The Current Music Blog
< An awesome phenomenon.. free music from Menomena | Main | Wednesday Coffee Break: Let's Make A List >

Today In Music History: But Yoko Said It Was OK

Posted at 6:04 AM on July 28, 2010 by Steve Seel
Filed under: Music History

Birthdays:

Bassist Marc Perlman of The Jayhawks is 49.


Today in:

1957 - Jerry Lee Lewis made his television debut on "The Steve Allen Show."
1958 - Billboard magazine warned that driving along listening to rock & roll music could "cost the motorist money" by compelling him to waffle the gas pedal in rhythm, thereby wasting fuel.
1973 - One of the biggest rock festivals in history took place in Watkins Glen, N.Y. About 600,000 people gathered to see the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers and The Band.


History Highlight:

Today in 1987, the surviving Beatles sued Nike and Capitol Records over the use of the song "Revolution" in shoe commercials. Nike had paid $250,000 for the rights to Capitol and a similar amount to ATV Music Publishing (the company owned by Michael Jackson, who owned the publishing rights to the Beatles' music). Many outraged fans felt John Lennon, the song's writer, would have objected to this commercialization of his song. George Harrison said of the Nike deal in November 1987 that "every Beatles song ever recorded is going to be advertising women's underwear and sausages. We've got to put a stop to it in order to set a precedent. Otherwise it's going to be a free-for-all. It's one thing when you're dead, but we're still around! They don't have any respect for the fact that we wrote and recorded those songs, and it was our lives." The suit was eventually settled out of court. So this morning, we enjoyed a completely non-commercial, product-endorsement-free airing of "Revolution."

July 2010
S M T W T F S
        1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31


Master Archive
Recent Entries
Tools
Categories
Services
Become a Sponsor