This Day in History: 2025-03-07

MARCH 7th

The Who’s “Pinball Wizard” is released in the U.K. It’s the first song from the Rock opera “Tommy.” 1969

Moving away from Glam and toward Soul and R&B, David Bowie releases the “Young Americans” album. 1975

Disturbed unleash their multi-platinum debut album, “The Sickness.” 2000

Imagine Dragons top the Billboard 200 with their sophomore set, “Smoke + Mirrors,” which sells 195,000 units during its debut week. 2015

Tom Delonge (Blink 182) and co-author Peter Levenda publish “Sekret Machines: Gods,” an “investigative journey to the heart of the UFO phenomenon.”   2017

MORE TODAY IN ROCK…

Love frontman Arthur Lee is born Arthur Taylor Porter in Memphis. 1945

Peter Wolf (Peter Blankfeld) enters the world. The Bronx-born singer grows up to be the frontman for the J. Geils Band. 1946

Procol Harum’s Matthew Fisher starts his life in in Addiscombe, Croydon, Surrey, England. His Hammond organ dominates the group’s ’67 international hit, “A Whiter Shade Of Pale.” 1946

Tina Turner records her vocals for “River Deep Mountain High.” Producer Phil Spector spends $22,000 on the song but Ike & Tina’s version stiffs in the U.S. However, it does get to #3 on the U.K, pop chart. 1966

Randy Guss (Toad The Wet Sprocket) is born. 1967

Simon & Garfunkel’s epic “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” is the only song keeping Creedence Clearwater Revival’s two-sided hit “Travelin’ Band”/”Who’ll Stop The Rain” out of the top spot on the U.S. pop chart. 1970

“Shoot Out At The Fantasy Factory” goes gold as Traffic winds down. 1973

A likeness of Elton John is put on display in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. 1976

Stevie Wonder enters the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York. 1983

Howard Stern’s bio flick “Private Parts” is in theaters with a cameo appearance by AC/DC. 1997

It’s THE trend of the Year: Bands ask fans to make their video clips. Red Hot Chili Peppers and YouTube launch a contest – fans make a video for “Charlie,” a track from RHCP’s “Stadium Arcadium” album. The winner gets $5,000 plus a trip to Paris to meet the band and attend a concert. All that is still cheaper than a band producing one themselves. The winning clip is the track’s official video. 2007

She-Bop-A-Lula, a photography exhibit of female Rockers, opens at the Strand Gallery in London. The 60-plus images feature Debbie Harry (Blondie), Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), Joan Jett, Janis Joplin, Suzi Quatro and Patti Smith. The exhibition supports Breakthrough, the U.K.’s leading Breast Cancer Charity. 2012

A class action suit reveals that Sony will pay $7.95 million to Cheap Trick, the Allman Brothers and others, to end a five-year dispute over digital music revenue. Most of the settlement goes to artists who have a minimum of 28,500 downloads from Apple’s iTunes store. 2012

The Speaking Rock Casino in El Paso, TX cancels a Filter show after the band posts a promotional video promising “a lot of Trump bashing” and showing the American flag upside down, which frontman Richard Patrick claims is an “artistic expression.” The venue receives threatening calls and bomb threats which leads the venue’s G.M. to shout at the group’s manager, “The First Amendment does not exist in this Casino. Get the f@*k out.”  2019

The Black Keys return with their first new song since ’14. “Lo/Hi,” a Bluesy tune, was recorded at guitarist/singer Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville.  2019

Wolfgang Van Halen announces his family is kick-starting the Adopt A School campaign with a $1,000 donation to each of the first 100 participating schools. The campaign is under auspices of Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports music programs in schools across the country through instrument donations.  2024