18 March

Pick a Day

18 MARCH

In Music History

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2023 Every track - all 36 of them - from Morgan Wallen's album One Thing at a Time lands in the Hot 100, breaking Drake's record of 27 set in 2017. Wallen's song "Last Night" claims the top spot.

2020 Gal Gadot posts a video of herself and a host of celebrities singing "Imagine" line-by-line from their places of quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic. It doesn't get the reaction she's after.More

2016 Gwen Stefani, recently split from Gavin Rossdale and dating Blake Shelton, releases This Is What the Truth Feels Like, her first solo album since 2006. The album deals with her divorce and subsequent renaissance - or you could say, "Gwenaissance."

2014 Joe Lala (drummer for The Blues Image) dies of lung cancer at age 66.

2011 Rock bassist Jet Harris (of The Shadows) dies of cancer at age 71.

2009 New Orleans singer/pianist Eddie Bo dies of a heart attack at age 78.

2008 Among other artists, Lou Reed, Damien Rice, and Moby take part in the Speak Up! concert (which benefits Iraq war veterans) held at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York.

2002 Members of The Doobie Brothers attend the wedding of Liza Minnelli and David Gest, who did PR for the band decades earlier. Also attending are Dionne Warwick and Petula Clark.

2002 Talking Heads play live for the first time since 1984 when they are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, The Ramones, Brenda Lee, Gene Pitney and Isaac Hayes.More

2001 Four teenage girls are crushed to death in a shopping mall in Indonesia, when hundreds of fans panic while trying to catch a glimpse of British boy band a1. The four band members cancel the rest of their tour in Asia.

2001 John Phillips (of The Mamas & the Papas) dies of heart failure at age 65.

1997 The second full-length album from Ben Folds Five is released, Whatever and Ever Amen. The album obtains platinum certification in the US, and spawns the group's biggest hit tune, "Brick."

1994 Kenner, Louisiana names a street "Lloyd Price Avenue" in honor of their native son.

1994 Courtney Love calls the police fearing that her husband, Kurt Cobain, is suicidal. Police confiscate four guns and 25 boxes of ammo from his home.

1994 Bassist Darryl Jones replaces Bill Wyman in The Rolling Stones.

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Neil Young Goes To #1 With "Heart Of Gold"

1972

Neil Young's "Heart Of Gold," with backing vocals by James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, goes to #1 in the US.

It's not like Neil Young to use understandable metaphors like, "I've been a miner for a heart of gold," a sentiment far more scrutable than anything found on his first three albums. The song finds him searching from Hollywood to Redwood for the girl of his dreams - a long way from "Down By The River." The lyric may be straightforward and a tad cliché, but the music is uncompromising. Recorded at a session in Nashville set up the night before (the first for Young's Harvest album), the musicians are all locals, including a pedal steel guitar player named Ben Keith, who made his mark on the 1961 Patsy Cline classic "I Fall To Pieces." After recording "Old Man," they do two takes of "Heart of Gold," which is all they need. The next day, Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor, who like Young are in Nashville to appear on The Johnny Cash Show, add backing vocals. Young, slowed by a debilitating back injury, completes the rest of Harvest over the next six months. Released in February 1972, it shoots to #1 in America on March 11. It stays there the next week as "Heart of Gold" claims the top spot on the Hot 100, putting Young in the position of reluctant hitmaker. Critics take him to task. "'Heart of Gold's' basic conceit would be laughed off the airwaves coming from another solo troubadour," sniffs Rolling Stone. Young does what he can to put some distance between him and his hit. His next three albums reflect the pain and heartache he feels from a series of setbacks: his son Zeke was born with cerebral palsy, and his friend Danny Whitten died of a drug overdose. "Heart of Gold" proves an abberation rather than a shift to the mainstream. "I thought the record was good, but I also knew that something else was dying," he says of it.

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