| 78 years ago (1944) | John Seiter of the musical group Spanky And Our Gang is born. |
| 75 years ago (1947) | Gary Talley, guitarist with The Box Tops, is born. |
| 73 years ago (1949) | Sib Hashian, drummer for Boston, is born. |
| 69 years ago (1953) | Kevin Rowland, guitarist with Dexy's Midnight Runners, is born. |
| 67 years ago (1955) | Kevin Moulding, songwriter, singer, and bassist for XTC, is born. |
| 67 years ago (1955) | Sun Records releases I Forgot To Remember To Forget by Elvis Presley. It fails to make the pop chart, but hits #1 on the Country chart. |
| 64 years ago (1958) | Former Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle is born. |
| 62 years ago (1960) | The Beatles arrive in Hamburg, Germany to start a residency at The Indra Club, and then move on to The Kaiserkeller Club where they made a total of 106 appearances. These are their first appearances outside England. |
| 58 years ago (1964) | The Kinks You Really Got Me is released in the U.K. on Pye Records. |
| 58 years ago (1964) | Former Lone Justice lead singer Maria McKee is born. |
| 57 years ago (1965) | The Byrds are forced to cancel a concert during their British tour at The Guildhall, Portsmouth, when only 250 of the 4,000 tickets have been sold. |
| 57 years ago (1965) | Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman is born. |
| 56 years ago (1966) | John Lennon makes another controversial statement in front of a microphone. In Toronto, he expresses his admiration for American draft dodgers. |
| 55 years ago (1967) | Gary Puckett & the Union Gap record Woman Woman. |
| 54 years ago (1968) | The Doors start a four-week run at #1 on the album chart with Waiting For The Sun. And People Got To Be Free, the hit single by The Rascals (formerly the Young Rascals), rockets into the top slot on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart, and stays there for five weeks. The group had 13 Top 40 hits. |
| 54 years ago (1968) | Deep Purple's Hush is released. |
| 54 years ago (1968) | McGraw-Hill rushes Hunter Davies' authorized biography of The Beatles to bookstores ahead of schedule to prevent loss of sales to Julian Fast's unauthorized The Beatles: The Real Story. Fast admits he has never met one of the Fab Four. |
| 53 years ago (1969) | Donnie Wahlberg, one of the New Kids On The Block, is born in Boston, Massachusetts. |
| 53 years ago (1969) | Jefferson Airplane performs at the final day of Woodstock. |
| 52 years ago (1970) | Christine McVie joins Fleetwood Mac. It's the band founded by her husband John, and she joins two months after she said she would retire from performing. |
| 50 years ago (1972) | Gladys Knight appears on TV's Dating Game. |
| 49 years ago (1973) | Former Temptations singer Paul Williams is found dead in his car after shooting himself. He owed $80,000 in taxes and his celebrity boutique business had failed. |
| 48 years ago (1974) | Prince Charles' favorite group of the 1970s, The Three Degrees, have their only U. K. #1 single with When Will I See You Again. |
| 48 years ago (1974) | Patrick Moraz replaces Rick Wakeman in Yes. |
| 48 years ago (1974) | Bad Company's Can't Get Enough is released. |
| 48 years ago (1974) | Paper Lace scores their only #1 single with The Night Chicago Died. And Eric Clapton starts a four-week run at #1 on the album chart with 461 Ocean Boulevard. |
| 45 years ago (1977) | Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD) reports that in one day the number of orders for flowers to be delivered to Graceland has surpassed the number for any other event in the company's history. |
| 45 years ago (1977) | The day after Elvis Presley's death, President Jimmy Carter issues the following statement: “Elvis Presley's death deprives our country of a part of itself. He was unique and irreplaceable. More than twenty years ago, he burst upon the scene with an impact that was unprecedented and will probably never be equaled. His music and his personality, fusing the styles of white country and black rhythm and blues, permanently changed the face of American popular culture.” |
| 42 years ago (1980) | John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas is arrested as part of a drug ring. |
| 38 years ago (1984) | On this, the first night of his Breaking Hearts Tour, Elton John announces that he is retiring from touring. |
| 36 years ago (1986) | 42 people are beaten or stabbed at a Run D.M.C. concert in Long Beach. |
| 36 years ago (1986) | Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen plays his first U. K. concert with the band since losing his left arm in a car accident. Prior to the show, Allen and the band had played a few low key dates in Ireland with Status Quo. |
| 35 years ago (1987) | Gary Chester, session drummer and member of The Coasters, dies of cancer. He's heard on Brown Eyed Girl, Under The Boardwalk, Walk On By, and It’s My Party. |
| 34 years ago (1988) | Sweet announces they are reforming after a £1.5 million offer from MCA Records. |
| 31 years ago (1991) | Rick Griffith, an artist who had designed album sleeves for Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane, dies. |
| 30 years ago (1992) | Wayne Newton files for bankruptcy, owing $20 million. |
| 29 years ago (1993) | Pop star Michael Jackson becomes the subject of an investigation of child molestation of a 13-year-old boy. Police confiscated video tapes and photographs from Jackson's Neverland ranch home, but found nothing to support the allegation. Charges are later dropped, and an unidentified source leaks to the press that a hefty settlement, possibly as high as $15 million, was paid to the boy's family. More than a year after the damaging allegations are made, the Santa Barbara County and Los Angeles County district attorneys publicly announce that they didn't have enough evidence to charge the pop singer with a single crime. |
| 27 years ago (1995) | Microsoft buys the rights to use the Rolling Stones' Start Me Up to advertise their Windows 95 software. |
| 27 years ago (1995) | Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan is rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after an apparent suicide attempt. Police had found him at his Los Angeles home with a two-inch laceration on his wrist. He recovers. |
| 24 years ago (1998) | Carlos Santana receives a star on Hollywood's Walk Of Fame. |
| 23 years ago (1999) | Former Bay City Rollers drummer Derek Longmuir appears at the Edinburgh Sheriff Court accused of child porn and drugs offenses. He denies the charges. |
| 20 years ago (2002) | Dilemma by Nelly featuring Kelly Rowland holds the #1 position on the singles chart, and the #1 album is The Rising by Bruce Springsteen. |
| 17 years ago (2005) | A federal judge in New Orleans fines Michael Jackson $10,000 for missing a court date the previous month. Jackson is being sued by a Kenner, Louisiana man who says he suddenly remembered Jackson holding him prisoner and sexually abusing him during a cross-country car ride in 1984. |
| 16 years ago (2006) | Kid Rock marries Pamela Anderson at a fabled Nashville honky tonk, Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. The couple has had two previous wedding ceremonies this year: one on July 29 near St. Tropez, France, and another on August 3 in a Beverly Hills courthouse. Kid Rock serenades Pamela at this latest ceremony with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama and Hank Williams, Jr.’s Family Tradition. |