More About Music History On This Day

14 Dec 1980
Yoko Ono called on fans to observe ten minutes of silence in memory of John Lennon. 30,000 gathered outside St George's Hall in Liverpool, while nearly 100,000 attend a memorial in New York's Central Park.

14 Dec 1985
Whitney Houston scored her first UK No.1 single with 'Saving All My Love for You'. The song which was written by Michael Masser and Gerry Goffin, had been a minor hit for Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. in 1978 and was also a US No.1 for Houston.

14 Dec 1991
Michael Jackson started a four-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with his eighth studio album 'Dangerous'. The album has sold over 32 million copies worldwide making it one of the bestselling albums of all time. Nine singles were released from the album spanning two years (1991–1993).

14 Dec 1997
Canadian guitarist and songwriter Kurt Winter died of kidney failure at the age of 51. He was a member of Brother and The Guess Who (replacing guitarist Randy Bachman), who scored the 1970 US No.1 & UK No.19 single 'American Woman'. Winter penned the hit singles ‘Bus Rider’ and ‘Hand Me Down World’, both of which were hits for The Guess Who.

14 Dec 1998
Billy Preston pleaded guilty to insurance fraud in a Los Angeles court and agreed to testify against six other defendants who allegedly participated in starting fires, staging thefts and rigging car crashes for which a total of 18 fraudulent insurance claims were filed. Preston received five years of probation and one year in jail to run concurrently with a sentence he was already serving for violating probation on a prior conviction for cocaine possession.

14 Dec 1999
Sir Paul McCartney appeared at The Cavern Club Liverpool, England in front of 300 people with David Gilmour, Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, Pete Wingfield on keyboards and the legendary Mick Green (of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates) on guitar. It marked McCartney's last gig of the year and the 20th Century. His last gig at the venue was in 1963. The show went out as a live webcast and was estimated to have been watched by some three million people worldwide (a record at the time for an online audience), BBC Radio 2 broadcast the show live and BBC1 TV also aired the historic performance.

14 Dec 2003
Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Changes' a remake of a track first sung by Ozzy on the Black Sabbath album Volume IV in 1972. It was the first father and daughter chart topper since Frank & Nancy Sinatra in 1967.

14 Dec 2004
The funeral took place in Arlington, Texas for Damageplan and Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell, Eddie Van Halen, placed Darrell’s original black and yellow stripes guitar into the KISS Kasket he was buried in. Several thousand fans and friends gathered at the Arlington Convention Center in Arlington, to mourn the guitarist’s death. Darrell was shot five times in the back of the head during a gig at the Alrosa Villa Club in Columbus on 8th Dec 04 by a mentally ill former US Marine. Damageplan's drum technician, John Brooks, and tour manager, Chris Paluska, were both injured in the incident.

14 Dec 2006
The co-founder of Atlantic Records Ahmet Ertegun died, aged 83. Ertegun who founded Atlantic Records with Herb Abramson in 1947 helped make Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin stars and signed The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin in the early 70s. He suffered a head injury when he fell at a Rolling Stones concert at New York's Beacon Theatre in October and died after slipping into a coma.

14 Dec 2011
The Troggs singer Reg Presley was hospitalized in Winchester, England, with what was suspected to be a stroke. Presley had become ill during a gig in Germany a few days earlier.

14 Dec 2011
American country music singer Billie Jo Spears died of cancer age 74. She reached the top 10 of the US country music chart five times between 1969 and 1977, her biggest being ‘Blanket on the Ground’, a 1975 No.1 hit. One of Spears's first singles was 'Harper Valley PTA', but her single release was beaten off the presses by Jeannie C. Riley's version which became a monster crossover hit, while Spears's failed to chart.

14 Dec 2015
Adele was at No.1 on both the UK and US chart with her third album 25. The album was a massive commercial success, debuting at No.1 in more than 25 markets and broke first-week sales records in many countries, including the UK and US. 25 eventually became the world's best-selling album of 2015 with 17.4 million copies sold within the year, and has sold 20 million copies as of June 2016, making it one of the bestselling albums worldwide.

14 Dec 2018
American bass guitar player Joe Osborn died aged 81. He was known for his work as a session musician in Los Angeles and Nashville during the 1960s through the 1980s. As a member of The Wrecking Crew his playing can be heard on records by; The Mamas & the Papas, The Carpenters, The Association and The 5th Dimension. Osborn can be heard on Simon & Garfunkel's 'Bridge Over Trouble Water' and the 5th Dimension's version of ‘Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In’.

14 Dec 2019
Sir Rod Stewart became the oldest male solo artist to have a No,1 album in the UK when the singer's 10th chart topper You're In My Heart went to the top of the charts. Sir Rod, who was 74 years and 11 months old, took the accolade which was previously held by American singer Paul Simon.

Date & Time

December 14, 2024

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