Rock 'n' Roll History for
June 24


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1964 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
Sam Cooke starts a two week stay at New York's Copacabana Club. A 70-foot billboard announcing the engagement was erected in Times Square.

June 24
The Beatles played the first of a two night stay in Auckland, New Zealand and although fans were enthusiastic, Auckland police were not. An inspector was quoted as saying "We didn't want 'em here and I don't know why you brought 'em." Only three officers were assigned to a mob of several thousand fans, held just ten meters from the band's hotel entrance. John Lennon was so angry at the lack of security that the Auckland shows were nearly called off.

1965 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
John Lennon's second book, A Spaniard in the Works was issued by the London publishing firm, Jonathan Cape. It consists of nonsensical stories and drawings similar to the style of his previous effort, 1964's In His Own Write. A Spaniard in the Works became an immediate best seller, going through four printings in its first four months and ultimately selling over 100,000 copies.

1966 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
The Richard Carpenter Trio, consisting of Richard Carpenter on electric piano, Karen Carpenter on drums, and Wes Jacobs on bass, won the "Hollywood Bowl Battle of the Bands" competition. They played an instrumental version of "The Girl from Ipanema" and their own piece, "Iced Tea". As a result of their victory they were signed to RCA Records and recorded songs such as The Beatles' "Every Little Thing" and Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night". After a committee reviewed their recordings, they chose not to produce them, and the trio were dropped from the label.

1967 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
The beginning of the end came for The Lovin' Spoonful when guitarist Zal Yanovsky quit after a performance in New York at the Forest Hills Music Festival. One year later, John Sebastian would also leave the band to go solo. Although he made several unannounced guest appearances during John Sebastian concerts, Yanovsky gradually withdrew from music altogether and eventually became a restaurateur. He was 58 years old when he suffered a fatal heart attack on December 13th, 2002 at his farm near Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

June 24
Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" enters the Billboard chart, where it will peak at #5. The song was written by the band around a melody composed by the group's organist, Matthew Fisher, who was inspired by the chord progression of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Orchestral Suite in D", composed between 1725 and 1739.

1972 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
A Detroit, Michigan band called Gallery had Cashbox Magazine's best selling single with "Nice To Be With You". The song would climb to #4 on the Billboard chart and earn a Gold record for sales of over one million copies. The group would find further success with "I Believe In Music" (#22) and "Big City Miss Ruth Ann" (#23) over the following ten months.

1974 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" is released in America, where it would become their highest charting single, reaching #8. If you listen carefully, you can hear Ronnie Van Zant shout "Turn it up", asking producer Al Kooper and engineer Rodney Mills to turn up the volume in his headphones so that he could hear the track better.

June 24
Capitol Records releases the two disc LP "Endless Summer", a collection of greatest hits by The Beach Boys. Four months later it will top the album charts in both the US and Canada and return the group to a level of commercial success they had not seen since the mid-1960s. The album spent 155 weeks on the Billboard 200 and was certified 3X Platinum by the RIAA for selling over three million copies.

1975 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
The US Attorney in Newark, New Jersey hands down indictments to nineteen music industry executives after a two year investigation. Counts of income tax evasion and payola are leveled against Clive Davis, former president of Columbia Records and Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, architects of the Philadelphia sound of the '70s. Fines and private settlements followed.

1977 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
Madison Wisconsin Police Detective Bruce Frey witnessed one of the strangest events of his career when he saw Elvis Presley jump out of his limo and stop two teenagers who were beating up a younger lad at a local gas station. Elvis said, "I'll take you on." Frey remembers; "They looked up at him, froze in mid-punch and the victim ran into the gas station." The pair quickly apologized and Elvis got back into the limo and headed for his hotel room at the Sheraton. Elvis was awarded a 7th Degree Black Belt in 1973 while training with Master Kang Rhee in Memphis, Tennessee from 1970 to 1974.

1999 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
Eric Clapton put one hundred of his guitars up for auction at Christie's in New York to raise money for his drug rehab clinic, the Crossroads Centre in Antigua. His 1956 Fender Stratocaster named Brownie, which was used to record the electric version of "Layla", was sold for a record $497,500. The auction helped raise nearly $5 million for the clinic.

2000 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
KISS auctioned off memorabilia from their touring days. The items brought in $876,000 on the first day of the two day event.

2003 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
Gert van der Graaf, a man who had been deported from Sweden for stalking ABBA's Agnetha Faeltskog, was arrested near the singer's island retreat. He had been her boyfriend from 1997 to 1999, but had been issued a restraining order barring him from seeing or talking to her in 2000.

2008 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
A 36-year-old Nashville man was charged with disorderly conduct and public intoxication after he grabbed Cher by the waist at Tootsies Orchid Lounge in Nashville, Tennessee.

2010 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
Jo Jo Billingsley, a former back-up singer for Lynyrd Skynyrd, died of cancer at the age of 58. She was the only band member who was not involved in the October 20, 1977 airplane crash that killed several members of the group, as she was under a doctor's care at the time. She did not rejoin when the band got together again in 1987, but was on hand to sing "Sweet Home Alabama" at Lynyrd Skynyrd's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

2012 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
Billboard.com named Olivia Newton-John's 1982 hit, "Physical" as The Sexiest Song Of All Time. Other classic Rock songs that made the top ten were Rod Stewart's "Tonight's The Night", Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On", Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff", and another Rod Stewart contribution, "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy".

2013 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
Alan Myers, drummer for the New Wave band Devo on their 1980, Billboard #14 hit, "Whip It", died of cancer at the age of 58.

2016 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
Bernie Worrell, whose mastery of the Moog synthesizer helped define the sound of George Clinton's dual projects of Parliament and Funkadelic, died of cancer at the age of 72.

June 24
Billy Joel gave a Billy Joel tribute band called Big Shot the thrill of a lifetime when he joined them on stage for three songs at Huntington, New York's intimate Paramount Theatre.

2018 - ClassicBands.com

June 24
George Cameron, drummer and vocalist for The Left Banke on their hits "Walk Away Renee" (US #5) and "Pretty Ballerina" (US #15), died of cancer at the age of 70.



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