| 98 | years ago | 1928 | Composer Burt Bacharach is born. |
| 84 | years ago | 1942 | Billy Swan is born. |
| 80 | years ago | 1946 | Ian McLagan, keyboardist for Small Faces, is born. |
| 78 | years ago | 1948 | Steve Winwood, vocalist with Blind Faith, the Spencer Davis Group, and Traffic, is born. |
| 76 | years ago | 1950 | Billy Squier is born. |
| 66 | years ago | 1960 | Frank Sinatra's Timex Spectacular is broadcast on ABC-TV. Sinatra and Elvis Presley trade hits, Elvis singing Witchcraft, and Sinatra crooning Love Me Tender. |
| 65 | years ago | 1961 | Billy Duffy, guitarist with The Cult, is born. |
| 64 | years ago | 1962 | Billboard reports last year's most-played jukebox disc was country star Jimmy Dean's Big Bad John. One vote behind was Chubby Checker's The Twist. |
| 63 | years ago | 1963 | Bob Dylan walks out of dress rehearsals for The Ed Sullivan Show when CBS censors tell him he cannot perform his Talking John Birch Society Blues. When told the tune may be libelous, Dylan refuses to appear on the show. |
| 62 | years ago | 1964 | The winners at the sixth annual Grammy Awards are announced. Henry Mancini's The Days of Wine and Roses is Record and Song of the Year. Album of the year is The Barbra Streisand Album. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | The Rolling Stones begin two days of recording at Chess Studios in Chicago. They put down the original tracks for Satisfaction, which they work on again two days later at RCA's Hollywood Studio, where they also record tracks for the album Out of Your Heads. |
| 58 | years ago | 1968 | The Rolling Stones perform at the New Musical Express Poll Winners Concert in London -- their first appearance in almost two years. |
| 58 | years ago | 1968 | Jimi Hendrix is arrested for possession of hashish and heroin as he crosses the Canadian border for a concert in Toronto. He claims the drugs were planted and he is later exonerated. |
| 55 | years ago | 1971 | Mick Jagger marries Bianca Perez Morena de Macias in St. Tropez, France. The guest list is full of rock & roll luminaries. It includes the other members of the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, and Stephen Stills. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | The Jefferson Starship give a concert in New York's Central Park for 60,000 fans. The band flies into town specifically for the performance, which is free. The Starship and concert sponsor, WNEW-FM, pay $14,000 for clean-up and damage done to the park. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | Steely Dan earns its third gold record for Katy Lied. It contains the singles Black Friday and Dr. Wu. |
| 50 | years ago | 1976 | Look Out for #1, the Brothers Johnson's debut LP, is certified gold. The album features two Top Ten soul hits, I'll Be Good to You and Get the Funk Out of My Face. The album goes platinum three months later. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | At a free concert in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, the new Jefferson Starship lineup, featuring lead singer Mickey Thomas, makes its debut. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, and Steve Harley play a benefit concert in London's Hammersmith Odeon for the family of their lighting director, Bill Duffy, who perished in an accident at a Bush concert April 20th. The highlight of the show is Gabriel's rendition of Let It Be. |
| 46 | years ago | 1980 | Linda Ronstadt receives a gold album for Mad Love, her new wave experiment. It includes three Elvis Costello tunes and backing from L.A.'s Cretones. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | The Who's first album without Keith Moon, Face Dances, goes gold. It is considered a disappointment even by the band itself. The record makes it to #4 but offers just one hit, You Better You Bet (#18). |
| 18 | years ago | 2008 | Paul McCartney gets a preliminary divorce from Heather Mills. It is final six weeks later. Mills gets custody of 4-year-old daughter Beatrice, and McCartney gets to keep most of his fortune, estimated at $880 million. The marriage lasted four years. |
| 16 | years ago | 2010 | Lenny Kravitz, Mos Def, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band re-record the New Orleans R & B classic, It Ain't My Fault for release on iTunes the next month. The session in Preservation Hall in the French Quarter is prompted by the U.S. Senate hearings on the Deepwater Horizon disaster in which executives from oil companies BP, Transocean, and Halliburton seemed to try to duck responsibility. |