Rockabilly/Country singer Johnny "The Man In Black" Cash was arrested today in 1965 at the El Paso/ Juarez border crossing after Mexican customs officials found hundreds of pills in his guitar case. These days, people usually try to smuggle drugs the other way. Johnny was sentenced to a jail term, which was suspended, and levied a $1000 fine.
Jimi Hendrix had been living in London for about a month when today in 1966 he played for the first time with the rhythm section set up for him by The Animals Chas Chandler. Drummer Mitch Mitchell and Bassist Noel Redding, and Jimi would change rock forever as the Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Iron Butterfly were on TV's American Bandstand today in 1968, lip-syncing to their ultra-psychedelic but hardly danceable hit. Singer Doug Ingle had apparently been drunk, stoned, or both when he first sang the lyrics "In The Garden Of Eden", but the words were slurred and what came out was written down by drummer Ron Bushy as Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida.
The Who performed on CBS's Ed Sullivan Show tonight in 1969. They were considerably more reserved than they had been on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour two years earlier, when they smashed their equipment and Keith Moon overloaded a pyrotechnical explosion set for the end of My Generation, permanently damaging Pete Townsend's hearing. Surprisingly tape of this performance doesn't survive in cyberspace.
The BBC began a four-year run of a new off-beat comedy show, Monty Python's Flying Circus tonight in 1969. The five Oxford and Cambridge graduates and an American animator would become quite popular with the rock-and-roll community, particularly Beatle George Harrison, who would finance them as they moved to film, as did Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin...but George actually took out a second mortgage on his house.
Led Zeppelin released their third album today in 1970. Jimmy Page marked the occasion by shopping for real estate, touring a 12th century castle in Wales that was for sale. He didn't buy it, but later purchased Boleskine House on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland, once the estate of occultist Aleister Crowley, where he filmed his "dream sequence" for the film The Song Remains The Same. He sold it 1991, but not before reporting the manor to be haunted by a floating severed head.
Ringo Starr released a solo single today in 1973 written for him by his friend George Harrison. Ringo later said that after George's death in 2001, Photograph took on a whole new meaning and made him weep.
David Cassidy filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Sony Music today in 2011, claiming he had not been paid royalties due for his likeness being used on Partridge Family lunchboxes, magazines, and board games. Neither was Danny Bonaduce, but you don't hear him complaining...outside of KZOK's morning show weekdays.
Rock and Roll Birthdays
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted guitarist, singer, songwriter, and recent former San Juan Island resident moved to Manhattan to be able to more clearly yell at the record industry, Steve Miller is 77.
Brian Connolly, lead singer for The Sweet, would be 76. He died in 1997 from a career of hard drinking.
AC/DC singer Brian Johnson is 73. He had a bad 2016, being told by doctors in April the hearing damage and pain he experiences from having played in one of the World's Loudest Bands for years was going to lead to total hearing loss if he didn't stop now, which led to the second half of their Rock or Bust tour being finished by Axl Rose, but he appears to have found a technological solution to the ear-thing, AC/DC's been dropping hints he's back on their new album PWRUP, coming out....soon.
Original Funkadelic rhythm guitarist Lucius "Tawl" Ross is 72. He quit the band in 1971 after a bad LSD trip, but clearly that didn't stop the rest of them.
Mötorhead guitarist "Fast" Eddie Clark is 70.