| 75 years ago (1948) | Ozzy Osbourne is born. |
| 74 years ago (1949) | Mickey Thomas of Jefferson Starship is born. |
| 69 years ago (1954) | Singer/songwriter/guitarist Steve Forbert is born. |
| 57 years ago (1966) | Paul Revere & The Raiders enter the Hot 100 with their seventh hit, Good Thing, which will reach #4 in its fourteen weeks on the chart. This matches the chart performance of thier biggest hit to date, Kicks, the anti-drug song. They will go on to have sixteen more chart entries. |
| 55 years ago (1968) | Elvis Presley's NBC-TV special Elvis, sponsored by the Singer Sewing Machine Company, is aired. The special also contains tape of a live performance given earlier at NBC's Burbank Studios, his first appearance before a live audience since 1961. Elvis constitutes the King's first big step toward his successful comeback. |
| 55 years ago (1968) | Three singles strike gold: the O'Kaysions' Girl Watcher, the Grass Roots' Midnight Confession and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown's Fire. Among the gold albums awarded this day are Aretha Franklin's Aretha Now, Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-da-Vida and Cream's 1967 debut, Fresh Cream. |
| 52 years ago (1971) | The Montreaux Casino burns to the ground during a show by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The incident is immortalized by Deep Purple in their song Smoke on the Water, which will become a major U.S. hit (#4) in 1973. |
| 50 years ago (1973) | Ringo Starr releases what will be his second straight #1 single, You're Sixteen. Both You're Sixteen and his previous hit, Photograph, are off Starr's Ringo LP. |
| 47 years ago (1976) | Seven gunman spray bullets into Bob Marley's house in Kingston, Jamaica where he and the Wailers are rehearsing. The shots hit Marley, his wife Rita, a friend, and Wailer manager Don Taylor. None are severely hurt. The shooters are never caught, the show goes on, and Marley and the band perform two nights later. |
| 47 years ago (1976) | The Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the U.K. is released. |
| 47 years ago (1976) | A 40-foot long inflatable pig being photographed for the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals breaks loose from the guy wires and takes off from the Battersea Power Station outside of London. It heads east and attains a height of 18,000 feet before coming down in Kent. |
| 44 years ago (1979) | Eleven Who fans are trampled to death in the rush to gain admittance for general or unreserved seats to the band's concert at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum. The eleven die when the doors open and the mob waiting outside stampedes for the doors. Results: the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island cancels the Who's concert scheduled there in two days; multiple suits are filed by families of the deceased; and festival seating itself is universally blamed for the tragedy (except Walter Cronkite, who on tonight's CBS Evening News blames it on “a drug-crazed mob of kids”). |
| 32 years ago (1991) | Gilby Clarke replaces Izzy Stradlin as Guns and Roses' rhythm guitarist. |
| 18 years ago (2005) | Marilyn Manson, who is actually Brian Warner in shock rocker disguise, marries his longtime girlfriend Heather Sweet in front of about 60 guests at Castle Gurteen in Ireland. Heather is a burlesque dancer who uses the stage name Dita Von Teese. Manson proposed at their Los Angeles home in March of the previous year. He files for divorce a year later. |
| 16 years ago (2007) | Shock jock Don Imus returns to the air for morning drive at WABC in New York. He was fired by CBS Radio on April 12 for racist and sexist remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. |
| 13 years ago (2010) | Officials say two young German hackers stole songs from Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, KeSha, and Kelly Clarkson and sold them online. They did it by means of a Trojan Horse loaded onto the performers' computers. Several singles are released early as a result. |
| 9 years ago (2014) | Ian McLagan, the legendary keyboardist who was a member of the Small Faces and the Faces, dies from a massive stroke. He was 69 years old. Also passing on this day is Paul Ferrara, a drummer who played with Louis Prima, Frank Sinatra, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt and other greats during a 65-year career. A member of The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame since 2009, he dies at his home in Kenner, Louisiana at age 76.
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| 8 years ago (2015) | Scott Weiland, the instantly recognizable voice behind Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver known for his dynamic stage presence, dies in his sleep aboard his tour bus in Bloomington, Minnesota at age 48. |