History

This Day in Music History — September 26

1975 : The Rocky Horror Picture Show opens in Westwood, California. Featuring a young Meat Loaf along with Tim Curry and Susan Sarandon, the movie tanks but later becomes a cult classic, with audience members shouting back at the screen and bringing toast, toilet paper, and other assorted items to enhance the viewing experience.

1992 : Gloria Estefan headlines a show featuring Paul Simon, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Jimmy Buffett at a Miami concert to raise money for Hurricane Andrew relief.

2008 : In some very unshocking news, Clay Aiken announces that he is gay in People magazine, saying: “It was the first decision I made as a father. I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not going to raise a child to do that.”

2012 : Artist Pink, aka “P!nk,” scores her first #1 album on Billboard’s album charts with The Truth About Love. The album had sold 280,000 copies at the time.

This Day in Music History — September 25

1956 : Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender becomes the first single to sell a million copies before its release.

1980 : Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham dies at age 32 of asphyxiation from vomiting after a night of heavy drinking. The band decides to break up instead of replacing him.

1990 : Dave Grohl, former drummer of the Washington DC band Scream, joins Nirvana.

2012 : Two con artists, Alpha Lorenzo Walker and Tamara Diaz, are sentenced to 292 days in jail and 3 years’ probation after an attempt to blackmail Stevie Wonder. The pair had somehow obtained or created a video portraying Wonder in a negative light and were demanding $5 million under threat of releasing it to the public. The pair were caught in a sting operation.

This Day in Music History — September 24

1988 : Bobby McFerrin’s Don’t Worry Be Happy becomes the first acappella song to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

1988 : James Brown leads police on an hour-long, two-state car chase starting in Augusta, Georgia. Brown is arrested and eventually serves 2 years for a variety of charges.

1989 : Bob Dylan plays flute and recorder at the “L’Chaim – To Life!” telethon, backing up the band Chopped Liver with his son-in-law Peter Himmelman, who is married to Dylan’s daughter Maria.

1998 : Former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler, 33, is sentenced to 150 days in jail for beating two women he dated and for violating his probation from an earlier domestic violence conviction.

2009 : Leonard Cohen performs a controversial concert at Ramat Gan Stadium in Tel Aviv, Israel. After announcing all proceeds from the concert will go to a charitable fund organized through Amnesty International, the group withdraws all involvement and Cohen is forced to make other arrangements. He dubs the performance “A Concert for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace” and creates a new charity of the same name, run by both Israelis and Palestinians, to distribute all profits to groups focused on coexistence in Israel.

This Day in Music History — September 23

1966 : The Rolling Stones begin their biggest-ever headlining tour of Britain at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with an impressive array of opening acts including Ike and Tina Turner and The Yardbirds. The crowd is unusually well-behaved for a Stones audience, rushing the stage but avoiding a full-scale riot.

1980 : Bob Marley, suffering from cancer, plays his last concert at a show in Pittsburgh, playing Redemption Song as the very last song before he collapses on stage and the tour is canceled because of his ill health. Marley died on May 11, 1981.

1992 : Actress Darryl Hannah breaks up with Jackson Browne, claiming he assaulted her.

1998 : The first ever Lilith Fair concert outside North America takes place at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Before the sold-out show, Lilith founder Sarah McLahlan tells a press conference that plans are underway to bring the Fair to Europe as a touring package the following year.

This Day in Music History — September 22

1960 : Joan Jett was born.

1985 : The first “Farm Aid” concert is held, in Champaign, Illinois with Roy Orbison,Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, John Fogerty and others.

1990 : After parting with original drummer Chad Channing, Nirvana plays their one and only show with Dan Peters of Mudhoney on drums (at the Motor Sports International Garage in Seattle). He is replaced by Dave Grohl, who mans the kit henceforth.

1999 : Diana Ross is held in police custody at London’s Heathrow Airport for several hours following an incident involving a member of the airport’s security staff. Ross is arrested then cautioned and released following an allegation of assault on a female security officer during routine security checks prior to boarding a plane.

2002 : Sting receives an Emmy for his A&E documentary, Sting in Tuscany: All This Time. He dedicates his award to his “dear late friend Timothy White.”

This Day in Music History — September 21

1968 : Janis Joplin announces her upcoming departure from her band Big Brother & the Holding Company, which observant listeners had decried as too amateurish for her talents.

1980 : Bob Marley, who had refused treatment for a spreading melanoma due to his religious beliefs, collapses while jogging in New York’s Central Park and is hospitalized. Two nights later he performs the next date on his North American tour, the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh, but it sadly proves to be his last.

2004 : Cat Stevens, known as Yusuf Islam since the late Seventies, is stopped from entering the US after his name is erroneously found on a terrorism watch list.

2011 : R.E.M. announce that they’re calling it quits after more than 30 years. In a post on their website, the band members write, “To our Fans and Friends: As R.E.M., and as lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band. We walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished. To anyone who ever felt touched by our music, our deepest thanks for listening.”

This Day in Music History — September 19

1960 : Chubby Checker’s version of “The Twist” goes to #1 while the original version by Hank Ballard & The Midnighters reaches its peak chart position of #28. Checker’s version of the song would top the charts again in 1962.

2003 : A week after his death at the age of 71, country legend Johnny Cash is bestowed with artist, song and album of the year awards at the Americana Music Awards ceremony in Nashville. Cash wins song of the year for his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt and album of the Year for American IV: The Man Comes Around, the fourth in a series produced by Rick Rubin.

2003 : No one is injured when a chartered plane carrying Dixie Chicks clips a building at Glasgow Airport. The group is en route from Dublin for a concert at Glasgow’s Exhibition and Conference Center. The show goes on as planned.

2008 : Former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and DJ AM are seriously injured in a jet crash that killed four people. The plane hurtled off the end of a runway in South Carolina when a tire blew, engulfing the plane in flames. DJ AM died of an accidental drug overdose less than a year later.

This Day in Music History — September 18

1970 : Jimi Hendrix is found dead in his basement. He had taken 9 pills of the barbiturate vesperax, that along with alcohol, caused a fatal overdose.

1984 : At the very first MTV Video Music Awards, Madonna performs Like A Virgin in a white wedding gown accessorized by her famous “Boy Toy” belt.

1998 : On the Grand Ole Opry, Jett Williams pays tribute to her late father, Hank Williams, who would have been 75 the day before. Daughter salutes father by performing Your Cheatin’ Heart, a song released after his death on New Year’s Eve, 1952. “He never sang the song on the Opry. He never sang it live,” Williams tells the audience.

2006 : Willie Nelson’s tour bus is stopped near Lafayette, LA, and Nelson, along with four members of his band, are arrested for possession of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms.

This Day in Music History — September 17

1967 : Keith Moon of The Who rigs his bass drum to explode at the end of “My Generation” during the group’s appearance on CBS-TV’s Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, but doesn’t realize that the stage crew had already set the charge. The resulting explosion cuts Moon’s leg, singes Pete Townshend’s hair, and startles fellow guests Bette Davis and Mickey Rooney.

1983 : Vanessa Williams, who would become a popular actress and score a #1 hit with Save The Best For Last, becomes the first black Miss America. She gives up the title the next year after naked photos of her appear in Penthouse.

1998 : A 19-year-old named Amit Singh is removed from the plane after harassing the members of Hootie & the Blowfish on their flight from New York to Los Angeles.

1999 : Rapper Eminem is hit with a $10 million defamation lawsuit filed by his mother Debbie Mathers-Briggs. The suit charges that the rapper made defamatory remarks about his mother in several interviews, including that she was “pill-popping” and “lawsuit-happy.”

2009 : Avril Lavigne and Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley go their separate ways after being married since 2006.

This Day in Music History — September 16

1965 : The Dean Martin Show makes its debut, with Martin using his hit Everybody Loves Somebody as the theme song. The popular variety show runs until 1975, and introduces us to a group of backup dancers called The Golddiggers.

1966 : Pete Quaife, bassist for The Kinks, leaves the band after injuries from a recent car crash threaten his ability to play. He will eventually return and stay with the band through 1969.

2006 : 65-year-old Bob Dylan becomes the oldest person to top Billboard‘s album chart when Modern Times goes to #1.

2010 : Country singer Justin Townes Earle is arrested in Indianapolis after storming offstage and trashing a green room. Reports say Earle was also intoxicated and he allegedly punched a woman backstage. Earle is forced to pay $200 in damages to the venue but is released from jail on a $150 bond.