6 APRIL
Featured Events
2016 On his 79th birthday, Merle Haggard dies at his ranch in Northern California. Haggard placed 71 songs in the Top 10 of the Country chart during his lifetime.
1992 Annie Lennox releases her first solo album, Diva, with the hits "Why" and "Walking On Broken Glass."More
1980 Andrew Wood forms the group Malfunkshun in Seattle, Washington, marking what some consider the beginning of grunge. The music of Malfunkshun makes an impact on Wood's roommate Chris Cornell, who forms Soundgarden. Wood moves on to Mother Love Bone, and after he dies of a heart attack in 1990, that group adds Eddie Vedder and becomes Pearl Jam.
1974 Billy Joel scores his first Top 40 hit with "Piano Man," which comes in at #33 (it peaks at #25 two weeks later).
1974 ABBA become European stars overnight when their composition "Waterloo" wins the annual Eurovision Song Contest.More
6 APRIL
In Music History
2023 The series Beef airs on Netflix with a soundtrack that revives several songs from the '90s and '00s, including "Drive" by Incubus, "Self Esteem" by The Offspring, and "Lonely Day" by System of a Down.
2016 Hello Billboard, my old friend. Simon & Garfunkel's 1966 chart-topper "The Sound of Silence" peaks at #6 on the Hot Rock Songs chart thanks to its appearance in a meme involving Ben Affleck and his botched blockbuster Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice.More
2004 Rock and roll guitarist Niki Sullivan (of Buddy Holly's backing band The Crickets) dies at age 66 of a heart attack in Sugar Creek, Missouri.
2004 Wilco's frontman, Jeff Tweedy, checks into a rehabilitation center after developing an addiction to painkillers. A statement released by the band reads: "The treatment follows a well-documented history of Tweedy's battle with migraine headache."
2002 Sarah McLachlan gives birth to her first child, daughter India Ann Sushil Sood.
1999 Bob Weir and Mickey Hart of Grateful Dead appear at an Al Gore presidential fundraiser, with Gore's wife, notorious anti-rock crusader Tipper, playing congas.
1998 Tammy Wynette dies at age 55 after suffering numerous health problems.
1998 Wendy O. Williams (lead singer of Plasmatics) dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 48 in Storrs, Connecticut.
1998 On the TV show Murphy Brown, Candice Bergen's lead character turns 50, and her coworkers celebrate by recreating an episode of American Bandstand. Dick Clark, Chubby Checker, Fabian and Lesley Gore all make appearances.
1997 The Michael Jackson short film/theme ride Captain EO is shown for the last time at Disneyland.
1993 Tool disrupt the grunge genre's victory parade with Undertow, their visionary debut album. Aided by the distinctive and unsettling music videos for "Sober" and "Prison Sex" (directed by Adam Jones), the album sells two million copies and earns the band an ardent fan base.
1993 Bruce Hornsby releases his first solo album, Harbor Lights. Jerry Garcia, Pat Metheny, Bonnie Raitt, Branford Marsalis, and Phil Collins all make appearances on this jazzy recording.
1992 George Harrison performs his first full live solo concert since 1969, appearing in London in a benefit for the Natural Law political party.
1988 Barbara "Sandi" Robison falls ill during a performance in Butte, Montana. She's rushed to a hospital but never fully recovers. She dies from toxic shock a couple of weeks later.
1986 Composer John Longmire dies at his Guernsey home at age 85.
The Graduate Soundtrack Goes To #1
1968The Graduate soundtrack hits #1 in America thanks to Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson," which tops the Hot 100 less than two months later.
"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?" asks Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), who attempts to cure his post-college malaise by falling into bed with the middle-aged sex pot, played by Anne Bancroft, only to fall for her daughter. Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson," originally titled "Mrs. Roosevelt" after the former First Lady, is woven throughout the film in bits and pieces as the adulteress' theme, because that's all Simon had completed. After the movie, he fleshed out the song and it became a #1 hit less than two months after the soundtrack topped the albums chart. Other than an incidental score by Dave Grusin, "Mrs. Robinson" was the only song written expressly for the film. During post production, director Mike Nichols was listening to Simon & Garfunkel's album Sounds of Silence and used "the title song," "April Come She Will," and "Scarborough Fair," (from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme) as placeholders until he could replace them with original music, which the folk-pop duo was supposed to provide. It hadn't even crossed his mind to keep the existing songs; movies of the time didn't repurpose hits, and "The Sound of Silence" had already hit #1. But the music became so integral to the scenes, it became irreplaceable, especially "The Sound of Silence." "'Hello darkness, my old friend…' was what was happening in Benjamin's head," Nichols explained. "O'Steen [Sam, the film's editor] and I were beside ourselves, because we knew nothing else would work. We felt that the song expressed the deep depression he'd been in since he got home, an emotional suicide that he commits by starting to fuck Mrs. Robinson. At a certain point, movies just decide what they need."
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