Calendar Search Results: take it o
May 21, 1983 ZZ Top release their video for "Gimme All Your Lovin'," marking the first appearance of the Eliminator, Billy Gibbons' 1933 Ford Hot Rod. The car appears in three other ZZ Top videos and becomes closely associated with the band. Gibbons has another one built just like it to bring on tour.More
April 11, 1983 Dave Mustaine is kicked out of Metallica because of his drug and alcohol addictions. Soon after, he forms Megadeth, which becomes one of the most successful metal bands of the era.More
April 1, 1983 Exodus guitarist Kirk Hammett gets a phone call from manager Mark Whitaker, asking him to audition for Metallica. Hammett accepts, and several days later, is on a plane to New York for his tryout.
April 1, 1983 The second Men at Work album, Cargo, is released in America. The group's debut was released there less than a year earlier and is still getting airplay, leading to Men at Work saturation. Sudden success takes its toll on the group, which breaks up a few years later.
March 7, 1983 The English new wave duo Tears For Fears release their debut album, The Hurting, featuring the melancholic "Mad World." The album is inspired by the work of American psychologist Arthur Janov, founder of primal therapy.More
February 22, 1983 Styx release Kilroy Was Here, a concept album about a dystopian future where rock and roll is banned and technology has run amok.More
January 20, 1983 Kenny Loggins falls off the stage while making his entrance at a concert in Provo, Utah. The house lights are dimmed, so the crowd doesn't see it. The audience is stunned to learn that Loggins is being taken to the hospital, where he is treated for broken ribs. The show is rescheduled, and while recovering, Loggins writes the song "Footloose" with Dean Pitchford, providing the title track for the movie.
May 29, 1982 Paul McCartney's Tug Of War begins a three-week run at #1 in the US; it's his first album to top the chart since Wings broke up. The album features the chart-topping hit "Ebony And Ivory," a duet with Stevie Wonder, as well as the #10 single "Take It Away" and the John Lennon tribute "Here Today."
April 17, 1982 Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force release "Planet Rock," the first hip-hop hit with electronic elements and a rhythm powered by a Roland TR-808 drum machine. It's just the third rap song to reach the Hot 100, following "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang and "The Breaks" by Kurtis Blow.More
March 27, 1982 "Pac-Man Fever," a song about the arcade game that has America enthralled, cracks the Top 10, becoming the only song about a video game ever to do so.More
March 19, 1982 Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist Randy Rhoads, just 25, dies when he takes a plane ride with a pilot who tries to buzz Ozzy's tour bus. When the wing hits the bus, the plane crashes into a nearby house, killing Rhoads, the pilot, and the tour costume designer/hairdresser.
February 20, 1982 Pat Benatar marries her guitarist, Neil Giraldo. Many rock-and-roll and marriages flame out quickly, but this one takes. They have two children together and keep their musical partnership alive as well, with Giraldo stepping in as a producer.
February 19, 1982 Ozzy Osbourne urinates on a statue near the Alamo, desecrating a Texas landmark.More
October 2, 1981 The Police's fourth album is the last in a sequence of four annual autumn releases. The title, Ghost in the Machine, is taken from a psychology book by Arthur Koestler and breaks their erstwhile tradition of giving their records French-sounding titles. It is a #2 hit in the US, led by the hit single "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic."
September 21, 1981 Nicole Richie is born Nicole Escovedo in Berkeley, California. Born to percussion player Peter Escovedo, she is taken in by Lionel Richie and his wife Brenda at age 3, and adopted by the couple at 9. She becomes a popular socialite, starring with Paris Hilton on the reality show The Simple Life.
May 10, 1981 Kraftwerk release their eighth studio album, Computer World, featuring prescient songs about the influence of computers on society.More
March 31, 1981 At the first ever Golden Raspberry Awards (aka The Razzies), Neil Diamond takes home the prize for Worst Actor for his performance as Yussel Rabinovitch in The Jazz Singer. Laurence Olivier, who played Cantor Rabinovitch in the film, also scores a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor, an honor he shares with John Adames for Gloria.
March 28, 1981 Blondie's "Rapture" hits #1 on the Hot 100, becoming the first chart-topper with a rap.More
February 21, 1981 REO Speedwagon's ninth album, Hi Infidelity, goes to #1 in America, displacing John Lennon's Double Fantasy.More
January 15, 1981 Stevie Wonder leads a rally in Washington to get Martin Luther King's birthday declared an official holiday. He performs his song "Happy Birthday," written for King, which becomes a rallying call for the movement.More
December 14, 1980 At Yoko Ono's request, a 10-minute worldwide silent vigil takes place at 2:00 p.m. EST for John Lennon, who was shot and killed six days earlier. Lennon was cremated without a funeral, so the vigil is the public outpouring of support and mourning. A large crowd gathers in Central Park near where Lennon lived with Yoko to take part; this becomes a tradition on each anniversary of Lennon's death.
October 26, 1980 While recording the band's latest album, Paul Kantner of Jefferson Starship is taken to LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after he (correctly) suspects he's having a brain hemorrhage. His wife initially doesn't believe him, but eventually calls the hospital's front desk, requesting "would you please get an ambulance for this asshole?" He recovers after two weeks' hospitalization.
September 23, 1980 Bob Marley plays his final concert: a 20-song set at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh with his group, The Wailers.More
July 31, 1980 The Eagles split up after Glenn Frey and Don Felder go at it on stage.More
June 6, 1980 Urban Cowboy, a Western romance film starring John Travolta and Debra Winger, opens in theaters. The mellow country soundtrack spawns hits from Kenny Rogers, Johnny Lee, and Anne Murray, and spurs a trend of pop-leaning fare in country music dubbed the "Urban Cowboy Movement."More
February 7, 1980 At the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, Pink Floyd stage the first production of The Wall, an immersive concert performance in which a giant wall is erected on stage as the band plays, representing the alienation between audience and performer.More
January 16, 1980 Traveling to Japan for a tour with Wings, Paul McCartney packs about half a pound of marijuana in his luggage, which lands him 10 days in a Tokyo jail upon arrival. He had the weed in New York and wanted to bring it with him to smoke on tour, saying, "This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I thought I'd take it with me." After McCartney's arrest, Wings' tour of Japan is immediately canceled. Paul never plays another show with the band.
January 9, 1980 At The Fast Lane in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen takes the stage with the cover band Atlantic City Expressway to perform his song "The Promised Land." The group's lead singer is a 17-year-old high school kid named John Bongiovi, who later forms the band Bon Jovi.
December 21, 1979 Willie Nelson makes his acting debut in the Sydney Pollack film The Electric Horseman, starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. He also sings five songs for the soundtrack, including the #1 country hit "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys."More
November 30, 1979 Pink Floyd's album The Wall is released, seeing out the '70s in spectacular fashion as it sells over 13 million copies. The powerful concept album's themes of isolation and despair resonate with legions of fans, and it even spawns a #1 single - "Another Brick In The Wall (part II).More
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