17 APRIL
Featured Events
2008 With Spirit, Leona Lewis becomes the first British woman to go straight to the top of the Billboard 200 album chart with a debut album.
2006 A big-budget Coke commercial with a new song by Jack White called "Love Is The Truth" hits YouTube, then quickly goes away.More
1983 Felix Pappalardi (bassist, vocalist for Mountain), age 43, is shot and killed by his wife, Gail, in their East Side Manhattan apartment. Gail claims it was an accident and the charge of second-degree murder is lessened to criminally negligent homicide, which lands her a brief stint in prison.
1983 Joe Strummer of The Clash runs the London Marathon, finishing with a time of 4 hours 13 minutes. He claims that his training included 10 pints of beer the night before.
1982 Denison University freshman Laura Carter is killed when a bullet from a gunfight a block away strikes her in the chest while she is riding in a car with her parents. Christopher Cross, who is dating her best friend, writes "Think Of Laura" in her honor.
1982 Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force release "Planet Rock," the first hip-hop hit with electronic elements and a rhythm powered by a Roland TR-808 drum machine. It's just the third rap song to reach the Hot 100, following "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang and "The Breaks" by Kurtis Blow.More
1971 Each of the four ex-Beatles has a solo single on the UK chart: John Lennon - "Power to the People" Paul McCartney - "Another Day" Ringo Starr - "It Don't Come Easy" George Harrison - "My Sweet Lord"
1967 Liz Phair is born in New Haven, Connecticut; she is raised by her adoptive parents in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Winnetka, Illinois. She becomes a '90s indie-rock icon with her debut album, Exile In Guyville, a feminist treatment of the Rolling Stones' Exile On Main St.More
1960 "Summertime Blues" singer Eddie Cochran dies in England when the taxi he is riding in crashes. He is just 21.
17 APRIL
In Music History
2026 Madonna makes a surprise appearance during Sabrina Carpenter's headlining set at Coachella, rising from the stage to perform "Vogue" and "Like a Prayer" alongside Carpenter and debut "Bring Your Love," the lead single from her upcoming Confessions II album. Madonna's first appearance at the festival was 20 years earlier in 2006 when she prepared to launch her Confessions Tour.
2026 Nine Inch Nails and German electronic-music producer Alex Ridha (known professionally as Boys Noize) release a collaborative album titled Nine Inch Noize. The 12-track collection features various remixes, including versions of older Nine Inch Nails songs, a tune by the Trent Reznor side project How To Destroy Angels, and a cover of British synth-pop duo Soft Cell's "Memorabilia."
2020 Fiona Apple releases her fifth album, Fetch The Bolt Cutters, her first since 2012. The title is a reference to a line Gillian Anderson says in the TV series The Fall and is a metaphor for setting yourself free.
2018 Tina Turner's life story, already depicted in the 1993 film What's Love Got To Do With It, is adapted for the stage as Tina: The Musical, opens in London's West End. It opens on Broadway the following year.
2010 When Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros frontman Alex Ebert takes the stage at Coachella, he clumsily knocks a microphone stand into the crowd. A guy in the audience catches it with his forehead, and blood spills all over the place. Ebert, horrified, gives the guy his sportcoat and his shirt to staunch the bleeding, and performs the set topless. It proves a breakout performance for the band, whose song "Home" starts showing up everywhere.
2009 Brad Paisley and his wife, Kimberly Williams, welcome their second child, Jasper. His song "Today" is about this event.
2009 Davy Jones of The Monkees visits Bikini Bottom when he plays himself on the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "SpongeBob SquarePants vs. The Big One."
2008 Danny Federici (organist, accordionist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band) dies at age 58 after three years of suffering with melanoma.
2007 Arcturus officially announces they are splitting up.
2003 Blues musician Earl King, composer of the standards "I Hear You Knocking" and "One Night," dies at age 69 of diabetes-related complications.
2000 "I Will Survive" singer Gloria Gaynor makes an appearance on Ally McBeal.
1997 Country singer Toby Keith and his wife Tricia welcome new arrival Stelen Keith Covel to the family.
1993 Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles marries screenwriter Jay Roach in Los Angeles.
1991 Jack Yellen, lyricist and screenwriter who wrote "Happy Days Are Here Again" (1929), dies in Concord, New York, at age 98.
1989 Neil Young releases an EP titled Eldorado. Released exclusively in Japan and Australia and recorded with a one-time backing band called The Restless, it contains three songs ("Don't Cry," "Eldorado" and "On Broadway") that will appear on Freedom six months later.
Linda McCartney Dies
1998Linda McCartney, Paul McCartney's wife and Wings bandmate, dies at age 56 after a three-year battle with breast cancer.
Beatles fans have long known Linda McCartney as wife to their beloved Paul, who married the rock photographer in 1969 despite hundreds of girls crying in protest outside the Marylebone Register Office. Their union would last 29 years until her death, producing three children (Mary, Stella, and James), a musical partnership in the band Wings, and a shared passion for animal rights activism. But Linda McCartney was more than just Paul's wife. Born Linda Eastman on September 24, 1941, she grows up in Scarsdale, an affluent suburb of New York City. She is soon drawn to the Arts and cultivates her interest in photography at Vermont College and the University of Arizona. After a brief marriage to Joseph Melville See Jr. in 1965, which produces daughter Heather Louise, Linda lands a prime gig photographing The Rolling Stones at a record promotion party, and soon becomes the house photographer at Manhattan's Fillmore East concert hall. Aside from shooting a string of stars, including Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Grace Slick, Neil Young, John Lennon, The Doors - and a lad named Paul McCartney, Linda photographs Eric Clapton for the cover of Rolling Stone, making her the first female photographer to shoot a cover for the magazine. The 1992 book Linda McCartney's Sixties: Portrait of an Era, is a testament to her role in the '60s rock scene. Her reputation as a musician, however, does not rival her reputation as a photographer. As a keyboardist and vocalist in Wings, she receives little praise - but she inspires Paul's enduring love ballads, including "Maybe I'm Amazed," "The Lovely Linda," "Long-Haired Lady," and "My Love," among others. They also share an Oscar nomination for the 1973 James Bond theme "Live And Let Die." Beginning in 1975, her newfound passion for vegetarianism leads her to publish three cookbooks (Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking, Linda's Kitchen, Simple and Inspiring Recipes for Meatless Meals) and a line of frozen vegetarian meals in 1991. Linda is diagnosed with breast cancer in 1995, which spreads to her liver, and she dies at the McCartney family ranch in Tucson, Arizona, after a three-year battle with the disease. Paul encourages fans to "go veggie" in her honor.
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