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Today in rock history: On this date in 1967, the Beatles opened the Apple Boutique. The shop arrived as the band was at its commercial peak and was located at the corner of Baker Street and Paddington Street in the Marylebone section of London. In the words of Paul McCartney, the shop was supposed to be “a beautiful place where beautiful people can buy beautiful things.” Largely consisting of clothing, accessories and an assortment of garments, the idea behind the venture was that everything in it was to be for sale. Although the band was selling albums in record numbers at the time, the Apple Boutique wound up being a commercial failure that lost money at a staggering rate; it shut its doors just seven months later. The evening before the official closure in late July of 1968, band members and their respective wives or girlfriends visited the shop to take any inventory they wanted. It was then advertised that the shop would be closing permanently and that all its contents were being given away free of charge. As fans queued up and waited to get their chance to take home a piece of Beatles history, scuffles and fights broke out among the lines and, within hours, the store was stripped clean of all its contents.
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Today in rock history: On this date in 1956, as rock and roll was in its infancy but gaining momentum, a film by the name of Rock, Rock, Rock! made its premiere at movie theaters. Intended to capitalize on the enormous success the genre was enjoying, the film captured several performances by artists like Chuck Berry, LaVern Baker, The Moonglows, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, and many others. The performances were interspersed with a very lightweight plot that involved a young girl’s plight to buy a fashionable new dress that her father disapproves of. The female character was played by actress Tuesday Weld, who was only 13 years old at the time of the filming. The movie was a huge box office success and helped catapult the careers of the musical acts that appeared; a soundtrack album was released to accompany the film, which was the very first full-length album to be released through legendary Chicago blues-based label Chess Records.
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Today in rock history: On this date in 1942, American singer-songwriter Harry Chapin was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. One of the best-selling and most popular artists of the 1970s, Chapin scored a string of hit singles; the ballad “Cat's in the Cradle” and the epic “Taxi” were among the most well-known and beloved. Outspoken against world hunger, Chapin was one of the earliest rock musicians to be a humanitarian and use his success for the greater good. Chapin died at the age of 38 in a 1981 car accident.
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Today in rock history: On this date in 1999, the Recording Industry Association of America, better known as the RIAA, sued file-sharing site Napster. The software made it possible for millions of music fans to download and trade copyrighted music for free, which meant losses of millions for record companies and the industry as a whole. The trial dragged on for years and eventually redefined the rules for file sharing and copyright infringement. Along the way, Napster went bankrupt and many of its backers and investors were on the hook for paying exorbitant legal fees incurred throughout the long, drawn-out case. Napster would reemerge years later as a legitimate music service but the damage was done; the hit the recording industry took after years of free music being accessible to millions of fans with a computer was vast and crippling. Napster and other related sites would change the course of how music was bought and sold indefinitely.
This article appears in Dec 6-13, 2018.