Rock 'n' Roll History for
March 8


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1962 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
The Beatles, with Pete Best on drums, make their television debut when they play Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby" on the BBC program Teenager's Turn. It was reportedly the first time they wore suits on stage.

1963 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
"Please Please Me" by The Beatles appears at #40 on the Chicago radio station WLS' weekly Silver Dollar Survey. It will peak at #35 on that list the following week, however, the song did not chart on any other major national American survey until a year later.

March 8
25,000 people attended the funeral for Country singer Patsy Cline, killed three days earlier in a plane crash near Camden, Tennessee.

March 8
The Four Tops ink a deal with Berry Gordy's Motown label and receive a $400 signing bonus. They would reach the Billboard Top 40 eighteen times before signing with ABC / Dunhill in 1972.

1964 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
The Dave Clark Five make their first of thirteen appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show where they perform their current #20 hit, "Glad All Over". The song would peak at #6 in America one month later.

1966 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Bob Dylan records "Just Like A Woman" at Columbia Studio A in Nashville. After being released the following August, the song will climb to #33 on Billboard's Hot 100. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it at #232 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

March 8
Lulu became the first British female singer to appear behind the Iron Curtain when she toured Poland with The Hollies.

1968 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Bill Graham opens The Fillmore East in an abandoned movie theater on Second Avenue near East 6th Street on the Lower East Side section of Manhattan. The opening acts are Albert King and Tim Buckley, along with Big Brother And The Holding Company. The venue would remain open until June 27th, 1971.

March 8
Elvis Presley's 26th movie, Stay Away, Joe, premieres in New York City. The western comedy features Elvis as a Native American rodeo champion who returns to the reservation in a white Cadillac convertible that he uses to drive cattle. For the first time since Wild in the Country, neither an LP record nor an extended-play single was planned for a Presley film soundtrack.

1969 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Steve Marriott officially announced that he was quitting The Small Faces. In 1973, he told The L.A. Times "I left the band when I realized the gimmickry album tracks we were making and the record company was releasing as singles, like "Itchycoo Park" (US #16) and "Lazy Sunday" (UK #2), were doing much better than the things we really dug." He would go on to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton, while the remaining members, Ronnie Lane, Kenny Jones and Ian McLagan joined forces with two former members of The Jeff Beck Group, singer Rod Stewart and guitarist Ronnie Wood to continue as Faces.

1970 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Diana Ross performs for the first time as a solo artist, starting an eleven-night run at the Monticello in Framingham, Massachusetts, where she hones her act for her Las Vegas debut in May. She had left The Supremes two months earlier.

1973 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Paul McCartney pleads guilty to charges of growing marijuana outside his Scottish countryside farm and is fined $240. Paul says that a fan gave him the seeds and he didn't know what they would grow.

March 8
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan of The Grateful Dead, died of a stomach hemorrhage and liver failure, brought on by alcohol poisoning. He was just 27 years old.

1975 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Olivia Newton-John's "Have You Never Been Mellow" becomes her second Billboard number one record. She would go on to have three more.

March 8
The New Musical Express announces that The Rolling Stones have chosen Wayne Perkins to replace the recently departed Mick Taylor. Two weeks later, The Stones themselves will issue a statement saying that Ron Wood will fill the position. Mick Jagger would say, "No matter how great Wayne Perkins is... he plays very similar to Mick Taylor."

March 8

1976 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Former Spooky Tooth singer Gary Wright is awarded a Gold record for sales of one million copies of "Dream Weaver". The song topped both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Cashbox Best Sellers chart.

1990 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Rolling Stone magazine let Jefferson Airplane know exactly how they felt about the group's reforming when they named their new album as the Most Unwanted Comeback of the Year. The LP featured all of the main members from the band's glory days, but little was heard from the Airplane after this embarrassment.

2003 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Adam Faith suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 62. He was one of England's major Pop stars in the early 1960s and enjoyed a run of eleven British Top 20 hits prior to the arrival of The Beatles.

2006 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Boy George pleaded guilty in Manhattan criminal court to a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report over a burglary. Judge Anthony Ferrara returned a sentence of a conditional discharge that required George to undergo a drug treatment program in Salisbury, England and to perform five days of community service in Manhattan.

2007 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Roy Head's son, 28 year-old Jason "Sundance" Head, was voted off the American Idol TV program in a move that shocked even the judges. "Sundance, you've been one of our finest. I'm speechless," said Paula Abdul. Sundance received a further blow after the show was over when he was told his cousin, Burl Head, died in a house fire in Houston. Burl had reportedly given Sundance $1,500 for his stay in Los Angeles during the competition. Sundance's father Roy reached the Billboard Top 40 three times in 1965, including the #2 hit "Treat Her Right".

2011 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Bernard St. Clair Lee, a baritone singer and original member of The Hues Corporation, who had an early Disco hit in 1974 with "Rock the Boat", died of natural causes at the age of 66.

2013 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Peter Banks, who co-founded Yes with Chris Squire in 1968, passed away at the the age of 65. Banks played on the band's first two albums, 1969's "Yes" and 1970's "Time and a Word" before being dismissed over disagreements about the group's direction.

2015 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
Lew Soloff, the trumpeter who played the memorable solo on the album version of Blood, Sweat & Tears' "Spinning Wheel", died following a heart attack at the age of 71.

2016 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
George Martin, who signed The Beatles to EMI in 1962 and went on to produce most of their catalog, passed away at the age of 90. In total, Martin produced 23 number ones on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, 19 of which were by The Beatles. He also produced chart topping hits for Paul McCartney ("Say Say Say" with Michael Jackson and "Ebony and Ivory" with Stevie Wonder), Elton John ("Candle in the Wind 1997") and America ("Sister Golden Hair"). In a statement to the press, McCartney said, "From the day that he gave The Beatles our first recording contract, to the last time I saw him, he was the most generous, intelligent and musical person I've ever had the pleasure to know."

2018 - ClassicBands.com

March 8
The soundtrack from the Hugh Jackman film The Greatest Showman set a new record for the second longest unbroken run at #1 in the last 20 years in the UK. For the ninth straight week, the collection was the most purchased album on CD, the most downloaded and most streamed record of the last seven days.



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