| 106 | years ago | 1920 | Sitar player Ravi Shankar is born. |
| 89 | years ago | 1937 | Charlie Thomas of The Drifters is born. |
| 80 | years ago | 1946 | Bill Kreutzmann, drummer with the Grateful Dead, is born. |
| 79 | years ago | 1947 | Patricia Bennett of The Chiffons is born. |
| 77 | years ago | 1949 | John Oates of Hall and Oates is born. |
| 75 | years ago | 1951 | Janis Ian is born. |
| 70 | years ago | 1956 | The CBS Radio Network premieres the first regularly scheduled national broadcast rock & roll show, Rock 'n Roll Dance Party, with Alan Freed as host. |
| 70 | years ago | 1956 | Little Richard's Long Tall Sally is released. |
| 68 | years ago | 1958 | The Platters' Twilight Time is released. |
| 64 | years ago | 1962 | Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Mick Taylor meet Brian Jones at the Ealing Club, a London hangout for those who like the blues. |
| 61 | years ago | 1965 | Dave “Yorkie” Palmer of Space is born. |
| 53 | years ago | 1973 | Elton John's Daniel is released. It makes it to #2. |
| 51 | years ago | 1975 | Richie Blackmore, lead guitar player for Deep Purple, leaves the group. The attempts to carry on with Tommy Bolin at Blackmore's spot. However, next year they give it up after making one more record, Come Taste the Band. |
| 47 | years ago | 1979 | The two-day California Music Festival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum opens. 110,000 people pour in and it makes $1.2 million. The promoters claim it's a financial loss, though. Performers like Aerosmith, the Boomtown Rats, Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent, and Van Halen make appearances. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | Early Who manager Kit Lambert dies after falling down a flight of stairs in his mother's London home. With his partner Chris Stamp, Lambert oversaw The Who from 1964 through 1967 and produced many of their albums including The Who Sell Out and Tommy. |
| 45 | years ago | 1981 | Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band start their first European tour in Hamburg, Germany. |
| 36 | years ago | 1990 | Farm Aid IV is held at the Indiana Hoosierdome. Performers include Neil Young, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, Guns N' Roses, and Jackson Browne. Elton John dedicates Candle in the Wind to AIDS patient Ryan White during the show. White dies later that night. |
| 29 | years ago | 1997 | Oasis singer Liam Gallagher marries actress Patsy Kensit. |
| 28 | years ago | 1998 | Wendy O. Williams, the chainsaw-wielding singer for the punk rock band, The Plasmatics, commits suicide in the woods near her Connecticut home. She had attended high school with JD the DJ. |
| 28 | years ago | 1998 | Singer George Michael is arrested in a public restroom in Beverly Hills for lewd conduct. Days later, he acknowledges his homosexuality on CNN. Michael is sentenced to community service for the incident. |
| 20 | years ago | 2006 | Bon Jovi kicks off a series of six concerts in Tokyo, plugging their Have a Nice Day CD. Guitarist Richie Sambora is somehow making do with his fractured left arm. He suffered the break in a fall in his Los Angeles home last month. This tour has earned $1.2 million to date. |
| 15 | years ago | 2011 | Eric Clapton plays a private gala in New York as a jazz guitarist with the Wynton Marsalis Septet. Proceeds from that show and two public shows on the following two days benefit Jazz at Lincoln Center. Clapton agrees to play Layla, but only if Marsalis comes up with an arrangement to make it sound like it came from New Orleans. He does. |
| 11 | years ago | 2015 | Stan Freberg, the comedian and satirist of radio, TV, and records, dies of natural causes at age 88. He spoofed Dragnet in 1953. |