| 94 years ago (1926) | Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis is born in Alton, Illinois. |
| 78 years ago (1942) | Levon Helm, drummer for The Band, is born. |
| 72 years ago (1948) | Stevie Nicks, vocalist with Fleetwood Mac, is born. |
| 62 years ago (1958) | Just four days after his arrival in Britain, Jerry Lee Lewis plays the third and last of what should have been a 37-date tour. The London Morning Star runs an editorial calling Lewis “an undesirable alien” and calls for his deportation. That night, Lewis is booed from the stage. The next day he goes back to the U.S. |
| 58 years ago (1962) | The Isley Brothers' Twist and Shout is released on Wand Records. It will rise to #17 on the pop chart, and will be covered in two years by The Beatles. |
| 56 years ago (1964) | Singer Lenny Kravitz is born. |
| 55 years ago (1965) | Bob Dylan enters the St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington, England, with a viral infection. |
| 55 years ago (1965) | The Rolling Stones appear on Shindig! along with Jackie De Shannon, Sonny and Cher, and Jimmy Rodgers. |
| 54 years ago (1966) | Bob Dylan and the Hawks rock and roll at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In attendance are the Stones, members of The Beatles, and other people in British rock. The concert is recorded, later to be heard on various bootleg albums that substantiate claims made for the concert -- that is one of the high-water marks of live rock and roll. |
| 51 years ago (1969) | John Lennon and Yoko Ono begin their second “Bed-In For Peace” in Montreal. |
| 47 years ago (1973) | Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water is released. |
| 46 years ago (1974) | A teenage girl dies and three others are hospitalized and more than 1,000 are treated by ambulance orderlies after a David Cassidy concert at London's White City athletic stadium. The head of the British Safety Council calls the show the “suicide concert.” Cassidy says “I do feel responsible.” |
| 44 years ago (1976) | A drunken Jimmy Page and Robert Plant verbally assault first class passengers on a transatlantic British Airways flight. Actors Telly Savalas and Dudley Moore were among the passengers. |
| 39 years ago (1981) | Motown Records announces plans for a year-long silver anniversary salute, starting in 1982, in order to mark the 25th year of association between Motown chief Berry Gordy and one of the label's most respected artists, William “Smokey” Robinson. Smokey is currently a vice president at the label. |
| 31 years ago (1989) | To illustrate the power of radio, over 8,000 stations nationwide go silent for 30 seconds at 7:42am. |
| 26 years ago (1994) | Elvis Presley's daughter Lisa Marie marries the self-proclaimed “King Of Pop” Michael Jackson in the Dominican Republic. Presley files for divorce in January of 1996. |
| 25 years ago (1995) | Rapper Flavor Flav (William Drayton) of the group Public Enemy is sentenced to three months in jail for firing a gun at a neighbor in his NY apartment. |
| 15 years ago (2005) | Nine Inch Nails drops out of the MTV Movie Awards after clashing with the network over an image of President Bush the band planned as a performance backdrop. The Bush image was to accompany the song The Hand That Feeds, which obliquely criticizes the Iraq war. It includes the lyrics: “What if this whole crusade's a charade / And behind it all there's a price to be paid / For the blood on which we dine / Justified in the name of the holy and the divine.” MTV says in a statement to its news division that the network is disappointed the industrial rock band would not perform but had been “uncomfortable with their performance being built around a partisan political statement.” The Foo Fighters will perform in place of the Trent Reznor-led band at the awards being taped June 4 in Los Angeles. Reznor says in a statement posted on the band's Web site this day that the image of the president would have been unaltered and “straightforward. Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me,” he says. Nine Inch Nails’ fourth studio album and first in six years, With Teeth, debuted this month at #1 in sales. |
| 14 years ago (2006) | Meat Loaf sues the writer of the song “Bat Out of Hell” and an ex-manager over the trademark rights to the phrase “bat out of hell.” Alleging that they had told the singer’s distributors that he had no right to use the phrase in order to disrupt the October release of the third Bat Out of Hell album, Meat Loaf seeks $50 million in damages for what he says is “blackmail and a holdup.” |
| 11 years ago (2009) | Ozzy Osbourne files suit in federal court against Black Sabbath guitarist Tommy Iommi, saying Iommi falsely claimed to have sole rights to Black Sabbath's trademark. The suit seeks damages, lost profits, and a declaration that Osbourne is half owner of the Black Sabbath name. |