11 NOVEMBER
Featured Events
2008 Eighteen-year-old Taylor Swift releases her second album, Fearless, which goes on to sell over 10 million copies in America. Standout tracks include "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me."
1994 Christie's auction house in New York City holds their first-ever auction of rock memorabilia, including The Beach Boys' guitars, a stage outfit worn by Jimi Hendrix, and John Lennon's famous Army fatigues.
1986 David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright announce they are working on a new Pink Floyd album despite a lawsuit from original member Roger Waters trying to retire the group. The album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, is issued the following year; soon after, the lawsuit is settled.
1982 Prince begins his 1999 tour with a show in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The opening acts are two groups he put together in Minneapolis: The Time and Vanity 6.
1972 Berry Oakley (bassist for The Allman Brothers Band) dies at age 24 after a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia, just three blocks from the site of Duane Allman's fatal motorcycle crash a year earlier.
1970 Bob Dylan publishes his first novel, a poorly received stream-of-consciousness work called Tarantula.
1968 John Lennon and Yoko Ono release the album Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins with a cover photo of the pair naked. Many record stores stock it in a brown paper wrapper.More
11 NOVEMBER
In Music History
2012 INXS, with Ciaran Gribbin on lead vocals, play their last concert, performing at Perth Arena in Australia as the support act for Matchbox Twenty. The band had re-formed with various lead singers since the death of frontman Michael Hutchence in 1997.
2011 Black Sabbath announce they will reunite with their original lineup for a new album and tour in 2012. The press conference is hosted by Henry Rollins.
2007 John Petersen (drummer for Beau Brummels, Harper's Bizarre) dies of a heart attack at age 65.
2005 Billy Joel begins touring again, launching his first solo tour in eight years.
2004 M'hammed Soumayah, bodyguard for Liza Minnelli, sues the singer for $100 million for allegedly forcing him to have sex with her or be fired.
2003 The owner of a pub in Wiltshire, England, is awarded £40,000 in damages after suing Van Morrison for pulling out of a scheduled performance at the pub in the summer of 2002 at the last moment.
2003 At the emotional funeral for Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield, Bill Medley, the remaining half of the famous blue-eyed-soul duo, sings the gospel standard "Precious Lord."
2002 The Cure play the first of two Trilogy Concert shows at the Tempodrom Berlin, which sees them performing their dark trio of albums - Pornography, Disintegration, and Bloodflowers - in their entirety. The concerts are filmed and released on a double live album DVD set the following year.
2000 The original Meters reunite for one - and only one - gig in San Francisco, their first since 1977.
1999 A teenaged Britney Spears wins for Best Female, Best Pop, Breakthrough Artist and Best Song ("Baby One More Time") at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Dublin.
1998 Madrid band Jarabe De Palo tops the 45th Premios Ondas in Barcelona, winning for Best Album (Depende) and Best Video. Other winners include Alejandro Sanz for Best Song ("Corazon") and Ella Baila Sola, Best Group. The Ondas are organized by media group Prisa through Radio Barcelona.
1997 At a Tower Records in-store performance in New York City, Green Day trash the place, smashing instruments, pouring beer on the CD racks, and spray painting the windows. Their label happily pays the $50,000 in damage as Green Day prove they're still punk to the core.
1997 Following in the footsteps of Garth Brooks, Metallica holds a free concert in Philadelphia to celebrate the release of their newest album, Re-Load.
1994 Billy Vera, Micky Dolenz of The Monkees and Rick Neilsen of Cheap Trick all appear on the TV show Boy Meets World in the episode "Band on the Run."
1993 James Brown appears on The Simpsons in the episode "Bart's Inner Child."
Michael Jackson Crowns Himself King Of Pop
1991Per Michael Jackson's wishes, one week before his controversial "Black Or White" music video airs, a memo circulates at MTV instructing the network's on-air personnel to refer to Jackson as the King of Pop at least twice a week during the next two weeks.
Tom Freston, chairman and CEO of MTV, doesn't mind doing a little ring kissing in exchange for rights to air the "Black Or White" video. After all, the memo assures staff members, "Fox and BET are already doing this," and no one wants to miss out on what could be the next "Thriller." "The fact is that a lot of people have changed their names recently," Freston reasons. "M.C. Hammer is now Hammer and Michael Jackson is 'The King of Pop.' Who are we to stand in front of the wheels of progress? Whatever they want to call themselves, we try and oblige." From the perspective of Jackson's apprehensive marketing team, including Epic Records executive Dan Beck, the singer's bid for royal status could be disastrous. Especially since the singer was moonwalking into strange territory as of late, with claims of skin-whitening and numerous plastic surgeries filling the tabloids inspiring the nickname "Wacko Jacko," not to mention his supposed purchase of the Elephant Man's bones. "Our feeling was that radio was going to just roll their eyes and say, 'Screw you!,'" Beck explains in a Songfacts interview. Come premiere night, however, "Black Or White" draws approximately half a billion viewers across three networks. The newly minted King of Pop takes fans on an 11-minute trip around the world, dancing with various tribes, hanging with Macaulay Culkin and fighting racism along the way. Throw in some simulated masturbation and violent destruction of property and you have the hottest video on MTV.
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