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Today in rock history: on this date in 1941, singer/songwriter Paul Simon was born in Newark, New Jersey. Simon’s rise to fame came as part of the successful duo Simon and Garfunkel which scored a pile of hit singles in the 1960s and into the early 1970s. Going solo after the breakup of the pair, Simon went on to lead a successful career that brought him his own fair share of platinum-selling albums and popular radio hits. Simon’s greatest success came in 1986 with his masterful foray into world music with his brilliant Graceland album.
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Today in rock history: on this date in 1980, Australian pop/rock band INXS released its very first album. The self-titled album produced one hit single in the band’s homeland, the catchy “Just Keep Walking,” and the record cracked the top 30 in Australia as well. Although not released in other parts of the world until 1984 when the band had already begun its meteoric rise to fame around the globe, the album stands as the very first release this, one of the best-selling bands to emerge in the 1980s, ever committed to wax.
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Today in rock history: on this date in 1978, Billy Joel released his sixth studio album, 52nd Street. The album was Joel’s first to reach the no. 1 spot on Billboard’s pop albums chart and produced several hit singles including “My Life”, “Big Shot” and “Honesty.” Awarded the Grammy award for album of the year, the record went on to sell in excess of seven million copies in America alone and remains one of Joel’s best-selling records of his catalog. 52nd Street was also the first commercially available pop CD to hit the Japanese market when the newly invented small plastic discs went on sale there in October of 1982.
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Today in rock history: on this date in 1965, The Who recorded what would become one of its most recognizable hits, and the song that would be regarded as one of the best teen angst anthems of all time, “My Generation.” The song was a nod to the English Mod culture that the band was so closely associated with at the time, and it quickly became a massive hit in the band’s native England where it climbed as high as no. 2 on British sales charts. Verses in the song feature lead singer Roger Daltrey stuttering some of the words in the lyrics, an act Daltrey would later admit to doing to make the words fit into the lines of the song. In England the BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation, was cautious about playing the raucous rock and roll anthem for fear that it would be offensive to listeners with speech impediments. Daltrey plays Ruth Eckerd Hall on October 30 — details on the show are available here.
