1973 - Shortly after having a hit with Shel Silverstein's "The Cover of the Rolling Stone", Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show were on the cover of Rolling Stone in caricature. According to members of the group, they really did buy five copies for their mothers, just like the song said. The lyrics were written as a send-up of rock bands who lose all self awareness when they reach a certain level of success.
1975 - Jeff Beck releases Blow by Blow. Stevie Wonder, who gave Beck his songs "Cause We've Ended as Lovers" and "Thelonius", played clavinet on the latter uncredited
1978 - Tina Turner officially divorced from her husband Ike. She gets nothing in the settlement except her name; born Anna Mae Bullock, it was Ike who named her "Tina Turner" when they started performing together. She revived her career with a startling comeback in the early '80s. (Photo by Giuseppe Cacace/Getty Images)
1979 - After attending a Dire Straits show during their residency at the Roxy in Los Angeles, Bob Dylan asked Mark Knopfler and drummer Pick Withers to play on the sessions for his next album. Slow Train Coming was the album, recorded in Muscle Shoals in May of 1979, with Jerry Wexler producing. Dylan had first heard Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler when his assistant Arthur Rosato played him the single 'Sultans of Swing'.
2005 - Neil Young was treated for a brain aneurysm at a hospital in New York.“ I noticed this weird thing in my eye, like a piece of broken glass,” Young wrote in his memoir Waging Heavy Peace. “I noticed that no matter what I did, it was still there. And then it started getting bigger. … So, I went to my doctor, had an MRI and the next morning I went to the neurologist. … He says, “The good news is, you’re here; you’re looking good. The bad news is, you’ve got an aneurysm in your brain. You’ve had it for a hundred years, so it’s nothing to worry about – but it’s very serious, so we’ll have to get rid of it right away.” The aneurysm forced one major change in Young’s lifestyle: He stopped smoking marijuana so that he could be more cognizant of his body as he aged. “The straighter I am, the more alert I am, the less I know myself and the harder it is to recognize myself," he wrote in Waging Heavy Peace. "I need a little grounding in something and I am looking for it everywhere.”
2007 - Bono accepted an honorary knighthood at a ceremony in Dublin. He was not entitled to be called "Sir" because he is not a British citizen. The singer's new title is Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE).
Birthdays:
Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, better-known as Vangelis, is 78.
Bobby Kimball of Toto is 74.
Ray Davis of The Parliaments was born on this day in 1940.
Patty Donahue of The Waitresses was born on this day in 1956.
Perry Farrell, Jane's Addiction, is 61. His stage name is a play on the word "peripheral," in the sense that he's "on the edge."
John Popper of Blues Traveler is 54.
On This Day In Music History are gathered from This Day in Music, Paul Shaffer's Day in Rock, Song Facts, Ultimate Classic Rock, and Wikipedia.