1966 - Tara Browne was killed when driving at high speed in his Lotus Elan after it collided with a parked lorry . Browne was a close friend of The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, and an heir to the Guinness empire. His death was immortalized in The Beatles song 'A Day In The Life’ after John Lennon read a report on the coroner's verdict into Browne's death. "He blew his mind out in a car..."
"I didn’t copy the accident. Tara didn’t blow his mind out. But it was in my mind when I was writing that verse."
John Lennon
The Beatles, by Hunter Davies
2005 - After airing on Saturday Night Live, the Digital Short "Lazy Sunday," about two gangsta wannabes who plan a trip to see The Chronicles of Narnia movie, appears on YouTube. It quickly goes viral, becoming the first TV segment to do so on YouTube, which launched 10 months earlier. Watch below.
Lonely Island Digital Shorts become a mainstay on Saturday Night Live, even though they aren't, you know... live. "Young Chuck Norris," "Laser Cats!" and "Peyote" all follow, and soon celebrities get in on the action. "Natalie's Rap" features Natalie Portman; "Dick In A Box" stars Justin Timberlake.
2020 - Paul McCartney releases McCartney III. He's a one-man band on the album, playing all the instruments and writing all the songs, which he also did on the prequels, McCartney in 1970 and McCartney II in 1980.
McCartney III is constructed at a modest scale, the arrangements so uncluttered that it's easy to hear the years on McCartney's voice. Maybe he can't hit the high notes he way he used to, maybe he sounds a bit weathered, but the change in his singing has a profoundly humanizing effect, especially when heard in conjunction with his distinctive drumming and fuzzed-out guitars. A charmingly off-kilter record.
Birthdays:
Billie Eilish is 22. She crafts genre-blurring outcast anthems that bridge the gap between ethereal indie electronic and dark alternative pop. With angsty, introspective lyrics that refuse to shy away from issues of mental health, she has endeared herself to a devoted audience from her breakthrough years in the late 2010s when she was still just a teenager.
Sia is 48. An inimitable presence on the pop scene with an unmistakable voice and sound that has yielded scores of hits for both herself and a long list of collaborators. Her song "Breathe Me," gained attention when it was used in the elaborate final scene of the Six Feet Under series.
Bobby Keys was born on this day in 1943. Saxophone player who is best known for his long association with the Rolling Stones. His credits also include Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Who, Harry Nilsson, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker and others.
Once fired by the Rolling Stones...it was the next to last day of a '73 European Tour. At the band assembly, Key's failed to show. When partner in crime Keith Richards went to check on him in his hotel room, he found Bobby, cigar in mouth, in a bathtub filled with champagne, along with a French girl.
Richards wrote in his autobiography, Life: "Bob, we gotta go, we gotta go right now. And he said, f--- off." So be it.
Keith Richards is 80. If any one person could be said to embody all the glories and excesses of rock & roll, it'd be Keith Richards. There is no adequate way to measure his influence. His riffs are legendary, Satisfaction, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Gimme Shelter, Can't You Hear me Knockin', Brown Sugar, Start Me Up...and there are countless posers who have based their entire existence on his persona.
After the death of Brian Jones in 1969, the Stones became a more straightforward, hard-rocking outfit (with Keith occasionally pushing the band to experiment with country and reggae) where his guitar took center stage more than ever before. The albums from Beggars Banquet to Exile On Main Street remains one of the greatest runs in rock 'n roll.
And of course there was the absurdly decadent lifestyle; drug busts, rumors of blood replacing (entertaining, but untrue), addiction, all coming to a head with the famous Toronto bust that threatened to send him to prison for a very long time.
As Richard Sassin once wrote: His private and public exploits were those of a twentieth nomad with unlimited means, a head full of rock and roll and a guitar capable of of giving shelter to the lost, blessed, and cursed.
Other strangers have tried to deify him but he is no God. He is a guitarist with God and time on his side. He walks a crooked mile. He is the palest angel. No mirror can reflect his impact. (Photo by MJ Kim/Getty Images)
On This Day In Music History was sourced, copied, pasted, and sometimes cobbled together with my own crude prose from This Day in Music, Allmusic, The Beatles Bible, Ultimate Classic Rock, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
KBCO