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.
Starman is part of the Ziggy Stardust story, in which the end of the world lingers just five years away. This song tells of a salvation waiting in the sky, as revealed through Starman's messenger, Ziggy Stardust. The song is told from the perspective of a person listening to Ziggy on the radio.
Suffragette City was actually offered to Mott the Hoople. They passed on that and took All The Young Dudes instead. Ian Hunter told me in KBCO Studio C that Suffragette City was in a key he couldn't sing it, Dudes was just right.
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 his shoes.
1983 - David Bowie releases, Let’s Dance. After summing up his maverick tendencies on Scary Monsters, David Bowie aimed for the mainstream with Let's Dance. Hiring Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers as a co-producer, Bowie created a stylish, synthesized post-disco dance music that was equally informed by classic soul and the emerging new romantic subgenre of new wave, which was ironically heavily inspired by Bowie himself. It was also the first time many heard the guitar playing of Stevie Ray Vaughn. Bowie had caught his set at the Montreux Festival and hired him to play on the album. (Photo by Martin BUREAU / AFP)
1989 - Cameron Crowe's teen drama Say Anything…, starring John Cusack and Ione Skye, opens in theaters. The movie is famous for an iconic scene with Cusack's character holding up the boombox playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes."
"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 at the Bleitz Funeral Home, Seattle. The death certificate listed Cobain's occupation as Poet/Musician and his type of business as Punk Rock.
1995 - Radiohead released The Bends. 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. Thom Yorke's tortured lyrics give the album a melancholy undercurrent, as does the surging, textured music.
2021 - Poco frontman Rusty Young died at the age of 75. Attended Jefferson High School and was a member of well known Denver psychedelic rock band "Boenzee Cryque". Wrote the Poco songs "Rose of Cimarron" and "Crazy Love". A virtuoso on pedal steel guitar, he was celebrated for the ability to get a Hammond B3 organ sound out of the instrument by playing it through a Leslie speaker cabinet. He's in the Colorado Music Hall Of Fame.
Birthdays:
Country legend Loretta Lynn was born today in 1932. Few performers in country music have proved as influential and iconic as Loretta Lynn. At a time when women usually took a back seat to men in Nashville, Lynn was a voice of strength, independence, and sometimes defiance, writing and singing songs that spoke to the concerns of working-class women with unapologetic honesty.
Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple is 78. Guitar virtuoso, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Ritchie Blackmore is a principal architect of the early hard rock and heavy metal sound. A scholar of blues, heavy metal, progressive rock, folk, and classical, he is a longtime member of Deep Purple, the founder of Rainbow and Blackmore's Night, and is responsible for one of the most enduring riffs of all time, Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water."
On This Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
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