6 DECEMBER
Featured Events
2004 Mötley Crüe announce their "reunion/farewell tour," with drummer Tommy Lee returning to the fold after a 5-year absence. It is not their farewell: They tour every year until 2015, when they finally call it quits.
1995 Coolio wins Single Of The Year for "Gangsta's Paradise" at the Billboard Music Awards. When he performs the song at the ceremony, he is joined by Stevie Wonder, whose "Pastime Paradise" is the basis for Coolio's track.
1994 Bush release their debut album Sixteen Stone, which takes off in America but is largely ignored in their native England.More
1993 At a video shoot for Travis Tritt's remake of the Eagles' "Take It Easy," the Eagles themselves reunite and decide to re-form for new songs and a tour.More
1988 Roy Orbison, in the midst of a career resurgence thanks to his supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, dies of heart failure at age 52. His album Mystery Girl, completed at the time of his death, is released in January 1989.
1977 Jackson Browne releases Running On Empty, a live album compiled from performances at various stops on his summer tour. Live albums typically rely on songs that have already been released, but this one features all new songs, the first major rock album to do so.
1975 Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years album hits #1 in America, his first solo album to top the chart.
1969 The Rolling Stones headline the Altamont concert at a speedway in California. It's a free event with Jefferson Airplane and Santana also on the bill, but it turns violent when the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, who are hired as security, kill a crowd member. The concert is documented in The Stones movie Gimme Shelter.More
6 DECEMBER
In Music History
2021 Drake, a longtime critic of the Grammy Awards, turns down his two nominations, joining The Weeknd in boycotting the awards.
2015 Carole King is celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors, where 73-year-old Aretha Franklin brings the audience to its feet with her rendition of "You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman," one of many classic songs written by King.More
2013 After its authenticity is verified on the PBS series History Detectives, the Fender Stratocaster that Bob Dylan played in his historic performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 is purchased for an astounding $965,000. It had spent the previous 48 years with the family of Dylan's personal pilot, who received no reply when he told Dylan to retrieve the gear he left behind.
2012 Metallica end their streaming holdout, allowing their music on Spotify for the first time.
2011 Soul singer Dobie Gray dies of complications from cancer surgery at age 71.
2011 Barbara Orbison, the second wife and widow of Roy Orbison, dies 23 years to the day after her husband.
2009 Weezer's tour bus crashes, forcing them to cancel the rest of their tour. Frontman Rivers Cuomo is injured, but is back in action six weeks later.
2009 President Obama greets honorees Bruce Springsteen and Robert DeNiro during the reception for the Kennedy Center Honors in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC.
2006 On her third wedding anniversary to Elvis Costello, Diana Krall gives birth to twin boys, Dexter Henry Lorcan and Frank Harlan James.
2005 T-Pain, 20, releases his first solo album, Rappa Ternt Sanga, the first major release with an Auto-Tune effect on every song. Soon, Auto-Tune is everywhere, with Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Migos and many other rappers embracing it.
2003 Elvis Costello marries jazz singer Diana Krall at Elton John's London estate.
2000 Tina Turner wraps up her wildly successful Millennium 2000 Twenty Four Seven tour with a show in Anaheim, California. She claimed it would be her last stadium tour, but it is not - she hits the road again in 2008.
1995 Michael Jackson collapses in a New York theater during a rehearsal for an upcoming TV special and is hospitalized.
1989 The Grateful Dead play the Earthquake Relief Fund Benefit at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum to help raise funds for victims of the Loma Prieta earthquake. They open their act, fittingly, with "Shakedown Street."
1988 Guitarist Bill Harris (of The Clovers) dies of pancreatic cancer in Washington, DC, at age 63.
The Ultimate Goodbye Song Hits #1
1969Steam's "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye," the ultimate "see ya later" song, hits #1 in America.
The song started life as "Kiss Him Goodbye," which a group called the Chateaus started writing in 1961. In 1969, Paul Leka of the Chateaus was producing Gary DeCarlo (Chateaus lead singer), when they needed a B-side for DeCarlo's single. They decided to revive "Kiss Him Goodbye," but the song didn't have a chorus. Leka improvised one, using "na na" and "hey hey" instead of coherent words. In an all-night session, they recorded the song, using the goofy group chant at the beginning and then over and over at the end - it was a B-side, after all. When an A&R man at the label heard it, he decided it should be an A-side credited to a group, which they called Steam. When the song started climbing the charts, an actual group was needed to promote it, so one was assembled - without DeCarlo. The song takes the top spot from The Beatles, who reigned with "Come Together," and spends two weeks at #1. After it fades from the charts, the song is rarely heard on the radio, but often sung at sporting events and other occasions when a mocking goodbye is in order. Since the song starts with the chorus, those first 20 seconds are typically all that's needed. There are verses that tell a story as old as time: The guy wants the girl to "say goodbye" to her boyfriend and get with him, since he'll treat her right.
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