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Featured Events
2015In Tulsa, Rush begin their R40 Live tour, playing their newer songs first and working backward to "Working Man," the song that launched them in America. It ends up being their last tour, as drummer Neil Peart develops brain cancer and dies in 2020.
1993The comeback is complete as Aerosmith's Get a Grip album debuts at #1, marking their first trip to the top of the album charts.
1981Lionel Richie and Diana Ross meet at a Reno, Nevada recording studio at 3:30 a.m., where they record vocals for "Endless Love," needed quickly so it can be inserted into the film of the same name. Richie flew in from Los Angeles; Ross drove up after her concert in Lake Tahoe. The song becomes one of the biggest hits of the decade.
1976John Sebastian's "Welcome Back," the theme song to the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter, hits #1 in America. The series was originally called Kotter, but after Sebastian wrote the song, the title was changed to accommodate (Sebastian tried writing a song called "Kotter," but could only rhyme that word with "otter").
1970The Beatles release their final studio album, Let It Be, in the UK. Its American release date is May 18.
1965On their first American tour, The Rolling Stones stop in Jacksonville, Florida. In the audience is 17-year-old Ronnie Van Zant, who decides then and there that he wants to be a singer in a rock band. He later forms Lynyrd Skynyrd.
1963The Beatles land their first #1 hit when "From Me to You" tops the UK chart. The song goes nowhere in America, where word of The Beatles is still just a whisper.
8
In Music History
2012Fiona Apple releases "Every Single Night," her first new song since 2005. The song is a visceral expression of her internal struggle, as she sings about how every single night is a fight with her brain.
2012Tom Gabel, lead singer of the Florida punk band Against Me!, comes out as transgender and announces he will undergo gender reassignment surgery, becoming Laura Jane Grace.More
2009San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders declares "Adam Lambert Day" after Lambert's performance of "Black Or White" and "Mad World" on American Idol.
2008Crosby Loggins, son of Kenny Loggins, wins the first and only season of MTV's Rock The Cradle, a singing competition featuring the offspring of celebrity musicians. Runners-up are Jesse Blaze Snider, son of Twisted Sister's Dee Snider and Chloe Lattanzi, daughter of Olivia Newton-John.
2008Country singer Eddy Arnold dies in Nashville, Tennessee, a week before his 90th birthday.
2001Clint Black and his wife Lisa Hartman Black welcome their daughter Lily Pearl Black.
2001The road manager for Insane Clown Posse is arrested at an Omaha show for attacking an Eminem supporter who was tossing M&M candies on stage to taunt ICP about their Detroit rival.
1999Jazz singer Leon Thomas dies of heart failure at age 62.
1995Rick Nelson receives a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1993The newly formed Backstreet Boys give their very first public performance, at SeaWorld Orlando.
1992Will Smith (AKA the Fresh Prince) marries a songwriter named Sheree Zampino, who is pregnant with their son Trey. The couple will divorce in 1995.
1991Bohemian-born pianist Rudolf Serkin dies of cancer at age 88.
1982In Los Angeles, Dean Martin is arrested when police find a loaded .38 pistol in the trunk of his Rolls Royce. He pleads guilty to carrying a concealed weapon and is sentenced to a year's probation.
1982The orchestral instrumental "Chariots Of Fire - Titles," by the Greek composer Vangelis, goes to #1 in America.
Dylan Makes Original Lyric Video
1965
D.A. Pennebaker films Bob Dylan in one of the earliest music videos ever shot, the famous "flashcard" clip for "Subterranean Homesick Blues."
A little under seven months after Dylan records "Subterranean Homesick Blues" for Bringing it all Back Home, he and D.A. Pennebaker film a video to go with the song. In the video, Dylan flips through a series of cue cards that have bits of the song's lyrics written on them. There are intentional mistakes such as "success" being misspelled as "suckcess" and "20 dollar bills" when the lyrics say "11 dollar bills."
The clip is used as the opening shot for Pennebaker's documentary Don't Look Back, which chronicles Dylan's 1965 tour of England.
In the clip, while Dylan stands in an alley near the Savoy Hotel in London flipping the cue cards and looking mostly bored, two men appear momentarily in the background. One of the men is Dylan's friend and '60s socialite-to-the-stars Bob Neuwrith (also co-writer of "Mercedes Benz"), and the other is Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" is in part an homage to the Beat poets, so Ginsberg's presence is fitting. Ginsberg and Dylan met personally in December of 1963. From that point on, they had a close relationship both personally and artistically.
Neuwrith appears throughout Don't Look Back, along with Joan Baez. He's one of the writers of the cue cards, as were Ginsberg, Donovan, and Dylan.
Along with being featured at the start of Pennebaker's documentary, the "Subterranean Homesick Blues" music video is used as a trailer to promote the film. In this trailer version, the words "Surfacing Here Soon | Bob Dylan in | Don't Look Back by D. A. Pennebaker" are superimposed over the ending of the video.
The "Subterranean Homesick Blues" video is referenced, satirized, and imitated for centuries to come, including in 1987 by INXS in their video for "Mediate" and in 2010 when it's used as a promotional video at the launch of Google Instant.
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