| 83 | years ago | 1942 | Paul Simon is born. |
| 81 | years ago | 1944 | Robert Lamm, keyboardist and vocalist with Chicago, is born. |
| 78 | years ago | 1947 | Ex-Van Halen lead singer Sammy Hagar is born. |
| 67 | years ago | 1958 | A Billboard featurette on the Teddy Bears notes “18-year-old Phil Spector, who wrote and arranged their hit To Know Him is to Love HIm, is studying to be a court reporter.” |
| 62 | years ago | 1963 | The Beatles appear on BBC's Sunday Night at the Palladium. Thousand of fans jam the streets adjacent to the theater. It's the first demonstration of Beatlemania as many of the fans battle with police to get into the theater. The group's television appearance is witnesses by 15 million British viewers. |
| 55 | years ago | 1970 | Janis Joplin's ashes are scattered off the coast of California. |
| 50 | years ago | 1975 | Neil Young undergoes surgery in Los Angeles. An “object” is scraped from his vocal chords, which have been bothering him. Although he's back in the studio rather quickly, Young is hampered by the setback and bows out midway during his 1976 tour with Stephen Stills because of the strain on his voice. |
| 46 | years ago | 1979 | Chaka Kahn and Rufus make the soul chart on the way to another #1 soul charter with Do You Love What You Feel? It will top the soul chart for two weeks starting December 15th. |
| 45 | years ago | 1980 | AC/DC position themselves as the heirs to Led Zeppelin with Back in Black, which turns platinum on this date. The albums makes it up to #4. |
| 40 | years ago | 1985 | The B-52's guitarist, Ricky Wilson, dies from complications from AIDS. He is 32. |
| 36 | years ago | 1989 | Billy Joel releases his album, Storm Front. |
| 33 | years ago | 1992 | The Patty Smyth and Don Henley single, Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough is certified gold. |
| 33 | years ago | 1992 | The Supreme Court decides not to reinstate lawsuits alleging that Ozzy Osbourne's music prompted the suicides of two teenagers. |
| 30 | years ago | 1995 | Rapper Tupac Shakur is released from jail after 8 months for groping and fondling a woman in a New York hotel room. |
| 27 | years ago | 1998 | The Crossroads Center in Antiqua, a $6.5 million addiction recovery center underwritten by Eric Clapton, opens. The center offers an intensive 29-day recovery program for $9,000. Those who can't pay are expected to work off the debt after treatment. Clapton says he'll offer his experience and will work directly with patients from time to time. |
| 21 | years ago | 2004 | Isley Brother Ronald is indicted on five counts of tax evasion and one count of failure to file an income tax return. The IRS claims he deposited royalty checks made out to his dead brother O'Kelly, and that he demanded half cash up front at many concerts so he could pay band members in cash and avoid taxation. |
| 16 | years ago | 2009 | Carly Simon hires big time lawyer David Boies to sue coffee giant Starbucks for non-promotion of her 2008 album This Kind of Love on its Hear Music label. Starbucks had quickly marked the CD 50% off and it sold only 124,000 copies. |
| 15 | years ago | 2010 | Chairmen of the Board lead vocalist General Johnson dies in suburban Atlana at the age of 69. |
| 9 | years ago | 2016 | American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan wins the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature, a stunning announcement that for the first time bestows the prestigious award on a musician for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” |