26 OCTOBER
Featured Events
2010 Keith Richards releases his autobiography, Life. His drug use is a big topic - here's a quote: "I loved a good high. And if you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses because they're asleep."
2002 Jessica Simpson marries Nick Lachey of the boy band 98 Degrees. The union lasts three years and is the subject of the MTV reality series Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica.
1993 Michael Jackson is awarded a patent for the system that allows him to lean in unnatural angles during performances of "Smooth Criminal." To recreate the video on stage, Jackson and his dancers wore special shoes that they could insert into pegs set up on stage for the famous lean.More
1985 Whitney Houston scores her first #1 on the Hot 100 when "Saving All My Love For You" reaches the top spot. She goes on a remarkable run, with her next six singles all topping the chart.
1976 The Mothership, a lander that descends to the stage when the band play "Mothership Connection," appears for the first time during P-Funk's show at the Municipal Auditorium in New Orleans.More
1973 The Who release Quadrophenia in the UK (the American debut is a week later). Like their 1969 album Tommy, it is a rock opera, this time centered on the character Jimmy, a mod on a search for meaning.
1970 Elton John releases "Your Song," which becomes his first hit.
26 OCTOBER
In Music History
2019 The beat-up sweater Kurt Cobain wore on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged special sells at auction for $334,000. After Cobain died, Courtney Love gave it to the family's nanny, who sold it to pay for cancer treatments.
2018 50 Cent uses Groupon to buy 200 tickets to an upcoming Ja Rule concert for $15 each, just so the seats will be empty. The rappers have been feuding since the '90s.
2013 Al Johnson (co-founder of The Unifics) dies at age 65.
2010 Results of Ozzy Osbourne's genome sequencing are revealed. The study shows that Ozzy has a very high predisposition for alcohol and cocaine addiction, and that he was partly descended from Neanderthals.
2007 Acting on the advice of director David Lynch, folk-pop icon and former student of the Maharishi, Donovan, begins drawing up plans for The Invincible Donovan University, a college for studying transcendental meditation.
2004 Apple introduces the U2 iPod, the first available in a color other than white (it's black with a red click wheel). It's promoted in a commercial where the band performs their new single, "Vertigo." This is the first time U2 allow their music be used in commercials and the start of a cozy relationship with Apple, which features their music on the iTunes store.
2004 Sugarland's debut album, Twice the Speed of Life, is released. It is the only Sugarland album to feature Kristen Hall, who leaves the band in 2005.
2001 Courtney Love plays her first-ever solo show at the Ventura Theatre in Ventura, California.
2000 The tree from U2's song "One Tree Hill" is taken down. Located in Auckland, New Zealand, the tree had been attacked by activists and had to be removed.
2000 The short-lived sitcom Cursed (aka The Weber Show), starring Steven Weber, debuts on NBC with its theme song, "Miss Fortune," written and performed by Liz Phair.
1999 Incubus release their breakthrough album, Make Yourself. The big hit is the third single, "Drive," which takes the long road and peaks at #9 in July 2001.
1999 German singer Rex Gildo dies at age 63, three days after jumping from the window of his apartment.
1999 Country singer Hoyt Axton, who wrote the Three Dog Night hit "Joy to the World," dies of a heart attack at age 61.
1998 Marilyn Manson begin their Mechanical Animals tour with a show in Kansas City.
Donnie Darko Revives "Mad World"
2001The science fiction film Donnie Darko, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a troubled teen who suffers from hallucinations, premieres in US theaters. The movie features Gary Jules' haunting cover of Tears For Fears' 1982 song "Mad World."
Donnie Darko's composer, Michael Andrews, and his longtime pal Jules recorded the stripped-down piano rendition of the synthpop hit when the film's director, Richard Kelly, couldn't secure the rights to U2's "MLK." Kelly loved the demo so much, he incorporated it into the end sequence of the film. The song turned out to be a perfect fit for the movie, as the title character is a 1980s teen struggling to survive with his own mad world spiraling out of control. A runaway hit, Jules' melodic take becomes the UK #1 Christmas single of 2003, 20 years after "Mad World" debuted on Tears For Fears' first album, The Hurting. And the duo couldn't be prouder. TFF's Roland Orzabal describes the moment Jules' cover hit #1: "I was in my 40s and had forgotten how I felt when I wrote all those Tears for Fears songs. I thought, 'Thank God for the 19-year-old Roland Orzabal. Thank God he got depressed.'"
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