1965 - Two female Beatles fans hired a helicopter to fly over the house The Beatles were renting in Beverly Hills, California and jumped from the helicopter into the swimming pool.
1970 - Jimi Hendrix opens Electric Ladyland Studios in New York City. He dies a few months later, but the studio lives on, with many major acts recording there over the years.
1970 - Elton John performed in the U.S. for the first time. His gig at the Troubadour Club (a six night residency)in Los Angeles launched a 17-date tour and the first big impact Elton John would make in America.
According to various reports, over the six nights there was also Neil Young, Carole King, Randy Newman, Don Henley, Brian Wilson and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Leon Russell, T-Bone Burnett, plus a mass turnout of music biz movers and shakers, top photographers, and a phalanx of music critics. It was a moment that would change his life.
1975 - Bruce Springsteen released his third album and big breakthrough, Born to Run. Born to Run had a big sound, and Springsteen wrote big songs to match it. The overall theme of the album was similar to that of The E Street Shuffle; Springsteen was describing, and saying farewell to, a romanticized teenage street life and hoping not to get trapped in dead end adulthood. He composed an updated West Side Story with spectacular music that owed more to Leonard Bernstein than to Chuck Berry. It's an album that declared its own greatness with songs and a sound that lived up to Springsteen's promise.
1981 - The Replacements released their first studio album, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash. Though the Replacements sounded scrappy and exciting here, what truly set them apart was Westerberg's songs -- they were clever, funny, and self-depreciating. Though the Replacements would get a lot better very quickly, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash drew the roadmap to everything that was best about them right out of the box, and it remains a dirty, roaring rock & roll delight.
1998 - Fugees member Lauryn Hill releases her solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. It becomes the first hip-hop album to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.
1986 - Paul Simon released his epic Graceland album. With Graceland, Paul Simon hit on the idea of combining his always perceptive songwriting with the little-heard mbaqanga music of South Africa (he had ben given a bootleg cassette of it), creating a fascinating hybrid that re-enchanted his old audience and earned him a new one. Simon abandoned a linear, narrative approach to his words, instead drawing highly poetic abstract, and satiric ("I Know What I Know") portraits of modern life. An enormously successful record, Graceland became the standard against which subsequent musical experiments by major artists were measured.(Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images)
2009 - During a radio broadcast on BBC Radio 6 Music, Bob Dylan revealed that he was speaking to a number of car companies about becoming the voice of their GPS systems. Dylan said he thought it would be good for drivers to hear him saying things like, "Take a left at the next street. No, a right. You know what, just go straight."
2018 - Neil Young and American actress and environmental activist Daryl Hannah married in a secret ceremony in Atascadero, California. It was Young's third marriage and her first.
Birthdays:
Composer Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story, others) was born today in 1918. He passed away in 1990.
Gene Simmons of KISS is 73.
Rob Halford of Judas Priest is 71.
Elvis Costello, born Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus, is 68.
Billy Ray Cyrus is 61.
Norman Rogers known professionally as Terminator X of Public Enemy is 56.
Jeff Tweedy, Uncle Tupelo and Wilco, is 55.
On This Day In Music History was sourced from Louder Sound, Allmusic, This Day in Music, Song Facts and Wikipedia.