1967 - In another great concert mismatch of the rock ages, The Who opened for Herman's Hermits on their first U.S. tour.
1969 - The movie Easy Rider, which opens with the heavy metal thunder of "Born To Be Wild," opens in theaters. The film stars Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper as motorcycle-riding free spirits.
The movie not only helped define the counter culture, with it's frank depiction of drugs and free love, of long hairs squared against square culture, but also revolutionized the movie soundtrack, rejecting a traditional orchestra in favor of a hip "song score". (Photo by James W. Lemke/Getty Images for AFI)
1980 - The combustible couple Glen Campbell and Tanya Tucker open the Republican National Convention in Detroit with a duet of the National Anthem. Campbell later admits they were "higher than the notes we were singing."
1982 - The movie premier for Pink Floyd's The Wall was held at The Empire, Leicester Square, London, England. The film which centers around a confined rocker named Floyd "Pink" Pinkerton, played by Bob Geldof, from the Boomtown Rats.
Film critic Roger Ebert: It combines wickedly powerful animation with a surrealistic trip through the memory and hallucinations of an overdosing rock star. It touches on sex, nuclear disarmament, the agony of warfare, childhood feelings of abandonment, the hero's deep unease about women, and the life style of a rock star at the end of his rope.
2015 - The Las Vegas coroner's office confirmed that B.B. King died of natural causes primarily stemming from Alzheimer's disease and was not murdered. Two of his daughters had alleged King was poisoned by long-time associates.
Birthdays:
1912 - Woodrow Wilson ‘Woody’ Guthrie in Okemah, Oklahoma. Folk singer and songwriter, famous for his ‘Dust Bowl Ballads’ and protest songs in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Woody was the most important American folk music artist of the first half of the 20th century, in part because he turned out to be such a major influence on the popular music of the second half of the 20th century, a period when he himself was largely inactive. He had a huge influence on a young Bob Dylan and the influence continued with artists like Wilco and Joe Strummer. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. Guthrie died of complications resulting from Huntingdon’s disease on October 3rd 1967.
1945 - Jim Gordon, drummer, one of the most requested session drummers in the late 1960s and 1970s. Gordon co-wrote Layla with Eric Clapton. A diagnosed schizophrenic, Gordon murdered his mother on June 3, 1983. He was sentenced to sixteen years-to-life in prison in 1984.
Bebe Buell is 69. Though she later rejects the description, she becomes one of the most famous "groupies" of all time, hooking up with a host of stars including Todd Rundgren, to whom she is married from 1972 to 1979. Rundgren brings up her daughter Liv - later revealed to be the biological child of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler.
1952 - Bob Casale, best known as a guitarist and keyboardist in the new wave band Devo. He engineered the first solo album for Police guitarist Andy Summers. Casale died on February 17, 2014.
Tanya Donelly, singer for The Breeders, Throwing Muses, and Belly, is 56.
Dan Smith, Bastille, is 36.
Dan Reynolds, Imagine Dragons, is 35.
On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Song Facts, rogerebert.com, Los Angeles Times, Allmusic, and Wikipedia.