1970 - The Woodstock movie premieres in Hollywood. Roger Ebert said this in his 1970 review:
Had it not been for this movie, Woodstock would be vaguely remembered as a rock concert that produced some recordings. "Woodstock" created the idea of "Woodstock Nation," which existed for three days and was absorbed into American myth. Few documentaries have captured a time and place more completely, poignantly, and for that matter, entertainingly. It has a lot of music in it, photographed with a startling intimacy with the performers, but it's not simply a music movie. It's a documentary about the society that formed itself briefly at Woodstock before moving on, showing how the musicians sang to it, the hog farm commune fed it and the Port-O-San man provided it with toilet facilities.
1971 - The Allman Brothers released the song "Midnight Rider". The song was primarily written by Gregg Allman, who first began composing it at a rented cabin outside Macon, Georgia. He enlisted the help of roadie Robert Kim Payne to complete the song's lyrics. He and Payne broke into Capricorn Sound Studios to complete a demo of the song.
1972 - Mott The Hoople had decided to call it all off after four albums, when David Bowie came to their rescue. He had a song called "All The Young Dudes" and Mott recorded it with Bowie producing.
One afternoon in KBCO Studio C session, Ian Hunter told me Bowie originally offered the band Suffragette City. Good song he said, but it wasn't going to get Mott on the radio. Then one afternoon Ian met David at an office where Bowie sat on the floor and played him "All the Young Dudes". Hunter: "The first thing I thought, I can sing this. The second thing I thought, this is a monster".
1980 - Seven years after its release, Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon broke the record for the longest-charting pop album, a title previously held by Carole King's Tapestry. Dark Side of the Moon remained in the charts until 1988.
1976 - Paul Simon released "Still Crazy After All These Years". It begins with the line, "I met my old lover on the street last night." The "old lover" has been variously interpreted to be either Simon's ex-wife Peggy Harper or even Simon's former musical partner Art Garfunkel, who appears on the following track, My Little Town. According to the biography Homeward Bound, Simon got the idea for the title one day when he was standing in the shower, thinking about his station in life. He was in his 30s, a father, divorced, and contemplating his next move. Simon recorded this song with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.
1987 - Nike began airing a commercial using the Beatles song "Revolution," marking the first time an original version of a Beatles song was used in an ad. The spot debuts during The Cosby Show, the highest rated program in America. Beatles fans are taken by surprise and emit some outrage, but the campaign is very successful, thanks in part to publicity generated from the controversy.
The song "Help!" appeared in a 1985 commercial for Ford, but that was a new recording by Beatles soundalikes. The Nike ad uses the original "Revolution," a feat that requires permission from both the US record company and the publisher. The record company is Capitol, which gets $250,000 in the deal. The publisher is Michael Jackson, who bought the rights to about 200 Beatles songs for $47.5 million in 1985, outbidding Paul McCartney in the process.
1991 - Bob Dylan's The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 is released. This three-disc box set is what Dylanphiles have been waiting for, sitting patiently for years, even decades. But even casual Dylan fans will find much to treasure in this three-disc set of unreleased material. They'll find songs as good as anything that made the records (sometimes surpassing the official releases, especially on the last disc), plus alternate versions and long-fabled songs. This doesn't just function as an alternate history of Dylan, but as an expansion of Dylan's history, enriching what is already known about the greatest songwriter of his era.
2001 - Gorillaz launched their debut self-titled album. It's tempting to judge Gorillaz -- Damon Albarn, Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett, and Dan "The Automator" Nakamura's virtual band -- just by their brilliantly animated videos and write the project off as another triumph of style over substance. Musically, however, Gorillaz is a cutely caricatured blend of Albarn's eclectic Brit-pop and Nakamura's equally wide-ranging hip-hop, and it sounds as good as the band looks. It's filled with enough fun ideas and good songs to make this virtual band's debut a genuinely enjoyable album. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella)
Birthdays:
Rufus Thomas was born today in 1917. From the 1940s onward, he personified Memphis music; his small but witty cameo role in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train, a film which satirizes and enshrines the city's role in popular culture, was entirely appropriate. As a recording artist, he wasn't a major innovator, but he could always be depended upon for some good, silly, and/or outrageous fun with his soul dance tunes. He was one of the few rock or soul stars to reach his commercial and artistic peak in middle age, and was a crucial mentor to many important Memphis blues, rock, and soul musicians. His biggest hit by far was "Walking the Dog," which made the Top Ten in 1963, and was covered by the Rolling Stones on their first album and Aerosmith on their debut.
Steven Tyler is 76. Many would agree that one of rock's all-time charismatic and entertaining frontman would have to be Aerosmith's Steven Tyler. Born Steven Victor Tallarico, he began playing drums at an early age, but eventually switched to vocals after discovering the Beatles, as well as the tougher blues rock of the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds. After moving to Boston in the late '60s, Tallarico hooked up with two members of an up-and-coming outfit called the Jam Band, Joe Perry and Tom Hamilton, and after finding drummer Joey Kramer and second guitarist Ray Tabano (who was eventually replaced with Brad Whitford), they renamed themselves Aerosmith.
R.I.P.:
2019 - Ranking Roger (Roger Charlery), the toaster for General Public and The English Beat, dies at 56. 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. In 1983 Wakeling and Roger formed the more pop- and soul-tinged General Public.
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, Roger Ebert, Allmusic, Song Facts and Wikipedia.
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