Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
2
3
New York City's Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center announces that it will begin presenting rock, pop and jazz concerts as well as its usual classical fare. Among the first nonclassical artists booked for the hall are
Carole King, Kris Kristofferson
and
Gordon Lightfoot
.
Grand Funk Railroad
"consent" to meet the press, who have never treated this power trio with respect, despite their string of gold records. Manager
Terry Knight
has invited 150 reporters to New York's Gotham Hotel -- only six show up, ensuring more strained relations with the press. Outraged, Knight calls the snubbing, "the grossest case of nonrecognition in the history of the music business."
New York
magazine publishes "Portrait of An Honest Cop," a profile of NYPD detective Frank Serpico
and his battle against corruption in the police department.
4
5
6
Ike and Tina Turner
receive their only gold record, for their version of
Creedence Clearwater Revival
's "Proud Mary." The song hit #4, the highest chart position ever for the husband-and-wife team.
7
Rival basketball leagues the ABA and the NBA seek congressional approval to merge. They will finally join in 1976.
8 Ronnie Spector
breaches the Top 100 with "Try Some, Buy Some" (#77), written by George Harrisonand produced by Harrison and her husband, Phil Spector
. It will be her only charting single without The Ronettes
.
Linda Ronstadt
performs at the legendary venue Fillmore East. The petite brunette is still singing mostly country and folk, with a rockin' backing band led by guitarist Glenn Frey
(pre- Eagles
). It takes a couple more years but Ronstadt not only catches on but catches on fire, delivering a string of much-praised albums like Heart Like a Wheel
and Living in the USA.
10
New York City police detective Frank Serpico
testifies at the trial of an NYPD lieutenant accused of taking bribes from gamblers.
11
12
Mick Jagger
marries
Bianca Perez Morena de Macias
in St. Tropez, France. The guest list is a veritable who's who of rock & roll luminaries, including the other
Stones, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton
and
Stephen Stills
. The reception, held at the Cafe des Arts, is described by one guest as "slightly seedy," and lasts until four in the morning. Ten hours after being married, Jagger is on stage, performing an impromptu set with singers
Doris Troy
and
P.P. Arnold
. Five months later, Bianca gives birth in Paris to a daughter, Jade. Jagger and Bianca divorce eight years later.
13
Jefferson Airplane
recording sessions are halted after singer
Grace Slick
smashes her Mercedes into a concrete wall near San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Slick, who'd given birth four months earlier to daughter China, is briefly hospitalized, but the band is in even worse shape. "Pretty as You Feel" soon becomes their last single to chart, though a later reformation as Jefferson Starship
delivers more Top 10 entries, including "Miracles" and "Count On Me."
The long-deadlocked Paris Peace Talks on the Vietnam conflict enter their fourth year; the count of U.S. forces in Indochina reaches 240,000.
14
15
Two
John Lennon-Yoko Ono
films are screened at the Cannes Festival. The first,
Apotheosis,
is an eighteen- minute-long camera shot of a snowy countryside. Ono's
Fly
is the graphic exporation of a nude woman's body by a fly. The flies proved difficult to direct, so, there being no guild to complain to, the insects were stunned with carbon dioxide gas. Those who lived are filmed walking on the woman's skin.
The creator of the yo-yo and the parking meter, Donald Duncan, Sr.
, dies at age 78.
16
17
Although a Christmas music recording session was supposed to be the order of the day, after Elvis Presley
put down a religious track titled "Lead Me, Guide Me" the session went askew when the rock legend, practicing a karate kick, knocked one of his "Memphis Mafia" buddy-guards' guns through the guitar of a justifiably distraught session musician.
18
The
Band
launch their first European tour in Rotterdam, Holland. The tour ends June 3 at London's Royal Albert Hall.
19
20
Peter Cetera
, bass player and singer for Chicago
, undergoes emergency surgery after being beaten and losing four teeth while attendng a baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs. He had been attacked by a gang who objected to the length of his hair.
21 Paul McCartney
releases
Ram,
which, unlike his first solo LP, is not a one-man show. Besides wife
Linda
on vocals, McCartney enlists sessionmen
David Spinoza
and
Hugh McCracken
on guitar and bass, and drummer
Denny Seiwell
, who will later become a member of Wings.
Ram
goes to #2.
22 Sticky Fingers,
the
Rolling Stones
' sixteenth LP, goes to Number One. The LP is the first complete Stones album to feature guitarist
Mick Taylor
, who'd replaced original member
Brian Jones
two years earlier. While the music is mostly uptempo, lyrically the record is often lugubrious, full of paeans to the sex-and-drugs lifestyle that characterized the Stones' own outlaw image.
A Gallup Poll finds 72% of Americans do not believe President Nixon
will be able to withdraw U.S. forces from South Vietnam and leave it strong enough to defend itself. As well, 69% believe that he has not told the public all it should know about the war.
23
24
Bob Dylan
turns thirty -- even the "Peanuts" comic strip makes mention of it. Dylan celebrates the milestone with a visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
25
26
Leslie West and Mountain
are awarded a gold record for
Nantucket Sleighride,
the biggest LP of the group's career (#16). it is also one of their last: Mountain's fortunes roll steadily downhill, and Leslie West soon abandons the group for
West, Bruce & Laing
(with former
Cream
singer/bassist
Jack Bruce
). In the Eighties, he'll reform Mountain with original drummer
Corky Laing
, but having slid so far, he'll be unable to get another record deal.
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30
Three-dozen
Grateful Dead
fans were treated for hallucinations caused by LSD they have unwittingly ingested when the drug is used to spike an apple drink served at San Francisco's Winterland. Although members of the Dead are suspected of supplying the drink, they are not accused.
31
A well-publicized antiwar march by approximately 400 Vietnam veterans takes place in Boston.