| 69 years ago (1948) | Ian Paice, drummer for Deep Purple, is born. |
| 64 years ago (1953) | Men at Work’s Colin Hay is born. |
| 58 years ago (1959) | Dick Clark announces he’s teaming up with veteran rock and roll package tour promoter Irvin Feld. The reason is to stage a series of Dick Clark Caravans. He announced there will be four tours each year. |
| 54 years ago (1963) | The first song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney makes it to the Hot 100. It’s From Me To You as performed by Del Shannon. |
| 51 years ago (1966) | The Beatles perform in Tokyo, Japan before a sold-out crowd. 500 police are called in to get the crowd under control. |
| 50 years ago (1967) | Keith Richards is found guilty of allowing his property to be used for the smoking of marijuana and is sentenced to one year in jail and is fined. Mick Jagger is found guilty of illegal possession of pep pills and is sentenced to three months in jail. |
| 49 years ago (1968) | Pink Floyd's second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, is released. On the same day, the band plays at the first-ever large scale free rock concert in London's Hyde Park. Jethro Tull, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Roy Harper are also in the show's line-up. |
| 48 years ago (1969) | Shorty Long drowns when his boat capsizes off Sandwich Island in Ontario, Canada. He was 29 years old. Shorty came to Motown from the Tri-Phi/Harvey Label in 1963 (owned by Gordy's sister, Gwen, and her husband Harvey Fuqua). His first release, Devil With The Blue Dress was on the Soul subsidiary label. Other single releases included It's A Crying Shame (1964); Chantilly Lace (1967); Here Comes The Judge (1968) - his biggest hit reaching #4 R&B and #8 Pop; I Had A Dream (1969); A Whiter Shade Of Pale (1969). |
| 48 years ago (1969) | The Jimi Hendrix Experience plays its last concert together on the final day of the three-day Denver Pop Festival, which is held at Mile High Stadium. |
| 43 years ago (1974) | Drummer Neal Peart replaces original Rush drummer John Rustey. |
| 42 years ago (1975) | Elton John shows up at a concert at the Oakland Coliseum starring The Eagles and The Doobie Brothers and sings with both groups. |
| 39 years ago (1978) | Pop singer-songwriter Peter Frampton is injured in a car crash in the Bahamas. |
| 38 years ago (1979) | Little Feat's Lowell George dies of a heart attack. |
| 33 years ago (1984) | Bruce Springsteen kicks off his Born In The U.S.A. tour in St. Paul, Minnesota. His single, Dancing in the Dark, peaks at #2 on the same day. |
| 19 years ago (1998) | George Harrison announces that he has been receiving radiation treatment for throat cancer caused by smoking. Harrison says he has been given a clean bill of health by saying, “I'm not going to die on you folks just yet.” |
| 18 years ago (1999) | Singer/songwriter Jewel forgets the words to her song Little Sister from her Pieces of You album during a concert in Mountain View, California. She asks the audience if anyone has a copy of her album with the front cover. A boy in the audience pulls it out of his backpack, and holds the lyrics up for Jewel while she performs. |
| 18 years ago (1999) | KISS' Gene Simmons and a slew of porn stars film a music video in downtown Los Angeles for Everclear's cover of Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back In Town. The song is part of the soundtrack to the movie, Detroit Rock City, which follows fans who attend a KISS concert in 1978. |
| 18 years ago (1999) | Madonna files a $2.5 million lawsuit in New York State against the accounting firm Padell, Nadell, Fine & Weinberger & Co. for breach of contract and malpractice. The singer sued after having to pay $2 million in New York state taxes when the firm declared her a resident of California instead of New York on her 1992 returns. |
| 17 years ago (2000) | Sting and his band lose simultaneous chess matches against world chess champ Garry Kasparov at New York's Times Square. |
| 17 years ago (2000) | Vandals desecrate the graves of Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines. Van Zant's casket is exposed, but not opened, while some of Gaines' ashes are spilled. |
| 13 years ago (2004) | Outkast wins Video of the Year Award for Hey Ya!, and is named Best Group at the BET Awards in Los Angeles. Beyonce is best female R & B artist, and Jay-Z the top male hip-hop artist. |
| 13 years ago (2004) | David Bowie cancels a performance planned for two days later at Denmark's annual Roskilde Festival, one of Europe's biggest outdoor rock fests. A Festival statement says, “This morning David Bowie's physician informed us that his condition doesn't enable him to carry through the planned concert.” The previous week, Bowie cut a Prague concert short due to shoulder pain. |
| 10 years ago (2007) | Devon Townsend, a former national laboratory worker admits using Government computers to hack into the email account of Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington. Townsend also hacked into a cell phone company's Web site to get Bennington's phone number. He pleads guilty to stalking and unlawful access to stored communications. |