1971 - Grace Slick and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane welcome a baby girl they name "God." Her name is later changed to "China," and as "China Kantner" she becomes a VJ on MTV.
1978 - Joy Division (after changing their name from Warsaw, inspired by the song Warszawa on David Bowie's Low album) made their live debut when they played Pips in Manchester, England. The band was made up of singer Ian Curtis, guitarist and keyboardist Bernard Sumner, bass player Peter Hook, and drummer Stephen Morris (who would go on to form New order). Curtis, who suffered from epilepsy and had trouble performing live, grew increasingly depressed over the band's few active years and took his own life the night before their first American tour, at the age of 23.
1980 - Paul McCartney is released and deported from Japan after spending nine days in a Tokyo jail. He was arrested at the airport when customs officials found 219 grams of marijuana in his luggage. That's about 7 ounces. What was he thinking?
1991 - Paul McCartney recorded his Unplugged concert for MTV, where he performed such Beatles songs as "Here, There and Everywhere" and "And I Love Her". Unlike other artists who appeared on the show with acoustic instruments plugged into amplifiers, McCartney played the show with all instruments actually unplugged. Microphones were placed close to the instruments to pick up the sound. The performance was released as an album: Unplugged (The Official Bootleg). (Photo by Rob Ball/Getty Images)
2004 - Bob Dylan was paid by ladies underwear company Victoria’s Secret to fly to Venice in Northern Italy, to film a TV advertisement in an ancient palazzo with a scantily dressed model. Some fans were upset while others empathized with Dylan.
This is the first and only time he’s appeared on screen in a commercial, with the exception of a 2010 Google ad that recycled clips from the ’65 “Subterranean Homesick Blues” film.
Dylan himself joked in 1965 that the only thing he’d sell out for would be “ladies undergarments.”
Birthdays:
Etta James was born in 1938.
Robert Finch, singer with KC and the Sunshine Band, is 68.
Alicia Keys is 41.
On This Day In Music History is sourced from Open Culture, This Day in Music, Song Facts and Wikipedia.