2008Pearl Jam and My Morning Jacketbond, a tardy Kanye Westriles the crowd and calls organizers "squid brains," and MGMT dance like hippies at Bonnaroo 2008.More
1995Diane Sawyer conducts a live interview with Michael Jackson and his wife Lisa Marie Presley on the ABC news program Primetime Live. Topics include the validity of their marriage, Jackson's surgeries, and if he's a Scientologist.More
1990Four days after being arrested for performing obscene songs at a Florida nightclub, the rap group 2 Live Crew performs at the Ozone Club outside of Atlanta. Authorities had warned the group that they would be arrested if they performed their dirty songs, so the rappers encourage the crowd to sing the obscene lyrics for them, resulting in about 500 people singing lines like "that's the way we like to f--k" as police officers look on. No arrests are made, and the group gets even more publicity and a bump in sales for the album they released a year earlier.
1971Emerson, Lake & Palmer release their second album, Tarkus. The creature on the cover is a weaponized armadillo.More
1964Workers at a London railway station open a tea chest addressed to The Beatles and find 12-year-old Carol Dryden, a fan who'd decided to mail herself to the group.
1961Patsy Cline gets in a nasty car accident in Nashville, when she is thrown through the windshield. She is hospitalized for about a month, during which time she is visited by the woman who will become her protégé: Loretta Lynn.
2017The National Music Publishers Association gives Yoko Ono the Centennial Award for song of the century and adds her name to the credits of the award-winning song, "Imagine." John Lennon took the sole credit, but later admitted he got the idea from Yoko's book Grapefruit, where she wrote things like, "Imagine 1000 suns in the sky at the same time."
2017The annual Bridge School benefit concert is cancelled after Neil Young begs off. The concerts, benefiting the school that treated Young's son Ben and others with disabilities, started in 1986.
2012Drake and Chris Brown are involved in a fight at a New York City nightclub, with Brown accusing Drake of throwing a bottle at him. They had beef over Rihanna, whom they both dated.
2009Bob Bogle (lead guitarist, bassist for The Ventures) dies of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at age 75.
2007Chris Tomlin's cover of "Indescribable" is used as the official wake-up call for NASA astronaut Patrick Forrester while on the Space Shuttle mission STS-117.
2006Rufus Wainwright, son of folk singer Loudon Wainwright III, recreates the whole of Judy Garland's legendary 1961 Carnegie Hall concert at the famous institution in order to mark the show's 35th anniversary.
2005Backstreet Boys stray from their traditional pop fare with their rock-leaning comeback album, Never Gone. It debuts at #3 in America, sells over 10 million copies worldwide...and is slayed by critics.
2003Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers is awarded a Member of the British Empire medal by Queen Elizabeth in London.
2003"Bring Me To Life," the debut single from Evanescence, hits #1 in the UK and stays for four weeks. The song peaks at #5 in America.
2002Cher starts her Living Proof: The Farewell Tour. Planned for 59 dates, it ends up at 325, bringing in 260 million dollars. It's billed as her final tour, though she ends up returning to music years later.
1996Mathew Fletcher, drummer for Heavenly, commits suicide at age 26 just before the release of the band's fourth and final album, Operation Heavenly.
1996Beatles producer George Martin is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
1995Irish blues rocker Rory Gallagher dies of a staphylococcal infection following a liver transplant at age 47.
1994Noted film composer Henry Mancini dies of pancreatic cancer at age 70.
1989Pete de Freitas (drummer for Echo And The Bunnymen) dies in a motorcycle accident en-route to Liverpool from London at age 27.
Beatles Butcher Cover Gets Chopped
1966
Deeming its "butcher cover" in poor taste, Capitol Records recalls the new Beatles album, Yesterday and Today, which is scheduled for release the next day and has already been sent to stores.
The gory cover was shot in March by the Australian photographer Robert Whitaker, who is known for his artistry and sense of macabre. His concept is a play on how The Beatles are adulated religiously, with inspiration drawn from the works of the surrealists Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. The shot of the group wearing butcher uniforms amid dismembered doll parts, raw pork and sausage links is meant to show how they are being torn apart by their celebrity.
Capitol president Alan Livingston is horrified by the photo, but John Lennon loves it, so he goes along with it to appease the star. About 60,000 advance copies are sent to stores and media outlets, which is when the backlash begins. When it becomes clear that retailers won't put the album on shelves, Capitol begins the recall, claiming that the image was an attempt at "pop art satire" that didn't work.
A furious effort begins to replace the cover. When the album is finally released on June 20, it is with an innocuous shot of the group posed around a trunk.
Word of the "butcher cover" gets out, as not every copy made its way to Capitol. It also gets out that recalled copies had the new cover pasted on top of the butcher shot, so many owners take a shot at steaming the album to see if they have the magic ticket.
Copies of the album with the original cover become a top-line collector's item and part of Beatles mythology. In 2016, a copy sells for $125,000.
Capitol president Alan Livingston is horrified by the photo, but John Lennon loves it, so he goes along with it to appease the star. About 60,000 advance copies are sent to stores and media outlets, which is when the backlash begins. When it becomes clear that retailers won't put the album on shelves, Capitol begins the recall, claiming that the image was an attempt at "pop art satire" that didn't work.
A furious effort begins to replace the cover. When the album is finally released on June 20, it is with an innocuous shot of the group posed around a trunk.
Word of the "butcher cover" gets out, as not every copy made its way to Capitol. It also gets out that recalled copies had the new cover pasted on top of the butcher shot, so many owners take a shot at steaming the album to see if they have the magic ticket.
Copies of the album with the original cover become a top-line collector's item and part of Beatles mythology. In 2016, a copy sells for $125,000.
No comments:
Post a Comment