Are you ready to learn some stuff? It’s March 9th and here’s what happened Today in Rock History!
Starting if off with releases, first up is Alice Cooper’s Love It to Death from 1971.
Other releases include Summerteeth from Wilco in 1999, Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz in 1993, and this really niche album that not a lot of people have ever heard of called The Joshua Tree from U2 in 1987.
Moving into birthdays now, we have Shannon Leto of Thirty Seconds to Mars!
As well as John Cale of the Velvet Underground
Moving onto 1991, The Clash’s song Should I Stay or Should I Go becomes the bands only No. 1 single in the UK after it appeared in a Levi’s TV commercial. The song was originally released in 1982 off their album Combat Rock.
We lost Brad Delp of Boston in 2007 at the age of 55 after he commits suicide from carbon monoxide poisoning after lighting two charcoal grills inside his bathroom at his New Hampshire home. He left a note paper-clipped to his shirt that read “Mr. Brad Delp. I am a lonely soul.”
In 1970, the band Earth, who recently underwent a name change, made their concert debut at The Roundhouse in London. Their new name: Black Sabbath.
In 2020, an appellate court upheld the 2016 ruling in the Led Zeppelin-Spirit lawsuit in favor of Zeppelin. The ruling would bring an end to the lawsuit, which began in 2014, stating Zeppelin used parts of the Spirit song Taurus for their song Stairway to Heaven. The court would also overturn the “inverse ratio rule.” This would lower the standard of infringement based on how much access a defendant had to a song.
In 1990, Mother Love Bone would play their final show ever as, 10 days later, their lead singer Andrew Wood would die of a heroin overdose. Love Bone members Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard would form Pearl Jam a year later.
And finally in 1986, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith visit Magic Ventures Studios in New York to record parts of their song Walk This Way. This was so the hip-hop group Run-D.M.C. could use the parts to turn the song into a rap jam. Neither of the acts were into the collab but Rick Rubin, Run-D.M.C.’s producer, spearheaded the effort. The track resulted in a huge hit for Run-D.M.C. and it helped revitalize the careers of Aerosmith.
This has been Today in Rock History! Keep on Rocking, keep on Rolling! Check back tomorrow for your next rock history lesson!
