11 MARCH
Featured Events
2018 American Idol, which ran for 15 seasons on Fox, returns on ABC just two years later with new judges Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan.
2006 The High School Musical soundtrack reaches #1 on the US albums chart, the first TV soundtrack album to top the tally since the Miami Vice soundtrack, which was #1 for eight weeks in 1985 and another three in 1986. Nine songs from the album make the Hot 100, led by "Breaking Free," sung by Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, which reaches #4.
2006 "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt goes to #1 in America. Blunt later explains that the song is "about a guy who's high as a f--king kite on drugs in the subway stalking someone else's girlfriend."
1972 Wings' "Give Ireland Back To The Irish" is listed at #23 in the Melody Maker chart. An article in the same issue reports it has been banned by the BBC as "unsuitable for broadcasting."
1972 Neil Young's album Harvest hits #1 in America, supplanting Don McLean's American Pie, which has been on top for seven weeks.
1903 Lawrence Welk, bandleader and host of the long-running Lawrence Welk Show, is born in Strasburg, North Dakota.
11 MARCH
In Music History
2019 Danny Kustow of the Tom Robinson Band dies at 63.
2019 Session drummer Hal Blaine, who played on hundreds of hit songs, dies at 90.
2017 Joni Sledge of Sister Sledge dies at age 60.
2016 Keith Emerson, the keyboard player and primary music composer in Emerson, Lake & Palmer, dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 71.
2015 Slipknot guitarist Mick Thomson and his brother, Andrew, are both rushed to the hospital after a knife fight with each other. According to police, the injuries are not life-threatening.
2015 Jimmy Greenspoon (keyboardist for Three Dog Night) dies of cancer, metastatic melanoma, at age 67.
2011 A pregnant Jewel is involved in a car accident when a volunteer fire truck slams into her Cadillac in Stephenville, Texas. Thankfully, no one is seriously injured.
2009 The Dead Weather, fronted by Alison Mosshart with Jack White on drums, make their debut performance at the opening of White's Third Man Records location in Nashville.
2008 Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony's newborn twins, Maximilian David and Emme Maribel, make their public debut in People. With a $6 million price tag, the exclusive photo is the most expensive celebrity picture ever taken at the time.
2008 Kid Rock returns to the Waffle House in Duluth, Georgia (where he was involved in a brawl the previous year), to hang out with Waffle House workers and customers as part of a charity meet-and-greet.
2004 Edmund Sylvers of The Sylvers dies of lung cancer at age 47.
2003 311 play their first "311 Day" concert at the State Palace Theatre in New Orleans, starting a tradition of playing special gatherings on March 11.
1995 Liz Phair marries film editor Jim Staskauskas. They divorce in 2001.
1994 The Supremes receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
1991 Pearl Jam begin recording their debut album, Ten, at London Bridge Studios in Seattle.
Paul McCartney Is Knighted
1997Thirty years after being admitted as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), Paul McCartney is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to popular music.
The honor is well overdue for the 54-year-old. As one half of the songwriting partnership behind the majority of The Beatles hits, McCartney is without doubt one the most influential musical artists of all time. After the Beatles' acrimonious split in 1969, he went on to enjoy massive commercial and critical success - first with Wings, and later as a solo artist. However, after fellow Beatle John Lennon snubbed the Queen by returning his MBE in 1969 (in protest against the Vietnam War), many media commentators suggested that the remaining Beatles' reputations had been irreparably tarnished in the eyes of the British establishment, even after Lennon's untimely death in 1980. McCartney is joined at the Buckingham Palace ceremony by three of his four children, but the Liverpool-born musician's day is tinged with sadness. His wife of 28 years - musician and activist Linda - is unable to attend due to her ongoing battle with breast cancer. The knighthood follows a renewed interest in The Beatles: a CD anthology of their work and two previously unheard singles were released in 1995, along with a six-hour TV series. After more than 10 fallow years, guitar-based music has returned to the British charts with a vengeance, and the music of the 1960s is being used as a blueprint for the Britpop movement. The patronage of contemporary stars such as Oasis' Noel Gallagher leads to a new, more youthful audience for McCartney, whose 1996 solo album Flaming Pie earns him his best reviews – and highest record sales - in more than a decade.
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