11/26/2025
ON THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY: 11.26
1962 - The Beatles recorded their second single "Please Please Me" in 18 takes, and "Ask Me Why" for the flipside, at EMI studios in London. When released in the U.S. on the Vee-Jay label, the first pressings featured a typographical error — the band's name was spelled "The Beattles".
1965 - After cleaning a church in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where they had Thanksgiving dinner the day before, Arlo Guthrie and a friend clean up the place, but toss the trash down a hill when they can't find an open dump. They are arrested, fined $25 each, and forced to pick up the garbage. When they return to the church, Guthrie writes "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" about the incident, embellishing some details ( there were not five police officers taking forensic evidence at the crime scene, and Guthrie did not get out of Vietnam because of his criminal record...he got out of it because his number wasn't called in the draft).
Three days after the arrest, the Berkshire Eagle reports on the event, explaining how the chief of police sleuthed them out by riffling through the trash for two hours before finding a piece of paper that identified Ray Brock, who lived in the church with his wife, Alice (the church is known as "Alice's Restaurant" because of the many meals she serves there).
The song becomes a Thanksgiving classic and Guthrie's franchise. In 1967, he performs it at the Newport Folk Festival, and in 1969 he stars in a movie, also called Alice's Restaurant, which re-tells the story. In 1991, he buys the church and re-names it "The Guthrie Center," running programs for kids. The center also honors his father, the folk singer Woody Guthrie. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
1968 - Cream played their farewell concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London. Also on the bill were Yes and Taste (Rory Gallagher’s band).
Cream’s set included classic blues covers such as “I’m So Glad” (Skip James), “Sitting on Top of the World” (Mississippi Sheiks), “Cross Roads” (Robert Johnson), “Steppin’ Out” (Memphis Slim) and “Spoonful” (Howlin’ Wolf). These were complemented by the band’s own compositions, “White Room,” “Politician,” “Toad,” with Ginger Baker’s long drum solo, and of course, “Sunshine of Your Love,” the song that broke Cream in America.
How could a band last for a little over two years, be so successful, and then break up? The working relationship among the three members of Cream was never an easy or uncomplicated one. The egos involved in keeping one of the world's first supergroups powered were astronomical. One guy was a cantankerous madman, another continuously tried to wrestle control of the group and another was called "God" by his fans. Some things were not meant to last.
1976 - The S*x Pistols released their incendiary "Anarchy In The U.K." single. It was the only S*x Pistols recording released by EMI before the label dropped the group after the band used profanity during a live television broadcast.
As far as debut singles go, ‘Anarchy In The UK’ is still unrivalled when it comes to announcing exactly who you are within just three and a half minutes. The fierce anti-establishment message that runs through the veins of the single is infectious and helped make the S*x Pistols the voice of the rebellious young in Britain who were fed up of living within the confinements of the system. Everything about Johnny Rotten was refreshing, ranging from his stage name, his general antagonistic demeanor but especially his canon of ferocious political tunes.
Steve Jones made his guitar sound like a pub brawl, while Rotten snarled, spat and snickered, declaring himself an antichrist and ending the song by urging his fans, "Get pissed/Destroy!" EMI pulled "Anarchy in the U.K." and dropped them, which just made them more notorious. "I don't understand it," Rotten said in 1977. "All we're trying to do is destroy everything."
(Photo credit should read JOHNNY EGGITT/AFP via Getty Images)
1980 - Blondie released their fifth studio album, Autoamerican. The basic Blondie sextet was augmented, or replaced, by numerous session musicians (including lots of uncredited horn and string players) for the group's fifth album, Autoamerican, on which they continued to expand their stylistic range, with greater success, at least on certain tracks, than they had on Eat to the Beat. A cover of Jamaican group the Paragons' "The Tide Is High," released in advance of the album, became a gold-selling number one single, as did the rap pastiche "Rapture.".
1982 - Led Zeppelin released their ninth and final studio album, Coda. Released two years after the 1980 death of John Bonham, Coda tied up most of the loose ends Led Zeppelin left hanging: it officially issued a bunch of tracks circulating on bootleg and it fulfilled their obligation to Atlantic Records.
It features three blistering rockers that were rejected for In Through the Out Door. If "Ozone Baby," "Darlene," or "Wearing and Tearing" -- rockers that alternately cut loose, groove, and menace -- had made the cut for In Through the Out Door, that album wouldn't have had its vague progressive edge and when they're included alongside a revival of the band's early raver "We're Gonna Groove," the big-boned funk of the Houses of the Holy outtake "Walter's Walk," and the folk stomp "Poor Tom" (naturally taken from the sessions for Led Zeppelin III), they wind up underscoring the band's often underappreciated lighter side. For heaviness, there's a live version of "I Can't Quit You Baby" and "Bonzo's Montreux," a solo showcase for the departed drummer, and when this pair is added to the six doses of hard-charging rock & roll, it amounts to a good snapshot of much of what made Led Zeppelin a great band: when they were cooking, they really did groove.
1982 - Trumpeter Miles Davis married for the third time, tying the knot with actress Cicely Tyson (1991’s Fried Green Tomatoes among her many credits). Although the marriage ended in 1988, Davis credited Tyson for helping him overcome his co***ne addiction, ultimately saving his life.
1988 - Russian cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 7 took into space a cassette copy (minus the cassette box for weight reasons) of the latest Pink Floyd album Delicate Sound Of Thunder and played it in orbit, making Pink Floyd the first rock band to be played in space. David Gilmour and Nick Mason both attended the launch of the spacecraft.
1989 - MTV's acoustic showcase Unplugged premieres with an episode featuring Squeeze. Jules Shear hosts the first season.
When Squeeze members Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford arrived at the taping, they brought electric guitars, as recalled by producer Alex Coletti.
Coletti pointed out the error, telling them, "Very funny, guys. Where are the acoustics? It's Unplugged".
The band members then had to make a quick phone call to get acoustic guitars for the performance.
The result: The initial episode featured Squeeze, alongside Syd Straw and Elliot Easton from The Cars, and launched the Unplugged series, which would go on to feature numerous iconic acoustic performances.
1993 - U2 play shorthanded for the only time when bass player Adam Clayton misses a show in Sydney after blacking out from a bender (his tech, Stuart Morgan, fills in). When the tour ends two weeks later, Clayton goes to rehab and gives up alcohol.
2010 - Willie Nelson was arrested for possession of six ounces of ma*****na found in his tour bus while traveling from Los Angeles to Texas. He was released after paying bail of $2,500. Prosecutor Kit Bramblett supported not sentencing Nelson to jail due to the amount of ma*****na being small, but suggested instead a $100 fine and told Nelson that he would have him sing "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" for the court.
Birthdays:
Anna Mae Bullock — better known as Tina Turner — was born today in 1939. Starting with her performances with her ex-husband Ike, Turner injected an uninhibited, volcanic stage presence into pop. Even with choreographed backup singers — both with Ike and during her own career — Turner never seemed reined in. Her influence on rock, R&B, and soul singing and performance was also immeasurable. Her delivery influenced everyone from Mick Jagger to Mary J. Blige, and her high-energy stage presence (topped with an array of gravity-defying wigs) was passed down to Janet Jackson and Beyoncé. Turner’s message — one that resounded with generations of women — was that she could hold her own onstage against any man.
But Turner’s other legacy was more personal and involved a far more complex man. During her time with Ike — a demanding and often drug-addled bandleader and guitarist — her husband often beat and humiliated her. Turner credited her introduction to Buddhism for giving her the strength to leave. “I never stopped praying … that was my tool,” Turner told Rolling Stone in 1986. “Psychologically, I was protecting myself, which is why I didn’t do drugs and didn’t drink. I had to stay in control. So I just kept searching, spiritually, for the answer.”
Her subsequent rebirth, starting with her massively popular, Grammy-winning 1984 makeover Private Dancer, made her a symbol of survival and renewal.
As Turner herself would later say, though, the ongoing retelling of her life story and time with Ike — in movies, musicals and documentaries — came with a price. As much as her troubles inspired others, she constantly had to relive them and was always asked about Ike, even after his death in 2007. “He did get me started and he was good to me at the beginning,” she said in the Tina doc. “So I have some good thoughts. Maybe it was a good thing that I met him. That, I don’t know.”
(Photo by -/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
John McVie is 80. As the bassist for Fleetwood Mac -- and, indeed, providing the "Mac" in that group name -- John McVie may be the most circumspect, self-effacing rock musician ever to achieve anything like superstar status. This fact could be explained when one recognizes that he never set out to be a rock musician, or a superstar. Among bassists whose names are (or have been) household words, he's positively a shrinking violet next to figures such as John Entwistle, Paul McCartney, Jack Bruce, John Paul Jones, Sting, et al., all the while appearing on just about as many records as any of them (save McCartney) that are in people's collections.
The young McVie was working as a tax inspector during the daytime and playing music at night with with the Cyril Davies All-Stars, one of the top British blues bands working in London at the time, and then was offered the chance to join a fledgling band called the Bluesbreakers, organized and led by John Mayall. When Peter Green left The Bluesbreakers, Mick Fleetwood and eventually John McVie would join him to form the first line up of Fleetwood Mac. John would anchor the group through all of it's many line up and stylistic changes and would also marry Christine Perfect (Christine McVie).
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, UDiscover Music, Rolling Stone, Far Out Magazine, Song Facts, Ultimate Classic Rock, Allmusic, and Wikipedia.
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