The Beatles were at the Playhouse Theater in Manchester today in 1962, having been managed by Brian Epstein since January with mixed results. They’d been rejected after an audition for Decca records in February with the comment “Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein”, but he had got them this fine radio gig tonight, on the BBC North program Teenager’s Turn-Here We Go! They played live before a live audience of actual teenagers (John and Ringo were 22 already), and for the first time they were dressed in snappy suits with ties instead of leather jackets and greaser hair, at Epstein’s insistence.
The Rolling Stones were playing the Playhouse theater in Manchester tonight in 1965 when an overly excited female fan fell from the balcony. She landed mostly on the crowd below, which broke her fall, and though she did break a couple of teeth, that looked fairly normal in England at the time. It was the first but certainly not the last time someone was injured in a fall at a Stones show. The triangular blocks installed on the ramp railings at Seattle’s Kingdome were installed to prevent a repeat after someone fell to their death from one during their 1981 tour.
Brian Wilson released the song Caroline, No as a single today in 1966. It would be included on The Beach Boys Pet Sounds album, but Brian was the only one of them who’d played on the song he’d originally written as Carol, I Know, but when he’d told the others the title they’d heard it that way, and it stuck.
Led Zeppelin played a show tonight in 1969 at the Hornsey Wood Tavern in London. Far from the arenas they’d be playing in a few years, this gig was in a meeting room in the back of the pub, with a tiny stage barely big enough to hold John Bonham’s drum kit, so the rest of the band stood on the floor in front of it.
CBS Records honcho John Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan to a contract some years earlier, was so excited about his new prospect Bruce Springsteen, who he’d arranged a showcase for at Max’s Kansas City nightclub in New York City tonight in 1973, that he suffered a heart attack during the show. John would recover and go on until 1989, three years after being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Elton John became England’s first rocker since The Beatles to be immortalized in wax at Madame Tussaud’s Museum in London today in 1976.
British pedal steel guitar player Gordon Huntley died of cancer at age 58 today in 1988. He’d been a session player on albums by Elton John, Rod Stewart, and had been a member of Matthews Southern Comfort, who had a 1970 hit in England with a cover of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock at the same time Crosby Stills and Nash did in the U.S.
Rock and Roll Birthdays
Love guitarist and songwriter Arthur Lee would be 69 if he hadn’t died of leukemia at 61.
The Zombies bass player Chris White is 69.
Procul Harum organist and songwriter Matthew Fisher is 68.
J Geils Band singer Peter Wolf is 67.
Ernie Isley, the youngest of The Isley Brothers, who’d started playing drums at age 12 when Jimi Hendrix was still a member of the band and living at their house, is 62.
