The Quarrymen played the Cavern Club in Liverpool tonight in 1957 without their newest member Paul McCartney, who was away at Boy Scout summer camp. The Cavern was still primarily a jazz club, but tolerated "skiffle" groups like The Quarrymen, but John Lennon had other plans and launched the band into covers of Hound Dog and Blue Suede Shoes, which led their friend who'd got them the gig, Alan Synter, to push his way through the crowd and hand John a note which read "Cut out the bloody rock!"
The top 5 albums in England today in 1963 were The Beatles Please Please Me, The Shadows Greatest Hits, Cliff Richards' Cliff's Hit Album, the soundtrack to West Side Story, and at #5 was Elvis Presley with the soundtrack to the movie he'd made in Seattle the year before, It Happened at The World's Fair.
Time magazine published a review of The Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night today in 1964 urging readers to "avoid this film at all costs", but not all the reviews were bad. Village Voice called it "The Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals", and critic Roger Ebert labeled it "one of the great life-affirming landmarks of the movies".
Herman's Hermits went to #1 on the U.S. singles charts today in 1965 with I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am. Interestingly it wasn't released as a single at home in England, where the cockney-accent tinged ditty was a common pub-sing-along song dating back to 1910, and the Brits didn't find their own accents quite so charming.
A pretty good lineup at the three-day Goose Lake International Music Festival, which started today in 1970 in Leoni Michigan, with Jethro Tull, 10 Years After, Mountain, Chicago (who had recently dumped "Transit Authority" from their name at the insistence of the real one), The James Gang, John Sebastian, Mountain, Brownsville Station, Rod Stewart, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and local Detroit acts Iggy and The Stooges, The MC5, and Bob Seger.
Former Chicken Shack singer and keyboard player Christine Perfect, who had recently married Fleetwood Mac's bass player John McVie, officially joined the band today in 1970. She had already sung backup vocals and painted the cover for their Kiln House album.
The J. Geils Band's frontman Peter Wolf married actress Faye Dunaway today in 1974 in Beverly Hills. She wasn't that much of a "cougar", being only 5 years older than the singer, but their marriage would end end divorce 5 years later, leading Peter to write a big hit.
Rock and Roll Birthdays
Iron Maiden frontman and occasional airline pilot Bruce Dickinson is 62. These days he's more often flying the band's own Everett-built 747-400 "Ed Force One"..