Rock History December 2
1967, The Monkees album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd went to number one on the album chart. It was their fourth album to sell over a million copies, following The Monkees, More Of The Monkees and Headquarters.
1967, Pink Floyd play at The Dome in Brighton, England
1969, George Harrison joins Delaney & Bonnie to perform with them in Bristol, England, after having watched them play with Eric Clapton the night before in London. He tours the UK with their ensemble, marking the first series of live performances by a Beatle since 1966.
1969, Cindy Birdsong of The Supremes was kidnapped at knifepoint by a maintenance man who worked in the building she lived in. She later escaped unharmed by jumping out of his car on the San Diego freeway. The kidnapper was arrested in Las Vegas four days later.
1971, Led Zeppelin appeared at The Royal Ballroom, Bournemouth, England.
1971, “Black Dog” by Led Zeppelin, which is featured as the lead-off track of their fourth album, was released as a single in the US and Australia with “Misty Mountain Hop” on the B-side, and reached number 15 on Billboard and number 11 in Australia.
1972, David Bowie performed at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania.
1973, The Who arrive in Montreal, Canada, disembarking from the plane wearing paper hats made out of French in-flight newspapers and singing the French national anthem. That evening they perform at the Montreal Forum. Early the next morning The Who and twelve members of their entourage are jailed in Montreal after Pete and Keith wreck their hotel suites. They manage to post bail at 1:15pm when the local promoter pays $5,995.34 (£3746.88) in cash to the police station and they perform that night at the Boston Garden, where they rail to the audience about the Montreal police. John will go on to commemorate the arrest in the song “Cell Number Seven” on his solo album Mad Dog.
1973, The Allman Brothers Band appear at William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Virginia.
1973, Bob Dylan fans start mailing in ticket requests for his latest tour today. Dylan sells 658,000 seats through the mail, but not before San Francisco witnesses traffic jams as people rush to send in their applications.
1973, The Grateful Dead performed at the Music Hall in Boston, Massachusetts.
1974, Yes played at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas.
1975, The Who perform at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Des Moines, Iowa.
1976, Elvis Presley played the first of an 11-night run at the Hilton Hotel, Las Vegas.
1976, The first day of the photo shoot for the forthcoming Pink Floyd Animals album cover took place at Battersea Power Station in London, England, with a giant inflatable pig lashed between two of the structure’s tall towers. A trained marksman was hired ready to fire if the inflatable escaped, but was not needed on this, the first day. Unfortunately the following day the marksman hadn’t been rebooked, so when the inflatable broke free from its moorings, it was able to float away, eventually landing in Kent where it was recovered by a local farmer, reportedly furious that it had scared his cows.
1977, Rush play at the Fitchburg Theater, Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
1978, Rod Stewart was at number one on the singles chart with “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” A plagiarism lawsuit by Brazilian musician Jorge Ben Jor confirmed that the song had been derived from his composition “Taj Mahal.” Stewart agreed to donate all his royalties from the song to the United Nations Children’s Fund.
1978, Aerosmith appeared at the Tarrant County Convention Center, Fort Worth, Texas.
1979, Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand’s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” was at number one on the US singles chart. A radio station engineer had spliced together Neil’s version with Barbra’s version and got such good response, the station added it to their play list. When Neil Diamond was told about it, he decided to re-record the song with Streisand herself, and within weeks of its release, the single went to the top of the charts in the US and number five in the UK.
1980, Bob Dylan performed at The Armory, in Salem, Oregon.
1982, Van Halen played at the Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis, Tennessee.
1982, US folk singer David Blue died of a heart attack aged 41 while jogging in New York’s Washington Square Park. He was a member of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue during the late ’70s. He wrote “Outlaw Man” covered by The Eagles on their 1973 Desperado album.
1983, MTV aired the full 14-minute version of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video for the first time. In 2009, the video was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, the first music video to ever receive this honor, for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant.
1988, The Stone Roses, supported by The Charlatans both appeared at The London School Of Economics, tickets £2.50.
1999, David Bowie played his first UK show in over two years when he appeared at the Astoria Theatre in London in front of 2,000 fans.
2000, The Smashing Pumpkins played their “final” concert when they appeared at the Metro Club in Chicago. They would not play again until May 2007, with founder Billy Corrigan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain as the only other original members to participate.
2001, Singer Valerie Jones died, aged 45. She was one third of the sister group The Jones Girls, who sang back-up vocals with Lou Reed, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Lou Rawls, Teddy Pendergrass and Betty Everett.
2006, Dutch singer Mariska Veres from Shocking Blue died of cancer at the age of 59. She had the 1970 US number one and UK number eight single “Venus.”
2013, Reggae singer Junior Murvin, best known for the 1976 hit song “Police and Thieves,” died in Jamaica aged 67. “Police and Thieves,” produced by Lee “Scratch” Perry, was a hit in Jamaica, and also took off in the UK, where it found an audience with punk rock aficionados.
2013, Roger Taylor and Brian May opened the Queen Studio Experience – Montreux, an exhibition of Queen memorabilia at Mountain Studios in Switzerland, where they had recorded many classic tracks spanning seven albums and where Freddie Mercury recorded his last vocal. The exhibition would open to the public a day later.
2014, American saxophone player Bobby Keys died from complications of cirrhosis of the liver at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. Keys started touring at age fifteen with Bobby Vee and fellow Texan Buddy Holly and was best known as being the main saxophone player for The Rolling Stones.
Born on December 2: Dr. Peter Carl Goldmark, inventor of the LP record in 1945 (1906); Tom McGuinness, guitar, vocals, Manfred Mann (1941); Ted Bluechel Jr, The Association (1942); Rick Savage, Def Leppard (1960); Nicholas Dingley, aka Razzle, drummer, Hanoi Rocks (1960); Nate Mendel, bassist, Foo Fighters, The Jealous Sound, Sunny Day Real Estate, and The Fire Theft (1968); Christopher Wolstenholme, singer-songwriter, bass, Muse (1978); Britney Spears (1981); Tal Wilkenfeld, bass, Jeff Beck (1986)
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Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Queen, Rod Stewart, Rush, Shocking Blue, Smashing Pumpkins, The Grateful Dead, The Monkees, The Stone Roses, The Supremes, The Who, Van Halen, Yes.
