On This Day:
In 1965 Marty Balin and Paul Kantner formed a folk-rock group that would eventually become the Jefferson Airplane. The group made its debut the following month in San Francisco.
In 1967 Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones was hospitalized with “strain and fatigue.”
In 1973 Queen released their first single, “Keep Yourself Alive.”
In 1991 Van Halen’s “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” debuted at number one on Billboard’s pop album chart.
In 2001 U2 kicked off the European leg of the Elevation 2001 tour with a show in Copenhagen, Denmark.
In 2004 Paul McCartney attended a special 40th anniversary screening of The Beatles’ film “A Hard Day’s Night” in London. After seeing the movie, McCartney said it seemed like it was, quote, “just yesterday.”
In 2005 The last Live 8 concert took place in Edinburgh, Scotland as the G-8 summit began. Snow Patrol and Annie Lennox were among the performers at the event.
In 2006 A lamp sparked an electrical fire at Ozzy Osbourne’s Buckinghamshire mansion. The blaze was contained to a hallway and the property only suffered minor smoke damage.
In 2007 Ozzy Osbourne was the first inductee into the new Birmingham Walk of Stars, a Hollywood Walk of Fame-type of attraction in the rocker’s hometown of Birmingham, England.
Former Clash guitarist Mick Jones joined Billy Bragg for a short performance at the West London Wormwood Scrubs prison. During their visit they also gave five guitars to inmates as part of Bragg’s Jail Guitar Doors campaign, an effort to get prisoners to turn their attention to music.
In 2010 Men At Work had to pay Larrikin Music Publishing five-percent of the future royalties from their hit “Down Under,” as well as royalties dating back to 2002. The judgment followed a court decision five months earlier, in which an Australian judge ruled that the flute solo in the 1983 single had, quote, “a sufficient degree of objective similarity” to the Australian children’s song “Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree.” Larrikin had been seeking an award of 40-to-60-percent of the song’s royalties.
In 2013 Sammy Hagar was the rock representative at Toby Keith’s Oklahoma Twister Relief concert in Norman.
The Rolling Stones gave their first performance at London’s Hyde Park in 44 years. The concert — the first of two to wrap up the band’s “50 and Counting” tour — occurred one day after the anniversary of the band’s 1969 event, which was intended to introduce then-new guitarist Mick Taylor but became a memorial for the group’s late co-founder Brian Jones.
In 2020 Singer songwriter Charlie Daniels died age 83. He was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009.
In 2024 Songwriter Joe Egan of Stealers Wheel died at the age of 77. The group is best known for their song “Stuck In The Middle With You.”
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