Rock History

2014 – The Rolling Stones top Billboard magazine’s list of the top 25-selling live acts of the past 25 years grossing more than $1.5 billion on the road since ’90, playing more than 500 shows to almost 20 million fans. U2 is in second place with Bruce Springsteen third, earning $1.2 billion gross over 700-plus shows in front of 15 million fans.

1968 – The Iron Butterfly record their seventeen-minute epic “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” at Ultrasonic Studios in Hempstead, Long Island, New York. The west coast band performs the song as part of a soundcheck while waiting for their producer to arrive and are unaware they are being recorded. According to VH1 (in ’09), the title track of the multi-platinum album is the 24th greatest Hard Rock song of all time.

2017 – In the week following Chris Cornell’s death, his work (solo, with Soundgarden and Audioslave) is streamed 32.5 million times (up 549%), his album catalog sells 38,000 copies (up 1,732%), and his songs garner 144,000 downloads (up 2,222%).  The top song is Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.”  

2007 – “Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End” opens. Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards plays the father of Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). “(It was) just something to do,” says Richards, who sees similarities between being a pirate and life in a Rock group. “Both are ways to make a good dishonest living.”

2022 – Iggy Pop receives the prestigious Polar Music Prize, Sweden’s highest music award. The prize honors two laureates every year to “celebrate music in all its various forms.” 

2010 – Bret Michaels (Poison) wins Donald Trump’s reality show Celebrity Apprentice despite suffering a brain hemorrhage and a stroke, and the discovery of a hole in his heart. Michaels appears on the show’s season finale, against doctor’s orders. His $250,000 prize is donated to the American Diabetes Association.

2024 – The official music video for Disturbed’s cover of “The Sound Of Silence” officially tops a billion views on YouTube. 

1983 – David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” knocks off Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” to become the #1 song in the U.S. It stays at the top for all of one week.

1967 – The BBC bans The Beatles” A Day In The Life” due to alleged ‘drug references’. Frank Gillard, the BBC’s Director of Sound Broadcasting writes, “the words ‘I’d love to turn you on’ followed by that mounting montage of sound, could have a rather sinister meaning.” Doesn’t matter, the song becomes one of the group’s most recognizable classics.

1998 – U2 give a concert in Belfast in support of an upcoming Peace Agreement vote. The show comes right after frontman Bono being named one of the 20 most hated men in Northern Ireland.