3 DECEMBER
Featured Events
2015 Scott Weiland dies at age 48 when he suffers cardiac arrest on his tour bus in Bloomington, Minnesota, where his band The Wildabouts are scheduled to perform.More
2015 A live adaptation of The Wiz airs on NBC. Based on the book (but not the film) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Wiz began as a stage production in 1975, and was made into a movie (with Michael Jackson and Diana Ross) in 1978.More
1994 Adam Sandler performs "The Chanukah Song" on the Weekend Update segment of Saturday Night Live, enlightening us to the fact that Harrison Ford, Paul Newman and David Lee Roth (among many others) are, in fact, Jewish. Released as a single the following year, the song reaches #10 US and becomes a seasonal favorite.More
1979 Before The Who concert at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, 11 people are trampled to death and dozens are injured in a rush to enter the arena. Like many concerts of the day, there are no reserved seats, a practice known as "festival seating." The resulting controversy (and lawsuits) force promoters to rethink the practice.More
1968 A TV special simply called Elvis airs on NBC, drawing a huge audience and revitalizing the career of Elvis Presley. Footage from two June concerts makes up most of the special, which pays tribute to Bobby Kennedy with the closing number, "If I Can Dream."
1964 The animated TV special Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer debuts on CBS, with Burl Ives as the voice of Sam the Snowman. The special is based on the 1949 song, which has become a perennial favorite.More
1947 Patti Page records her first hit single, "Confess." Unable to find background singers due to a strike, Mercury Records sound engineer Bill Putnam overdubs Page's own vocals. It's the first-ever recording with overdubbed vocals.
3 DECEMBER
In Music History
2022 SZA performs two cuts from her album SOS on Saturday Night Live, but it's a song called "Cuffing Season" in the skit "Big Boys" - a celebration of hefty boyfriends - that takes off of TikTok.
2017 LL Cool J, 49, becomes the youngest person to receive a Kennedy Center Honor, and the first rapper to do so.
2016 Thanks to a spike in sales following his death, Leonard Cohen's original version of "Hallelujah" enters the Hot 100 at #59, giving Cohen his first entry on the chart.
2015 Crosby, Stills & Nash, which formed in 1968, finally implode at the White House National Christmas Tree Lighting concert when Stephen Stills throws a pick at David Crosby for talking over him. They get though a performance of "Silent Night," but never play together again.
2014 A fake MSNBC report claims that Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose has been found dead in his West Hollywood home. The band's official Facebook page posts photos of the singer with the caption "Ha! They say I'm dead -- again… Wait, what? WTF? It's a hoax. Guys. Get a life at ParadiseCity.com." The link references the band's online fan community.
2014 Ian McLagan (keyboardist for Small Faces, Faces) dies of a stroke at age 69.
2014 Graeme Goodall, an Australian recording engineer and co-founder of Island Records, dies at age 82.
2014 Sonny Bivins, leader of The Manhattans, dies at age 78.
2005 Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age marries Brody Dalle of The Distillers. They have three children before splitting up in 2019; much of the 2023 QOTSA album In Times New Roman... deals with their messy divorce.
2000 Kevin Mills, Newsboys' former bassist, is killed in a motorbike accident. He was 32.
1992 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards confirm the rumors that Bill Wyman, their bass player since 1962, will be leaving The Rolling Stones.
1988 Carole King and Gerry Goffin receive a Lifetime Achievement award from the US National Academy of Songwriters.
1984 "Do They Know It's Christmas?," the first charity single on a grand scale, is released in the UK with proceeds going to help famine victims in Ethiopia. It becomes the biggest-selling single in UK history, a record that stands until 1997 when it's overtaken by Elton John's updated version of "Candle In The Wind." The single is released in America a week later.
1983 Songwriter Irving Taylor dies in Los Angeles. He co-wrote "Everybody Loves Somebody," which later became a hit for Dean Martin.
1981 At a show in Hartford, Connecticut, AC/DC is prohibited from firing their cannons during "For Those About To Rock (We Salute You)," as police enforce an ordinance banning stage weaponry.
Madonna Defends "Justify My Love" On Nightline
1990Madonna appears on the news program Nightline, where she debuts her video for "Justify My Love," which MTV has refused to play. As the lascivious clip plays, Madonna provides commentary, answering questions from host Forrest Sawyer.
Co-written and produced by Lenny Kravitz, "Justify My Love" is one of a few original songs from Madonna's greatest hits album The Immaculate Collection and was released as its lead single on November 6. When the video fails to make it past MTV's censors, Madonna appears on Nightline to discuss the controversial clip and the topic of censorship. In the black-and-white video, we meet the scantily clad Material Girl in a hotel room, where she plans to fulfill the sexual fantasies she whispers about in the song. Joining her are an array of men and women in various stages of undress, waiting to take turns as both lovers and spectators. When asked by Nightline's Forrest Sawyer if there's a line she won't cross in her increasingly sexual works of art, the singer says she abhors violence and degradation against women, but she's against censorship of any kind. As far as the children who may be tuning into her X-rated exploits, Madonna thinks there's much more harmful content on the network. If her videos are going to be censored, she says, any videos with sensitive content should be. "If we're gonna have censorship, let's not be hypocrites about this. Let's not have double standards. I mean, why is it OK for 10-year-olds to see someone's body being ripped to shreds?" she asks. "Why do parents not have a problem with that? Why do they have a problem with two consenting adults displaying affection to each other, regardless of their sex?" The ban only fuels public interest in the raunchy clip, and folks buy more than a million copies of the video on VHS and MTV finally adds it to its late-night lineup. Controversy has always served Madonna well. Prior to the "Justify My Love" debacle, she took heat for her racy "Like A Prayer" video, which had her lusting after a priest and dancing in front of burning crosses. Both songs went to #1.
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