| 78 | years ago | 1948 | Bill Bruford, drummer with Yes, is born. |
| 63 | years ago | 1963 | Bob Dylan and Joan Baez team up with Pete Seeger at the first Monterey Folk Festival. |
| 59 | years ago | 1967 | Don't Look Back, D.A. Pennebaker's film documentary on Bob Dylan's 1965 British tour, debuts at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco. Dylan will later denounce the movie and file a court injunction to bar it being shown. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | The Chicago Transit Authority release their self-titled debut double album. The band was later sued by the real Chicago Transit Authority and had to shorten their name to Chicago. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | The New Musical Express announces that for the first time ever, album production and sales outdid production and sales of singles in Great Britain, in 1968. |
| 57 | years ago | 1969 | Associated Television fails in its bid to take over Beatles music company, Northern Songs. Its offer for all shares expires with only 47-percent of stock committed. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | Yes receive gold records for both Yessongs their triple-record live set and The Yes Album. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | Elton John was awarded a platinum record for his album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy. It was the first album to sell one million copies on its first day of release. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | Just two weeks before the start of the Rolling Stones' long Tour of the Americas '75, Mick Jagger puts his right hand through a window at Gorman's restaurant in Montauk, on Long Island. It takes 20 stitches to make it like new. No real damage is done and the tour goes on as scheduled. |
| 48 | years ago | 1978 | Lou Reed starts a week long series of shows at the Bottom Line club in New York City. He uses portions of the recordings for his upcoming live album, Take No Prisoners. |
| 48 | years ago | 1978 | Thank God It's Friday, a movie celebration of disco which is Casablanca Records chief Neil Bogart's response to Saturday Night Fever, premieres in Los Angeles. It stars Donna Summer as a singer looking for her big break in a “typical” Hollywood disco on a “typical” Friday night. Summer's song The Last Dance is introduced and it goes on to top the pop charts and wins the 1978 Academy Award for Best Song. The film meantime, is a flop. |
| 46 | years ago | 1980 | Kiss drummer Peter Criss, the one who wore the catlike makeup, leaves the group for a solo career. |
| 46 | years ago | 1980 | Joe Walsh releases All Night Long from the Urban Cowboy movie soundtrack. The film starred John Travolta. |
| 39 | years ago | 1987 | A fire destroys Tom Petty's Los Angeles home and causes $800,000 worth of damage. It was later discovered to be the work of an arsonist. |
| 37 | years ago | 1989 | At the Cannes Film Festival, The Who lead singer Roger Daltrey says he wanted to become a doctor of Chinese medicine. He says he never felt that singing and acting were proper careers and that he wanted to study herbal medicine and acupuncture. |
| 34 | years ago | 1992 | Lawrence Welk dies of complications from pneumonia. He was 89 years old. |
| 34 | years ago | 1992 | Genesis has to end a show after two songs during a stop in Tampa, Florida for their We Can't Dance tour after Phil Collins comes down with a sore throat. Police arrest several concert-goers who got upset when the show stopped. |
| 27 | years ago | 1999 | Producer Bruce Fairbairn, who had worked with Aerosmith, Van Halen, AC/DC. and others, dies in his Vancouver home at age 49 of unknown causes. |
| 18 | years ago | 2008 | Ashlee Simpson marries Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz. Sister Jessica is maid of honor. In private, she'll be Ashlee Wentz, and professionally, she'll be Ashlee Simpson-Wentz. |
| 14 | years ago | 2012 | Disco legend Donna Summer dies of cancer at age 63. |
| 13 | years ago | 2013 | Singer-songwriter Alan O’Day, who penned hits for Helen Reddy and the Righteous Brothers, and had his own #1 hit with Undercover Angel in 1977, dies of cancer in his Westwood, California home. |