1965 - Bob Dylan releases Bringing It All Back Home. With Another Side of Bob Dylan, Dylan had begun pushing past folk, and with Bringing It All Back Home, he exploded the boundaries, producing an album of boundless imagination and skill. And it's not just that he went electric, it's that he's exploding with imagination throughout the record, from the rocking "Subterranean Homesick Blues" to the funny fantasia "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream". This is the point where Dylan eclipses any conventional sense of folk and rewrites the rules of rock, making it safe for personal expression and poetry, not only making words mean as much as the music, but making the music an extension of the words.
1969 - Two days after their wedding in Gibraltar, John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their "bed-in," inviting members of the media into their Amsterdam hotel room where they were promoting peace with songs, signs and dialogue. These events were outlined in the song "The Ballad of John and Yoko."
1974 - The Eagles released their third studio album On the Border, the first Eagles album to feature guitarist Don Felder. They had started this album with Glyn Johns, who produced their first two. But there's was a disagreement about the direction of the band, the Eagle wanting to rock a little harder and Johns to emphasize the group's country elements. The band switched producers and got what the wanted with songs like "Already Gone" and James Dean". But the album also features the usual mixture of styles typical of an Eagles album, country rock, bluegrass, ballads, and on this one, a cover of Tom Waits' "Ol' 55". A solid album which looked back to their earlier work and anticipated their later work.
1978 - The Beatles' parody 'The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash' aired on NBC with Eric Idle, Neil Innes, etc. The mockumentary chronicles the rise of the "Prefab Four" while playfully poking holes in the Beatles' legacy.
Ringo Starr likes the funnier bits but doesn't want to be reminded of the band's painful breakup, John Lennon loves it so much he keeps copies of the film and soundtrack, and Paul McCartney refuses to comment. George Harrison says, "The Rutles sort of liberated me from the Beatles in a way.
The star-studded supporting cast includes John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Michael Palin, Bianca Jagger, Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, Ronnie Wood, and George Harrison as a reporter.
Coming out a full four years before This Is Spinal Tap, it was considered the first rock mockumentary.
2013 - Vance Joy releases his debut EP, God Loves You When You're Dancing. Not a bad start for the former pro footballer who abandoned the sport to follow his artistic muse. It falls somewhere between the laid-back surfer charm of Jack Johnson and the earnestness of the Mumfords' nu folk scene. Featured the easygoing, ukulele-led "Riptide".
Birthdays:
Keith Relf, lead singer of The Yardbirds, was born today in 1943. Although the Yardbirds will forever be associated first and foremost with their extraordinary roster of guitarists during their career (Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page), singer Keith Relf was an integral ingredient of the band's sound.The group started out as a blues-based outfit, but as the years progressed, pop, psychedelia, and hard rock was worked into their sound, as the group welcomed in the aforementioned all-star guitarists into their ranks one after anothe
Andrew Lloyd Webber is 75. Composer and impresario of musical theatre, he has composed 13 musicals and several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits; 'All I Ask of You' from The Phantom of the Opera, 'I Don't Know How to Love Him' from Jesus Christ Superstar, 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' from Evita, and 'Any Dream Will Do' from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
R.I.P.:
1994 - Dan Hartman
American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer Dan Hartman died aged 43 He was a member of the Edgar Winter Group ( and was also in Johnny Winter's band for a time and wrote the band's hit ‘Free Ride.’
Hartman was also a session musician that supported artists as diverse as Ian Hunter, Stevie Wonder, Todd Rundgren, and Ronnie Montrose. After releasing one solo pop/rock album in 1976, he hit the big time with the fine disco album, Instant Replay.
On This Day In Music History was sourced, copied, pasted, curated, 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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