Today in rock history 5th June

1947 - Tom Evans-bassist for Badfinger is born today in Liverpool

1948 – Frank Eslersmith the keyboardist for Air Supply is born

1954 – Nicko McBrain drummer for Iron Maiden is born

1956 – Richard Butler lead singer for the Psychedelic Furs is born

1971 – Grand Funk Railroad sells out New York’s Shea Stadium within 72 hours, breaking the Beatles’ box office record there.

1974 – Patti Smith enters a studio for the first time to cut her interpretation of “Hey Joe.”

1975 – Former Pink Floyd singer Syd Barrett turns up in the studio and is present while the band mixes Wish You Were Here, the majority of whose tracks refer to Barrett’s increasing dementia.

1977 – Tragedy on tour with Alice Cooper. The rat meant to be dinner for his boa constrictor bites the reptile, killing it. Cooper weeps that it’s like “like being hit on by your Wheaties” and vows to replace the snake. That is one Vicious Rat!

1979 – The 64-year-old Muddy Waters marries Marva Jean Brooks, 25.

1990 – Drummer Jim Hodder, who appeared on several Steely Dan albums, dies.

2001 – John Mayer, a songwriter inspired to pick up the guitar by the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, releases Room for Squares, the album that will shoot him to national prominence.

2002 – Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone (Douglas Glenn Colvin) is found dead in his Hollywood, Calif., home. He is 50.

2003 – The Project, a group made up of ex-Guns N’ Roses members Slash, Duff McKagen and Matt Sorum, pick Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland as their vocalist three days after he pleads not guilty to drugs charges.

2003 – Guitar legend Carlos Santana announces alongside Bishop Desmond Tutu that the proceeds from his summer tour will go towards battling AIDS.

2004 – Country star Toby Keith and “Cat Scratch Fever” guitarist Ted Nugent perform for American GIs at an installation in Baghdad, Iraq.

2007 – Paul McCartney released his 21st solo album Memory Almost Full.

2012 – Sheryl Crow states that she does not worry about it, a brain tumour.

2014 - John Lennon's original poetry and drawings for his mid-Sixties books In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works were part of over 100 Lennon manuscripts that sold for $2.9 million at Sotheby's in New York.