1964, The first US Beatles album, Introducing The Beatles, was released on Vee-Jay records. The album cover showed John, Paul and George with their now famous “mop top” haircuts, but Ringo had yet to convert. Vee-Jay would be forced to stop selling the disc by the end of the year because of legal complications, but by then, over 1.3 million copies had been sold.
1964, The Rolling Stones recorded “Not Fade Away” at Regent Sound Studios in London, England.
1965, American promoter Sid Bernstein telephones Beatles manager Brian Epstein to propose the Fab Four play Shea Stadium.
1968, In New Delhi, India, the General Secretary for the Movement for the Spiritual Regeneration (not, we suspect, a real government office) announces that the Beatles are coming to India to study transcendental meditation. George Harrison is currently in Bombay recording the soundtrack to Wonderwall.
1969, Jimi Hendrix performed at Falkoner Centret in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1969, George Harrison announces that he is leaving the Beatles. He later returns.
1970, The Amboy Dukes, featuring Ted Nugent played at the Uptown Palladium 12 Theatre in Birmingham, Michigan.
1971, The trial over Paul McCartney’s move to dissolve the Beatles partnership begins today in London’s High Court. Ringo testifies, “Paul behaved like a spoiled child.”
1971, The reclusive Bob Dylan appears on the banjo picker Earl Scruggs’ Fanfare Show. The duo performs “East Virginia Blues” and “Nashville Skyline Rag.”
1972, Hawkwind played at Civic Hall in Wolverhampton, England.
1973, Cliff Richard appeared on the Cilla Black Show, singing the six entries chosen to represent Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest. TV viewers picked “Power To All Our Friends.”
1973, Bob Dylan and The Band appeared at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto.
1975, Genesis performed “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” at the Convention Centre, in West Palm Beach, Florida, a show popular among tape collectors.
1976, Blues artist Howlin Wolf, born Chester Burnett, died of cancer, aged 66. The guitarist, singer and harmonica player’s well known songs included “Smokestack Lightning,” “Little Red Rooster,” and “Spoonful.”
1976, CW McCall went to number one on the singles chart with “Convoy.”
1977, The litigation between Beatles, Apple, Allen Klein and ABKCO is declared settled in court.
1978, The Sex Pistols make their US TV debut on the show Variety.
1981, John Lennon’s “Imagine” started a four-week run at number one on the singles chart, 10 years after it was recorded. Lennon had two other songs in the Top 5 this week, “Happy Christmas, (War Is Over”) and (“Just Like) Starting Over.” “Imagine” was voted by the viewers of BBC TV as the best lyrics of all time, in a poll broadcast in October 1999.
1981, The Allman Brothers Band performed at the Ocean State Theater, Providence, Rhode Island.
1984, Motley Crue played their opening show on the first leg of Ozzy Osbourne’s Bark At The Moon tour in front of 9500 people in Portland, Maine.
1984, Cyndi Lauper became the first female recording artist since Bobbie Gentry in 1967 to be nominated for five Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Performance (Female), Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
1990, Bon Jovi played the first of seven sold-out nights at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, England on their New Jersey Syndicate Tour.
2001, American guitarist and songwriter and founder member of The Cramps Bryan Gregory, died after suffering a heart attack aged 46 at in Anaheim, California.
2005, American drummer Spencer Dryden died from colon cancer at his home in California aged 66. He was the drummer for Jefferson Airplane, replacing Skip Spence, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and The Dinosaurs. Dryden was the nephew of Charlie Chaplin.
2008, Radiohead topped the US album charts with the physical release of In Rainbows, originally sold via the Internet for a price chosen by fans. The album sold 122,000 copies during its first week on release, giving the band a second US chart topper following 2000’s Kid A, which sold an initial 207,000 copies.
2013, Claude Nobs the founder and general manager of the Montreux Jazz Festival died aged 76. During a 1971 Frank Zappa concert at the Montreux Casino, the venue caught fire. Nobs saved several young people who had hidden in the casino, thinking they would be sheltered from the flames. This act earned him a mention, as Funky Claude in the line “Funky Claude was running in and out pulling kids out the ground,” in the Deep Purple song “Smoke on the Water,” which is about the incident.
2016, David Bowie died two days after his 69th birthday and the release of the studio album Blackstar, Bowie died from liver cancer in New York City. He had been diagnosed 18 months earlier, but chose to not disclose his illness to the public.
Born on January 10: Jerry Wexler, Atlantic records (1917); Ronnie Hawkins, The Band (1935); Scott McKenzie (1939); Jim Croce (1943); Martin Turner, guitar, Wishbone Ash, and Rod Stewart (1945); Aynsley Dunbar, Journey, Whitesnake (1946); Cyril Neville and Donald Fagen (1948); Pat Benatar (1953); Michael Schenker, The Scorpions, UFO (1955); and Brad Roberts, vocals, guitar, Crash Test Dummies (1964)