1 APRIL
Featured Events
2020 Dolly Parton makes a $1 million donation to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center to help fund research for a coronavirus vaccine.
2016 Guns N' Roses announce that original members Slash and Duff McKagan are returning to the group to join Axl Rose on the Not In This Lifetime stadium tour of North America. VIP packages (the "Welcome to the Jungle Pit Experience") go for $2,500, which gets you a backstage tour and access to the Paradise City Lounge, but no interaction with the band.
2008 On April Fools' Day, YouTube tricks users with the popular bait-and-switch prank called Rickrolling by featuring video links that actually lead to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video. Several other websites have the same idea, creating an unintentional, internet-wide April Fools' joke.More
2007 Proving she understands irony just fine, Alanis Morissette transforms the Black Eyed Peas' booty anthem "My Humps" into a mournful piano ballad for April Fools' Day. The accompanying music video debuts on YouTube and becomes a viral sensation, garnering millions of views.More
2006 Spin magazine publishes a review of the Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy, which Axl Rose and his gang have been working on since 1994. It's an April Fool: the album isn't released until 2008.
1996 After blowing through more than $30 million, MC Hammer files for bankruptcy protection.More
1985 It's no joke: David Lee Roth officially leaves Van Halen to start a solo career.
1984 Marvin Gaye is fatally shot by his own father and dies at age 44. An investigation reveals that Marvin had beaten his father, who ends up serving five years' probation for voluntary manslaughter.
1969 After playing on hits for the likes of Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, four session musicians start Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, where they record The Staple Singers, Paul Simon, Rod Stewart and The Rolling Stones.More
1 APRIL
In Music History
2020 Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne dies at 52 after contracting coronavirus. He's one of the first popular entertainers to die from the virus, which a week later claims the life of John Prine.
2016 Actor-turned-singer Kiefer Sutherland releases his debut single, "Not Enough Whiskey."
2015 Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon's first wife, dies of cancer at age 75 in Mallorca, Spain.
2008 Scott Weiland officially departs Velvet Revolver, effectively ending the band.
2008 The Rolling Stones release Shine A Light, the soundtrack to their concert film of the same name, directed by Martin Scorsese.
2007 The Hammersmith Palais in London, subject of The Clash song "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais," hosts its last concert - a gig by The Fall.
2005 Jack Keller dies of leukemia at age 68 in Nashville, Tennessee. The songwriter is known for his pop collaborations with Howard Greenfield, including "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" and "Run To Him." He was also a writer and producer for The Monkees TV series.
2004 Guitarist Paul Atkinson (of The Zombies) dies at age 58 from liver and kidney disease, while also suffering from cancer.
1999 "Shake, Rattle And Roll" composer Jesse Stone, aka Charles Calhoun, dies at age 97 in Alamonte Springs, Florida.
1995 Tupac Shakur is in jail (serving time for sexual abuse), but his third album, Me Against the World, hits #1, where it stays for four weeks.
1992 Nigel Preston, drummer and founding member of The Cult, dies of a heroin overdose at age 28.
1992 MC Hammer's 2 Legit 2 Quit tour begins in Hampton, Virginia. By the end of the tour, two of his support acts have become more popular than he is: Boyz II Men and TLC.
1992 Jimmy Buffett and his wife Jane welcome their second daughter, Sarah Delaney.
1992 Billy Idol pleads no contest to charges of misdemeanor assault and battery and is fined $2,000. The incident happened in October 1991, when Idol ended up in a car with two women and allegedly punched one of them. Alcohol was involved.
1991 At his Wembley Arena concert in London, Rod Stewart calls for his wife Rachel Hunter to join him on stage for "You're In My Heart (The Final Acclaim)," but she instead sends out his buddy Elton John, dressed in women's clothes and makeup, to prank her husband. Stewart gamely plays along and sings to Elton.
Traffic Find Strange (And Possibly Supernatural) Inspiration For Their Debut Album
1967A former champion horse jockey named Sir William Pigott-Brown rents one of his properties - a 19th century farm in the countryside outside London - to Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who has his recently signed band Traffic record their debut album there.
The farm offers a serene and secluded setting where the band can draw inspiration for songs. Almost immediately, everyone feels a strange aura about the place. They want to infuse their music with the weird energy of their surroundings, so they enhance the mystical feeling by taking psychedelics and projecting a liquid light show onto the front of the cottage at night, and jamming on the front porch. One morning during their stay, Traffic member Jim Capaldi is coming down off LSD and sketching in front of a log fire. Bubbling out of his acid-fired subconsciousness and through his pencil comes an image of man hanging on puppet strings and wearing a spiked hat with the words, "Dear Mr. Fantasy, play us a tune, something to make us all happy" scrawled under him. The image becomes the inspiration for what is perhaps the band's most enduring song, "Dear Mr. Fantasy." Yet not everyone comes to see the mysterious energy about the place as positive. For some, it seems downright corrupt. Capaldi later blames it for causing Traffic's internal strife and eventually forcing them to break up. "There was something evil in that cottage," he says.
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