The late Johnny Green (songwriter – ‘Body And Soul’ and ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’ among others, in addition to 5 Academy Awards for his work on Easter Parade, West Side Story, Oliver, An American In Paris and High Society) was born in 1908
The late Ivory Joe Hunter (‘Since I Met You Baby’) was born in 1914
The late Thelonious Monk (jazz pianist – ‘Straight, No Chaser’) was born in 1917
The late Denis D’Ell (born Denis James Dalziel – lead singer with The Honeycombs – ‘Have I The Right’) was born in 1943
Rock Factoid: The Honeycombs’ band name was a pun on drummer Ann “Honey” Lantree and the fact that she and founding member Martin Murray had been hairdressers, and of course, a comb had been one of their tools.
Rock Factoid #2: After the band recorded the backing and vocals for ‘Have I The Right’, producer Joe Meek (who had built his reputation as the producer of The Tornados’ ‘Telstar’) asked the band members to trample the beat on the wooden stairs which led up to the studio and recorded that noise with five microphones he had fixed to the banisters.
In addition, a tambourine was beaten directly onto a microphone. After that, as was usually the case with Meek, the whole recording was sped up and compressed – repeatedly. D’Ell hated the final version, all the more so as this sound couldn’t be reproduced on stage.
“There was always contention between us and Joe that he never recorded the band the way we sounded. He was fond of speeding us up so that I ended up sounding like Mickey Mouse. He liked to compress everything and put on so much echo ─ we ended up sounding like the Tornados with a singer.” … Denis D’Ell
The late Headman Msongelwa Shabalala (bass vocalist with Ladysmith Black Mambazo – ‘Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes’ and ‘You Can Call Me Al’ with Paul Simon) was born in 1945
Rock Factoid: Thanks in part to their participation with Simon on his ‘Graceland’ album and subsequent tour, Ladysmith Black Mambazo become famous across the world. On December 10, 1991, while driving home from a family gathering in KwaZulu-Natal, Headman was shot and killed by a white, off-duty security guard in a racially motivated killing.
The late Kirsty MacColl (‘There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis’ as a solo artist and ‘Fairytale Of New York’ with The Pogues) was born in 1959
Martin Kemp (bass guitar with Spandau Ballet – ‘Only When You Leave’) is 53
Tanya Tucker (‘Lizzie And The Rainman’) is 56
David Lee Roth (‘Jump’ with Van Halen and ‘Just A Gigolo’ as a solo artist) is 60
James ‘Midge’ Ure (born James Ure – guitarist and singer with Ultravox – ‘Vienna’), co-wrote and produced ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ and ‘If I Was’ as a solo artist) is 61
Rock Factoid: Ure co-organized Band Aid, Live Aid and Live 8 with Bob Geldof. Ure acts as trustee for the charity, and serves as ambassador for Save The Children. In 2005, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to music and charity.
Rock Factoid #2: Ure is a recovering alcoholic, something he openly admits and discusses in his autobiography If I Was. He said the turning point came when he was on a holiday and he went back to his car to get a bottle of alcohol. “As I turned round there was my then 11-year-old daughter looking at me and it was utterly heartbreaking and devastating to see the look on her face.”
Rock Factoid #3: Why is he called Midge? It is a phonetic reversal of Jim, the diminutive form of his real name.
John Prine (‘Angel From Montgomery’) is 68
Alan Cartwright (bass guitar with Procol Harum – ‘Conquistador’) is 69
Frank Busseri (baritone vocals with The Four Lads – ‘Moments To Remember’) is 82
The Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Company was founded. Gibson’s first electric guitar the ES-150 was produced in 1936, and in 1946 Gibson introduced the P-90 single coil pickup, which, in 1952, was used on the first Les Paul model—1902
Eleanor Rigby died (massive brain hemorrhage) at the age of 44—1939
Rock Factoid: She was born at 8 Vale Road in Woolton which, intriguingly, backs onto Menlove Avenue, where John Lennon grew up. Eleanor’s real name, in fact, was Eleanor Whitfield, but with the Rigby family line on the cusp of dying out, her grandfather insisted she take his surname – and this is how it appears on the family gravestone even though she married Thomas Woods in 1935.
Rock Factoid #2: All that aside, Paul McCartney says you should forget the charming story of how he came up with her name for the title of the Beatles’ song. She did die in the same house where she had been born and was buried in the graveyard of St Peter’s Church, the site of McCartney’s first meeting in 1957 with Lennon – who, incredibly was born almost one year to the day following her death. BUT her gravestone had nothing to do with McCartney’s song.
“I had fancied using the name Miss Daisy Hawkins, but rejected it for its lack of realism. I then remember quite distinctly having the name Eleanor, looking around for a believable surname and then wandering around the docklands in Bristol and seeing a shop there: Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers. I swear, I made up the name Eleanor Rigby like that.” … Paul McCartney
Idle Thought: It’s important to remember that Paul has, on occasion, come up with different scenarios about many events from the past.
The Quarrymen played at the Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool—1959
Rock Factoid: Guitarist Ken Brown, suffering from a heavy cold, was unable to perform. After the show, an argument started when Paul McCartney said Brown should not get a share of their fee since he had not performed. John Lennon and George Harrison sided with McCartney and Brown quit the group.
The Shangri-Las released ‘Leader Of The Pack’ / ‘What Is Love’—1964
Rock Factoid: In 2010, Billy Joel claimed he played piano on one of the demos for ‘Leader Of The Pack’, and was not sure if any of his parts made the final recording. In fact, the piano part was played by Roger Rossi, a staff musician for Ultrasonic Recording Studios at the time.
Rossi said, “I remember the date like it was yesterday, there were no written charts, so unfortunately, some musicians kept making mistakes. As I recall, it took 63 recording takes before (producer) Shadow Morton was satisfied.”
Rock Factoid #2: Let’s put another myth to rest. According to legend, to add the authentic sound of a motorcycle engine, one was driven through the lobby of the hotel and up to the floor of the recording studio. However, in an interview four decades later, Shangri-Las lead singer Mary Weiss (who was just 15 when the song was recorded) said the motorcycle sound was taken from an effects record.
Rock Factoid #3: In the United Kingdom, the song was refused airplay by the BBC, due to its death theme. The ban had no effect on sales in England. The song – which reached #1 in the U.S. – charted three times in the UK: #11 in 1965; #3 in 1972 (by which time the BBC ban had been lifted); and once again at #7 in 1976.
Colgems Records (in the U.S.) and RCA (worldwide) released ‘The Monkees’ album. The debut album was the first of four consecutive U.S. #1 albums for the group—1966
Rock Factoid: The cover featured the soon to be teen idols flashing their pearly whites, with one exception. Michael Nesmith had told the photographer he was only allowing him five minutes to take the photo and that was it.
The photo which became the cover for their debut album shows Nesmith verbally counting the seconds. Once the photo was snapped, Nesmith, having reached five minutes of counting down the time, stormed away.
The Beach Boys released ‘Good Vibrations’—1966
Rock Factoid: The recording is reported to have used over 90 hours of magnetic recording tape, with an eventual budget estimated between $50,000 and $75,000. In comparison, the entire ‘Pet Sounds’ album recorded earlier in 1966 had cost $70,000, which was itself an unusually high cost for an album.
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles released ‘Tears Of A Clown’—1970
The Rose, loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin, and starring Bette Midler, premiered in Los Angeles—1979
Peter Frampton released his ‘Frampton Comes Alive! II’ album—1995
Nick Hawkins (guitarist with Big Audio Dynamite II – ‘Rush’) died (heart attack)—2005
Sting topped a list of the worst lyricists ever—2007
Rock Factoid: He was chosen for such alleged sins as name-dropping Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov in the Police tune ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’, quoting a Volvo bumper sticker (‘If You Love Someone Set Them Free’), and co-opting the works of Chaucer, St. Augustine and Shakespeare.
Rock Factoid #2: The survey in Blender magazine placed Rush drummer Neil Peart second, Creed frontman Scott Stapp third, and Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher at #4, saying Gallagher “seemed incapable of following a metaphor through a single line, let alone a whole verse.”
Solomon Burke (‘Everybody Needs Somebody To Love’) died (natural causes)—2010
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