1956 - Elvis Presley’s self-titled debut studio album is released. The groundwork is laid...This was as startling a debut record as any ever made, representing every side of Elvis' musical influences except gospel -- rockabilly, blues, R&B, country, and pop were all here in an explosive and seductive combination. Elvis Presley became the first rock & roll album to reach the number one spot on the national charts, and RCA's first million dollar-earning pop album.
1965 - Eric Clapton, concerned that the band is becoming too commercial, leaves The Yardbirds. Clapton wanted to continue in a blues vein, while the rest of the band preferred the more commercial style of their hit, 'For Your Love'. His replacement is Jeff Beck.
1971 - Brewer and Shipley entered the US singles chart with 'One Toke Over The Line'. The song, which featured Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia on steel guitar, peaked at No.10 despite being banned by radio stations for its drug references. Brewer and Shipley maintained that the word 'toke' meant 'token' as in ticket, hence the line 'waitin' downtown at the railway station, one toke over the line.'
1977 - Iggy Pop kicked off a the North American leg of The Idiot World Tour at Le Plateau Theatre, Montreal, Canada (with David Bowie in the band playing keyboards and backing vocals). Blondie were the opening act on this leg of the tour.
1984 - The Cars released their fifth studio album, Heartbeat City. A pop masterpiece. It's a near-total reboot of the Cars' sound, giving them a thoroughly modern upgrade while still retaining enough of the DNA from their early hits to keep it a Cars album. Strong songs, terrific vocals, it all made for brilliant pop album. Highlights: Drive, Magic, Hello Again, and You Might Think.
1995 - Radiohead released their second studio album The Bends. Radiohead create a grand and forceful sound that nevertheless resonates with anguish and despair -- it's cerebral anthemic rock. Thom Yorke's tortured lyrics give the album a melancholy undercurrent, as does the surging, textured music. But what makes The Bends so remarkable is that it marries such ambitious, and often challenging, instrumental soundscapes to songs that are at their cores hauntingly melodic and accessible.
BTW, "The bends", of course, is the common term for decompression sickness - when bubbles of dissolved gasses get into the bloodstream, which most commonly occurs when deep sea divers surface too quickly. Yorke used the term as a metaphor for drowning in the sea of modern life: "My baby's got the bends / We don't have any real friends". (Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images)
2006 - The Sex Pistols refused to attend their own induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Blondie, Herb Alpert and Black Sabbath were all inducted, but the Pistols posted a handwritten note on their website, calling the institution "urine in wine," adding, "We're not your monkeys, we're not coming. You're not paying attention."
Birthdays:
Adam Clayton is 64. Known to many as the bass player for world-renowned U2, which showcases his driving, hard rock style marked by melodic flair. Though his career has been defined by his decades-long association with the band, he also found the Top Ten in the mid-'90s with his cover of the theme to Mission: Impossible with bandmate Larry Mullen, Jr.
R.I.P.:
2023 - Drummer Jim Gordon, died in prison at the age of 77. Gordon was one of the most renowned rock drummers of the early '70s and also one of the saddest cases in rock music. Behind his fame and success, however, there was a dark side to Gordon's persona that few listeners and few fellow musicians ever knew about -- a personality torn by serious psychological demons. As early as 1969, he would go off for days in spurts of bizarre, self-destructive private behavior. According to some accounts, he often heard a voice inside of his head that directed him at various times to act out. Whatever the particulars and the pathology, by 1981, he was unable to continue in music, and finally, in 1983, the voice told Gordon to kill his mother, which he did.
He was one of the most requested session drummers in the late 1960s and 1970s. Gordon co-wrote Layla with Eric Clapton, worked with The Everly Brothers, The Monkees, The Beach Boys, George Harrison, John Lennon, The Carpenters, Traffic, Glen Campbell, , Steely Dan, Jackson Browne, Frank Zappa and many others.
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, Allmusic, Radio X, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
KBCO