Gary Wright and Andy Gibb. Because of such high demand for his work, McCracken declined Paul McCartney’s invitation to help form his new band, Wings after appearing on his 1971 album Ram.
2014, Tickets for Kate Bush first live shows in 35 years sold out in less than 15 minutes. The Before the Dawn concerts, which were booked to take place this August and September, marked the singer’s first return to the stage since The Tour Of Life in 1979. Demand was so high that the singer’s own website, as well as some ticket-selling sites, crashed as people tried to log on.
