1966 - The Beatles release "Nowhere Man". John Lennon came up with this after struggling to write a song for Rubber Soul. Said Lennon: "I thought of myself sitting there, doing nothing and getting nowhere."
1969 - Marianne Faithfull releases "Sister Morphine". Written with Mick and Keith and released before the Rolling Stones version on Sticky Fingers.
The song is about a man who gets in a car accident and dies in the hospital while asking for morphine. Faithfull told Mojo. "It's definitely a kind of junkie song except that neither Mick nor I knew much about junkies back then."
The personnel for the Faithfull version are Marianne on vocals, Jagger on acoustic guitar, Ry Cooder on slide guitar and bass guitar, and organ, and Charlie Watts on drums. It was recorded during the Let It Bleed sessions.
1972 - Led Zeppelin released "Rock And Roll / Four Sticks" as a 7 inch single in the U.S., peaking at No. 47 on the chart. The song was written as a spontaneous jam session while the band was trying to finish "Four Sticks".
Jimmy Page said this to Creem: It wasn't an intellectual thing, 'cause we didn't have time for that - we just wanted to let it all come flooding out."
With a pretty much unplayable drum pattern, John Bonham got frustrated with the "Four Sticks" session, and tensions rose. In a pique of anger, he started playing something completely different: a riff based on the intro to the 1957 Little Richard song "Keep a Knockin'" (session great Earl Palmer was the drummer on that one).
They put "Four Sticks" aside and started working on this new song, which they called "It's Been a Long Time." Jimmy Page blasted out a guitar part, and the bones of the song were completed in about 30 minutes.
Four Sticks...This song was named because drummer John Bonham played it with four drumsticks - two in each hand. He only recorded two takes of the song, because, as Jimmy Page says, "it was physically impossible for him to do another."
1975 - David Bowie released "Young Americans". This was recorded between tour dates at Philadelphia's Sigma Sound Studios, which was the capital of soul music in the area. Over the course of about eight very creative days, Bowie recorded most of the songs for Young Americans there. He usually recorded his vocals after midnight because he heard that's when Frank Sinatra recorded most of his vocals, and because there weren't so many people around.
2014 - Beck released his 12th album, Morning Phase. A slow, shimmering album deliberately in the vein of classic singer/songwriter LPs, it's easy to think of it as a pained, confessional sequel to Sea Change, the 2002 record written and recorded in the wake of a painful romantic breakup. Beck didn't shy away from these comparisons, calling it a "companion piece" to it. Highlights include the haunting "Heart Is a Drum," bringing to mind memories of Nick Drake; the loping country-rock "Say Goodbye" and its sister "Country Down"; and "Blue Moon," where the skies part like the breaking dawn.
Birthdays:
Nina Simone was born on this day in 1933. She was one of the most gifted vocalists of her generation, and also one of the most eclectic. Simone was a singer, pianist, and songwriter who bent genres to her will rather than allowing herself to be confined by their boundaries; her work swung back and forth between jazz, blues, soul, classical, R&B, pop, gospel, and world music, with passion, emotional honesty, and a strong grasp of technique as the constants of her musical career. (Photo by ELEONORE BAKHTADZE/AFP via Getty Images)
David Geffen is 81. Though not always the most popular figure in rock music, David Geffen has nevertheless been one of the most important figures in the corporate rock world of the last 30 years. He is responsible for guiding the careers of such big-name acts as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Laura Nyro, Jackson Browne and the Eagles, believing in the artists when few others did. Geffen is also believed by some, however, to be the definitive figure in shaping the greed and excess of the music industry during the '70s, the shark who changed the priority from music to money. Indeed, the overinflated claim alone is indicative of the power and influence David Geffen has had on the music business. Check out the documentary, Inventing David Geffen.
Jerry Harrison, of Talking Heads, is 75. Though he's hardly a cult persona, Jerry Harrison has failed to be recognized as a crucial figure in the history of punk rock, a portion of the music which influenced it, and the styles which had grown out of punk more than 15 years later. Best known as the keyboard player and occasional guitarist of Talking Heads during the 1980s, Harrison had begun his career ten years before, playing with Jonathan Richman's seminal Modern Lovers during the early '70s. Along with recording solo albums, he also produced records for Crash Test Dummies, Live, plus our own Big Head Todd and the Monsters
Vince Welnick, keyboardist for the Tubes and the Grateful Dead, was born today in 1951.
Ranking Roger was born today in 1963. Best-known as the singer/toaster and co-frontman of the English Beat and General Public. Became a punk rock fan as a teenager. He joined ska revival pioneers the English Beat in 1978, where he teamed with singer Dave Wakeling to give the group a unique one-two punch out front. After three albums, Wakeling and Roger departed in 1983 to form the more pop- and soul-tinged General Public.
Rhiannon Giddens is 47. On her own and as a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Rhiannon Giddens has explored the depths of folk music, specializing in how old-timey songs and forms still resonate in the modern world. Giddens' music functions as a commentary upon and expansion of the known folk songbook.
On This Day In Music History was sourced, copied, pasted, edited and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose, from This Day in Music, Music This Day, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
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