Pick a Day

4 OCTOBER

In Music History

1996 Van Halen, who months earlier recorded two new songs with original lead singer David Lee Roth, shock fans by announcing their new lead singer will not be Roth but Gary Cherone from the band Extreme. The Cherone era results in one tour, one album, and little support from fans. The band finally reunites with Roth in 2007.

1996 Roger Miller is inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

1996 Fiddler Jerry Rivers (of The Drifting Cowboys, backing group for Hank Williams) dies of cancer.

1995 Alan Jackson wins the prestigious Entertainer of the Year award at the annual Country Music Association's award ceremony. Alison Krauss sweeps Top Female vocalist. Vince Gill wins Top Male vocalist.

1994 Guitarist Danny Gatton commits suicide in Newburg, Maryland, at age 49.

1991 R&B singer J. Frank Wilson dies at age 49, after years of alcohol abuse takes its toll.

1988 Determined to finally clean his system of the alcohol and drugs he's been abusing for years, Ringo Starr, along with wife Barbara Bach, flies to Tucson, Arizona, to enter the Sierra Tucson Rehabilitation Clinic. He stays six weeks.

1984 Lena Katina (of t.A.T.u.) is born Elena Sergeevna Katina in Moscow, Russia.

1981 The music variety show All Time Greats launches on BBC Radio 2 with "Up-Up and Away" by The 5th Dimension starting things off. The show, which is later re-named Desmond Carrington: The Music Goes Round, lasts 36 years.

1980 Fleetwood Mac members Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks join the USC Trojan Marching Band, which performed on their hit "Tusk," during halftime of the football game between USC and Arizona State. Nicks twirls a baton, Fleetwood plays a bass drum, and Buckingham mock conducts as the band plays the song. The USC band is then presented with a platinum record for their contribution.

1980 On stage during a concert in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carly Simon collapses from nervous exhaustion. She keeps going, but cancels the rest of her tour when she can't go on the next night. She doesn't perform again until 1987.

1980 Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust" goes to #1 in America, where it holds the top spot for three weeks.

1978 Tammy Wynette claims that on this day she was kidnapped from a Nashville shopping mall and then beaten and dumped by the side of the road. Wynette struggled with an addiction to prescription pain killers, which contributed to her death in 1998. Her daughter claimed that she made up the story about the kidnapping, possibly to explain bruises inflicted by her husband.

1975 Pink Floyd's album Wish You Were Here hits #1 in America.

1974 At a concert in Wales, Thin Lizzy introduce their new lineup, with new additions Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson providing a twin-guitar attack.