Day two of The Beatles first tour outside Britain today in 1963, with two shows in Karlstad, Sweden halfway between Stockholm and Oslo Norway. The music writer for the local paper was not impressed, writing "The Beatles should be grateful to their screaming audience for drowning out the group's terrible performance...they were of no musical importance whatsoever...and their local support group The Phantoms decidedly outshone them."
The Rolling Stones played CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show tonight in 1964, doing two songs, Chuck Berry's Around and Around and Norman Meade's Time Is On My Side. A small riot broke out among the excited audience in what is now Steven Colbert's Ed Sullivan Theater, and many of the seats were damaged, causing Ed himself to shout at a producer, "I promise you they'll never be back on our show again!" The Stones would do The Ed Sullivan Show 5 more times before it ended in 1971. In '67 Ed would ask Mick to change the lyric "Let's spend the night together" to "Let's spend some time together", which unlike Jim Morrison Mick did, but rolling his eyes at the camera each time he sang "time". On another appearance Ed asked that they all wear matching suits "for a cleaner look". They found a local costume shop and rented matching Nazi uniforms, Ed had a fit, and they played the set in their regular duds, which were usually quite stylish.
There are conflicting reports, but tonight in 1968 at a show at Surrey University The New Yardbirds, with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Henry Bonham, and Robert Plant called themselves Led Zeppelin for the first time, though posters for the show that went up weeks earlier still said "the New Yardbirds". One of them sold at auction recently in England for £2,400.
The third and final album from The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland, came out today in 1968. It's the only studio Hendrix album Jimi got to have complete "producer" control over as far as music goes, but for the cover art he was completely ignored. He specifically asked for a color photograph by Paul McCartney's girlfriend (they would be married in March) Linda Eastman of the band sitting with children at the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in New York's Central Park, going so far as to sketch what he wanted it to look like. American label Reprise went with a blurry red and yellow treatment to a shot of Jimi's head, and in England Track Records used a gatefold-wide photograph of 19 women, offered £5 to pose and £5 more to do it naked (they all did), against a black backdrop, which Jimi was rather embarrassed by.
President Richard Nixon appeared before a National Association of Broadcasters convention today in 1970, asking radio programmers to ban any and all songs with even the slightest reference to drugs.
Nirvana and Tad were Live At Leeds tonight in 1989, but not at the University's "Refectory" (Cafeteria) like The Who 19 years before, but The Duchess of York nightclub was big enough, and the Brits would go ape s*** for the Seattle bands.
Legendary British disc jockey John Peel died of a heart attack in Peru today in 2004 at age 65. Starting on a pirate ship in the English channel, he was picked up by the BBC, and ended up being the longest tenured rock jock in their history, among the first to play bands from Pink Floyd to Nirvana. Many of them played live in the studio, and these were recorded and released as "Peel Sessions". He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) by The Queen in 1998.
Rock and Roll Birthdays
Yes singer Jon Anderson is 76.
Judas Priest guitarist Glen Tipton is 73.
Television guitarist Richard Lloyd is 69.
Scorpions guitarist Matthias Jabs is 65.
The Divinyls lead singer Chrissy Amphlett would be 61. She died in 2013 after a long battle with Breast Cancer and MS. It's Breast Cancer Awareness month. So...Make a donation already.