1966, Bob Dylan and The Band played at the Convention Center in Louisville, Kentucky. This was the first date on a world tour which would become significant as the first outing in which Dylan used electric instruments, after he had gone “electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.
1966, The Who play the Astoria Theatre in Finsbury Park, North London. The supporting acts are Screamin’ Lord Sutch & the Savages, the Merseys, the Fortunes and the Graham Bond Organization.
1967, The Rolling Stones’ Between the Buttons enters the UK chart at number three.
1967, this was the last week of a thirteen weeks atop the US album charts for The Monkees self-titled debut album. It would be knocked off on February 11 by the followup, More of the Monkees.
1968, Billed as ‘Tour 60 cities in 66 Days’ The Jimi Hendrix Experience appeared at the Winterland in San Francisco.
1968, Working at Abbey Road studios, London, The Beatles recorded “Across The Universe.” John and Paul decided the song needed some falsetto harmonies so they invited two girl fans into the studio to sing on the song. The two were Lizzie Bravo, a 16-year-old Brazilian living near Abbey Road, and 17-year-old Londoner Gayleen Pease.
1970, John Lennon and Yoko Ono donated their hair for an auction in aid of the Black Power movement.
1972, Genesis appeared at the Hippodrome in Bristol, England.
1973, Pink Floyd played at the Palais des Sports de la Porte de Versailles, Paris.
1972, In a memo to Attorney General John Mitchell, South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond suggests that John Lennon be deported.
1974, Pink Floyd release “Time” backed with “Us and Them” as a 7-inch single in the US.
1975, Led Zeppelin performs at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.
1975, American jazz, blues, songwriter and saxophonist Louis Jordon died aged 66. Known as “The King of the Jukebox,” between 1942-1950 he scored eighteen number one singles and fifty-four Top Ten hits on the US R&B chart.
1976, David Bowie appeared at Memorial Coliseum, Portland, Oregon.
1977, This was the 25th anniversary show of TV’s American Bandstand, which began as a local program on WFIL-TV, Channel 6 in Philadelphia on October 7, 1952.
1977, Aerosmith played at the Kyoden-Taiiku-Kan, Fukuoka, Japan.
1977, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is released. The album shoots to the top of US album charts, staying there for 31 weeks. More than 17 million copies have been sold in the U.S.
1978, The Bee Gees started a four week run at number one on the singles chart with “Staying Alive.” It came from the film soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, it gave the Gibb brothers their fifth number one.
1979, The Grateful Dead appeared at the Dane County Coliseum in Madison, Wisconsin.
1981, The Who performed at the Rainbow Theatre in London.
1982, Scottish singer Alex Harvey died of a heart attack while waiting to take a ferry back to shore after performing a concert with his new band, the Electric Cowboys. In an ambulance on the way to the hospital, he suffered a second heart attack, this one fatal. It occurred on the day before his 47th birthday, in Zeebrugen, Belgium. Formed Alex Harvey Big Soul Band in 1959 and then mid 1960’s band Tear Gas. He had the 1975 UK number seven single with Sensational Alex Harvey Band “Delilah” and 1975 album Next.
1983, Karen Carpenter died aged 32 of a cardiac arrest at her parent’s house in Downey, California. The coroner’s report gave the cause of death of imbalances associated with anorexia nervosa. The Carpenters’ 1970 album Close to You, featured two hit singles, (“They Long to Be) Close to You” and “We’ve Only Just Begun.” They peaked at number one and two respectively on the singles chart. In Playboy‘s annual opinion poll for 1975, its readers voted Karen Carpenter the Best Rock Drummer of the year.
1984, Culture Club started a three-week run at number one on the US singles chart with “Karma Chameleon” the group’s 5th US Top 10 hit, also a chart topper in the UK.
1984, The Eurythmics scored their first UK number one album with their second release Touch, featuring the singles “Here Comes The Rain Again,” “Who’s That Girl,” and “Right By Your Side.”
1984, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble kicked off their 114-date Couldn’t Stand the Weather tour at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee.
1985, Prince performed at the Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis, Tennessee.
1992, Pearl Jam appeared at The Borderline in London, England, tickets cost £5 ($8.50.)
1999, Rykodisc becomes the first music label to give its stamp of approval to the MP3 music format.
2001, Jimmy Buffett is thrown out of a New York Knicks – Miami Heat basketball game after verbally abusing a referee.
2009, Erick Lee Purkhiser, aka Lux Interior, singer and founding member of The Cramps died aged 62. He met his wife, better known as Poison Ivy, born Ivy Rorschach, in Sacramento in 1972, when he and a friend picked her up when she was hitchhiking. The couple later founded The Cramps.
Born on February 4: John Steel, The Animals (1942); Florence Larue, The 5th Dimension (1944); Margie and Mary Ann Ganser, vocalists, The Shangri-Las (1947); Vincent Furnier, aka Alice Cooper (1948); Phil Ehart, Kansas (1950); Jerry Shirley, Humble Pie (1951); Clint Black, country singer (1962)
