Today in rock history 4th October

1947 - Jim Fielder-bassist for Blood, Sweat & Tears is born

1961 – Bob Dylan makes his concert hall debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall, earning $20 for the night. Of the 53 people that attended, most were friends.

1963 – Eric Clapton replaces Anthony Topham in the Yardbirds.

1963 – The Beatles make their first appearance on the UK rock and roll TV show Ready Steady Go!, where they are interviewed by fellow performer, Dusty Springfield.

1968 – One of the original super groups, Cream, a trio consisting of Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, set out on their farewell tour.

1969 – “Abbey Road”, the last album recorded by The Beatles, enters the UK charts at number one.

1969 – Creedence Clearwater Revival started a four week run at the top of the US album chart with “Green River”, the group’s first number one album.

1970 – Janis Joplin is found dead in a room at the Landmark Motel in Hollywood from an accidental heroin overdose.

1974 – Irish rockers Thin Lizzy play their first date with the twin-guitar line-up of Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson in Aberystwyth, Wales.

1975 – Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” LP hits #1 on the US album chart

1980 – Queen had their second US number 1 song when “Another One Bites the Dust” hit the top of the Billboard chart.

1980 – Fleetwood Mac members Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood present the University of Southern California Trojan Marching Band with a platinum record for their contribution to the album “Tusk”.

1988 – Ringo Starr and his wife Barbara Bach fly to Tucson, Arizona to enter an alcohol abuse program. Over six weeks later, they complete the program and return to England.

1990 – Two separate lawsuits are combined on appeal against CBS Records and Ozzy Osbourne by the parents of 17 year old Harold Hamilton and 16 year old Michael Waller, both of whom are alleged to have committed suicide after listening to Osbourne’s “Suicide Solution”. The Supreme Court would refuse to reinstate the case.

1996 - Van Halen announced that former Extreme singer Gary Cherone would be replacing Sammy Hagar.

1999 - Ozzy Osbourne issued a press release asking the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to remove Black Sabbath from the ballot. Black Sabbath was later inducted in 2006.

2005 – Michael Gibbins, drummer for Badfinger on their hits “Come And Get It”, “Day After Day” and “No Matter What”, died in his sleep at the age of 56.

Today in rock history 3rd October

1938 – Rock ‘n’ roll teen Eddie Cochran is born in Oklahoma City.

1949 – Fleetwood Mac songwriter Lindsey Buckingham is born in Palo Alto, Calif.

1954 – Blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, widely ranked up there with Hendrix, is born in Dallas.

1962 - Tommy Lee-drummer for Motley Crue is born

1967 – Folk legend Woody Guthrie passed away of Huntington’s chorea in a hospital where he had spent the last ten years

1967 – Keith Richards gets a local priest to bless his guard dogs

1969 – John Lennon records “Don’t Worry Kyoko” with the Plastic Ono Band at Lansdowne Recording Studios in Britain. The song later appears on Lennon and Ono’s Wedding Album.

1970 – Janis Joplin listens to a playback of the instrumental “Buried Alive in the Blues,” for which she intends to cut a vocal for her album Pearl. She dies the next day.

1970 – Cream’s Jack Bruce teams up with John McLaughlin, Larry Young, and Tony Williams to form the fusion group Lifetime.

1972 – Led Zeppelin play their second night at Tokyo’s Budokan Hall during a tour of Japan.

1978 – The members of Aerosmith bailed thirty fans out of jail after they had been arrested for smoking pot during an Aerosmith concert at the Fort Wayne Coliseum.

1982 – No. 1 Chart Toppers Pop Hit: “Jack & Diane,” John Cougar.

1992 – Sinead O’Connor did her career some major damage when she appeared on US TV’s Saturday Night Live and held up an 8″ x 10″ color photo of Pope John Paul II, ripped it into pieces and said, “Fight the real enemy.”

2000 – 45-year-old Mark David Chapman, the man who twenty years earlier fired five shots into John Lennon’s back, faces the parole board. Parole for John Lennon’s murderer is denied.

2000 – Benjamin Orr, former bassist and singer of the Cars, dies at his home in Atlanta from pancreatic cancer. He is 53.

2003 – School of Rock, starring Tenacious D’s Jack Black, opens in theatres around the country.

2006 – The U.S. Supreme Court throws out a lawsuit by Vinnie Vincent against his former bandmates in KISS. Vincent alleged he was owed royalties from the 1983 album Lick It Up.

2007 – The Rolling Stones set a new record for the top grossing tour of all time when their A Bigger Bang tour, which ran from the Fall of 2005 to August 26, 2007, earned the band a staggering $558,255,524.

Today in rock history 2nd October

1945 – Don McLean is born in New Rochelle, N.Y.

1950 – Guitarist Mike Rutherford is born this day

1951 – Sting (Gordon Sumner) is born in Wallsend,

1964 – At London’s Granville Theatre the Beatles rehearse for a taping of the American pop show Shindig!

1965 – Tonight’s episode of Shindig! is America’s first chance to see the Who, performing “I Can’t Explain.”

1965 – Manfred Mann are allowed into the Soviet Union and become the first Western rock band to tour there.

1967 – Police raid the Grateful Dead’s house at 710 Ashbury St. in San Francisco and bust the band’s members on charges of marijuana possession. They are released on bail after six hours in jail and later cleared of charges, as the police had failed to obtain a search warrant.

1969 – John Lennon disses his own company in an interview, saying that Apple is like a black hole that sucks up his earnings as an artist.

1971 – Rod Stewart enjoyed a two sided, US number one record with “Maggie May / “Reason To Believe”.

1976 – Joe Cocker is the musical guest on tonight’s Saturday Night Live. During his rendition of “Feelin’ Alright,” Cocker impressionist John Belushi comes out and duets with him.

1977 – The Electric Circus, a well-known punk club in Manchester closes.

1977 – Gene Simmons picks up a platinum record for his self-titled solo debut

1982 – Peter Gabriel performs with Genesis for the first time since leaving the band in 1975. Phil Collins and the gang join him at a concert to benefit WOMAD. The concert saves Gabriel’s ailing world music organization.

1985 – Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” tour ends with the last of four shows at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles.

1993 – Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell” enters the Billboard LP chart, where it will go on to reach number one.

1995 – Journey announce that they’ve decided to re-form

1998 – Cheap Trick are inducted into the Hollywood Rockwalk

1999 – John Paul Jones, former bass player with Led Zeppelin, plays his first solo concert in Galway, Ireland.

2003 – Radiohead makes it a hat-trick of wins when it wins the “best act in the world today” award for the third-year running at the Q Awards in London.

2003 – The Offspring announce Rocket from the Crypt drummer Atom Willard will fill the stool vacated by Ron Welty earlier in the year.

2003 – Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx sues sneaker maker Vans, alleging they used his image in an ad without permission.

2004 – Billy Joel marries for the third time. The lucky bride is Kate Lee

2004 -  During a Pearl Jam concert in Toledo, OH as part of the Vote for Change tour, Neil Young & Peter Frampton made surprise appearances to perform “All Along the Watchtower”, “Act Of Love”, “Cortez The Killer”, & “Rockin’ in the Free World” with Pearl Jam.

 

Today in rock history 1st October

1932 – Albert Collins (US blues singer/guitarist) is born

1947 – Wishbone Ash bassist Martin Turner is born in Torquay

1948 – Cub Koda, who wrote the memorable anthem “Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room” as part of Brownsville Station, is born in Detroit.

1962 – The Beatles sign a revised contract with their manager, Brian Epstein.

1967 – Pink Floyd land in New York to begin their first American tour

1970 – Funeral of Jimi Hendrix held in Seattle, Washington

1970 – In Milan, 2,000 fans riot when they’re denied entry to a Rolling Stones concert.

1971 – Gene Vincent cuts a session for British radio in London. It will be the last time Gene is in a studio. The “Be-Bop-A-Lula” singer would die on October 12, 1971.

1973 – Riding high on the success of Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd begin sessions for their new album, declaring they intend to use only household objects to make the music. Very avant-garde. They later ditched the idea to record Wish You Were Here.

1977 – The Madison Square Garden Hall of Fame inducts its first rocker, Elton John.

1977 – Drummer Rat Scabies quits punk pioneers the Damned

1983 – By reaching No. 7 in US with ‘Metal Health’, Quiet Riot achieve most successful debut LP in heavy metal history to date

1983 – Robert Plant wraps up his first North American tour at Vancouver’s PNE Coliseum.

1995 – Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, Hootie & The Blowfish and the Dave Matthews Band raise close to $1 million at the Farm Aid concert in Louisville, Ky.

2000 – In Sydney, Men at Work and INXS perform at the Olympic closing ceremonies.

2003 – New York police refuse to give Bruce Springsteen an escort from his Shea Stadium gig after the Boss performs “American Skin (41 Shots),” about the shooting of Amadou Diallo.

2004 – Bruce Palmer, former bassist with West Coast folk rock legends Buffalo Springfield dies of a heart attack. He was 58.

2008 – Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues turns on the website ‘songwars.net’. The goal of the site is to intice song writers to submit songs for prize money and prizes while getting their song heard by industry moguls

2011 – KISS rocker Gene Simmons tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend, Shannon Tweed.

 

Today in rock history 30th September

1940 - Dewey Martin-drummer for Buffalo Springfield born in Ontario, Canada.

1947 – Marc Bolan (Marc Feld) of T. Rex is born in London.

1963 – New York promoter Sid Bernstein contacts Brian Epstein. Sid wants to know more about these Beatles he keeps hearing about, even though they have yet to score a hit in the U.S. Bernstein would go on to promote the band’s famed gigs at Shea Stadium.

1964 – Born on this day, Robby Takac, bass, Goo Goo Dolls

1966 – Chas Chandler offers Noel Redding the job of bass player in Jimi Hendrix’s new band, the Experience.

1967 – Paul McCartney and John Lennon appear on The David Frost Show, but all they want to talk about is how wonderful the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is.

1969 – Tragedy strikes David Crosby, as the CSN member’s girlfriend Christine Gail Hinton dies in a car crash north of San Francisco.

1971 – Yes begin a British tour with Rick Wakeman behind the keyboards for the first time.

1977 – It’s a peaceful time over at New York’s Palladium, where Foghat (“Slow Ride”) play a benefit. The money raised will help the New York Public Library buy a collection of rare blues records for its Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives.

1977 – Sound techie Jay Sloatman brawls with a crew of Lynyrd Skynyrd roadies who believe he deliberately cut the sound during the band’s set at the Louisville Convention Center in Kentucky. The roadies claim that Sloatman attacked them when they asked him to leave.

1987 – L.A.’s Coconut Grove plays host to an all-star gathering as Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits, and Elvis Costello join Roy Orbison onstage to tape a TV special.

1988 – John Lennon gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1993 – George Harrison and David Crosby make guest appearances on the fifth season premiere of the Fox animated comedy series “The Simpsons.”

1997 – Fleetwood Mac’s reunion show at the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J., grosses a house record of $1,094,520.

2004 – Troubled grunge poster child Courtney Love is sued by a Los Angeles travel agency who claims she owes them nearly $50,000 for unpaid airline tickets.

2006 – Farm Aid co-founders Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Neil Young are joined by Dave Matthews, Steel Pulse, Gov’t Mule, Jerry Lee Lewis,Steve Earle and Allison Moorer for the organization’s 21st anniversary concert at the Tweeter Center in Camden, N.J.

2007 – Foo Fighters went to No.1 on the UK album chart with ‘Echoes Silence Patience & Grace’ the bands sixth studio album and second UK No.1

2010 -Black Country Communion’s self titled debut album has charted at #13 in the Official UK Top 40 Album Chart.

Today in rock history 29th September

1935 – Jerry Lee Lewis is born in Ferriday, La. His parents later mortgage their home to buy him his first piano.

1948 – Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark Farner is born in Flint, Mich.

1961 – Three days after Bob Dylan begins his two-week stint supporting the Greenbriar Boys at Greenwich Village’s Gerde’s Folk City, critic and future Dylan biographer Robert Shelton catches his act.

1963 – The Rolling Stones open their first British tour supporting the Everly Brothers and Bo Diddley at the New Victoria Theatre in London.

1966 – At London’s Birdland club, Eric Burdon’s New Animals are holding auditions for a new guitarist. The band members are unimpressed by Noel Redding’s guitar skills, but invite him to play bass. He jams with Chas Chandler’s new find Jimi Hendrix and the two head off to a pub. Redding would go on to play bass with the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

1967 – Drummer Mickey Hart joins the Grateful Dead.

1976 – Happy birthday Jerry Lee Lewis style Trying to shoot a soda bottle, Lewis instead hits his bassist twice in the chest. With a .357 Magnum.

1977 – After the death of his friend Marc Bolan of T.Rex, David Bowie sets up a trust fund for the glam rocker’s son Rolan.

1989 – With a full-scale Eagles reunion still five years away, Glenn Frey joins Don Henley onstage for the first time since 1980 at a concert in LA. Throughout the decade, band members received several lucrative offers to reunite, but declined them all.

1989 - Bruce Springsteen stopped in Matt’s Saloon in Prescott, AZ to jam with the house band for an hour. He overheard a barmaid discussing financial problems & one week later, the barmaid received a check from Springsteen for $100,000.

1990 –Twins Nelson top the charts with “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love and Affection.”

1996 – Alanis Morissette finishes her first U.S. tour in Houston, Texas.

2003 - Ozzy Osbourne announced that he was writing a Broadway musical based on the life of Russian monk Rasputin.

Today in rock history 28th September

1902 – Born on this day, Ed Sullivan, TV host

1943 - Nick St. Nicholas-bassist for Steppenwolf born

1953 – Paul de Lotbiniere Harwood, founding member of Mahogany Rush is born

1968 – The Beatles started a nine week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Hey Jude’.

1968 – Bruce Springsteen and a local folk rock group The Founders appeared at the Off Broad Street Coffee House in Red Bank, New Jersey.

1971 – Led Zeppelin played the first of two nights at the Festival Hall in Osaka, Japan.

1972 – David Bowie sells out his first show in New York at Carnegie Hall.

1974 – Bad Company went to No.1 on the US album chart with their self-titled debut album.

1976 – A&M Records sued George Harrison for $6 million over non-delivery of a new album after he missed the deadline by two months.

1980 – The Police were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ the group’s third No.1. Taken from their album ‘Zenyatta Mondatta’ and the best selling single of 1980.

1991 – Bryan Adams was awarded the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia.

1991 – Guns N’ Roses released 2 albums ‘Use Your Illusion I’ and ‘Use Your Illusion II’ which debut at number 1 and number 2 on the UK album chart. Both albums make No.1 & No.2 in the US.

2000 - Ballet for Life a ballet in tribute to Queen’s Freddie Mercury opened to a sell-out crowd & fellow Queen members Brian May, John Deacon and Roger Taylor at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.

2007 – The John Lennon Northern Lights Festival was held in Durness, Scotland, the most northwesterly and remote village on mainland Britain.

2011 – Chickenfoot hold press conference for Chickenfoot 3.