Don't Stop the Music E-Book

Justin Lewis

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 376

Beschreibung

'The deliciously simple conceit ― pop facts from every day of the year ― lets Lewis roam wide and free, to fascinating effect.' Daily Mail, 2023's best history booksWith entries for every day of the year, ranging from mini-essays to pithy and engaging sentences, Don't Stop the Music is a novel musical companion – a way of charting your year through the major events and tiny incidents in the lives and careers of pop stars and recording artists, spanning 130 years of unmissable musical milestones from 1894 to the present day.Whether it be when pop became newsworthy; when future stars attended notable gigs; when that K-Pop act issued their first single; or when Elvis Presley found himself on TV singing 'Hound Dog' to a basset hound, there are surprising and enlightening events from the history of popular music for every single day of the year. And esteemed music writer Justin Lewis has compiled them all for you, informatively and divertingly.***'A wonderful ride through our pop universe amongst thousands of bright stars, gnarled debris and twinkling nuggets of music and events made distant over time. Lewis has made all of it up-close and vivid through this indispensable companion for anyone who loves music and popular culture. Whatever the age of the reader, it's brimming with new discoveries and triggering classics: memories and signposts make this an intoxicating music journey!' Peter Curran'This is an astonishing book, a calendar of pop, an almanac of songs, a day by day in the life of music. A book of events that's an event in itself.' David Quantick'An absolute must for all music fans, Lewis' addictive volume is packed to the gills with facts, trivia, notable events and pure pop nuggets.' Waterstones'A brilliant musical almanac, compiled by an engaging writer whose musical knowledge is not just detailed but wide-ranging and generous.' Jonathan Coe

Leseprobe

For my mother Jennette and my nephew Harry,with love, and for those we have lost along the way,especially Viv, Jonathan, Enid and Ruben.

CONTENTS

Introduction

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

Don’t Stop the Music is a history of pop, but arranged a little differently. It could have been a linear trip through history, beginning in 1950 or so, and winding up in the 2020s. Instead, we’re going to begin on 1 January and end on 31 December, while sampling the years seemingly at random.

So, for each day of the calendar year, yes including the unsung 29 February, we’ve selected some events from pop’s annals: births and deaths, record releases and live shows, TV and radio, introductions and departures, encounters and coincidences. Consider it a kaleidoscopic sampling exercise, pinballing across the decades in, hopefully, a genre-defying fashion.

When I started researching and selecting the material for this book, it occurred to me that events in any kind of history fall into two main categories: the planned (Live Aid is a good example here) and (much more commonly) the unexpected.

I was especially drawn to the early days of a song or an artist. How far back can you trace the origin of something, the eureka of inspiration? Especially when I found examples by artists whose careers have not already been presented as literal day-by-day itineraries.

One of the things that forever interests me about history in general is the way events happen simultaneously, but independently of each other. I love the word ‘meanwhile’ – one event takes place somewhere, while another one is unfolding thousands of miles away. Especially fascinating back in the pre-digital age, before most of the globe was connected.

I don’t know why I have a penchant for dates and anniversaries. I have for as long as I can remember. I enjoy that they are both random and accidental. Who knows what events get remembered, and why, while others are discarded and forgotten and should be reappraised? And the randomness comes to mean something in itself. Why are we interested in who or what shares our birthday?

Before we get to business, a few disclaimers.

We decided in the end not to include an index. There was a specific reason for this, and it wasn’t just so that we didn’t have to have the ‘why is my favourite group not included?’ discussion. Honest. We have included about 900 artists or so, so there’s a fair chance at least some of your favourites have made it to publication.

No, the reason for no index is a creative one. We wanted the book to be a little more than a dipping-in exercise. Sure, we understand that you’ll look up your own birthday first, you’re only human. But once that’s out of the way, the book is constructed to tell a story through hundreds of fragments. The story of music, of trends, of technology, from the songs that immediately made an impact to the ones that were almost completely ignored at the time, but have since had seismic effects on the direction of popular music and entertainment. Nobody can guarantee what will break through, or predict what will be recalled.

We hope to have mixed up the memorable and the underrated in what follows. And we hope you enjoy the ride.

Justin LewisMarch 2023

A few additional notes before we begin:

I have used several abbreviations throughout the book:

•   BOTD – born on this day

•   DOTD – died on this day

•   ROTD – released on this day

Where release dates vary in different territories, I have usually opted for the earliest, or in the artist’s or group’s country of origin. Often, especially between the mid-1980s and 2015 (after which just about everything came out on a Friday), new releases came out on Mondays in the UK, and Tuesdays in the US, even by US acts. In these cases, I have gone with the Monday date, which is often not what Wikipedia says.

Still there? Ah. Anyway, I am on Twitter and Threads at @WhenIsBirths, should you (politely please – cheers!) wish for further explanations that are too niche even for these pages.

Unless stated, highest chart positions for the US refer to those compiled by Billboard magazine. Chart positions for the UK refer to a succession of sources, all now owned under one archive by current compilers Official Charts.

JANUARY

1 JANUARY

1958Johnny Cash plays the first of many concerts at San Quentin State Prison, California. He and his band are touring the west coast of the US when they are asked at short notice to take part in the traditional New Year’s Day extravaganza staged by the San Francisco Musician’s Union for the prison’s 4,000 inmates. Accepting the invitation, Cash appears on the bill alongside dancers and a 17-piece jazz ensemble, although his bass guitarist Marshall Grant is forbidden from bringing in a toy pistol (a standard prop in their stage act).

In the captive audience is 20-year-old Merle Haggard, serving a 15-year sentence for petty crimes. ‘[Cash] had the right attitude,’ Haggard later recalls. ‘He chewed gum, looked arrogant and flipped the bird to the guards. When he walked away, everyone in that place had become a Johnny Cash fan.’

Granted early parole in 1960, Haggard later embarks on his own career as a country-and-western singer. In 1969, the same year that Cash’s At San Quentin live album is released, he guests on Cash’s national TV show, where the pair duet on ‘Sing Me Back Home’. Three years later, Haggard is pardoned for his past teenage crimes by the governor of California, and future US president, Ronald Reagan.

1962The Beatles record five songs as an audition for Decca Records but will be turned down by the label in favour of the Dagenham group Brian Poole and the Tremeloes.

1964 The BBC relaxes its ‘artists don’t mime’ rule on its pop music shows as the first edition of Top of the Pops is broadcast at 6.35 p.m. from a converted Methodist chapel in Manchester. Appearing are Dusty Springfield, The Rolling Stones and The Hollies. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ by The Beatles is at #1. Meanwhile, in a Hollywood studio, The Beach Boys are recording ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’.

1990 Florida rock radio station WKRL begins a two-week marathon as a Led Zeppelin-only station by playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ nonstop for 24 hours.

2 JANUARY

1926 Songwriter Horatio Nicholls adorns the front cover of Melody Maker, his own new music newspaper. Across its 74-year run, it will champion jazz, popular music and eventually indie-rock.

1986 ROTD: The Bangles’ Different Light album, which opens with their breakthrough ‘Manic Monday’ single (written by Prince under the name ‘Christopher’).

1994 Who’s the only artist to have a UK #1 with ‘Twist and Shout’? The Isley Brothers? The Beatles? No – it’s Jamaican duo Chaka Demus & Pliers.

1995 ROTD: ‘Glory Box’ by Portishead. Based around a string sample from ‘Ike’s Rap 2’ by Isaac Hayes, the track will peak at UK #13.

3 JANUARY

1926 BOTD: George Martin, record producer for not just The Beatles but also Cilla Black, Elton John, Ultravox and Celine Dion. Martin also worked on three #1 singles for Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1963, whose frontman Gerry Marsden DOTD in 2021.

1976 Scottish teen idols the Bay City Rollers briefly make a splash Stateside when their single ‘Saturday Night’ reaches US #1. A flop in the UK on its previous release in 1973, the track’s chanting style is credited by Tommy Ramone as a sizeable influence on the Ramones’ debut single ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’.

1987 Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, just as her ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)’ duet with George Michael is about to hit UK #1 and US #2.

4 JANUARY

1967 ROTD: For their debut LP, The Doors become the first major rock band to be advertised on billboard hoardings, which bear the slogan, ‘Break on through with this electrifying album!’

1969 On Lulu’s BBC TV Saturday night variety show, Happening for Lulu, closing guest act The Jimi Hendrix Experience halt their live rendition of ‘Hey Joe’ (‘We’re gonna stop playing this rubbish’) in favour of a freewheeling, impromptu take on ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, as a tribute to Cream, who have recently announced their dissolution.

As a result, the group is banned by BBC Television, but thanks to the efforts of canny archivists – mindful of how easily footage could be wiped in those days – the clip has survived. Watching at home, at least one teenage viewer, Declan MacManus, will keep it in mind; eight years later, as Elvis Costello, he disrupts the flow of NBC’s Saturday Night Live when he and the Attractions suddenly abandon their agreed performance of ‘Less Than Zero’ in favour of their raucous new protest song ‘Radio, Radio’. ‘They’ve run that clip forever,’ Costello later says. ‘But I was copying Jimi Hendrix.’

Incidentally, at the time of the Lulu appearance, Hendrix is recovering from a leg injury he suffered in New York over the Christmas period, and is preparing for a live concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, although his preferred choice of MC (Spike Milligan) will be unavailable.

1971 Controversial film Performance, starring Mick Jagger, premieres in London, over two years after it was made. Its dialogue will later be sampled for tracks by Happy Mondays and in Big Audio Dynamite’s 1986 chart hit, ‘E=MC2’.

2010 ROTD: New York singer-songwriter Lizzy Grant uses her new stage name, inspired by the actor Lana Turner and the Ford del Rey sedan, for her first album: Lana del Ray. Soon after, she changes the spelling to ‘del Rey’. All eight of her subsequent albums to date have reached the top 10 around the world with major label Universal, but this initial one languishes in obscurity.

5 JANUARY

1965TheSupremes begin recording ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’ at Motown’s Hitsville USA Studio A. The single will become their fourth consecutive US #1.

1973 ROTD: Two enduring rock acts unveil debut albums. From Boston comes Aerosmith, with their self-titled album, while Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. introduces 23-year-old Bruce Springsteen.

1975The Wiz, the multi-Tony winning African American remake of The Wizard of Oz co-written by Luther Vandross, opens on Broadway. Portraying Dorothy is future soul hitmaker Stephanie Mills.

1984 At UK #35 and heading for #1, Frankie Goes to Hollywood perform ‘Relax’ on Top of the Pops for the only time in the record’s original chart run; a week later it is banned by BBC radio and TV when Radio 1 DJ Mike Read sees the explicit artwork and content of the single sleeve, despite it having been played over 70 times on Radio 1 already (including once on Christmas morning 1983). Though the suggestive lyrics also presented a problem, Read claims it was the sleeve that made up his mind.

6 JANUARY

1964 With TheRonettes as opening act, TheRolling Stones begin their first full tour of the UK in Harrow, Middlesex.

1976 ROTD: Peter Frampton’s double album Frampton Comes Alive!, which will become the best-selling live album of the 1970s in the US.

1977 EMI Records terminates the Sex Pistols’ recording contract. The group go on to sign, briefly, with A&M, before a longer association with Richard Branson’s Virgin label, where they will record a withering take-down of their former record company in their track ‘E.M.I.’.

1981John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ single posthumously reaches UK #1, 10 years after it was recorded and almost a month after he was murdered in New York.

7 JANUARY

1954 In Chicago, Muddy Waters records Willie Dixon’s ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, which will become Waters’ biggest hit, inspiring a future generation of rock’n’roll pioneers.

1962 DJ Alan Freeman’s BBC Radio chart show Pick of the Pops moves from Saturday night to Sunday afternoons, establishing the slot for decades thereafter as the new home of the British top 20.

1986 A revamped version of their 1984 single ‘West End Girls’ becomes the first of four UK #1 singles for Pet Shop Boys. Inspiration for its lyric came partly from Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and an old Jimmy Cagney film that singer Neil Tennant once caught on late-night television.

8 JANUARY

1937 BOTD: Shirley Bassey, the only singer to record two James Bond film themes, namely ‘Goldfinger’ (1964) and ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ (1971), is born in Tiger Bay, Cardiff, to a Nigerian father and a mother from Teesside.

1968 ROTD: A month after his death in a plane crash comes Otis Redding’s ‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay’ (US #1, UK #3), a paean to isolation that he had begun writing on a houseboat in California in August 1967.

2013 ROTD: On his 66th birthday, with no advance warning, David Bowie breaks a near 10-year recording silence with ‘Where Are We Now?’, a reflection on his time in Berlin, where he lived during the late 1970s. For his comeback, he is reunited with his regular collaborative producer, Tony Visconti.

2016 Exactly three years later, Bowie and Visconti’s Blackstar is unveiled. The artist had always been inspired by new music, and his 26th studio album, recorded over four months in early 2015, is no exception, with influences including Kendrick Lamar, Boards of Canada and D’Angelo. Many of the personnel on the record have a jazz background, with Visconti later explaining to Mojo: ‘Having jazz guys play rock music turns it upside down.’

For the first time, a David Bowie album has no picture of the artist on its sleeve. It proves to be his final album: the following Monday morning, it is announced on the world’s media that he has died of liver cancer.

2016 Several artists have been simultaneously #1 and #2 in the UK singles chart – The Beatles, Madonna and Frankie Goes to Hollywood among them – but with ‘Love Yourself’, ‘Sorry’ and ‘What Do You Mean?’ Justin Bieber becomes the first to monopolise #1, #2 and #3.

9 JANUARY

1943 BOTD: Scott Walker in Hamilton, Ohio, as Noel Scott Engel. In 1964, he will join forces with the unrelated John Maus and Gary Leeds to form The Walker Brothers trio. Incidentally, the final ever Walker Brothers single, ‘The Electrician’ (1978) substantially influences Ultravox’s ‘Vienna’, ROTD in 1981.

1963 Graphic designer and drummer with Blues Incorporated, Charlie Watts, joins The Rolling Stones.

1981 ROTD: ‘In the Air Tonight’, with its memorable gated reverb drum sound, marks Phil Collins’ debut as a solo performer.

1995 ROTD: Massive Attack’s ‘Protection’, with fragments of James Brown’s ‘The Payback’, is enhanced by the vocals of Tracey Thorn, who the group approached as big fans of her 1982 song ‘Plain Sailing’.

10 JANUARY

1917 BOTD: Jerry Wexler, later to become one of the top soul record producers, responsible for classic hits such as Ray Charles’ ‘What I’d Say’, Aretha’s ‘Respect’ and Wilson Pickett’s ‘Mustang Sally’.

1949 Nine years in development, RCA Victor announces the 7-inch single 45 rpm record, which can house up to eight minutes of sound on each side. Portable, cheap to produce and affordable for young consumers, it becomes a major factor in the subsequent rise of rock’n’roll.

1994 ROTD: ‘Cornflake Girl’ by Tori Amos. A ‘cornflake girl’ is what you would call a woman close to you who betrays you, explains Amos of her new single (UK #4), while raisin girls, who are open to new ideas, are harder to find. Possibly her cereal bowl metaphor was inspired by her appearance in a Kellogg’s commercial in 1987. But further ideas for the song came after Amos read Alice Walker’s novel on female genital mutilation, Possessing the Secret of Joy.

2007 ROTD: Robyn’s ‘With Every Heartbeat’. A collaboration with fellow Swede and producer Kleerup, and inspired by the unlikely dual influences of Giorgio Moroder and ZZ Top, the song peaks at #23 in Sweden, but #1 in the UK.

11 JANUARY

1895 BOTD: Laurens Hammond is born in Illinois. He will invent the Hammond organ, first manufactured in 1935, and three years later will also develop the first polyphonic synthesiser, the Novachord, a haunting counterpoint to Vera Lynn on her 1939 recording of ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

1971 BOTD: Mary J. Blige is born in the Bronx. After becoming a telephone operator on the 411 local directory line prior to her singing career, Blige will appropriately go on to call her first album What’s the 411? It will spawn a pioneering remix album in which every track features a guest rapper.

1982 ROTD: ‘Mickey’ by Toni Basil. A flop on its first outing in 1981, ‘Mickey’ becomes an international smash for Basil, who has been chiefly known until this point as a choreographer (for the film American Graffiti, and Talking Heads’ ‘Once in a Lifetime’ video). The song began life under the title ‘Kitty’ as a vehicle for the British group Racey in 1979, but Basil’s masterstroke was to add a high-school chant to the retitled track. ‘That’s where I probably got all my choreography background,’ she later explains, ‘because I was always head cheerleader.’

1985 In Brazil, the first Rock in Rio festival opens with a bill of headliners including Queen, Iron Maiden, Whitesnake (a substitution for Def Leppard), and homegrown artists like Baby Consuelo e Pepeu Gomes, Erasmo Carlos and Ney Matogrosso. Over a million people will attend the 10 days of events.

12 JANUARY

1944 BOTD: Cynthia Robinson in Sacramento. Initially discouraged from pursuing her career as a trumpeter (the instrument was seen as ‘unfeminine’), her potential will later be spotted by Sly Stone for his Family Stone group, in which she will also excel as a vocalist.

1955 ROTD: ‘The Wallflower (Roll With Me, Henry)’ by Etta James (a #1 on the US R&B chart) is intended to be about dancing, but many US radio stations have a different interpretation . . .

1959 In Detroit, Berry Gordy launches a new record company, Tamla, which boasts the slogan, ‘The Sound That Makes the World Go ’Round’. Its first release, Marv Johnson’s ‘Come to Me’, will eventually peak at US #30.

2004 ROTD: ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears. Co-written by Cathy Dennis and reportedly turned down by Kylie Minogue, the song contains samples from ‘Tere Mere Beech Mein’ from the soundtrack to the 1981 Hindi film, Ek Duuje Ke Liye.

2018 ROTD: Camila, Camila Cabello’s first solo LP after breaking away from Fifth Harmony, includes the track ‘Something’s Gotta Give’, which sums up ‘the story of my journey from darkness into light’.

13 JANUARY

1963 Philip Saville’s BBC TV play, The Madhouse on Castle Street, is broadcast, with Bob Dylan in the cast. Dylan performs four songs, notably ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, but unfortunately no telerecording survives.

1964 ROTD: The Times They Are a-Changin’, Dylan’s first entirely self-penned LP, whose title track is a conscious call for societal change.

1986 ROTD: Janet Jackson’s ‘What Have You Done for Me Lately’ (US #4, UK #3) is a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis song, the lyrics of which were rejigged by Jackson to reflect her reactions to a short-lived marriage and new-found sense of independence.

1997 ROTD: White Town’s irresistibly catchy ‘Your Woman’ combines Marxist lyrics with an early 1980s Casio keyboard setting, and a trumpet sample from Lew Stone’s 1932 recording, ‘My Woman’. White Town’s sole member, Jyoti Mishra, who first heard the latter as a teenager when watching Dennis Potter’s television series Pennies from Heaven, described it as ‘really weird and twisted, like the best pop’.

And ‘Your Woman’ turns out to be the best pop. Within a week of release, it hits UK #1, and will chart all over the world.

When making the track in his Derby home, Mishra says he took great pains to make the ingredients ‘slightly out of sync’, explaining that ‘the most interesting things in life are always those with imperfections’. As if to underline this, the single, when it was issued in 1996 on the tiny Illinois label Parasol, had an unwieldy but irreverent subtitle: ‘>Abort, Retry, Fail?_’. A copy made its way into the hands of DJ Mark Radcliffe, who gave the song its all-important first national play on BBC Radio 1. Simon Mayo, the station’s mid-morning show presenter, also championed the song,

2017 ‘Shape of You’ by Ed Sheeran enters the UK singles chart at #1. It was initially intended as a vehicle for Rihanna and Rudimental, but Sheeran soon realises that, with its references to Van Morrison, the song suits his own oeuvre more effectively. It will top the charts in 34 countries.

14 JANUARY

1970 At the Frontier Hotel, Las Vegas, The Supremes perform with Diana Ross for the last time, closing their set with ‘Someday We’ll Be Together’ and introducing Ross’s replacement: Jean Terrell.

1977 ROTD: Heatwave’s first hit, ‘Boogie Nights’. Complete with harp contributions from Sheila Bromberg – the first woman to play on a Beatles recording (‘She’s Leaving Home’) – the track is written by Cleethorpes’ very own Rod Temperton, who will soon begin writing for Michael Jackson.

1978 ‘This is no fun.’ So says Johnny Rotten at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco as he parts ways with the original Sex Pistols.

2008 ROTD: ‘Chasing Pavements’ is Adele’s second single release, a vow to move on after experiencing infidelity. It reaches UK #2 and US #21.

15 JANUARY

1941 BOTD: Don Glen Vliet, who in 1964 will become Captain Beefheart. Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, becomes a fan after hearing Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica in 1969: ‘a sloppy cacophony . . .’ but even so ‘. . . the greatest album I’d ever heard.’

1965 ROTD: For ‘Tired of Waiting for You’, The Kinks’ second UK #1 hit, Ray Davies revisited a melody from his time studying at Hornsey School of Art – but had to write new words as he had forgotten the original ones.

1967The Rolling Stones reach some kind of compromise with US TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show; Mick Jagger agrees to change the title of ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ to ‘some time’ but while doing so rolls his eyes, enraging the host. Their ensuing ban from the show lasts two years.

1974 Hit sitcom Happy Days, an idealisation of rock’n’roll adolescence in the 1950s and early 1960s, debuts on ABC. Initially adopting Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’ as its signature tune, the show will run for 10 years.

16 JANUARY

1957The Cavern Club opens in a former air-raid shelter 11 feet below Mathew Street in Liverpool. One of the men responsible for constructing the stage is Harry Harris – uncle to a certain Paul McCartney.

1981 ROTD: With some bonus airplay on BBC Radio 2, Madness’s lyrically sparse ‘The Return of the Los Palmas 7’, their sixth UK top 10 hit in just 15 months, sneaks in a reference to ‘Tommy McGloin’, who just happens to be the uncle of the band’s Chas Smash.

1994 ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ by D:Ream reaches UK #1. Borrowing its motivational title from a phrase overheard by lead singer Peter Cunnah during his office-job days, the song will be revived in 1997 as a Labour Party campaign anthem.

1998 ROTD: Moon Safari is the debut album from Versailles duo Air, whose name is an acronym for ‘amour, imagination, rêve’ (love, imagination, dream). Like many artists, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel are defined not just by what they are (in this case, trying to combine the past and the future), but what they aren’t. ‘French pop was synonymous with Sacha Distel. I hated it,’ Godin will tell the Guardian. Instead, Air’s influences come from a variety of sources: Ray Bradbury, Albert Einstein, astrophysics, and even Charlie’s Angels, whose star Jaclyn Smith inspired their song title ‘Kelly Watch the Stars’. ‘Sexy Boy’, their first hit, started as a joke, but ‘it’s important to have humour in a record’. The sound of a Hofner bass, just like Paul McCartney’s, pervades the sound of the whole record, which is also characterised by the duo’s use of analogue synthesisers from the 1970s – not least because that was all they could afford.

Joining the duo on two songs (‘All I Need’, ‘You Make It Easy’) is American singer Beth Hirsch, Godin’s neighbour in Montmartre, who makes them sound like ‘a space-age Carpenters’.

Moon Safari will reach #21 in the French album charts, but becomes bigger abroad, peaking at UK #6. And one smitten fan is the film director Sofia Coppola, who invites them to write the score for her next movie: The Virgin Suicides.

17 JANUARY

1933 BOTD: Cairo-born French/Italian singer Dalida. After relocating to Paris in 1954, she will have a 30-year international recording career, achieving 28 #1 hits in France. Her breakthrough single in 1956 is ‘Bambino’, which adds lyrics to Perez Prado’s instrumental ‘Guaglione’ (from that Guinness advert in the 1990s), and she will go on to release cover versions of songs ranging from ‘The Lambeth Walk’ to Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’. In 1968, President Charles de Gaulle will award her the Medal of the President of the Republic.

1967 Today’s Daily Mail becomes the focus for a new Beatles song, ‘A Day in the Life’. Investigations are continuing into the death in London of Guinness heir Tara Browne, who was killed in a traffic accident after driving his car through a red light shortly before Christmas. John Lennon’s eyes are also drawn to another short piece headlined ‘The holes in our roads’, in which – according to a council survey – there are ‘4,000 holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire’.

Moved to pen a few verses, Lennon needs a middle section and, fortunately, his songwriting partner has one. Paul McCartney recalls the morning ritual of his formative teenage years, of getting up and racing to catch the bus to school. Juxtaposing these elements of past and present, the pair compose ‘A Day in the Life’ and start recording it two days later at Abbey Road, ready for use as the final track of their forthcoming album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

‘It was a good piece of work between Paul and me,’ Lennon will tell Rolling Stone magazine in 1968. ‘Now and then we really turn each other on with a bit of song.’

1972 ROTD: ‘Mother and Child Reunion’ (US #4, UK #5), recorded in Jamaica with Jimmy Cliff’s backing band and singer Cissy Houston (mother of Whitney), is Paul Simon’s first solo single.

1974 In Hialeah, Florida, George McCrae records his vocal for the KC & the Sunshine Band song ‘Rock Your Baby’, which becomes a worldwide #1 in the summer. (McCrae’s then wife Gwen will herself enjoy several hits, most notably 1975’s US top-tenner, ‘Rockin’ Chair’.)

1978 Taking their name from the middle section of David Bowie’s ‘The Jean Genie’, Simple Minds play their first concert at Satellite City, Glasgow.

18 JANUARY

1955 BOTD: Francis Nicholls Jr in New York. In 1977, as Frankie Knuckles, he becomes a resident DJ at Chicago’s Warehouse club, where he and the club’s name will together give rise to what becomes known as ‘house’ music.

1969 ROTD: Later considered by many to be her best LP, Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis will sell comparatively poorly on its release, despite the inclusion of ‘Son of a Preacher Man’. During its making, Dusty suggests her label Atlantic should sign brand new band Led Zeppelin, purely because bass player John Paul Jones once backed her in concert.

1993 ROTD: ‘No Limit’ by the Dutch pop techno-techno-technotechno duo 2 Unlimited is the record that will finally put an end to the 10-week reign of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ at the top of the UK charts.

2019 ROTD: Ariana Grande’s friendship anthem ‘7 Rings’ contains an interpolation of ‘My Favourite Things’ from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, content that will cost 90 per cent of the publishing rights.

19 JANUARY

1949 BOTD: Robert Palmer in the Yorkshire town of Batley. Making his name in the 70s rock band Vinegar Joe with Elkie Brooks, Palmer will go on to have solo hits like ‘Addicted to Love’ and ‘She Makes My Day’.

1955 The prison drama movie Unchained is released, now forgotten but for its title song, first sung by Todd Duncan. ‘Unchained Melody’ has now been UK #1 four times thanks to the efforts of Jimmy Young, The Righteous Brothers, Robson & Jerome and Gareth Gates.

1963 BOTD: Caron Wheeler in London. A teenage reggae chart topper in Brown Sugar with 1977’s ‘I’m in Love with A Dreadlocks’, Wheeler will go on to co-found vocal group Afrodiziak, backing The Jam, Howard Jones and Elvis Costello. At the end of the 1980s, she will enjoy pop success with Soul II Soul.

1980Spizzenergi’s ‘Where’s Captain Kirk?’ and Adam and the Ants’ Dirk Wears White Sox become, respectively, the best-selling single and album in the first independent charts to be published in the UK.

20 JANUARY

1965 On the day that rock’n’roll and R&B-championing broadcaster Alan Freed dies in California, and M People’s Heather Small is born in London, The Byrds record ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ in Hollywood – just five days after its composer Bob Dylan has laid down the original. The Byrds’ cover, already approved by Dylan, differs significantly in length, tone and structure – only one of Dylan’s original four verses appears, with greater emphasis given to the chorus. Roger McGuinn is the only Byrd to appear on the recording, and the session’s producer is Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day.

1967 In Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Arthur Conley records ‘Sweet Soul Music’, a homage to Sam Cooke’s ‘Yeah Man’ (for which Cooke ultimately receives a composer credit). Whereas Cooke’s song celebrates a succession of activities (dancing, sports, swimming), Conley’s cites the giants of soul.

1972 At the Dome in Brighton, Pink Floyd debut a suite of new songs in their live set – later to feature on The Dark Side of the Moon – but experience technical difficulties during ‘Money’.

1978 ROTD: ‘Shot By Both Sides’ is the first single by Manchester band Magazine. Fronted by Howard Devoto, late of Buzzcocks, the song just misses out on reaching the top 40, but on Top of the Pops Devoto spends the entire performance standing motionless. ‘I decided I just wouldn’t react.’ The single starts to fall back down the charts.

1986 ROTD: Public Image Ltd’s new single has the word ‘Single’ on the sleeve. The A-side is in fact called ‘Rise’ and features none other than the great Ginger Baker on drums. Five years earlier, after the band had managed to run through six different drummers in two years, the

NME had published an April Fool gag suggesting that Baker was about to become their latest and most unlikely new member. It seems both the band and Baker decided to play up to the joke.

21 JANUARY

1957 In New York, Patsy Cline wins CBS-TV’s talent show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, with the song that will become her first hit: ‘Walkin’ After Midnight’.

1965 BOTD: Jason Mizell, aka Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay. Exactly 20 years later, on the group’s King of Rock LP, ‘Jam-Master Jammin’’ will offer a supreme encapsulation of Mizell’s imagination and skills as a turntablist.

1983 ROTD: Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)’. Reaching UK #2 and US #1, the track combines Annie Lennox’s ‘hopeless and nihilistic’ feelings with a more motivational middle section suggested by Dave Stewart. Its memorable promotional video juxtaposes dreams of consumerism (like computers in boardrooms) with a cow in a field, ‘who has none of these aims in life’, says Stewart.

1991 ROTD: ‘Motown Junk’ by Manic Street Preachers. Complete with Skids and Public Enemy samples, the single marks the first national impact of the Welsh band after their formation in the town of Blackwood in 1986.

22 JANUARY

1931 BOTD: Sam Cooke in the Mississippi town of Clarksdale. In his brief 33-year life, Cooke will become a much-respected soul and gospel singer and civil rights campaigner. Starting out as frontman for the Soul Stirrers, his first solo single in 1957 is slated to be a cover of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’, before the flip side receives top billing: ‘You Send Me’.

1963 While The Drifters are recording ‘On Broadway’ in New York, Gerry and the Pacemakers are in London laying down Mitch Murray’s ‘How Do You Do It?’, which their producer George Martin had recorded with The Beatles the previous September.

1973 ROTD: Roberta Flack’s interpretation of ‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’, credited officially to the writing team of Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, will become an international hit but its origins are actually more complicated.

Many people are aware that the track was conceived as a response to a Don McLean concert, but perhaps fewer will know the full story. Folk singer-songwriter Lori Lieberman was in the audience at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles in mid-November 1971, where McLean was supporting Carly Simon. Lieberman had been initially reluctant to go, but was persuaded by her 44-year-old manager, Norman Gimbel, to attend. As McLean performed ‘Empty Chairs’, Lieberman began scribbling notes on a napkin.

‘She told us about this strong experience she had listening to McLean,’ Gimbel will later say in April 1973. ‘I had a notion this might make a good song, so the three of us discussed it.’ Unfortunately, only two of those three people ended up with a composer credit, even though Lieberman recorded the song herself in 1972, before it was brought to Flack’s attention.

‘I’m not looking for money,’ Lieberman told the Washington Post years later. ‘I just want the truth of how the song was written to come out.’ Roberta Flack’s response? ‘I hope Lori knows I am forever grateful for her part in the writing of the song.’

1996 ROTD: Garbage’s ‘Stupid Girl’ is ‘really about squandering potential,’ says Shirley Manson, likening it to Madonna’s ‘Express Yourself’, ‘but a little more subversive.’ That drum sample, by the way, is Topper Headon on The Clash’s ‘Train in Vain (Stand by Me)’.

23 JANUARY

1910 BOTD: Guitarist Django Reinhardt in Liberchies, Belgium. A major influence on a generation of rock guitarists including Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Willie Nelson, Reinhardt will also inspire Jerry Garcia and Tony Iommi, both of whom, like Reinhardt, will lose fingers in accidents and have to adapt their style of playing accordingly.

1964 ROTD: ‘The Way You Do the Things You Do’, which becomes the first Temptations single to significantly chart, reaching US #11. The song is the work of two members of the Miracles: Robert Rogers and William ‘Smokey’ Robinson.

1981 ROTD: ‘Reward’ by The Teardrop Explodes. Destined to reach UK #6, the single is the result of the band’s typically grand ideas. Lead singer Julian Cope describes how he wanted it to be a Northern soul classic, ‘like we were playing in an ice rink’, while keyboard player David Balfe (later to establish Food Records, home of Blur) wanted the horn solo ‘to sound like wild elephants’.

1988 Producer Jack Endino at Reciprocal Studios in Seattle welcomes Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Melvins drummer Dale Crover, who, as Nirvana, record and mix 10 songs in six hours. Endino is impressed by Cobain’s voice at their first-ever session: ‘I thought he had a good scream.’

24 JANUARY

1944 BOTD: Klaus Nomi in Bavaria. In the 1960s, while working as an usher at West Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, Nomi will wow fellow staff with his extraordinary singing voice, before finding his niche in 1970s New York, notably on rock operatic reworkings of ‘Lightning Strikes’, ‘You Don’t Own Me’ and a doomy version of ‘The Twist’.

1970 Moog’s Minimoog synthesiser hits the stores. Its portability, especially for live performances, will make it an attractive purchase for many musicians, including Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Gary Numan and ABBA.

2018 DOTD: Mark E. Smith, at the age of 60. ‘If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s a Fall gig,’ Smith had said in 1998. Now there will be no more Fall gigs.

25 JANUARY

1915 BOTD: Ewan MacColl as James Miller, in Salford. Father of Kirsty MacColl, and composer of ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ and ‘Dirty Old Town’, the singer-songwriter will also originate the arrangement of ‘Scarborough Fair’ later popularised by Simon and Garfunkel.

1980 ROTD: ‘Games Without Frontiers’ by Peter Gabriel. The anthemic anti-war song’s title is a translation of ‘Jeux Sans Frontières’, the title of a long-running pan-European TV gameshow (the original French name is sung by Kate Bush for the track’s backing vocals).

1980 Meanwhile, Black Entertainment Television (BET) launches on US cable TV. Initially a two-hour Friday night block of classic Black films, plus R&B and jazz music, it will expand to become the only place to exclusively screen music videos by Black artists.

26 JANUARY

1937 BOTD: Alison Steele in Brooklyn. Later known as ‘The Nightbird’, she benefits from the decision of WNEW-FM in 1966 to appoint an all-female team of radio DJs. From 1968 to 1979 she becomes the station’s regular night-time presenter, playing rock of the progressive and countercultural variety. She apparently inspires Jimi Hendrix to write the song ‘Night Bird Flying’, a single released in 1971 a few months after the guitarist’s death.

1970 ROTD: Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel’s final studio LP, will become the biggest-selling album of the 1970s. Its title track is also out today, as a single.

1975BBC1’s arts strand Omnibus premieres ‘Cracked Actor: A Film About David Bowie’, narrated and directed by Alan Yentob, and filmed during Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour the previous summer.

1982Shakin’ Stevens has been reliant on cover versions for his hit songs, but ‘Oh Julie’, which hits UK #1, is one of his own compositions. In the US, it is itself covered by, of all people, Barry Manilow.

1997 At UK #1 is ‘Beetlebum’, reminiscent of The Beatles’ ‘White Album’, and Blur’s first new material since The Great Escape in 1995, representing a radical shift away from the Britpop movement.

27 JANUARY

1956 ROTD: ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ by Elvis Presley. The song that will make Presley a national and worldwide star was written ‘in just 22 minutes’ the previous September by steel guitar player Tommy Durden and high school teacher and part-time DJ Mae Boren Axton. It was inspired by a Miami newspaper report about a man’s suicide note, which included the phrase, ‘I walk a lonely street’.

Soon after completing the song, Mullen and Axton approached Elvis in Nashville. Taking advantage of the fact that Axton had already met and interviewed the singer at a Jacksonville concert, the pair played him the demo and agreed to give him one-third of the publishing royalties on condition that he make it his next single.

Presley’s first release after signing to the RCA Victor label, the song will reach the top of the country and pop charts in the US. In Britain it will reach the #2 spot, although an unimpressed BBC Radio confines it to restricted play.

By summer 1957, there will be much debate about Presley’s suitability as a role model for teenagers (thanks to his gyrations during performances and the often frenzied audience reactions at concerts, among other things), but Axton – teaching in a Jacksonville high school – tells Billboard magazine that she rewards her pupils’ efforts at studying by allowing them to discuss their idol or play some of his records in class: ‘You’d be surprised how enthusiastic they become.’

1973Marc Bolan appears on Cilla Black’s BBC variety show Cilla, where they perform a duet of T. Rex’s ‘Life’s a Gas’, and Bolan previews a song that will not be released for another year: ‘Mad Donna’.

1992 ROTD: ‘Movin’ On Up’ by Primal Scream. The lead track on the band’s new EP gets the airplay, but the record also includes the bonus 10-minute epic ‘Screamadelica’ sung by Denise Johnson, which confusingly is not included on the group’s LP of the same name.

28 JANUARY

1975 In the nick of time, ‘January’ by Scottish foursome Pilot becomes a UK #1.

1984 ROTD: Pioneering hip hop record label Def Jam’s first-ever single: ‘It’s Yours’ by T La Rock and Jazzy Jay.

1990Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, written by Prince, reaches UK #1. It is perhaps equally well-remembered for its stark, captivating video. In the final verse, two tears roll down her cheeks, a reaction – she later says – to suddenly remembering her late mother.

29 JANUARY

1969Peggy Lee records Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s ‘Is That All There Is?’, inspired by an 1896 story by Thomas Mann called ‘Disillusionment’. The arranger on the session is one Randy Newman.

1977 ROTD: Spiral Scratch by Buzzcocks. The release of the Manchester band’s debut four-track EP is a defining moment in British music: it doesn’t come from one of the major record companies (EMI, CBS, Pye) nor from one of the newer labels (Island, Virgin, Stiff) that pride themselves on seeking out adventurous acts. Instead, it comes out on the New Hormones label, founded by the group itself and financed by a £250 loan from singer Pete Shelley’s dad. Within a week of its release, the first 1,000 pressings will sell out and the record will be awarded a rave review by the NME’s Paul Morley.

Buzzcocks began in 1976, when founder members Howard Trafford and Peter McNeish saw Johnny Rotten in the NME saying, ‘We’re not into music, we’re into chaos!’ They formed a band, taking their name from a Time Out review of TV drama Rock Follies – ‘getting a buzz, cocks!’ – and went to watch the Sex Pistols at several venues, including Manchester’s Free Trade Hall. Six weeks later, when the Pistols played there again, Buzzcocks were the support group, and Trafford had become Howard Devoto while Peter McNeish was now Pete Shelley.

Spiral Scratch was recorded with producer Martin Hannett (under the pseudonym ‘Martin Zero’) just after Christmas 1976. ‘Boredom’, the lead track, is a glorious slab of wild apathy, and will later be covered by glove puppet Sweep on local television, while its one-note guitar solo will be consciously echoed in Orange Juice’s ‘Rip It Up’ (1983).

Yet despite immediate acclaim for Buzzcocks, Howard Devoto soon wants out. ‘I don’t like movements,’ he will say of the burgeoning fashion for punk rock. ‘What was once unhealthily fresh is now a clean old hat.’ Instead, he goes on to form the hitless but magnificent Magazine, while Shelley and the rest of Buzzcocks build on their 15,000 sales of Spiral Scratch by signing to United Artists and releasing a remarkable string of snappy, witty and charming singles between 1977 and 1980: ‘Orgasm Addict’, ‘What Do I Get’, ‘Ever Fallen in Love . . . (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve?)’ and ‘Everybody’s Happy Nowadays’.

1982 ROTD: All released on this day alone: ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’ by Soft Cell; ‘Town Called Malice’/‘Precious’ by The Jam; ‘See You’ by Depeche Mode; and ‘Party Fears Two’ by Associates. The last of these four, with an expressive, agile lead vocal by Billy Mackenzie, will peak at UK #9, and from May, its sprightly piano intro will be adopted for the next 11 years as the opening theme for BBC Radio 4’s satirical comedy show Week Ending.

30 JANUARY

1968 ROTD: White Light/White Heat by The Velvet Underground. Described by the band’s John Cale as ‘consciously anti-beauty’, its 17-minute-long finale ‘Sister Ray’ is summed up by Lou Reed as ‘a scene of total debauchery and decay’. Recorded in one take, the engineer reportedly left the session saying: ‘When you’re done, come get me.’

1969The Beatles present a 40-minute set on the roof of Apple Records in London, accompanied by keyboard player Billy Preston. It will be their final public live performance.

1995 ROTD: Leftfield’s Leftism. A debut album for the electronic music duo, it is already more like a greatest hits collection including singles – ‘Song of Life’, ‘Release the Pressure’, ‘Open Up’ – released over the previous three years.

2000R.E.M. reach their highest ever UK singles chart placing (#3) with ‘The Great Beyond’, taken from the soundtrack of the Jim Carrey movie Man on the Moon.

31 JANUARY

1962 BOTD: Sophie Muller in London. The filmmaker comes to prominence and acclaim when she directs several videos for Eurythmics’ 1987 album Savage. She will also collaborate with Annie Lennox on her solo career, and with Garbage, Sparks, PJ Harvey and Kylie Minogue.

1969 DOTD: Spiritual figure Meher Baba, a devotee of the value of observed silence. Pete Townshend will dedicate Tommy – the next album by The Who – to him, and compose 1971’s ‘Baba O’Riley’ in his memory.

2005 ROTD: I Am a Bird Now (UK #16) is the Mercury Prize-winning debut from Antony and the Johnsons, a showcase for the talent of singer-songwriter Anohni, whose potential was recognised early on by Lou Reed. ‘He advocated for me very intensely,’ she will later say of Reed, who guests on the track ‘Fistful of Love’. ‘He convinced people it was worth listening to me.’