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.
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.
2001 The 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."More
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.
P-Funk's Mothership Makes First Landing
1976The 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.
For the 1975 Parliament album Mothership Connection, George Clinton and his cast of funk lords (including Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell) went interstellar, with Clinton taking the persona "Star Child," a visitor from space. On the album cover, he's seen emerging from a small craft found at a Los Angeles prop house - it was used in the 1951 sci-fi movie The Day The Earth Stood Still. But Clinton had bigger ideas for his stage show. He wanted something huge, something bigger than anything the dominant rock acts - Bowie, The Who, even The Rolling Stones - could conceive. He wanted a Mothership. With a loan from his label, Clinton commissioned Broadway designer Jules Fisher to build it. Twenty feet wide and 10 feet high, the Mothership weighs about 1500 pounds, has nine legs, and is rigged with an array of blinking lights. It's the centerpiece of their Earth Tour, a tricky undertaking because the group is used to improvising on stage - blending songs together, switching instruments, even bringing up audience members. With the Mothership, the concert has to be tightly choreographed. At the first show, the Mothership comes down at the beginning and provides the backdrop, but the band quickly learn that this is like setting off the fireworks at the start of the parade. They adapt by bringing it out in the middle of the show, after they've built up anticipation. It descends at the end of the song "Mothership Connection" while the band (and audience) sing: Swing down, sweet chariot Stop, and let me ride This refrain comes from a traditional gospel song called "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," which was sung by slaves in the 1800s, the "chariot" being transport out of their bonds and to a higher place. In P-Funk's world, the Mothership is the chariot, lifting all on board to their galactic destiny. When ship lands, there's a lot of smoke, then Dr. Funkenstein - another of George Clinton's alter egos, this one a pimp - emerges. The Mothership stays in service until 1981, when P-Funk starts to fracture from all their otherworldly adventures. A replica eventually lands in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, where it is on display.
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