Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today October 12
1997
John Denver dies when the plane he was piloting crashes
John Denver dies at 53 when the experimental aircraft he was piloting falls into Monterey Bay, California. The author of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and “Rocky Mountain High” had sold more than 30 million records singing to nature. He died pursuing his other great passion, flight, leaving anthems the whole planet still sings.
John Denver
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1935
Luciano Pavarotti is born: the tenor who filled stadiums singing opera
On October 12, 1935, Luciano Pavarotti was born in Modena, son of a baker who sang in the parish choir. He was a schoolteacher and an insurance salesman before taking up singing. In 1990 the BBC used his "Nessun dorma" as the theme for the Italian World Cup, and opera arrived overnight in homes where it had never been heard. With the Three Tenors he filled entire stadiums, unheard of for the genre.
Luciano Pavarotti
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1942
Melvin Franklin is born: the deep bass that held the Temptations up from below
On October 12, 1942, David English — known as Melvin Franklin — was born in Alabama, the bass voice of the Temptations. In a group of five singers who took turns at the lead microphone, he laid the floor: that low note that appears in "My Girl" or "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" and holds everything else up. He was in the group from the first line-up until 1994, longer than almost anyone.
Melvin Franklin
The Temptations
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1968
Janis Joplin tops the chart with the record she had already decided to leave
On the Billboard chart dated 12 October 1968, “Cheap Thrills” reached number one and would eventually total eight weeks there. Producer John Simon had suffered so much with the band that he added fake applause to fake a live album. Joplin had already announced she was quitting Big Brother before it hit the top: she left in December.
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Janis Joplin
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1971
Gene Vincent dies, dragging the broken leg he carried for fifteen years
On 12 October 1971 the man behind “Be-Bop-A-Lula” died in Saugus, California, aged thirty-six. A ruptured ulcer, internal bleeding and a failing heart closed a decade of drink and pain: since his twenties he had carried a leg wrecked in a motorcycle crash, the same one he survived the wreck that killed Eddie Cochran with.
Gene Vincent
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1978
Nancy Spungen is found dead in room 100 of the Chelsea Hotel
On 12 October 1978 she was found under the wash basin in the bathroom of their room at New York's Hotel Chelsea, with a single stab wound to the abdomen. The knife was Sid Vicious', and he was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. He died of an overdose four months later, before trial, and the case closed with more versions than certainties.
Nancy Spungen
Sid Vicious
1979
Fleetwood Mac spend a fortune on not repeating “Rumours”
On 12 October 1979 “Tusk” came out in the United States, the double album with which Lindsey Buckingham dragged the band away from the mould that had made them millionaires: songs cut in his bathroom, a college marching band on the title track and a record-breaking studio bill. It sold four million copies and was written off as a flop.
Fleetwood Mac
Lindsey Buckingham
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1985
Ricky Wilson dies, the guitarist who took strings off on purpose
On 12 October 1985 The B-52's guitarist died in New York, aged thirty-two. Cancer was announced; it was AIDS, and he had kept it hidden while finishing “Bouncing Off the Satellites”. He played with strings removed and tunings of his own invention, and that was where the band's unclassifiable sound came from. They took three years to face a studio again.
Ricky Wilson
The B-52's
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1987
INXS deliver an album their label tried to send back
On 12 October 1987 “Kick” was released. The American label had offered the band a million dollars to go back to Australia and record it again, because it could not hear a single on it. Four top-ten hits came out of it, “Need You Tonight” among them, and the album passed ten million copies. Hutchence went from pub singer to global star in a year.
INXS
Michael Hutchence
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1994
A stand at Earls Court collapses a minute into the show
On 12 October 1994, barely into “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, block nine of the stands at London's Earls Court gave way and dropped the people sitting in it several metres to the floor. There were dozens of injuries and no deaths. Pink Floyd stopped at once, and that date — the first of fourteen — was made up five days later.
Pink Floyd
1948
Rick Parfitt is born, who played the same riff for fifty years without apologising
On October 12, 1948, Rick Parfitt was born in Surrey, rhythm guitarist of Status Quo, the band that turned twelve-bar boogie into a half-century career and more than sixty British hits. Critics spent their whole lives accusing them of always making the same song; they replied that it was the good one. They opened Live Aid in 1985 with "Rockin' All Over the World". He died in 2016.
Rick Parfitt
Status Quo
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1955
Jane Siberry is born, who let people set the price of her music years before Radiohead
On October 12, 1955, Jane Siberry was born in Toronto, a songwriter of long, strange songs who funded her first album by waiting tables. In 2005 she dismantled her online store and replaced it with a system where each buyer decided how much to pay, zero included, with the average of what everyone else had paid on display. Radiohead would do something similar two years later and the whole world would talk about it.
Jane Siberry
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1958
Jeff Keith is born, the singer who gave Tesla its sandpaper throat
On 12 October 1958 the singer of Tesla was born in Texarkana, Arkansas. The band came out of Sacramento at the height of the teased-hair boom but refused the make-up and the magazine glamour. Their 1990 acoustic show opened the unplugged fashion in hard rock, and Keith's rasp aged rather better than most of his contemporaries'.
Jeff Keith
Tesla
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1962
Chris Botti is born: the trumpeter who became a star playing in someone else's band
On October 12, 1962, Chris Botti was born in Oregon. He decided to take up the trumpet at twelve after hearing a Miles Davis record. He spent the nineties as a sideman, mostly in Sting's band, until at forty he launched a career of his own that ended up outselling almost any living jazz instrumentalist. His formula: familiar melodies, a clean tone and nothing strident.
Chris Botti
Sting
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1969
Martie Maguire is born, of the group country radio erased from its playlists
On October 12, 1969, Martie Erwin was born in New York, fiddler and founder of the trio that became the best-selling female group in country music. In March 2003 her bandmate Natalie Maines said at a London concert that she was ashamed the president of the United States was from Texas. Country stations pulled them from rotation en masse, there were public record burnings, and they received death threats.
Martie Maguire
The Chicks
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1981
U2 release the album they nearly did not make
On 12 October 1981 “October” appeared, U2's second album and the most awkward record in their catalogue. Bono had lost the briefcase with his lyrics on tour and had to improvise them at the microphone; three of the four were then involved with a Christian community that wanted them to give up rock. What came out is confused faith and a band still hunting.
U2
Bono
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1982
The Clash support The Who at Shea and the handover never happens
On 12 October 1982, at New York's Shea Stadium, The Who played with The Clash and David Johansen opening. It was Townshend's band on their first farewell tour, in the same stadium where the Beatles had invented the stadium concert. Neither band came out whole: The Clash fell apart a little over a year later.
The Who
The Clash
David Johansen
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1985
Sixteen weeks of climbing to the British number one
On the UK chart dated 12 October 1985, Jennifer Rush's ballad finally reached the top after four months of very slow climbing, and stayed there five weeks. It was the year's biggest-selling single in Britain and the first by a solo female singer to pass a million copies there. Céline Dion would recycle it later.
Jennifer Rush
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1987
Harrison returns to the charts with a song he bought in 1963
On 12 October 1987 “Got My Mind Set on You” came out in the United States, a cover of an obscure James Ray track whose record Harrison had carried home from his first American trip. It went to number one there — the last by a solo Beatle — and drove “Cloud Nine”, his return after five silent years.
George Harrison
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1996
A British number one radio barely dared to play
On the UK chart dated 12 October 1996, The Chemical Brothers' “Setting Sun” entered at number one. It was big beat — distortion and marching drums — with Noel Gallagher singing over the top, so indebted to “Tomorrow Never Knows” that stations eyed it warily. It sold ninety-nine thousand copies in seven days and put dance music at the centre of British pop.
The Chemical Brothers
Noel Gallagher
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1998
Placebo stop being an androgynous curiosity and write songs
On 12 October 1998 “Without You I'm Nothing” came out, Placebo's second album and the one that gave them a repertoire: “Pure Morning”, “Every You Every Me” and a title track Brian Molko would end up cutting as a duet with David Bowie. It made them an arena band in Europe while America still had no idea where to file them.
Placebo
Brian Molko
David Bowie
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1998
R.E.M. open their three-piece era with a song about night shifts
On 12 October 1998 “Daysleeper” came out in the UK, the first single from “Up” and the first without Bill Berry on drums. Stipe wrote about an office worker who works overnight for another time zone and sleeps while the world runs. It was their last British top ten, and the album it opened nearly dissolved what was left of the band.
R.E.M.
Michael Stipe
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1999
Matthew Sweet records in 1999 an album that sounds like 1967
On 12 October 1999 “In Reverse” appeared, the peak ambition of a man who had spent a decade making power pop almost alone: an orchestra, harmonies stacked the Brian Wilson way and at last a Hollywood studio with a real budget. It sold very little, was his last record for a major, and is the favourite of everyone who did hear it.
Matthew Sweet
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2002
Elvis returns to number one twenty-five years after dying
On the Billboard chart dated 12 October 2002, the compilation “ELV1S: 30 No. 1 Hits” entered straight at the top with over half a million copies in a week. It was the first Presley album ever to debut at number one and his first chart-topper since 1973. A dance remix of “A Little Less Conversation” had done the pushing.
Elvis Presley
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2008
Oasis top the chart with the album nobody knew was the last
On the UK albums chart dated 12 October 2008, “Dig Out Your Soul” entered straight at number one with two hundred thousand copies in seven days. It was the band's seventh album and turned out to be their last: eleven months later a fight between the Gallagher brothers at a festival outside Paris ended Oasis on the spot.
Oasis
Noel Gallagher
Liam Gallagher
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