January 26th
1955 Guitarist Eddie Van Halen is born in Amsterdam.
1970 “Chicago II” has been released.
Containing the hits “25 Or 6 To 4” and “Make Me Smile,” the album is their first album under the name Chicago (the band’s prior name, Chicago Transit Authority, was changed due to a threatened lawsuit from the actual mass-transit operation with the same name).
1985 John Fogerty has the #1 song on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart with “Old Man Down The Road.”
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1948 Corky Laing (Laurence Gordon Laing), the drummer for Mountain, enters the world. He’s from Montreal.
1960 Charlie Gillingham (born Charles Thomas Gillingham) celebrates his birthday. He’s the keyboardist for the Counting Crowes.
1961 Cinderella vocalist, Tom Keifer, enters the world.
1968 David Gilmour plays his first show with Pink Floyd at Southampton University. He replaces Syd Barrett whose behavior has become increasingly unpredictable.
1974 Ringo Starr sits at #1 on the pop chart with the Richard Perry-produced cover of Johnny Burnette’s “Your Sixteen.” It’s Ringo’s second chart-topper (“Photograph” was the first).
1977 The Clash sign a six-album deal with CBS Records.
2001 There are serious injuries and at least one death when Limp Bizkit performs at the Big Day Out Festival in Sydney, Australia. The group delays their performance for 15 minutes while police and festival staff try to sort out and rein in the mosh pit chaos. A later investigation places blame squarely on the concert promoters for not providing adequate security but also singles out Bizkit frontman Fred Durst for not taking the situation seriously.
2005 Word is that drummer Ryan Vikedal has left Nickleback after five years. In a statement, the group wishes Vikedal “all the best in his future endeavors.”
2007 “Screamers,” a movie that documents System Of A Down’s ongoing campaign for the recognition of the Armenian genocide, opens in New York. “(It’s) important for all those that survived the Armenian genocide to be remembered correctly,” says vocalist Serj Tankian.
2011 Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil pleads guilty to a Las Vegas drunk driving charge from the previous summer and is sentenced to fifteen days in jail. “He pled guilty to DUI. The vast majority of people facing a first offense DUI in Nevada don’t face jail time,” says Clark County District Attorney David Roger. But in ’84 Neil served 20 days and paid $2.5 million after pleading guilty to drunk driving and manslaughter when the car he was driving crashed and killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas Dingley.
2014 What year is it? 1974? Hard to tell at the 56th annual Grammy Awards in L.A. Paul McCartney nabs Best Rock Song for “Cut Me Some Slack,” his collaboration with the surviving members of Nirvana. Black Sabbath’s “God Is Dead?” gets the Best Metal Performance award. And Led Zeppelin is handed the Best Rock Album Grammy for their documentary “Celebration Day.” Imagine Dragons (whew, somebody from this century) takes home Best Rock Performance for their track “Radioactive.”
2015 Tom Petty and E.L.O.’s Jeff Lynne are given a songwriting credit for Sam Smith’s hit “Stay With Me,” because of the similarities to Petty’s ’89 song “I Won’t Back Down,” co-written by Petty and Lynne. Smith ‘acknowledged the similarity’, but the likeness was ‘a complete coincidence’. “I Won’t Back Down” was released three years before Smith was born.
2016 Vampire Weekend co-founder, Rostam Batmanglij, announces he is leaving the band to work on other projects. “My identity as a songwriter (and) producer, needs to stand on its own,” explains Batmanglij. He adds that he still plans to continue collaborating with Ezra Koenig on future Vampire Weekend projects and songs.
2019 Metalica’s James Hetfield plays Bob Hayward, a Utah highway patrol officer, in “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile,” which premieres at the Sundance Film Festival. The story follows the relationship between serial killer Ted Bundy and his longtime girlfriend, who at the time had no knowledge of Bundy’s crimes. Hayward arrested Bundy in 1975 after pulling the killer over and discovering burglary tools in his car. The film is Hetfield’s first dramatic role playing someone other than himself.
2022 Spotify removes Neil Young’s music after the singer requested in an open letter that they choose between his catalog or conservative anti-vaxer Joe Rogan’s podcast. Young, who accused Rogan of COVID misinformation, said Spotify “can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”
