This Day In Classic Rock [Videos] 11/13

The Beatles were in Plymouth, England today in 1963 to play a show at a movie theater that evening. In the afternoon they were scheduled to tape a TV interview, but due to a large group of Beatlemaniacs outside, had to be smuggled in through a service tunnel. They were being shadowed by writer Alun Owen, who was fashioning a script that reflected their lives at the time, mostly consisting of "a train and a room and a car and a room and a room and a room" for their upcoming movie, which Ringo had not yet unwittingly titled A Hard Day's Night.

Decca Records released The Rolling Stones version of Willie Dixon's Little Red Rooster today in 1964. They'd recorded it at the Chess Records studio in Chicago while on their first American tour, the same studio where Howlin' Wolf had recorded his version of the song that they'd fallen so in love with. It was the last cover song released as a single by the band, and mark the only time a blues song ever topped the British charts.

The "Teenage Go Go Dance" at The Fire House in Hazlet, New Jersey tonight in 1965 was headlined by a local band called The Castilles, who nobody remembers except that their lead singer was a guy named Bruce Springsteen.

Rolling Stones guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones bought Cotchford Farm in Sussex, England today in 1968. Previously owned by Winnie The Pooh author A.A. Milne, the place had numerous sculptures of Pooh characters on the grounds, and a swimming pool at the bottom of which Brian would be found a year later.

The Beatles psychedelic animated feature film Yellow Submarine opened in the U.S. and Canada today in 1968. It had been showing since July in Britain, and received mostly positive reviews despite the fact that other than allowing their songs to be used and making a brief appearance at the end, the band had nothing to do with the film. They hadn't been all that pleased with Help!, and were even less eager to do another production after the mostly negative publicity around their TV special Magical Mystery Tour, but contractually they owed United Artists another picture, and thought an animated feature would be an easy way to fulfill it. United Artists, however, noted that they hadn't appeared in the film for more than a few seconds, and even used voice actors to portray them, so they had to release Let It Be before breaking up.

The drummer in Jerry Lee Lewis' band was killed in a car accident near Hernando, Mississippi today in 1973, a few days after doing the Midnight Special TV show. Adding to the tragedy was the fact that the drummer was his son, 19 year old Jerry Lee Lewis Jr. "The Killer" had already lost another son 11 years earlier. Altogether, he had 6 children (though more have claimed him as a father) over the course of 7 marriages.

Rod Stewart was at #1 on the American singles chart with Tonight's The Night today in 1976, and it would get to #5 in England, despite being banned by many radio stations in both countries for it's lurid sexual content about the seduction of a virgin, and featuring moaning and whispers from his then-girlfriend, former "Bond Girl" Britt Ekland, who was presumably not a virgin, having been married previously to actor Peter Sellers and record producer Lou Adler.

Rod Stewart fan Patricia Boughton filed a lawsuit against him today in 1990, complaining that a soccer ball he'd kicked into the crowd from the stage (Rod is an avid English Premier League football fan, and supporter of the Glasgow Celtic, who once thought of playing professionally) had ruptured a tendon in her middle finger, "making sex with her husband difficult". The court did not inquire as to what she did with her middle finger.

31 years after their breakup, The Beatles launched their website www.thebeatles.com today in 2000, chock full of links to what the surviving band members...and occasionally their offspring...are doing, and items of historical interest.

Rock and Roll Birthdays

The Tubes guitarist Roger Steen is 70.

Comedian, late-night TV host, and former KZOK (circa 1989) disc jockey Jimmy Kimmel is 52.


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