Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
1
2
Eric Burdon
is launching a CURB THE CLAP bumpersticker campaign aimed at fighting what he calls "the number-one sickness in the record business today -- VD,"
Rolling Stone
reports. Burdon's manager,
Steve Gold
, denies that it has anything to do with MGM Records president
Mike Curb
's recent annnouncement that he was dropping eighteen acts from his roster because their music advocated drug use. "It's because Eric has the clap," says Gold. "He says from age fifteen to twenty-six he only had it once, but it's happened three or four times since. For every donation to the L.A. Free Clinic, Eric will send out a CURB THE CLAP bumpersticker. VD has more effect on this industry than any drug."
3
4
Supersession,
an album that evolved out of an ad hoc studio jam session in May 1968 with guitarist extraordinaire Mike Bloomfield
and singer/organist Al Kooper
; late of The Electric Flag
and Blood, Sweat and Tears
, respectively, is certified gold. After one marathon eight-hour session, the impulsive Bloomfield recruited old pal Stephen Stills
to finish up. "It's hard to get the right people at the right time," says Michael Thomas
. "The very spontaneity and rashness of a jam depends on the good luck of one night, any night, but no night in particular. A jam is, must be, a fugitive occasion."
5
6 Gimme Shelter,
Albert and David Maysles
' documentary film about the
Rolling Stones
' 1969 tour of the U.S., premieres on the anniversary of the Altamont concert.
Nearly 200 Public Broadcasting stations around the United States air a sixty-minute show called
San Francisco Rock: Go Ride the Music,
featuring performances by and interviews with the
Jefferson Airplane, Jerry Garcia
of the
Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service
and
David Crosby
.
7
8
9
10
11 Best-selling The Gulag Archipelago
author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
wins this year's Nobel Literature Prize but doesn't claim it until his exile in 1974 in fear of retaliation by the Soviet government.
12 Rock critic
John Mendelsohn
's band,
Christopher Milk
, arouses the ire of
Doug Weston
, owner of the Troubador club in Los Angeles. At a Monday night audition there, the band's lead singer,
Mr. Twiste
r, wreaks havoc by pouring hot wax all over himself, biting audience members, overturning tables and spilling drinks in customer's laps.
Charges of "larceny by trick" are filed against
Little Richard
in Miami Beach, Florida, by Black, Inc., a black advocacy group that alleges the veteran rocker pocketed $250 he'd solicited for Blacks, Inc. Little Richard claims that all he wants is a receipt, and then he'll give them their money. A week later, the charges are dropped.
The Top Five
1. "The Tears of a Clown"
- Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
2. "I Think I Love You"
- Partridge Family
3. "Gypsy Woman" - Brian Hyland
4. "One Less Bell to Answer"
- Fifth Dimension
5. "I'll Be There"
- Jackson Five
13
14
Food price riots break out in Poland, and last for five days. The riots force Wladyslaw Gomulka
out of power and replace him with Edward Gierek
. All riots were eventually suppressed but the scheduled price increases were cancelled and wages are increased as well.
15
16 In one day, five singles and five albums by
Creedence Clearwater Revival
are certified gold: "Down on the Corner, "Lookin' out My Back Door,"
"Travelin' Band," "Bad Moon Rising," "Up around the Bend"
and
Cosmo's Factory,
Willy and the Poor Boys, Green River, Bayou Country
and
Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Love Story,
Paramount Pictures' movie version of Erich Segal
's best-selling novel, duplicates the book's success after it arrives onscreen today. Segal's screenplay for the film looked so promising that the producers had the author pen a book to release first. That strategy pays off spectactularly as Love Story
duplicates that success onscreen. The schmaltzy, simple tale of two attractive youngsters ( Ryan O'Neal, Ali McGraw
) falling in love but suffering an unhappy ending, runs away with moviegoers' hearts -- and dollars. Love Story
not only becomes the year's highest-grossing movie, its $50 million take is more than triple that of second-place finisher, Little Big Man.
Tommy Lee Jones
makes his film debut as O'Neal's Harvard University roommate -- in real-life, Jones did attend Harvard, and his roommate was future Vice-President Al Gore
.
17
The
Beach Boys
play a command performance for
Princess Margaret
at London's Royal Albert Hall.
18
Creedence Clearwater
's latest album,
Pendulum,
is added to their gold cache. And
Bob Dylan
's second album,
Freewheelin'
(vintage 1963), is certified gold.
The Beatles
' last fan-club-only Christmas record is released.
19
President
Richard Nixon
commends MGM chief
Mike Curb
for taking the iniative in ridding the music industry of drug users through his well-publicized dismissal of eighteen MGM acts who supposedly advocated drug use.
20
21 Three new albums are certified gold:
Traffic
's reunion album,
John Barleycorn Must Die,
the original British studio recording of
Jesus Christ Superstar
and
Judy Collins
'
In My Life.
After penning a fawning note to Richard Nixon
, Elvis Presley
is granted a meeting with the president at the White House in Washington, D.C. But it's not just a social call -- Elvis wants to be appointed a "federal agent-at-large" in the service of the administration's war on drugs. Apparently unsearched, Elvis brings along a present for the Commander In Chief: a World War II-era Colt .45 pistol. Presley isn't the only rock star who will pay visits to presidents in the Oval Office during the decade: in October 1972, soul shouter James Brown
gets a presidential invite after throwing his support to Nixon, and two years later George Harrison
, in the midst of a 30-date tour, will stop by to meet President Gerald Ford
. Shortly thereafter, Peter Frampton
will stop by to chat up Ford and his son Jack.
The Supreme Court declares amendments to the Voting Rights Act constitutional, and in Oregon v. Mitchell, lowers the voting age to 18 for federal elections in a close 5-4 decision.
22
23 Joni Mitchell
, who's gained recognition as a songwriter through
Judy Collins
' recording of "Both Sides Now," and renditions of "Woodstock"
by
Matthews Southern Comfort
and
Crosby, Stills Nash and Young
, earns her first gold disc as a performer with her third album,
Ladies of the Canyon.
24
New York City garbage analyst and Dylanologist
A.J. Weberman
, in an article for
Rolling Stone,
sheds light on a line of
Bob Dylan
's "If Dogs Run Free" from the
New Morning
album: "The words are well-articulated and easy to understand until Bob sings, 'Oh winds which rush my tail to thee solglet me tone de.' When the last five unintelligible syllables are played backward at a slightly slower speed, one distinctly hears, 'If Mars Invades us.'"
25
27
28
29
30
31 On the last day of 1970 it is officially announced that the
Beatles
are breaking up, which had been the worst kept secret in rock 'n' roll.
Paul McCartney
files a writ in London High Court against "The Beatles Co.," including Messrs.
John Lennon, George Harrison
and
Ringo Starr
, seeking the legal dissolution of the Beatles' partnership.
Most popular music, books and film - 1970: Simon & Garfunkel
's "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
(pop single), Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water
(pop album); the Jackson 5
's "The Love You Save"
and "I'll Be There"
and Stevie Wonder
's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" (three-way tie for R&B single); Lynn Anderson
's "Rose Garden" (C&W single); Mario Puzo
's The Godfather
(fiction); David Reuben
's Everthing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex
(nonfiction); Love Story
(film).