| 82 | years ago | 1944 | Archie Bell is born. |
| 80 | years ago | 1946 | Bee Gee Barry Gibb is born. |
| 70 | years ago | 1956 | Elvis Presley shares his success with his family by purchasing his mother a pink Cadillac. |
| 69 | years ago | 1957 | Gloria Estefan is born. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | James Brown appears on Shindig! performing Papa's Got a Brand New Bag. Also on the show is Booker T. & the MG's. |
| 59 | years ago | 1967 | Guitarist Boz Scaggs joins the San Francisco based Steve Miller Band. Scaggs stays with the group through two albums (Children of the Future and Sailor) before heading out on a solo career in 1969. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | The O'Jays receive a gold record for their first hit single, Backstabbers It makes it up to #3 on the pop chart. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | David Bowie releases John, I'm only Dancing in the U.K. However, due to the song's supposedly gay lyrics, it's not released in the U.S. until 1976 on the greatest hits LP ChangesOneBowie. In 1979, a six minute dance version of the tune is released. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | The Rolling Stones open their first European tour since 1971 at Vienna's Stadthalle, the first stop of the 20 city tour. The band wanted to play on the other side of the iron curtain--but were denied. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | Bob Dylan's soundtrack to the film, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid enters the LP charts. It includes Knockin' On Heaven's Door. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies peaks at #57 on the singles chart. |
| 50 | years ago | 1976 | Ode Records president Lou Adler and employee Neil Silver are kidnapped at the former's house in Malibu. The two are released after paying out $25,000 in hundred dollar bills. A week later, a California couple is charged with the crime. A search for another accomplice continues. |
| 49 | years ago | 1977 | Blondie signs its first major record company contract with Chrysalis. |
| 49 | years ago | 1977 | Billy Idol's former band, Generation X, release their debut single, Your Generation. Elton John reviews it for a British newspaper calling it “really dreadful garbage. The Ramones do this sort of thing so much better.” |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | INXS make their live debut in Sydney, Australia. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | U2 release their first record, an EP entitled, U2-3 in their native Ireland. |
| 46 | years ago | 1980 | Fleetwood Mac ends a nine-month tour with a performace at the Hollywood Bowl. Lindsay Buckingham announces from the stage, “This is our last show for a long time.” |
| 43 | years ago | 1983 | Paul Simonon and Joe Strummer of the Clash, fire guitarist Mick Jones, accusing him of “drifting apart from the original concept of the band.” Jones goes on to form Big Audio Dynamite, and the Clash soon breaks up. |
| 42 | years ago | 1984 | Tina Turner's What's Love Got To Do With It peaks at #1 on the pop chart. |
| 40 | years ago | 1986 | Paul McCartney releases the Press to Play LP. |
| 39 | years ago | 1987 | Mick Jagger's Let's Work single is released by Columbia. |
| 37 | years ago | 1989 | A judge in Dublin, Ireland decides not to convict U2 bassist Adam Clayton of marijuana possession, even though he had admitted to the crime. Clayton agreed to contribute money to a women's center in Dublin. |
| 28 | years ago | 1998 | David Bowie opens his on-line internet service provider business, Bowienet. The service offers basic internet services and exclusive Bowie news and releases. |
| 22 | years ago | 2004 | Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame member Raful Neal dies in Baton Rouge battling cancer at the age of 68. The singer and harmonica player made his recording debut in 1958 with Sunny Side of Love. His 1987 recording, Man, Watch Your Woman received a W. C. Handy Blues Award. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | 65-year-old Ronald Isley of the Isley Brothers is sentenced to 37 months in a Bureau of Prisons hospital for tax evasion. He suffers from kidney cancer and complications from a stroke. Meanwhile, film director Aaron Russo, who directed The Rose and Trading Places, has a documentary film in theaters at the time called America: Freedom to Facism, which makes the case that there is no law requiring anyone to pay individual income taxes. |
| 19 | years ago | 2007 | Alice Cooper mingles with about 150 fans at the haunted-house-themed Homer Mill restaurant in south central Michigan, wearing black leather from head to toe after changing out of an orange T-shirt and jeans he'd worn for a morning round of golf in Battle Creek. He says taking up golf helped him beat alcoholism. |