1965 - The Beatles changed the name of their second movie from Eight Arms To Hold You to Help!
1972 - David Bowie released "Starman" and "Suffragette City," the advance single from his acclaimed conceptual The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. The lyrics of Starman describe Ziggy Stardust bringing a message of hope to Earth's youth through the radio, salvation by an alien. Ziggy would remain on the album chart for more than a year, finally putting Bowie over the top in the States.
1975 - Following many rumors and much speculation that Jimmy Page, Chris Spedding, Jeff Beck or even Eric Clapton would replace Mick Taylor in The Rolling Stones, it was announced that Faces guitarist Ron Wood would fill the shoes. "I always knew I was gonna end up in this band," Wood told Stuff. "I remember walking around the periphery of Hyde Park in '69, and this big car pulls up through a whole sea of people and out steps Mick and Charlie. Mick comes up and says, 'Ullo, Face,' which is what he called me then, 'cause I was in the Faces. And we talk away for a while and then they say, ‘Okay, we gotta go and play. We'll see you soon.' And I said, ‘Yeah, sooner than you think.' I was always confident I would end up in this band, and a few years later I did." (Photo by Jo Hale/Getty Images)
1980 - A New Jersey State assemblyman introduced a resolution to make Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run" the official state song of New Jersey.
1988 - Public Enemy's sophomore album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, was released. Often cited as one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time, the album spawned such PE classics as "Don't Believe the Hype," "Night of the Living Baseheads," and "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos," as well as the original version of "Bring the Noise."
1989 - Cameron Crowe's Say Anything…, starring John Cusack and Ione Skye, opens in theaters. The movie is famous for an iconic scene featuring Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." In the movie, Lloyd Dobler (Cusack) is a kickboxing loner who falls for beautiful brainiac Diane Court (Skye). When the couple hits a rough patch in their romance, Lloyd stands outside Diane's bedroom window with his boombox held high, blasting their song "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel. The image of Lloyd's boombox serenade is regarded as a classic moment in '80s cinema. Crowe was going to use Billy Idol's "Got To Be A Lover," but it didn't work with the scene. Crowe got the idea to use this when he played a tape from his wedding which had the song on it. Because it was a deeply personal song, Gabriel did not want to let him use it, but when Crowe called and sent him a tape of the movie, Gabriel loved it and gave his approval.
"I've talked to John Cusack about that," Gabriel tells Rolling Stone in 2012. "We're sort of trapped together in a minuscule moment of contemporary culture."
1994 - Kurt Cobain was cremated. The death certificate listed Cobain's occupation as Poet/Musician and his type of business as Punk Rock.
1995 - Radiohead released The Bends, featuring "High and Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees." Building from the sweeping, three-guitar attack that punctuated the best moments of Pablo Honey, Radiohead create a grand and forceful sound that nevertheless resonates with anguish and despair -- it's cerebral anthemic rock. Occasionally, the album displays its influences, whether it's U2, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., or the Pixies, but Radiohead turn clichés inside out, making each song sound bracingly fresh.
2016 - At the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Prince plays his last concert, as he dies a week later. His last song is "Purple Rain."
2015 - Today in 2015, American R&B and soul singer Percy Sledge died of liver cancer at his home in Baton Rouge at age 73. The inspiration behind his 1966 U.S. No. 1 hit "When a Man Loves a Woman", came when Sledge's girlfriend left him for a modelling career after he was laid off from a construction job in late 1965.
Birthdays:
Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple is 76.
JD McPherson is 44.
Win Butler of Arcade Fire is 41.
On This Day In Music History is sourced from This Day in Music, Paul Shaffer's Day in Rock, Song Facts, Allmusic, Ultimate Classic Rock, and Wikipedia.