26 APRIL
Featured Events
2013 Country singer George Jones dies at age 81 from hypoxic respiratory failure, just a couple weeks after his final concert in Knoxville, Tennessee.
2003 The Morgan Creek Bridge in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is renamed the James Taylor Bridge in honor of the singer, who mentioned it in his song "Copperline."
1994 Live release their third album, Throwing Copper. It very slowly finds an audience as radio stations and MTV warm to tracks like "Lightning Crashes" and "I Alone." The album goes to #1 in America a year after its release and sells over 8 million copies.
1986 Van Halen prove there is life after David Lee Roth as their album 5150, their first with Sammy Hagar, hits #1 in the US for the first of three weeks.More
1977 The most famous club of the disco era, Studio 54, opens for business at 254 West 54th Street in New York City. Over the next three years, celebrity guests include Cher, Elton John, Michael Jackson, Brooke Shields, and Liza Minnelli. Donald Trump and his wife, Ivana, attend on opening night.
1977 Jim Steinman's play Neverland opens at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Five months later, three of the songs he wrote for the production appear on Meat Loaf's seminal album Bat Out Of Hell, which would become one of the 10 best-selling albums of all time.
1969 Walter Carlos's album Switched-On Bach, notable for being the first successful album to remix classical music compositions on the newly-invented Moog synthesizer, reaches #10 on the Billboard Albums chart. The popularity of the album is the commercial breakthrough for Moog synthesizers, which go on to be part of the soundtrack in the films Tron, The Shining, and A Clockwork Orange. This in part brings synthesized music to mainstream popularity, paving the way for disco (especially the 'hi-NRG' style) in the '70s.
1969 "Oh Happy Day" by The Edwin Hawkins Singers enters the Hot 100 at #72, becoming the first pure gospel song to make that chart. More
26 APRIL
In Music History
2023 Pras Michel of Fugees is found guilty of acting as a go-between for a Malaysian businessman trying to gain access to the United States government on behalf of China. Details are Byzantine, but it's clear a lot of money flowed through Pras.
2017 Father John Misty releases his video for "Total Entertainment Forever," which stars Macaulay Culkin as a crucified Kurt Cobain.More
2013 Deep Purple release Now What?!, their first album produced by Bob Ezrin.
2013 X marks the spot for the Ohio-born Twenty One Pilots, who pledge their devotion to their hometown fans by getting "X" tattoos midway through a performance at the Lifestyles Community Pavilion in Columbus. Frontman Tyler Joseph tells the crowd: "This X is dedicated to you guys. Columbus, Ohio is where we're from and it will always be where we are from. Whenever someone asks what that X means, I am going to say this is for all of you."
2011 The Voice debuts on NBC with coaches Adam Levine, Christina Aguilera, CeeLo Green and Blake Shelton, who each choose teams of contestants who then compete against each other. Levine's pick Javier Colon goes on to win. The series is a hit and draws lots of famous names as coaches in subsequent seasons, including Kelly Clarkson, Pharrell Williams and Usher.
2011 Folk singer-songwriter Phoebe Snow dies at age 60 after being in a coma for three months due to a cerebral hemorrhage.
2006 Country singer Kellie Pickler gets voted off Season Five of American Idol.
2005 Amerie releases "Touch."
2005 Bruce Springsteen releases Devils & Dust.
2004 Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy) makes his Broadway debut starring as Walter Lee Younger in the revival of A Raisin In The Sun.
2003 David Cassidy guests on the CBS show The Agency.
1999 English post-punk rocker Adrian Borland (The Sound, The Outsiders) commits suicide at age 41 by throwing himself under a train at London's Wimbledon Station.
1991 A tribute concert for Tim Buckley, who died in 1975 at 28, is held at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn. It's the first time his son, Jeff Buckley, performs his father's music.
1984 Count Basie, famed jazz pianist and orchestra leader, dies of pancreatic cancer at age 79.
1982 Rod Stewart is mugged on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard.
The Last Waltz Opens In Theaters
1978The Last Waltz, director Martin Scorsese's acclaimed documentary of The Band's star-studded last concert, opens in theaters. The film features performances by Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, The Staple Singers and Dr. John.
The Last Waltz is shot in 35-millimeter film rather than the customary 16, a risky proposition because the 35-millimeter cameras have never run continuously for very long, and many fear they'll burn out. Scorsese, however, is adamant that only 35 millimeter can do the concert justice. He goes ahead with the plan and the cameras mercifully hold up. The cinematographers operating the cameras are among the best in the business, with Raging Bull's Michael Chapman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind's Vilmos Zsigmond, and Easy Rider's László Kovács. The farewell concert depicted in the film takes place in San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom. A set from a San Francisco Opera production of La traviata appears as the stage backdrop. Crystal chandeliers hang over the stage. The film captures several giants of the music world performing along with the Band. Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Joni Mitchell, and many others are there. Stephen Stills and some poets doing spoken-word pieces don't make the cut, and also deleted from the film is a smudge of cocaine under Neil Young's nose. All overt signs of cocaine use are hidden in the film, in fact, but observers can see the drug's presence in some of the wired-up performances - particularly Young's. Cocaine had been present at the show in large quantities, all part of the celebratory atmosphere cultivated for the event. The film receives lavish critical praise, instantly touted as one of the great concert films ever made, with only a couple prominent detractors issuing negative reviews. One of those detractors, however, is the Band's Levon Helm, who feels the movie is made to look as if Robbie Robertson was the only member who really mattered. He calls it "The biggest f--kin' rip off that ever happened to The Band."
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