April 27

Births

1932: Casey Kasem (Radio DJ)

1944: Cuba Gooding, Sr. (Singer in The Main Ingredient)

1946: Gordon Haskell (Singer & Bass for King Crimson)

1947: Pete Ham (Vocals & Guitar in Badfinger)

1948: Kate Pierson (Vocals for The B-52's)

1949: Herbie Murrell (The Stylistics)

1951: Ace Frehley (Guitar in KISS)

1959: Marco Pirroni (Guitar for Adam And The Ant)

1959: Sheena Easton (Pop Singer)

1972: Bob Coombes (Keyboards for Supergrass)

1979: Will Boyd (Bass for Evanescence)

1984: Patrick Stump (Lead singer & Rhythm Guitarist for Fall Out Boy)

Events

1956: Capitol Records signs Gene Vincent, intending to market him as the next Elvis.

1957: Elvis makes his second and last appearance outside of the US, wearing his classic gold lame suit for the last time as he plays Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens.

1968: Simon and Garfunkel release the single  "Mrs. Robinson".

1969: Joe Cocker makes his television debut, singing "Feelin' Alright" on tonight's episode of CBS' Ed Sullivan Show.

1969: Jose Feliciano's TV special Very Special, guest starring Glen Campbell and Dionne Warwick, airs on NBC.

1970: John Lennon's explicit "Bag One" lithographs are returned to the London Arts Gallery exhibition after a High Court judge rules them "unlikely to deprave or corrupt."

1971: The Grateful Dead appeared at the Fillmore East in New York City. The Beach Boys also appeared on stage with the Dead, who together performed a short set of Beach Boys songs.

1975: 511 audience members are in custody in Los Angeles for smoking marijuana during Pink Floyd's recent five nights at the Los Angeles Arena.

1976: David Bowie is detained at the Poland-Russian border after Nazi memorabilia (mostly books) are found in his luggage. The singer, who claims they're research for an upcoming film about Joseph Goebbels, is released.

1979: At a Duke Ellington tribute concert held at UCLA, Stevie Wonder makes a surprise appearance to sing his hit tribute "Sir Duke" and also Ellington's own "C-Jam Blues."

1980: The legendary New York disco of discos, Studio 54, closes its doors after exactly three years and a day due to violations of city liquor licenses.

1981: Ringo Starr marries his second wife, actress Barbara Bach, a former "Bond girl" and model he met while filming the flop comedy Caveman. The two are married at the Marylebone Registrar's Office in London with the other two surviving Beatles attending.

1984: Blues Singer Z.Z. Hill died in Dallas at the age of 48 from a heart attack after a road accident.

1988: Queensryche released the album "Operation: Mindcrime."

1990:  Singer Axl Rose (Guns N' Roses) married Erin Everly. The marriage lasted for 27 days.

1990: David Bowie plays his Seventies hits for the last time as he begins his latest American tour, "Sound + Vision."

1991: Bonnie Raitt and Michael O'Keefe were married.

1992: Singer Belinda Carlisle (Go Go’s) Morgan Mason give broth to a son.

1993: Prince issued a statement saying he was retiring from studio recordings to concentrate on film and other ventures.

1994: San Francisco's legendary rock venue the Fillmore Auditorium reopens, with performances by Smashing Pumpkins and American Music Club.

1994: A man was arrested after breaking into Ace Of Base singer Jenny Berggren's home. Jenny was asleep at the time and woke up to find the man above her holding a hunting knife.

1999: Jazz trumpeter Al Hirt died, aged 76, in New Orleans of liver failure, after spending the previous year in a wheelchair due to edema in his leg.

1999: UK band The Verve announced that they had split.

2000: Vicki Sue Robinson died eleven days after the release of Red Lipstick.  Robinson died of cancer at her home in Wilton, Connecticut. She was thirty-five days short of reaching the age of 46. 

2003: Iggy Pop reuintes with the Stooges for the first time in three decades at the close of this year's Coachella festival.

2004: Elton John publicly responds to American Idol's snub of Jennifer Hudson by declaring the call-in voters "incredibly racist."

2006: 63-year-old Keith Richards falls from a palm tree while vacationing in Fiji, landing on his head and causing a hemorrhage that required doctors to drain his skull. He makes a full recovery.

2009: Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament was the victim of a robbery outside Southern Tracks Recording studios in Atlanta, where the band were recording. Ament and a band employee had arrived at the rear of the studio when three assailants brandishing knives emerged from the woods wearing black masks and smashed the windows of a rented Jeep. The robbers grabbed a BlackBerry and Ament’s passport and stole $3,000 in cash and $4,320 worth of goods.

2009: Aerosmith were to hold a free concert in Hawaii to placate angry fans who brought a legal case against them. Fans filed a class action case, which claimed the band had cancelled a sold-out show in Maui two years ago, leaving hundreds of fans out of pocket in favour of a bigger gig in Chicago. Lawyers for the would-be concert-goers said Aerosmith had now agreed to put on a new show, and would pay all expenses. ‘Everyone who bought a ticket to the original concert will receive a free ticket.

2011: 70’s folk singer Phoebe Snow died from complications of a brain hemorrhage she suffered in January 2010.

April 26

Births

1938: Maurice Williams (Doo-Wop Singer)

1938: Duane Eddy (Guitarist)

1940: Giorgio Moroder (Electronic Music producer)

1943: Gary Wright (Piano Player & Singer)

1952: Neol Davies (Selecter)

1960: Roger Taylor (Drums for Duran Duran)

1961: Chris Mars (Drums for The Replacements)

1970: T- Boz (Tionne Watkins) (Vocals for TLC)

1975: Joey Jordison (Drums for Slipknot)

1976: Jose Antonio Pasillas (Drummer for Incubus)

Events

1957: Calypso star Harry Belafonte resigns to his record label, RCA Victor, for an unprecedented million dollars.

1962: Jerry Lee Lewis, still stricken from the tragedy of losing his three-year-old son Steve Allen Lewis in a swimming pool drowning, arrives in the UK to tour for the first time since he was forced out in 1958 for marrying his 13-year-old cousin.

1963: Teen idol Frankie Avalon agrees to star in Beach Party, the first of what would become known as the "Beach Movies" starring himself and Annette Funicello.

1964: The Beatles attend a birthday party for Roy Orbison in London (Orbison had actually turned 28 three days earlier). That night, the group headlines the poll winner's concert for the magazine New Musical Express, which also features fan favorites The Rolling Stones and the Dave Clark Five.

1965: Bob Dylan makes his first trip to England to promote his new album, called Bringing It All Back Home. The tour is chronicled by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker for a film that will eventually become the iconic Don't Look Back.

1966: According to the New York Times, Ray Charles is being forced to undergo tests in Boston to confirm that he has kicked the heroin habit, as ordered by a court after a drug-possession rap the previous year.

1967: Janis Ian, then only sixteen, appears on Leonard Bernstein's CBS special Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, singing her single from a year earlier, "Society's Child." Though the song, which details a forbidden interracial relationship, was banned from airwaves in its initial run, this exposure turns it into a Top 20 hit.

1967: The Mamas and the Papas' "Mama Cass" Elliot gives birth to her one and only child, daughter Owen Vanessa. She would take the father's name to the grave.

1969: The Original Cast of 'Hair' started a 13-week run at No.1 on the US album chart.

1977: The disco boom gets rolling in earnest with the opening of Steve Rubell's new glitzy and ultra-exclusive club, Studio 54, in New York. Among the guests invited opening night: Cher, Mick Jagger and wife Bianca, Debbie Harry, Donald and Ivana Trump, Liza Minnelli, Jerry Hall, Halston, Margaux Hemingway, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Salvador Dali, Brooke Shields, Martha Graham, and Robin Leach.

1978: Ringo Starr plays two roles in a musical version of Prince and the Pauper entitled simply Ringo, also starring Art Carney, John Ritter, Carrie Fisher, Vincent Price, Angie Dickinson, Mike Douglas, and featuring George Harrison's narration. Airing on NBC, the show is a dismal flop.

1980: The Carpenters' fifth TV variety special, entitled Music, Music, Music and also starring John Davidson and Ella Fitzgerald, airs on ABC.

1982: While shopping for clothes on Hollywood Boulevard in the middle of the day, Rod Stewart is robbed at gunpoint of, among other things, his $50,000 Porsche.

1982: Joe Strummer disappears for about a month causing the Clash to cancel their U.K. tour.

1984: Count Basie died of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida.

1988: A jury in White Plains, New York ruled that Mick Jagger did not pirate an unknown reggae musician's song and turn it into his 1985 hit, 'Just Another Night'. Patrick Alley of New York City had accused Jagger of copyright infringement.

1990: New Kids On The Block's Danny Wood injured his ankle while on stage in Manchester when he tripped over a toy animal thrown on stage by a fan; he was forced to fly back home to the US for treatment.

1994: The Jefferson Airplane's Grace Slick pleads guilty to assault after turning a shotgun on police who visited her California home the previous month. Although she claims she was edgy due to a recent fire, the judge nonetheless sentences her to a short stint in Alcoholics Anonymous.

1995: Courtney Love reportedly turned down an offer of $1m from Playboy to pose nude for the magazine.

1997: Ernest Stewart, keyboard player with KC and the Sunshine Band, died of an asthma attack.

2003: The Morgan Creek Bridge in Chapel Hill, NC, is renamed the James Taylor Bridge in honor of the city's native son.

2004: June Pointer of the Pointer Sisters is arrested in Los Angeles for possession of cocaine.

2008: Amy Winehouse spent the night in custody after being arrested on suspicion of assault. Police said Winehouse had been "in no fit state" to be questioned when she arrived at the London station and she was kept in the cells. The 24-year-old was to be questioned about an incident said to have occurred 3 days earlier after a 38-year-old man claimed he was assaulted.

April 25

Births

1917: Ella Fitzgerald (Jazz Singer)

1923: Albert King (Blues Guitarist & Singer)

1933: Jerry Leiber (Standards Composer)

1940: Al Pacino

1945: Bjorn Ulvaeus (Singer in ABBA)

1945: Stu Cook (Bass for CCR)

1958: Fish (Derek William Dick) (Singer in Marillion & Solo)

1964: Andy Bell (Singer in Erasure)

1965: Eric Avery (Bass for Jane’s Addiction)

Events

1955: The UN's commission on narcotics releases a report stating "definite connection between increased marijuana smoking and that form of entertainment known as bebop and rebop."

1967: Just days after the completion of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles embark upon their next project, recording the theme to 'Magical Mystery Tour' at Abbey Road studios in London.

1967: The Beatles recorded "All You Need Is Love" during a British TV broadcast. Marianne Faithfull sang in the chorus.

1968: The Beatles refused to perform for the Queen of England at a British Olympic Appeal Fund show because "Our decision would be the same no matter what the cause. We don't do benefits."

1970: At today's concert in Raleigh, North Carolina, the interracial band Pacific Gas and Electric is subject to verbal abuse on stage. Later, when they leave the club, four bullets are fired at their van. No one is injured.

1974: According to the new issue of Rolling Stone, "streaking" has become so popular that Yes and Gregg Allman concerts have been interrupted by the fad. At a recent Beach Boys concert, the magazine says, the band was streaked by its own crew.

1974: Pam Morrison, Jim Morrison's widow, died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.

1977: Elvis Presley performs at the Civic Center in Saginaw, MI, with a mobile unit capturing what would be his very last recording (released on the album Moody Blue).

1977: The musical variety television special Paul Anka -- Music My Way, featuring Natalie Cole, Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, and a host of famous cameos, airs on ABC.

1979: The film "Rock & Roll High School" starring the Ramones premiered.

1979: The Police made their debut on BBC TV's 'Top Of The Pops' performing 'Roxanne'. The single which was taken from their album Outlandos d'Amour was written from the point-of-view of a man who falls in love with a prostitute.

1981: Denny Laine leaves the trio Wings, essentially leaving Paul McCartney a solo act once more.

1993: Legendary album artist Stanley "Mouse" Miller, designer of the Grateful Dead's "Skull and Roses" logo, has his upcoming liver transplant financed by the band.

1994: After fourteen years, The Eagles reform at Warner's Burbank Studios for the first of what will be two reunion concerts chronicled on the live/studio album Hell Freezes Over.

1994: A judge finds Michael Bolton's 1991 hit "Love Is A Wonderful Thing" plagiarizes the Isley Brothers' 1966 song of the same name, despite Bolton's protests that he's never heard the song.

1994: Yankee Stadium in New York holds their first "Joe DiMaggio Day," featuring Paul Simon singing "Mrs. Robinson" (and cheers when he gets to the "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" part).

1999: Roger Troutman (Zapp) died at the age of 47. He had been shot several times. His brother, Larry, was found near the crime scene with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

2002: In Honduras, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes (TLC) was killed in a car crash at age 30.

2003: The parents of the late Doors frontman Jim Morrison sue the remaining members for touring with a new singer as "The Doors 21st Century" using the band's image and logo.

2003: Sinead O'Connor announced on her Web site that she was going to retire.

2003: Nina Simone is laid to rest in Carry-Le-Rouet, France, with attendees including Miriam Makeba and gifts from luminaries like Elton John.

2004: For the third time in two years, Billy Joel is involved in a minor traffic accident, driving his car into a home in Bayville, Long Island, New York. No one is injured.

2007: Singer Bobby "Boris" Pickett died due to complications from Leukemia at age 69.