16/01/2025
ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY: 1.15
1967 - The Rolling Stones were forced to change the lyrics of "Let's Spend The Night Together" to "Let's Spend Some Time Together" when appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show after the producers objected to the content of the lyrics.
Jagger ostentatiously rolled his eyes at the TV camera while singing the changed lyrics, resulting in host Ed Sullivan announcing that The Rolling Stones would be banned from performing on his show ever again. They would be back in '69...
1968 - The Byrds release The Notorious Byrd Brothers. The recording sessions for the Byrds' fifth album, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, were conducted in the midst of internal turmoil that found them reduced to a duo by the time the record was completed. That wasn't evident from listening to the results, which showed the group continuing to expand the parameters of their eclecticism while retaining their hallmark guitar jangle and harmonies.
They took more chances in the studio, enhancing the spacy quality with electronic phasing and washes of Moog synthesizer. But the Byrds did not bury the essential strengths of their tunes in effects, there's still tasteful 12-string guitar runs. The Notorious Byrd Brothers looks forward to the country-rock that would soon dominate their repertoire.
1969 - CCR releases Bayou Country. It's the first of three albums (all classics) the would release that year. At the heart of Bayou Country, as well as Fogerty's myth and Creedence's entire career, is "Proud Mary." A riverboat tale where the narrator leaves a good job in the city for a life rolling down the river, the song is filled with details that ring so true that it feels autobiographical.
Elsewhere on the album, "Born on the Bayou" is a magnificent piece of swamp-rock, "Penthouse Pauper" is a first-rate rocker with the angry undertow apparent on "Porterville" and "Bootleg" is a minor masterpiece, thanks to its tough acoustic foundation, sterling guitar work, and clever story. All the songs add up to a superb statement of purpose, a record that captures Creedence Clearwater Revival's muscular, spare, deceptively simple sound as an evocative portrait of America.
1990 - The Sundays released their debut album, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. The Sundays' debut album builds on the layered, ringing guitar hooks and unconventional pop melodies of the Smiths, adding more ethereal vocals and a stronger backbeat. As evidenced by the lilting, melancholy single "Here's Where the Story Ends," it's a winning combination, making Reading, Writing and Arithmetic a thoroughly engaging debut.
1990 - They Might Be Giants released their third studio album, Flood. On their major-label debut, Flood, They Might Be Giants exchange quirky artiness for unabashed geekiness and a more varied and polished musical attack. Even with those faults, Flood has a number of first-rate songs, including "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)". It's still a strong addition to their catalog, even if it isn't as weirdly intoxicating as its predecessors.
1992 - Johnny Cash, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Booker T. & the MG's, The Isley Brothers, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Sam & Dave, and The Yardbirds are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Birthdays:
Captain Beefheart was born today in 1941. Born Don Vliet, Captain Beefheart was one of modern music's true innovators. The owner of a remarkable four-and-a-half-octave vocal range, he employed idiosyncratic rhythms, absurdist lyrics, and an unholy alliance of free jazz, Delta blues, latter-day classical music, and rock & roll to create a singular body of work virtually unrivaled in its daring and fluid creativity. While he never came even remotely close to mainstream success, Beefheart's impact was incalculable, and his fingerprints were all over punk, new wave, and post-rock.
Ronnie Van Zant, singer for Lynyrd Skynyrd, was born today in 1948. Before the band, was a great baseball player and dreamed of going pro one day, but it seemed his main love was music. The radio held his interest, any artists influenced him during those early years, one of them being country singer Merle Haggard. There would be other noteworthy influences later, like the Rolling Stones and Free.
When VanZant was 16, he became the lead singer for a group called Us. Things didn't work out as well as he had hoped, so he put together a band of his own, My Backyard, with Bob Burns, Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and Larry Junstrom. The guys, some as young as 13, practiced every second that was possible. All of the practice paid off. Working under different names, like One Percent and Conqueror Worm, the fivesome performed in clubs. It was through their tongue-in-cheek name game that the band used Lynyrd Skynyrd for the first time. The name stuck and the rest is history.
R.I.P.:
1994 - Singer songwriter Harry Nilsson died in his sleep of heart failure after spending the previous day in the recording studio. Although he synthesized disparate elements of both rock and pop traditions, singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson was at heart a maverick whose allegiance belonged to neither. He's best-known for his versions of other people's songs (Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'," Badfinger's "Without You," an entire album of Randy Newman songs), but he was a skilled composer and is recognized as a pop craftsman of the first order.
His initial series of albums in the late '60s made him a personal favorite of the Beatles, who found a natural affinity with his knack for catchy melodies, witty lyrics, and extraordinary vocal range. When John Lennon and Paul McCartney held a press conference in 1968 to announce the formation of Apple Corps, John was asked to name his favorite American artist. He replied, "Nilsson". Paul was then asked to name his favorite American group. He replied, "Nilsson".
1998 - Chicago blues vocalist, harmonica player, Junior Wells died at age 63. He was one bad dude, strutting across the stage like a harp-toting gangster, mesmerizing the crowd with his tough-guy antics and rib-sticking Chicago blues attack. Amazingly, Junior Wells kept at precisely this sort of thing for over 40 years; he was an active performer from the dawn of the '50s until his death in the late '90s.
2015 - American record producer, singer, musician and self-styled "Lord of Garbage", Kim Fowley died at the age of 75. He is best-known for his role behind a string of novelty and cult pop-rock singles in the 1960s, and for managing The Runaways in the 1970s. With Gary S. Paxton he recorded the novelty song 'Alley Oop', which reached No.1 on the charts in 1960 and was credited to the non-existent group the Hollywood Argyles.
2018 - Irish musician and singer-songwriter Dolores O'Riordan from The Cranberries died unexpectedly while she was in London for a recording session. An inquest at Westminster Coroner's Court later ruled that she died as a result of accidental drowning in a bath following sedation by alcohol intoxication. As lead vocalist of the Cranberries, Dolores O'Riordan was one of the most visible females in early-'90s alternative rock.
The Cranberries had the 1994 hit singles "Linger", "Dreams" and "Zombie" and the band's 1993 debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We reached No. 18 on the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart. (Photo credit should read JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)
On This Day In Music History was sourced, curated, copied, pasted, edited, and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose, from This Day in Music, Music this Day, Allmusic, Song Facts, and Wikipedia.
![A very young Vince Clarke [1965] (This little child will later co-found Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure, among others)](https://img4.evepla.com/270/733/1125425722707338.jpg)
