July 5, 1954:
Nineteen-year-old Elvis Presley was at Sun Studio in Memphis, getting nowhere during a slow recording session with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black. During a coffee break, Elvis started fooling around, playing an incredibly fast, frantic version of an old blues track, Arthur Crudup’s "That’s All Right." The band joined in, laughing. Producer Sam Phillips stuck his head out of the control room and said, "What are you doing? Well, find a place to start and do it again." They taped it.
July 5, 1969:
The Rolling Stones gave a legendary free concert in London's Hyde Park to an audience of 250,000 people. It was originally planned as a way to introduce their new guitarist, Mick Taylor. However, just two days earlier, their founding guitarist Brian Jones tragically drowned in his swimming pool. The gig turned into a massive, bittersweet memorial; Mick Jagger read poetry on stage and released 3,500 white butterflies into the sky as you do. A lot were dead.
1975:
Pink Floyd headlined the Knebworth Festival in England (tickets were a steep £3.50!). To premiere tracks from their upcoming album Wish You Were Here, they brought full pyrotechnics, two genuine World War II Spitfire planes that flew low over the crowd, and a model plane that crashed directly into the stage rigging as part of the visual effects. Beat that Taylor Swift.
Jimi Hendrix got his massive break on July 5, 1966, when Chas Chandler saw him playing a tiny club in New York and convinced him to fly to London to form the Jimi Hendrix Experience
1974:
With a massive Top 5 radio hit ("Rikki Don't Lose That Number") and a platinum album (Pretzel Logic) riding high, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker did something completely unheard of for a hot rock band. They walked off stage at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and quietly announced they were entirely retiring from live touring. They detested the road, the bad sound systems, and the lack of control. Instead, they locked themselves in the studio for the next 18 years, hiring a revolving door of the world's finest session musicians to obsess over mic placements and single snare drum hits.
July 6, 1977:
On the final night of Pink Floyd’s massive In the Flesh stadium tour in Montreal, the crowd was rowdy, setting off fireworks and screaming over the quiet acoustic numbers. Roger Waters grew so completely furious with a fan shouting right at the front of the stage that he beckoned the guy closer and spat directly in his face. Shocked by his own sudden malice and how alienated he felt from his audience by these massive stadium gigs, Waters went back to his hotel room and started sketching out a concept album about a rock star who builds a literal psychological barrier between himself and the world. That single spit was the exact birth of The Wall.
1973:
Queen released their very first official single on this day: "Keep Yourself Alive.", the BBC Radio 1 playlist committee rejected the song multiple times because they claimed it "took too long to get going."
1988:
MTV officially banned the music video for Neil Young’s blues-rock track "This Note's For You." The song was a scathing critique of rock musicians selling out to corporate sponsorships, featuring the lyrics: "Ain't singin' for Pepsi, ain't singin' for Coke, I don't sing for nobody, makes me look like a joke." MTV claimed they banned it due to a strict policy against "trademark infringement," but it was widely understood they didn't want to upset the massive beverage companies funding their commercial breaks. The ban caused a massive backlash, forcing MTV to eventually relent—and the video went on to win MTV's Video of the Year anyway.
July 12, 1962:
A tiny jazz club in London called the Marquee Club needed a last-minute substitute band because the regular act got booked for a BBC TV show. A brand new group stepped up to play their very first live gig under the name The Rolling Stones. The line-up that night included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Brian Jones—playing standard blues covers to a handful of people.
July 12, 1979:
One of the most infamous promotional disasters in baseball and music history. At Comiskey Park in Chicago, a rock radio DJ held a promotion where fans got into a baseball game for 98 cents if they brought a disco record to be blown up on the field between games of a doubleheader.
Over 50,000 people showed up, far exceeding capacity. When the crate of disco records was detonated, it ripped a massive hole in the grass. Thousands of rock fans rushed the field, sliding into bases, tearing down batting cages, and refusing to leave. The field was so badly damaged the home team had to forfeit the second game to the Detroit Tigers.
