| 68 | years ago | 1958 | Prince is born Prince Roger Nelson in Minneapolis. |
| 63 | years ago | 1963 | Decca Records releases Come On, the Rolling Stones' first record. That night, the group appears on Thank Your Lucky Stars, their TV debut. The single peaks at #21 in the U.K. |
| 60 | years ago | 1966 | Roy Orbison's first wife Claudette is killed in a motorcycle accident that Orbison witnessed. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | The Who's Tommy enters the Billboard chart at #96. It would peak at #7 on July 26th but would soon fall back down. However, with the success of their follow-up album, Live At Leeds, Tommy shoots up to #4...It falls back down and surfaces once again for a 16-week stay in 1975 after the Tommy film is released! |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | Blind Faith plays a free concert in London's Hyde Park in front of an estimated 120,000 people. |
| 56 | years ago | 1970 | The Who performs Tommy at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. It is the first time that The Who performed at the venue, and it is the last time they would perform Tommy in its entirety until 1989. |
| 55 | years ago | 1971 | Carole King's album Tapestry goes gold. The album remains on the charts for three years and produces her biggest single, It's Too Late. |
| 54 | years ago | 1972 | The musical Grease opens on Broadway. It had been playing at an off-Broadway theatre for four months. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | Elton John's album, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy enters the U.S. chart at #1, where it stays for seven weeks. |
| 50 | years ago | 1976 | Capitol tries to revive Beatlemania by issuing some of the Fab Four's rockers in a package called, Rock 'N' Roll Music. Even though Ringo Starr speaks out against it, it makes it up to #2. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | Chuck Berry is charged with three counts of tax evasion -- this coming one day before Berry performs on the White House lawn in front of President Jimmy Carter at the Black Music Association gala. |
| 33 | years ago | 1993 | Ground is finally broken on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland - 7 years after the city won the right to build the building. Pete Townshend and Chuck Berry are among those present for the ceremony. |
| 33 | years ago | 1993 | Prince changes his name to an unpronounceable symbol. Most just refer to him as, “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” |
| 32 | years ago | 1994 | Grace Slick is sentenced to 200 hours of community service and four Alcoholic's Anonymous meetings a week for three months. It is punishment for a March 5, 1994 incident in which she pointed a gun at police. |
| 27 | years ago | 1999 | Rod Stewart is late ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to commemorate the first day of trading for SFX Entertainment stock, a company that produced a number of the singer's tours. Still, Stewart arrives in time to head-butt soccer balls onto the trading floor. |
| 17 | years ago | 2009 | Poison's Bret Michaels gets hit in the head by a falling set piece after a performance at the Tony Awards. He breaks his nose, takes three stitches in his lip, and gets a CAT scan the next day. |