1966 - The Beach Boys released the critically-lauded Pet Sounds. The group here reached a whole new level in terms of both composition and production, layering tracks upon tracks of vocals and instruments to create a richly symphonic sound. Conventional keyboards and guitars were combined with exotic touches of orchestrated strings, bicycle bells, buzzing organs, harpsichords, flutes, Theremin, Hawaiian-sounding string instruments, Coca-Cola cans, barking dogs, and more. It wouldn't have been a classic without great songs, and this has some of the group's most stunning melodies, as well as lyrical themes which evoke both the intensity of newly born love affairs and the disappointment of failed romance (add in some general statements about loss of innocence and modern-day confusion as well). Highlights? So many...Wouldn't It Be Nice," "God Only Knows," "Caroline No," and "Sloop John B".
1969 - Pete Townshend spends the night in a New York City jail after assaulting a man who jumped onstage during a Who concert at the Fillmore East. It turned out that this man was a plainclothes police officer trying to warn the audience that a fire had broken out, which Townshend wasn't aware of.
1970 - The Who release their acclaimed album Live At Leeds in America. By the beginning of 1970, The Who were road-hardened and sick of playing Tommy. So they took it back to basics with an album that set the bar for live albums in the 70s. There is certainly no better record of how this band was a volcano of energy on-stage, teetering on the edge of chaos but never blowing apart. This was most true on the original LP, which was a trim six tracks, three of them covers ("Young Man Blues," "Summertime Blues," "Shakin' All Over") and three originals from the mid-'60s, two of those ("Substitute," "My Generation") vintage parts of their repertory and only "Magic Bus" representing anything resembling a recent original, with none bearing a trace of their mod roots. Throughout the '70s the album was seen as one of the gold standards in live rock & roll, and certainly it had a fury that no proper Who studio album achieved. (Shows from the Hull concerts recorded the following night were included on a future re-issue. Pete Townshend claims those show were actually better, but not as intense...and some of John Entwistle’s bass parts somehow weren’t recorded) (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
1978 - Joe Walsh releases his fourth album, But Seriously, Folks...,his most insightful and melodic. Allmusic has suggested maybe the Eagles should have recorded this album instead of The Long Run...all of them are on it anyway. The album's introspective outlook glides through rejuvenation, the simple pleasures of the past, mid-career indecision, "Life's Been Good," his sarcastic and bittersweet ode to Walsh's "rock star-party guy" persona.
1980 - Elvis Presley's doctor, George Nichopoulous, is arrested for abusing his license to prescribe controlled drugs. Nichopoulous wrote Elvis prescriptions for over 10,000 doses of narcotics in 1977, the year Elvis died). He is acquitted, but in 1992 the Tennessee Medical Board revokes his license.
1983 - Michael Jackson does the Moonwalk for the first time on TV when he breaks out the move on the Motown 25th anniversary TV special.
At the special, he performs "Billie Jean," during the bridge, he breaks out a new move where he glides backward but looks like he is walking forward. This becomes Jackson's signature move, which he calls the Moonwalk.
Jackson didn't invent the move - Jeffrey Daniel performed it on Soul Train in 1979 and claims he was brought in to teach it to Jackson before the special. Known as the Backslide, it is known to viewers of the show and aficionados of street dance, but for everyone else, Jackson's walk on the moon is the first sighting.
1984 - Prince releases When Doves Cry. There is no bass on this song. Prince took out the bass track at the last minute to get a different sound, though he hated to see it go.
"Sometimes your brain kind of splits in two - your ego tells you one thing, and the rest of you says something else. You have to go with what you know is right," he told Bass Player magazine.
1998 - Keith Richards fell while reaching for a book of nude art in his Connecticut home. The fall broke his ribs, causing the Stones to postpone many dates on their Bridges To Babylon tour.
Birthdays:
Robert Fripp, guitarist for King Crimson, is 78. A truly singular figure in rock music, Robert Fripp is a guitarist, composer, and bandleader who has brought a unique, strikingly intelligent perspective to his work. One of the most technically gifted guitarists in rock, Fripp is the thinking-person's guitar hero, showing no interest in shredding but eager to challenge himself and blaze new trails with unusual techniques, unique group configurations, and collaborations with other open-minded talents. Capable of arena-filling bombast and intimate improvised meditations, the unifying elements in Fripp's style are his highly textured melodic sense, at once jagged and fluid, and a tone that embraces the possibilities of sustain and non-conventional picking and tuning systems.
Jonathan Richman is 73. A singer and songwriter who has stubbornly (and joyfully) followed his muse in a career that began in the early '70s, Jonathan Richman started out as a primitive proto-punk bandleader under the influence of the Velvet Underground (he initial lineup of Richman's band the Modern Lovers (as documented on the album The Modern Lovers would often be cited as a precursor to the first wave of punk. It featured David Robinson who would become the drummer in Tthe Cars and keyboardist Jerry Harrison who would join Talking Heads) who would eventually mature into an acoustic balladeer.
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Krist Novoselic, bassist for Nirvana, is 59. Novoselic's younger brother, Robert, brought home a new friend one day, Kurt Cobain, who was impressed with the fact that Novoselic was a punk fan. Cobain tried convincing Novoselic to form a band with him, and after turning down the invitation numerous times, he finally agreed. The duo went through a series of names (and a revolving door of drummers) until settling on Nirvana.
R.I.P.:
2010 - Ronnie James Dio, singer for Rainbow, Black Sabbath & Dio, died at 67 years old. Although his trademark tales of "dungeons and dragons" may have single-handedly inspired Spinal Tap (more specifically, Tap's overblown epic "Stonehenge"), Ronnie James Dio was unquestionably one of heavy metal's most talented and instantly identifiable vocalists. Sang in Elf, Rainbow, and Black Sabbath for a spell.
On this Day In Music History was sourced, curated, copied, pasted, edited and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose, from This Day in Music, Music This Day, Allmusic, Louder, Rolling Stone, Song Facts and Wikipedia.