Chapter 01 — Today in music
On a day like today October 20
1977
Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane goes down in Mississippi: Southern rock loses its leader
The plane carrying Lynyrd Skynyrd crashes in a Mississippi forest, killing vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister Cassie, among others. Three days earlier they had released “Street Survivors”. The tragedy beheaded Southern rock at its peak and turned “Free Bird” into an eternal requiem.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Ronnie Van Zant
Steve Gaines
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1937
Wanda Jackson is born: the queen of rockabilly, pushed into it by Elvis
On October 20, 1937, Wanda Jackson was born in Oklahoma, a teenage country singer who toured with Elvis Presley in 1955. It was he who convinced her to try rock and roll. Her growled voice and fringed dresses scandalised the country industry: no woman sang like that. In 2011, at seventy-three, she recorded an album with Jack White that brought her back to the stage.
Wanda Jackson
Elvis Presley
Jack White
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1950
Tom Petty is born, the stubborn man who never stopped defending the song
Tom Petty is born in Gainesville, Florida; with the Heartbreakers he built four decades of unadorned rock: “American Girl”, “Free Fallin'”, “Learning to Fly”. He fought labels and even the pricing of his own records, always on the fan's side. His death in 2017 orphaned America's noblest radio rock.
Tom Petty
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1969
Lennon releases Cold Turkey, the song the Beatles turned down
He offered it as a Beatles single while they were finishing Abbey Road and was refused, so he cut it with Clapton, Klaus Voormann and Ringo Starr: four minutes of withdrawal with no metaphor to soften it. Five weeks later he returned his MBE to Buckingham Palace, citing Biafra, Vietnam and — brazenly — the song slipping down the charts.
John Lennon
Eric Clapton
Ringo Starr
Klaus Voormann
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1971
Snoop Dogg is born, whose first album entered straight at number one
On October 20, 1971, Calvin Broadus was born in Long Beach, nicknamed Snoop by his mother in childhood. Dr. Dre heard him on a homemade tape and put him on "The Chronic". In 1993 his own debut "Doggystyle" entered the American album chart straight at number one, the first debut record ever to do so. The following year he stood trial for a homicide of which he was acquitted.
Snoop Dogg
Dr. Dre
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1979
Video Killed the Radio Star hits number one and prophesies itself
The UK chart dated this day crowns the Buggles with a song about technology devouring the technology before it. Two years later, at 12:01 am on 1 August 1981, that video was the first MTV ever broadcast. In February 2000 it was the first again — the channel's millionth clip. Few prophecies land quite so literally.
The Buggles
Trevor Horn
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1980
U2 debut with Boy and America swaps out the sleeve
Steve Lillywhite produced the debut at Windmill Lane in Dublin using unorthodox tricks, including putting Larry Mullen in a stairwell to record the drums. In Britain it barely reached fifty-two. Peter Rowen's face was replaced for North America over fears of how it would be read. I Will Follow did the work on college radio.
U2
Steve Lillywhite
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1989
Trent Reznor made Pretty Hate Machine at night, behind his boss's back
He used the dead hours at the Cleveland studio where he worked as an assistant, played almost everything himself on cheap samplers and synths, and put it out on TVT, a label built on television jingles. It took months to chart and stalled at seventy-five — then stayed on the Billboard 200 for 115 weeks and became one of the first independent albums to go platinum.
Nine Inch Nails
Trent Reznor
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1992
Madonna releases Erotica on the same day as her photography book
The album arrives in America alongside Sex, the book that shared its photo sessions with the record's booklet, and it was her first release on Maverick, her own company. It debuted at number two with 167,000 copies — her first album since 1983 to miss the top. The argument about the scandal ate the music.
Madonna
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2001
McCartney fills the Garden with firefighters to give New York its noise back
Five weeks after 11 September, Madison Square Garden filled with firefighters, police and families to see the Who, Bowie, Clapton, Elton John, Jagger and Richards, Bon Jovi, Jay-Z and Destiny's Child. McCartney organised it and closed it. The VH1 broadcast raised more than thirty-five million dollars for the Robin Hood Relief Fund.
Paul McCartney
The Who
David Bowie
Mick Jagger
Keith Richards
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2003
Amy Winehouse debuts at twenty with a record she could not stand
Frank arrived with Winehouse barely twenty: jazz sung in an adult voice and written by someone who was not one yet. It entered at sixty in Britain and climbed to thirteen by January, picking up a Mercury nomination and an Ivor Novello. She dismissed it, blaming the marketing and the promotion — everything was a shambles, she said.
Amy Winehouse
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1901
Adelaide Hall is born, who improvised without words in 1927 and changed what a voice could do
On October 20, 1901, Adelaide Hall was born in Brooklyn. In 1927, while Duke Ellington was rehearsing "Creole Love Call", she began humming behind the screen in imitation of an instrument. Ellington sent her to the microphone and recorded it: one of the first times a voice was used as a trumpet, with no lyric. She settled in London, opened her own club and kept singing into her nineties.
Adelaide Hall
Duke Ellington
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1955
Elvis shares a bill with Bill Haley at a Cleveland high school and ends up on film
Disc jockey Bill Randle staged a show at Brooklyn High School auditorium with Pat Boone, the Four Lads, Bill Haley and His Comets, and a kid from Memphis still recording for Sun. The cameras were rolling for The Pied Piper of Cleveland — the earliest known footage of Presley. Six weeks later RCA bought his contract from Sam Phillips.
Elvis Presley
Bill Haley & His Comets
Pat Boone
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1958
Mark King is born: the bassist who turned his thumb into a percussion instrument
On October 20, 1958, Mark King was born on the Isle of Wight. He started out as a drummer, which is why he treats the bass as something to hit: his slap technique, thumb striking the strings at absurd speed, defined the sound of Level 42 and much of British funk in the eighties. The band sold millions with songs like "Lessons in Love" while never quite stopping playing as though improvising in a club.
Mark King
Level 42
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1960
Only the Lonely puts Roy Orbison at number one in Britain for two weeks
The UK chart dated this day sends Orbison to the top, where he held on for a fortnight until Elvis's It's Now or Never pushed him off in November. It was his first big hit and it already contained the whole formula: an almost operatic tenor, a crescendo instead of a conventional chorus, melancholy with no self-pity in it.
Roy Orbison
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1961
The Blue Hawaii soundtrack spends twenty weeks at number one
RCA releases the album from the film that set the template for Elvis on screen: twenty weeks at the top in America, eighteen in Britain, figures no other record of his would match. Inside sits Can't Help Falling in Love, adapted from an eighteenth-century French melody, which ended up closing every concert he played in the seventies.
Elvis Presley
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1964
The Yardbirds chart for the first time with a borrowed blues
Good Morning Little Schoolgirl comes out in Britain and stalls at forty-four: the band's first appearance on the singles chart. Clapton was still the lead guitarist and the repertoire was still borrowed Chicago blues. For Your Love, the record that split the group into two irreconcilable halves, was only months away.
The Yardbirds
Eric Clapton
Sonny Boy Williamson II
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1969
The Who play Tommy in full in New York for six straight nights
The Fillmore East opened on weeknights for a major act for the first time: six consecutive shows in which the Who performed the opera end to end behind a wall of forty-five speakers. No band had held the theatre for more than two days running. Those nights turned Tommy from a difficult record into a spectacle.
The Who
Pete Townshend
Bill Graham
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1973
Angie takes the Rolling Stones to number one on an acoustic guitar
The Billboard chart for the week ending this day crowns the barest ballad on Goats Head Soup — a band built on electric excess selling strings and piano. Richards said in 1993 that the name came from his newborn daughter, then wrote in 2010 that he picked it at random. Angela Bowie and Marianne Faithfull still haunt the song without evidence.
The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger
Keith Richards
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1976
Led Zeppelin premiere their film with a sound system hired from Dallas
Cinema I in New York screens The Song Remains the Same, shot three years earlier at Madison Square Garden and patched up at Shepperton with footage filmed afterwards. Critics tore it apart as amateurish and self-indulgent. A quadraphonic system was hired from Showco for the premiere: two hundred thousand dollars at the box office in the first week.
Led Zeppelin
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1978
The Police make their US debut with their instruments checked as luggage
Two late-night sets at CBGB on the Bowery and not a record in American shops: Outlandos d'Amour had not been released there yet. They flew in on cheap tickets, carried their guitars as baggage and did the rest of the tour in a borrowed van. Summers remembered the handful of people there reacting as though they already mattered.
The Police
Sting
Andy Summers
Stewart Copeland
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1979
Dylan sings gospel on Saturday Night Live and apologises to nobody
On the episode hosted by Eric Idle, Dylan performed three songs from Slow Train Coming, the record of his evangelical conversion, to a television audience that wanted the other Dylan and made no secret of it. The same night Andy Kaufman challenged the women in the studio to wrestle him. A strange hour even by NBC's standards.
Bob Dylan
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1984
Wham! take a second British number one with Freedom
The chart dated this day puts George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley on top for three weeks; it ended the year as the tenth best-selling single in Britain. The video was shot in Beijing, where Wham! became the first Western pop group to play in China. America would take almost another year to catch up.
Wham!
George Michael
Andrew Ridgeley
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1986
Chrissie Hynde releases Get Close with half the band dismissed
The fourth Pretenders album comes out in Britain with Hynde the last founder standing: Honeyman-Scott and Farndon were dead, bassist Malcolm Foster had gone, and drummer Martin Chambers was pushed aside during the sessions. Three different producers and a drift toward funk. Don't Get Me Wrong and My Baby both topped US rock radio.
Pretenders
Chrissie Hynde
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1988
A$AP Ferg is born: the clothing designer who took up rapping with his friends
On October 20, 1988, Darold Ferguson was born in Harlem, son of a graphic designer who made logos for rap labels. He studied design himself and was selling belts under his own brand before joining the A$AP Mob collective. His way of rapping, somewhere between shouting and singing, contrasted with his colleagues'. In 2013 his album "Trap Lord" made him the group's second big name.
ASAP Ferg
ASAP Mob
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1990
The Charlatans go straight in at number one with their first album
Some Friendly enters at the top of the UK albums chart dated this day, something no new act had managed in years, and was certified gold within three days. Rob Collins's Hammond and a dance pulse borrowed from Manchester put them at the head of the baggy pack. It lasted exactly one week: Paul Simon moved them out.
The Charlatans
Rob Collins
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1998
B.B. King produces himself in four days and walks off with a Grammy
Blues on the Bayou was cut at Dockside Studio in Maurice, Louisiana, with no overdubs and no tricks, and with King in charge for the first time in years: nobody needed to tell them what to do, he wrote in the notes. It won the 2000 Grammy for best traditional blues album, when King was seventy-three.
B.B. King
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1998
The only Aerosmith record with a parental advisory sticker is a live one
A Little South of Sanity stitches twenty-three tracks together from two tours, Nine Lives and Get a Grip. The Parental Advisory sticker was not earned by the songs but by Steven Tyler talking between them and rewriting lyrics on the fly. It reached twelve in the US and topped the UK rock and metal chart.
Aerosmith
Steven Tyler
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1998
Jon Spencer puts six producers on one record and it still sounds like him
Acme gathered Steve Albini, Dan the Automator, Jim Dickinson, Calvin Johnson and Alec Empire onto a single album without the Blues Explosion losing the thread: gutted blues, hip-hop loops and noise shaped into songs. Talk About the Blues got onto MTV with a video built from detective films. On the Billboard 200 it barely grazed one-eighty.
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Steve Albini
Dan the Automator
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2003
Suede sum up eleven years and sign their own farewell without saying so
Singles collects twenty-one tracks from 1992 to 2003, with Attitude and Love the Way You Love cut specially for it. It stalled at thirty-one in Britain, a long way from the years when Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler decided what English pop was arguing about. The band split a few months later.
Suede
Brett Anderson
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2007
Springsteen returns with the E Street Band and an eighth number one
The Billboard chart dated this day puts Magic at the top with 335,000 copies sold in a week — Springsteen's eighth album to manage it. It was his first studio record with the E Street Band in five years, written against the political weather of Bush's second term and disguised as bright radio songs.
Bruce Springsteen
E Street Band
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2008
AC/DC return after eight years and let only Walmart sell them
Black Ice reaches the international market after the longest silence between any two of their albums and ends up the second best-selling record on the planet that year. In North America it was sold exclusively through Walmart, on the argument that record shops were dying. Number one in twenty-nine countries and 784,000 US copies in week one.
AC/DC
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