November 13

Births

1951: Bill Gibson (Drums for Huey Lewis and the News)

1953: Andrew Ranken (Drums for The Pogues)

1956: Aldo Nova (Singer & Guitarist)

1964: Walter Kibby (Vocals & Trumpet for Fishbone)

1967: Jimmy Kimmel (Talk Show Host)

1969: Bootie Brown (Rapper in The Pharcyde)

1978: Nikolai Fraiture (Bass for The Strokes)

1990: Jibbs (Jovan Campbell) (Rapper)

Events

1960: Sammy Davis Jr. marries Swedish actress May Britt, one of the first public celebrity interracial marriages.

1967: The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones buys Cotchford Farm, Sussex, England, the former home of Winnie the Pooh writer A.A. Milne. Statues of Pooh characters dot the ground.

1968: The Beatles' Yellow Submarine film premieres in New York.

1969: John Lennon purchases the island Dorinch off the Ireland coast and invites any hippie who wishes to live there.

1973: Jerry Lee Lewis' son Jerry Lee Jr. is killed in a highway accident near Hernando, MS. The elder Lewis had already lost his only other son, Steven Allen, in a 1962 drowning.

1974: An imposter posing as Deep Purple guitar player Ritchie Blackmore crashes a borrowed Porsche in Iowa City, IA, having already conned food and shelter from several Deep Purple fans.

1975: Hank Williams Jr. undergoes four hours of plastic and oral surgery at Nashville's Baptist Hospital to repair damages from a 500-foot fall in an August mountain accident.

1982: Men At Work started a 15-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with their debut album 'Business As Usual', which went on to sell over five million copies in the US.

1985: New York's Whitney Museum presents an exhibition celebrating Bob Dylan's 25 years in the music industry.

1987: Sonny and Cher reunite for a performance on TV show Late Night with David Letterman.

1990: Patricia Boughton filed a lawsuit against Rod Stewart claiming that a football he kicked into the crowd during a concert at Pine Knob Music Theatre had ruptured a tendon in her middle finger. And as a result the injury had made sex between her and her husband difficult.

1992: 90,000 people attend Elton John's Mexico City concert, his first in the country.

2002: The three surviving member of Led Zeppelin announced they were re-forming after 22 years for a US stadium tour.

2004: Rap artist Ol' Dirty Bastard, (real name Russell Jones), collapsed and died at a Manhattan recording studio in New York aged 35. A spokesman for his record company, said the rapper, had complained of chest pains, was dead by the time paramedics reached him. ODB was a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan in the early 1990s.

2005: Astronauts on the US space station in orbit around the Earth are woken up today by Paul McCartney, singing "Good Day Sunshine" live from his concert in Anaheim, CA.

November 12

Births

1944: Booker T. Jones (Piano for Booker T. and the MGs)

1945: Neil Young (Singer / Songwriter & Guitarist)

1947: Buck Dharma (Lead Vocals & Guitar for Blue Oyster Cult)

1964: David Ellefson (Bass for Megadeth)

1976: Tevin Campbell (R&B Singer)

1984: Omarion (Omari Ishmael Grandberry) (R&B Singer in B2K and Solo)

Events

1931: Abbey Road recording studios open in London's pricey St. John's Wood.

1955: Billboard begins its "Top 100" chart, with the first Number One listed as "Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing" by the Four Aces. The magazine wouldn't resolve all its pop charts into one until 1959.

1955: Hill Valley, CA native Marty McFly travels back to this date from 1985 to make sure his parents get together; while in 1955, he plays "Johnny B. Goode" at a local sock hop, inspiring Chuck Berry's "new sound." (Not really.)

1966: Teens on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip protesting a recent curfew are beaten by police, inspiring Stephen Stills to write the Buffalo Springfield hit "For What It's Worth."

1966: The Grateful Dead are the house band at a dance put on by the Hell's Angels biker gang at San Francisco's Sokol Hall.

1966: The Monkees debut album started a 13-week run at No.1 on the US album chart, selling over 3 million copies in three months.

1968: Jimi Hendrix' third album, Electric Ladyland, causes a controversy in England over the cover, which features the singer/guitarist surrounded by a bevy of naked women. A major British chain refuses to stock it; the American version is released with an alternate cover.

1969: The Supremes and the Temptations' second joint TV special, G.I.T. On Broadway, airs on NBC. (The title stands for "Gettin' It Together"; the show consisted of both groups performing show tunes.)

1970: The Doors made their last appearance with Jim Morrison in New Orleans.

1979: Kenny Rogers begins filming the CBS-TV movie The Gambler, based on his 1978 smash tune of the same name. It will spawn four sequels.

1987: Sly Stone arrives one hour late for a major comeback concert in Santa Monica, CA, only to be arrested at the gig for failure to pay child support.

1990: Ron Wood, formerly of the Faces and currently of the Rolling Stones, is badly injured when hit by a car in London, breaking both legs.

1997: Keyboardist and Singer Billy Preston is sentenced to four years in prison in California's Avenal State Prison for cocaine use and fraud when he arranged a fake burglary of his home in 1994. He will serve a year and a half.

1997: Carly Simon is hospitalized with breast cancer, undergoing both chemo and a mastectomy.

1999: Glam legend Gary Glitter is acquitted in England's Bristol Crown Court of sexual assault of a minor stemming from an incident with a fan in the Eighties; however, that same day, Glitter (real name Paul Gadd) is sentenced to four months in jail for four counts of possessing child pornography found in 1997.

2002: The city of Atlanta declared this day as TLC day to remember Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes who was killed in a car crash on 26th April 2002 aged 30.

2003; Drummer Tony Thompson, who had played drums with Led Zeppelin at Live Aid in 1985, died of cancer. He was most famous as the drummer with Chic, whose single 'Le Freak' hit No.1 in the US. He also played on David Bowie's hit single 'Let's Dance'.

2004: The funeral of longtime (and highly influential) British DJ John Peel is held in Suffolk, England, with attendees including Robert Plant, The White Stripes, and members of Underworld, Pulp, and the Undertones.

2005: Vietnamese authorities visit Gary Glitter's home in Ba Ring Vung Tau and find his live-in companion, a fifteen-year-old girl. The singer, however, has vanished.

2007: Former Culture Club frontman, Boy George was charged with the false imprisonment of a 28-year-old man. Police said the offence was alleged to have taken place at the 47-year-old's home in Hackney, in London on 28 April of this year.

2008: Mitch Mitchell, the British drummer with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was found dead in his US hotel room at age 61. 

November 11

Births

1929: LaVern Baker (R&B Singer)

1945: Vince Martell (Lead Guitar for Vanilla Fudge)

1945: Chris Dreja (Rhythm Guitar & Bass for The Yardbirds)

1950: Jim Peterik (Lead Vocals & Guitar for Survivor)

1953: Andy Partridge (Singer / Songwriter & Guitarist for XTC)

1953: Marshall Crenshaw (Singer / Songwriter)

Events

1938: Kate Smith sings a twenty-year-old, unknown Irving Berlin tune called "God Bless America" for the first time on her radio program.

1944: Frank Sinatra, of the Harry James big band, signs with Columbia as a solo recording artist.

1954: Bill Haley scored his first US Top ten single with 'Shake Rattle And Roll'. He had dropped his cowboy image about a year and a half earlier, while renaming The Saddlemen to Bill Haley and His Comets.

1963: After a gig in Birmingham, England, the Beatles find themselves attempting to escape a throng of fanatically devoted fans for the first time, escaping through the crowd by dressing up as policemen.

1965: Journalist Al Aronowitz gets the garage band The Velvet Underground their first gig -- at the Summit High School dance in Summit, NJ.

1967: Van Morrison makes his only appearance on ABC-TV's American Bandstand, lip-synching his big hit, "Brown Eyed Girl."

1968: American record buyers are scandalized when John Lennon and Yoko Ono release their new album Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins with a cover depicting the two of them standing unashamedly in full-frontal nudity. Record stores eventually carry the experimental album in a brown paper wrapper.

1969: Jim Morrison of the Doors is arrested by the FBI for drunk and disorderly behavior and interfering with the flight of an aircraft in Phoenix, AZ, after a flight attendant on his trip from Los Angeles accuses him of attacking and sexually harassing her. Morrison and his flight companion, American actor Tom Baker, spend the night in local jail but are released the next day on $2,500 bail. The charges are later dropped.

1970: Ringo Starr and his first wife, Maureen, become the proud parents of their first child, daughter Lee Parkin, at Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital in Hammersmith, London.

1970: Bob Dylan publishes his first novel, a poorly-received stream-of-consciousness work called Tarantula.

1972: Berry Oakley (Bass for Allman Brothers) was involved in a motorcycle accident in Macon, Georgia, just three blocks from where Duane Allman had his fatal motorcycle accident the year before.  He refused medical treatment and got a ride home.  Three hours later, he was rushed to the hospital, delirious and in pain, and died of cerebral swelling caused by a fractured skull.  He was 24 years old.

1975: Reba McEntire signs her first recording contract, with Mercury Records.

1986: Pink Floyd announce their intention to record a new album and tour under their band name, a name which recently departed leader Roger Waters considers his alone.

1990: A 21 year-old AC/DC fan died after being attacked outside the Brendan Byrne Arena in New Jersey where the band were playing a gig that night.

1994: Christie's auction house in New York City holds their first-ever auction of rock memorabilia, including the Beach Boys' guitars, a stage outfit worn by Jimi Hendrix, and John Lennon's famous Army fatigues.

1994: The Monkees' Micky Dolenz guest stars, along with Rick Neilsen of Cheap Trick and Billy Vera, on tonight's "" episode of ABC-TV's Boy Meets World.

1999: Singer Brandy was admitted into a hospital in Southern California due to dehydration from overwork.

2000: The original Meters reunite for one and only one gig in San Francisco, their first since 1977.

2003: A London High Court orders Van Morrison to pay $67,000 in lost revenue to Gary Marlow, owner of the Crown Hotel in Wiltshire, England, after canceling a planned gig there.

2004: M'hammed Soumayah, bodyguard for Liza Minelli, sues the singer for $100 million for allegedly forcing him to have sex with her or be fired.

2004: Coldplay fan Sarah Sainsbury wrote to the band asking for their autographs so she could sell them to raise funds at her school charity. Coldplay sent her a triple platinum disc worth over $7,500.