1966- “We were trying to capture spiritual love that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the world,” Wilson has said. In doing so, he gave popular music one of its finest touchstones.
The Beach Boys release Pet Sounds. It's the best Beach Boys album, and one of the best of the 1960s. The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon tracks of vocals and instruments to create a richly symphonic sound. Conventional keyboards and guitars were combined with exotic touches of orchestrated strings, bicycle bells, buzzing organs, harpsichords, flutes, Theremin, Hawaiian-sounding string instruments, Coca-Cola cans, barking dogs, and more.
It wouldn't have been a classic without great songs, and this has some of the group's most stunning melodies, as well as lyrical themes which evoke both the intensity of newly born love affairs and the disappointment of failed romance (add in some general statements about loss of innocence and modern-day confusion as well).
Paul McCartney has always said Pet sounds was a major influence on Sgt. Peppers. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
1970 - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young land their first US #1 album when Deja Vu hits the top spot.
1980 - Elvis Presley's doctor, George Nichopoulous, is arrested for abusing his licence to prescribe controlled drugs. Nichopoulous wrote Elvis prescriptions for over 10,000 doses of narcotics in 1977, the year Elvis died. Morphine, codeine, valium, methaqualone, and various other barbiturates and sedatives were found in his system when he died. He is acquitted, but in 1992 the Tennessee Medical Board revokes his license.
1983 - Michael Jackson introduced the moonwalk for the first time on TV when he broke out the move on the Motown 25th anniversary TV special. Jackson busted out the move during "Billie Jean."
1987 - U2 break big in America with their first #1 hit in that country, "With Or Without You," from the album The Joshua Tree. The lyric can be interpreted many ways; Bono explained that he wanted to write a love song that dealt with real issues.
In 1987 Bono explained that everybody in the group knows what the line "and you give yourself away" means: "It's about how I feel in U2 at times - exposed. I'm not going to do many interviews this year. Because there's a cost to my personal life, and a cost to the group as well."
Bono intended this as part of a trilogy with two other songs that did not make the album.
1998 - Five years after it was first released (in Danish), "Torn" goes to #1 on the US Airplay chart with a version by the Natalie Imbruglia. The song was written by Anne Preven, Scott Cutler and Phil Thornalley in 1991, and first released (in Danish) by the Danish singer Lis Sørensen in 1993. Preven and Cutler released the first English version with their band Ednaswap in 1995, but it was Imbruglia's 1997 version that got noticed.
Birthdays:
Liberace was born today in 1919.
Robert Fripp, guitarist for King Crimson, is 76.
Jonathan Richman (frontman for The Modern Lovers), is 71.
Krist Novoselic, bassist for Nirvana, is 57.
Janet Jackson is 56.
On This Day In Music History is sourced from fherehab, Vox, Allmusic, This Day in Music, Song Facts and Wikipedia.