The Beatles were at Abbey Road today in 1968 recording Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey, a John Lennon poke at many of his musician friends experimenting with heroin and the old junkie reference of "having a monkey on your back". The song has the distinction of having the longest title of any Beatles song, and they were "well chuffed" when one of their idols, Fats Domino, recorded a cover of it the next year.
6 days after Led Zeppelin's Seattle Kingdome show, they played the first of two scheduled nights at the Oakland-Alameda County Stadium tonight in 1977, and all went relatively well until after the show when a member of promoter Bill Graham's staff saw Zep manager Peter Grant's 11 year old son take down a sign in the band's dressing room, and hit him. Drummer John Bonham saw this and went over and kicked the man, then told Grant about it. Grant and a London gangster he'd hired as security, John Bindon took the man into a room and beat him senseless while tour manager Richard Cole guarded the door. Graham and staff were outraged, but Grant threatened to cancel the next night's performance unless Graham signed a "letter of indemnification" absolving the band of any wrongdoing, which he did, but the next day changed his mind and after the second show police arrived at Zeppelin's hotel and arrested Bonham, Grant, Cole, and Bindon and charged them with assault. They plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge and received suspended sentences and paid a small fine, and eventually 2 million dollars in a subsequent lawsuit filed by Graham, but this second show would end up being Zeppelin's last in the United States, when singer Robert Plant got news after the show that his 5 year old son Karac had died back in England of a stomach virus and the rest of the tour was cancelled.
Seattle-born Keith Godchaux, keyboard player with The Grateful Dead, was killed in a Marin County California car crash today in 1980 at age 32.
Ringo Starr started his first full tour since the breakup of The Beatles in front of 10,000 Texans in Dallas tonight in 1989 backed by the first of many "All Starr Bands", including his brother-in-law Joe Walsh on guitar, The Beatles old friend Billy Preston on keyboards, and the "Big Man" from Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band, Clarence Clemons on saxophone.
59 year old Paul McCartney, who'd lost the love of his life and first wife Linda Eastman McCartney to cancer three years earlier, proposed to 33 year old model and activist Heather Mills today in 2001 while on vacation in Britain's Lake District, giving her a £15,000 diamond and sapphire engagement ring. She would cost him a lot more when they separated 5 years later, eventually getting some £25 million in their divorce settlement.
A rare yellow 2003 Ferrari 575 Maranello with only 10,000 miles on the odometer sold at a classic car auction in England today in 2011 for a whopping £66,500, the price slightly inflated as it's service record book had been signed by the car's previous owner, Eric Clapton.
Rock and Roll Birthdays
Singer, actor, and multi-instrumentalist David Albert Cook (OBE) is 73, and better known by his stage name David Essex.
Bachman Turner Overdrive guitarist Blair Thornton is 70.
Saul Hudson is 55, better known by the stage name he uses as the top-hatted lead guitarist for Guns-N-Roses, Slash.
Country and bluegrass singer, fiddle, and keyboard player Alison Krauss is 49, best known among Led Zeppelin fans as the woman Robert Plant wanted to tour with instead of joining his former bandmates on one after their wildly popular London reunion in 2007.