1967 - Filming began for The Beatles ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. There was no script, nor a very clear idea of exactly what was to be accomplished, not even a clear direction about where the bus was supposed to go. It was the Beatles' first critical failure.
McCartney later spoke to the press, saying: "We don't say it was a good film. It was our first attempt. If we goofed, then we goofed. It was a challenge and it didn't come off. We'll know better next time."
1970 - NME’s Keith Allston met with Jimi Hendrix, for what would turn out to be the artist’s final interview. In the article, Hendrix spoke about a new musical phase, even detailing collaborations with Miles Davis and Paul McCartney to form a new super group.
1973 - Bruce Springsteen releases his second album, The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle. Springsteen created a street-life mosaic of suburban society that owed much in its outlook to Van Morrison's romanticization of Belfast in Astral Weeks. Though Springsteen expressed endless affection and much nostalgia, his message was clear: this was a goodbye-to-all-that from a man who was moving on.
Musically and lyrically, Springsteen had brought an unruly muse under control and used it to make a mature statement that synthesized popular musical styles into complicated, well-executed arrangements and absorbing suites; it evoked a world precisely even as that world seemed to disappear.
1977 - David Bowie joins Bing Crosby to record the crooner's Merrie Olde Christmas special. Bowie refuses to sing "Little Drummer Boy" with Crosby, so his part is rewritten as "Peace On Earth." Crosby dies a month later before the show airs, and the duet becomes a Christmas classic
Birthdays:
Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead is 80. Hart originally joined the Grateful Dead in 1967 as its second percussionist. His influence over the next year was to push the band into complex, multirhythmic explorations. A student of Ustad Allah Rakah (Ravi Shankar's tabla player), he added various strains of non-Western music to the Dead's general atmosphere.
Moby is 58. One of the most important electronic dance music figures of the 1990s, whose crossover success helped bring the sound into the mainstream and established him as a progenitor to the crop of superstar DJs that would define the next wave of popular electronic music. Early on, Moby fused rapid disco beats with heavy distorted guitars, punk rhythms, and detailed productions that drew equally from pop, dance, and movie soundtracks. Not only did his music differ from both the cool surface textures of ambient music and the hedonistic world of house music, but so did his lifestyle; Moby was famous for his devout Christian beliefs, as well as his environmental and vegan activism.
Richard Ashcroft of The Verve is 52. Long acclaimed as one of the most innovative and spellbinding bands on the contemporary British pop scene, the Verve finally broke through to a mass international audience in 1997 with the instant classic "Bittersweet Symphony."
R.I.P.
1987 - Peter Tosh is shot and killed at age 42 during a robbery in his home.
Staying at Tosh's home during this time was an old friend of the Wailers, Dennis Lobban. He left in a fury, however, after an argument with Tosh's girlfriend, Marlene Brown, returning a few days later on September 11 with a gang of friends. Lobban later claimed he had merely intended to threaten the artist, and perhaps rob him, but panicked. The end result was that Tosh and all six of his friends who were hanging out in the room were shot.
2009 - Punk musician Jim Carroll dies of heart attack in Manhattan, New York City, at age 60.
To rock audiences, Jim Carroll's crowning achievement was the near-hit "People Who Died," a brutally emotional punk record saluting the victims of the New York drug culture. In truth, however, Carroll's artistic legacy was considerably more complex and far-ranging -- an acclaimed diarist, poet, actor, and spoken word performer, his formative years even served as the subject of the film The Basketball Diaries.
2019 -Songwriter and artist Daniel Johnston died at his home in Waller, Texas, at the age of 58. Kurt Cobain once described him as 'the best songwriter on earth' and famously wore one of Johnston's t-shirts to the 1992 MTV Awards.
Daniel Johnston's songs of love and pain made him one of the most unique figures of the American underground, and his outsider spirit set a template for indie rock on the whole. Though Johnston struggled with mental illness his entire life, his creative world was vivid, and his songwriting struck a moving balance between innocence and emotional devastation
Other musicians who have covered Johnston's songs include Pearl Jam, Tom Waits, Wilco, Death Cab for Cutie, Sufjan Stevens and Yo La Tengo.
2020 - Toots Hibbert, frontman of the legendary reggae band Toots and the Maytals, died at the age of 77. Hibbert was one of Jamaica’s most influential musicians, helping to popularize reggae in the 1960s with songs like “Pressure Drop,” “Monkey Man,” and “Funky Kingston.” Hibbert was such a seminal figure in the rise of reggae music that he is widely recognized as the artist that coined the term in the first place, via his 1968 single, “Do The Reggay.” (Photo by Suhaimi Abdullah/Getty Images)
On this Day In Music History was sourced from This Day in Music, Far Out Magazine, Grateful Dead, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
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