This Day in Rock History: September 1st

Time to take a look back into this day in rock history: September 1

1957

These were obviously less enlightened times. Big concert tour kicks off on this date at the Paramount Theater in New York with an all-star lineup that includes Buddy Holly & the Crickets, the Everly Brothers, the Drifters and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. But get this: In some cities the full bill couldn’t play because of segregation laws.

1977

Blondie signs with Chrysalis Records, but it’s not Debbie Harry’s recording debut. She was with a hippie band back in 1968 that put out an album titled “Wind in the Willows”.

1979 Talk about a collectors item! U2 released it’s first record, an EP titled “U2-3” available only in Ireland and each of the individual copies is numbered.

1984

Hindsight is 20/20. Cliff Richard and Donna Summer both turned down the song, but Tina Turner recorded “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and got her first solo Number One in her then 25-year career.

2009

Tragedy when the former keyboard player with Echo and the Bunnymen, Jake Brockman, was killed in a motorcycle crash. The band’s first drummer, Pete De Freitas, had a similar fate..

2011
“Simmer down, now”. Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong is thrown off a plane when a Southwest Airlines flight attendant can’t get him to pull up his pants! The incident gets talked out with no hard feelings.

2012

We say goodbye to Hal David, Burt Bacharach’s longtime collaborator, who dies from complications from a stroke at age 91. His hits include “Walk On By”, and “I Say a Little Prayer”