1964 - The Rolling Stones released their debut self-titled EP which included "You Better Move On," "Poison Ivy," "Bye Bye Johnny," and "Money."
1966 - NBC bought The Monkees series, placing it on their 1966 fall schedule. The series centered on the adventures of The Monkees, a struggling rock band from Los Angeles, and introduced a number of innovative new-wave film techniques to television. The show could be regarded as a precursor to MTV.
1967 - The Daily Mail ran the story about a local council survey finding 4,000 holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire inspiring John Lennon's line in The Beatles song 'A Day In The Life'. Lennon had a problem with the words of the final verse, however, not being able to think of how to connect "Now they know how many holes it takes to" and "the Albert Hall". His friend Terry Doran suggested that the holes would "fill" the Albert Hall, and the lyric was eventually used.
1967 - 40-year-old David Mason (no, not the guy from Traffic) recorded the piccolo trumpet solo for The Beatle's "Penny Lane" at Abbey Road Studios in London. He was paid $42 for his performance. In August 1987, the trumpet he used was sold at a Sotheby's auction for $10,846.
1996 - David Bowie, Tom Donahue, The Jefferson Airplane, Gladys Knight And The Pips, Little Willie John, Pink Floyd, Pete Seeger, The Shirelles and The Velvet Underground were all inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Birthdays:
Former Rolling Stones guitarist Mick Taylor is 75. His guitar work helped make their incredible run of albums, Let It Bleed, Get Yer Ya Ya's Out, s Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main St. so special.
Drawing inspiration from Freddie King and Albert king, Taylor first made a name for himself in John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers before replacing Brian Jones in the Stones.
His run with the band is considered their high water mark. But Taylor eventually grew restless (not to mention that the group's well-documented lifestyle was beginning to weigh heavily on him), and in 1975, the guitarist shocked the music world by leaving the group.
Steve Earle is 69. He first won an audience as a country artist, though it didn't take long for him to demonstrate that designation was too narrow for him. Earle's music runs the gamut from country, bluegrass, and rock to folk, blues. His populist lyrical stance, literate yet down to earth, finds room for the personal and the political, writing about the stuff of everyday lives as well as the forces that shape and define their existence.
Susanna Hoffs is born on this day in 1959.. She forms the Bangles after answering an ad placed by the sisters Debbi and Vicki Peterson. The power poppers rose from Los Angeles' Paisley Underground and into the Top 40 with "Manic Monday," written by Prince.
Jeremiah Fraites of The Lumineers is 38. Born and raised in Ramsey, New Jersey, (Jersey Ringo!) Fraites was drawn to music from a very young age. His fondness for piano led him first to Beethoven, and later, with help from his older brother Joshua, his tastes expanded to include rock, especially Guns N' Roses and Pink Floyd.
After graduating college, Fraites and longtime friend Wesley Schultz relocated to Denver, where they met cellist Neyla Pekarek, and formed the Lumineers. In 2021 he released an instrumental album titled, Piano Piano. also that year he released a cover of Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box in honor of Kurt Cobain. Watch below.
(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Global Citizen).
R.I.P.:
Music publisher, talent manager, and songwriter Don Kirshner died on this day in 2011. He helped launch the careers of Neil Diamond, Carole King, Neil Sedaka, The Monkees, The Archies and Kansas. Created Don Kirshner's Rock Concert in 1973, featuring live performances, which was unusual for the period since most television appearances at that time used lip-synching to prerecorded music.
The show was hosted by Kirshner up till the last season. His on-air delivery was described as flat by viewers. Paul Shaffer often lampooned him in a convincing impersonation on Saturday Night Live.
On this Day In Music History was sourced, copied, pasted, and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose, from This Day in Music, Song Facts, Emmy webpage, Texas Monthly, Allmusic, and Wikipedia.