08/06/2025
ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY: 8.6
1959 - In balmy Los Angeles, Dean Martin records the most famous version of the holiday classic "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!." It's one of many popular Christmas songs with no mention of Christmas in the lyric.
1965 -The Beatles released Help! Considering that Help! functions as the Beatles' fifth album and as the soundtrack to their second film -- while filming, they continued to release non-LP singles on a regular basis -- it's not entirely surprising that it still has some of the weariness of Beatles for Sale. Again, they pad the album with covers, but the Bakersfield bounce of "Act Naturally" adds new flavor (along with an ideal showcase for Ringo's amiable vocals) and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" gives John an opportunity to flex his rock & roll muscle. George is writing again and if his two contributions don't touch Lennon and McCartney's originals, they hold their own against much of their British pop peers.
Lennon's Dylan infatuation holds strong, particularly on the plaintive "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" and the title track, where the brash arrangement disguises Lennon's desperation. Driven by an indelible 12-string guitar, "Ticket to Ride" is another masterpiece and "You're Going to Lose That Girl" is the kind of song McCartney effortlessly tosses off -- which he does with the jaunty "The Night Before" and "Another Girl," two very fine tunes that simply update his melodic signature. He did much better with "I've Just Seen a Face," an irresistible folk-rock gem, and "Yesterday," a simple, beautiful ballad whose arrangement -- an acoustic guitar supported by a string quartet -- and composition suggested much more sophisticated and adventurous musical territory, which the group immediately began exploring with Rubber Soul.
1970 - Steppenwolf, Janis Joplin, Paul Simon, Poco and Johnny Winter all appeared at the Concert For Peace at New York's Shea Stadium. The concert date coincided with the 25th anniversary of dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
1970 - At the Fillmore West in San Francisco, Christine McVie plays her first gig with Fleetwood Mac. She later becomes the band's first female member, joining her husband John in the group.
1973 - A devastating car accident drops Stevie Wonder down to two senses, as he temporarily loses smell and taste after the vehicle he's riding in runs into the back of a logging truck. He is in a coma for four days, but makes a strong recovery and returns to the studio in a few weeks.
Wonder gradually began to believe that the crash had been destined, because the aftermath took him to “a much better spiritual place that made me aware of a lot of things that concern my life and my future”. Wonder, who was not into drugs, and only drank the occasional beer or glass of Mateus Rosé wine, said after the accident: “I don’t even drink, man.” Years after the crash, he still regarded the date as remarkable: “It was on 6 August that I almost died in that car accident. It was also on 6 August – 1988 – that my son Kwame was born. Life is funny.”
1981 - Stevie Nicks released her first solo album, Bella Donna. Stevie Nicks' solo career was off to an impressive, if overdue, start with Bella Donna, which left no doubt that she could function quite well without the input of her colleagues in Fleetwood Mac. The album yielded a number of hits that seemed omnipresent in the '80s, including the moving "Leather and Lace" (which unites Nicks with Don Henley), the poetic "Edge of Seventeen," and her rootsy duet with Tom Petty, "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around." But equally engaging are less-exposed tracks like the haunting "After the Glitter Fades." Hit producer Jimmy Iovine wisely avoids over-producing, and keeps things sounding organic on this striking debut. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images For The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)
1996 - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released Songs and Music from the Motion Picture “She’s the One”. Nominally a soundtrack to Ed Burns' film She's the One, Tom Petty's Songs and Music from "She's the One" plays like an entity of its own, standing up quite well without the movie itself. She's the One is one of Petty's most relaxed efforts -- several of the songs feel like they were written and performed quickly, almost as if they were throwaways, but that ramshackle feeling actually works in the album's favor. With its loose ends, repeated songs, covers, brief instrumental bridges, and direct production, She's the One is a ragged listen, but it's a comfortable, engaging, and surprisingly eclectic one. Some of the songs were leftover from Wildflowers after it was decided that it would be a single LP as opposed to the original idea of a double.
Along the way, he tosses in two excellent covers of contemporary songwriters -- Lucinda Williams' slyly sneering "Change the Locks" and Beck's stark, sad "As***le" -- which are performed with affection and vigor. In fact, that vigor is what makes She's the One so charming -- Petty sounds like he's having a good time throughout the album. It's not a major statement in his catalog, but it's all the more entertaining because of its simple, direct approach.
2004 - Green Day releases American Idiot. Billie Joe Armstrong was inspired to write this after hearing a jingoistic Lynyrd Skynyrd song being played on his car radio, whilst driving to the studio. He told Q magazine May 2009: "It was like, I'm proud to be a redneck and I was like, Oh my God, why would you be proud of something like that? This is exactly what I'm against. When he got to the studio, Armstrong furiously penned this song. He said: "I looked at the guys like, Do you mind that I'm saying this? And they were like, No, we agree with you. And it started the ball rolling."
Billie Joe Armstrong told Spin magazine in November 2004 regarding the American Idiot album: "It's about the confusion of where we're at right now. My education was punk rock - what the Dead Kennedys said, what Operation Ivy said. It was attacking America, but it was American at the same time."
Birthdays:
Andy Warhol, whose work in music included managing the Velvet Underground, was born today in 1928. He passed away in 1987. Andy Warhol is of course primarily known as a major visual artist, and a significant filmmaker. He was not a musician, and probably knew little about the technological processes by which music is recorded. Nonetheless, he made notable contributions to rock history as a producer and manager of the Velvet Underground. He managed the Velvets until about the summer of 1967, and was credited as producer of the bulk of their debut album.
Singer-songwriter Elliott Smith was born in 1969 in Omaha, Nebraska. He spent most of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity as a performing artist. During his too-short career, the highly influential Smith was nominated for an Oscar in 1998 for the song "Miss Misery," which was included in the film Good Will Hunting. 50 years after his birth — Smith’s albums XO and Figure 8 were reissued as deluxe editions. Smith’s songwriting and production techniques — notably his use of whispery multi-tracked vocals — remain an influence on a wealth of indie musicians, including Phoebe Bridgers.
R.I.P.:
1999 - Dick Latvala died aged 56 after being in a coma caused by a heart attack. Latvala had worked with the Grateful Dead since the early 80s looking after their archives of live performances which became a series of 'Dick's Picks' albums.
2004 - Rick James was found dead in his Los Angeles home at age 56. In the late 60s James worked as a songwriter and producer for Motown, working with Smokey Robinson and The Miracles. In the late 1970s, when the fortunes of Motown Records seemed to be flagging, Rick James came along and rescued the company, providing funky hits that updated the label's style and saw it through into the mid-'80s. He was in a band with future Buffalo Springfield members Neil Young and Bruce Palmer, The Mynah Birds. Addicted to co***ne, he once admitted to spending $7,000 a week on drugs for five years.
2009 - W***y DeVille died at the age of 58 following a battle with pancreatic cancer. The band he formed, Mink Deville, appeared at the legendary CBGB club in New York in the 1970s and scored the 1977 hit "Spanish Stroll."
On This Day In Music History was sourced, curated, copied, pasted, edited, and occasionally woven together with my own crude prose, from This Day in Music, Song Facts, The independent, Allmusic, Music this Day and Wikipedia.
