Entertainment
John Lennon Is Born, Chuck Berry Plays His Last Gig: Music History In Depth Podcast October 9 - 15
In this episode of Music History In Depth, we explore significant events from October 9 to 15, including John Lennon's birthday and Chuck Berry's last gig. We delve into the dramatic moments...
John Lennon Is Born, Chuck Berry Plays His Last Gig: Music History In Depth Podcast October 9 - 15
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This is the Music History In-depth Podcast 4 October 9th through the 15th.
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On this week's show, someone takes exception to someone winning an award and it's not Kanye.
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We look back on October 15th and we celebrate the birthday of a beetle.
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You know, awards time is supposed to be a happy time for most artists.
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It's a time to reflect on the past year and celebrate your fellow artist
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accomplishments.
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Oh my goodness.
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It's a time for artists to get jealous of each other and to sometimes act out.
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Most people lately will pull a Kanye or 50 cent and walk on stage to interrupt someone else's acceptance speech.
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In Kanye's case twice, mind you.
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Apparently, country music artists are more gangster and like to take it to a whole other level.
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At least one of them did.
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See, back in the early 1970s, country music purist had a problem.
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Pop music acts were beginning to cross over into country music and dominating the country music charts.
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Not only were they topping the country charts, they were also winning awards for doing it.
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On October 14th, 1974, Olivia Newton-John won female vocalist of the year at the Country Music Association Awards.
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And that made the purist furious.
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That same year though, Country Music Singer Charlie Rich won the top award which is an entertainer of the year.
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That win would come back to haunt the Country Music Association in both an insulting and actually kind of funny way the very next year.
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On October 13th, 1975, that year's Country Music Association Awards were handed out.
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Much like the Oscars, the winners from the previous year handed out the awards the next year.
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The night originally went along pretty smoothly.
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And then the final award was presented entertainer of the year.
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That is the award that every country music artist wants to win at least once.
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It's the MVP award for Country Music.
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Think of it that way.
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Charlie Rich since he won the award the year before came out to present this year's award.
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Charlie read off the names and then he took the envelope with the winners name on it and opened it.
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And what he did next shocked the audience.
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First, Charlie took out his cigarette lighter, lit it and started burning the card with the winners name on it.
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And then Charlie read John Denver's name on the card and made a noise of disgust.
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The winner, Pops Superstar John Denver, was not there but was on a satellite feed accepting the award.
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He was oblivious to the fact that Rich burned the card with his name on it.
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Rich for his part was banned from certain future award shows.
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Still, my thought is that the Kanye's in 50 cents of the world will need to now do something dramatic.
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Maybe tackle the winner or burn their hair or something like that.
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Not even Kanye in 50 cents have managed to top Charlie Rich burning the winner's card with John Denver's name on it.
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At the Country Music Association Awards which were held on October 13th, 1975.
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What if I told you that a now famous Broadway show got popular because of an album?
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You would say sure, that happens all the time.
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Green Day and American Idiot for example.
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True, but shows like that were adapted only after the album American Idiot movie,
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insert any Disney movie or song book like say a Billy Joel, Motown, Carol King became popular.
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Then they were adapted into Broadway musicals.
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This next story is about how a Broadway show became popular because it was purposely marketed as an album first.
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Back in the late 1960s, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice had a show called Joseph and the Amazing Ten.
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It was a two popular at that time playing mainly in churches over in England.
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Undeterred though, they decided to work on what would be their third musical with a rather uncontroversial subject matter that people I'm sure would flock to like crazy.
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Jesus Christ.
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Yeah, no controversy there.
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Let's see here, just to kick it up a notch, they concentrated the story on Judas.
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And to take it even further, they decided not to portray Judas as a villainous backstabber,
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but as someone who was bothered with the fact that Jesus Christ had a massive following and was becoming a little too much of a celebrity for his liking.
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Still, that shouldn't stop anyone from backing this new venture, should it?
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I mean, after all, it's in 1960s.
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Free love, hippies, and all that sort of thing.
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Surely people would fork over some money for this.
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In fact, I bet they were tripping over each other just to get at this one.
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Yeah, no.
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Financial backers were shockingly not ready to fork over millions for this idea.
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Andrew and Tim were stuck.
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How could they get people to back this?
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And then they got an idea.
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How about they put out the cast concept album first to what everybody's appetite?
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They gathered up a cast that included some people who would later become famous.
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Singer Helen Ready, who would have a huge hit with the song I Am Woman,
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Murray Head, who had the hit One Night in Bangkok off of another one of the Android Webber things called Chess back in the 1980s.
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And Ivan Elliman, who's saying if I can't have you from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
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They recorded the single Superstar on October 10, 1969.
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Then they recorded the rest of the album between March and July 1970.
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On October 16, 1970 in England and October 27, 1970 in America, they released their album.
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The reaction, as you would expect from virtually anything that Webber and Rice has ever done,
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was not met kindly by the critics.
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In fact, they trashed it.
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The BBC, for its part, banned the album, calling it sacrilegious.
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Didn't matter though, the album did its job.
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It became a huge smash and got the public excited for the Broadway show, which by then had found financial backing.
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In July of 1971, after finally getting the financial backing that it needed,
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the musical production of Jesus Christ Superstar had its first official run.
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Not on Broadway mind you, but at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they staged it as a concert.
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By the fall of 1971, production had become so popular that unauthorized production started popping up all over America,
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everywhere from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles.
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The official Broadway production opened on October 12, 1971 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre at 237 West 51st Street.
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The theatre was named after journalist Mark Hellinger, and at one time had been a movie theatre.
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Jeff Fenholdt played Jesus, Ben Verine, and Carl Anderson both played Judas, switching off when one needed a break or became ill.
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Paul Ainsley played Herod, Barry Denon played Pontius Pilate, Ivan Eleman played Mary Magdalene.
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The critics were split on the production.
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Some Christians called it blasphemous, while Jewish leaders weren't exactly thrilled with it either.
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For others, it was the fact that two African-Americans were playing Judas.
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No matter the production went on to be nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Score, although it didn't win any Tony Awards,
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it did win a Drama Desk Award and a Theatre World Award.
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It then went to London at the Palace Theatre in 1972 and other places from there.
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It was also adapted into a film in 1973 that was nominated for numerous Golden Globe Awards.
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Just goes to show you that sometimes you have to bet on yourself in your own dreams and come up with a different way in order to get your dreams accomplished.
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The beginning of the recording of the Jesus Christ Superstar musical album with the song Superstar, October 10, 1969.
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The opening of Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on October 12, 1971.
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If there was ever anyone who was a poster boy for punk rocket was definitely Sid Vicious.
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The man had anti-establishment written all over him with swagger to match.
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He became the bassist of the Sex Pistols because the group had just fired their original bassist and Vicious just happened to be at every single one of the Pistols shows, so he was familiar to the guys.
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Sid, however, had a couple of tiny problems.
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The first was that in the beginning he couldn't even play bass.
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In fact, for some gigs, the band unplugged his bass from the sound system.
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The second and more important problem was that he had serious substance issues and by substance issues, just read between the lines because the streaming services don't like you to say exactly what those issues were.
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By the time he joined the group, he was already in deep with them.
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It didn't help that his mother and Beverly also had the same issues and included her son in them.
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Because of this, he was hospitalized for a time for a treatment of hepatitis.
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This meant that he missed a lot of time during the recording of the only Pistols album.
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Never mind the ballaks, here's the Sex Pistols.
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So, Steve Jones had to do both bass and electric guitar and the vast majority of the album.
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Sid's use got in the way of the group.
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Sid went after audience members routinely, and the band ended up breaking up two weeks into their US tour in 1978.
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It was around this time that Sid met and started a very volatile relationship with a party girl who also had the same issues as he did, Nancy Spungen.
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Their flames burned bright and fast for each other.
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Maybe a little bit too fast.
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They would constantly get into fights, mainly brought on by those issues that I was referring to earlier.
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And unfortunately, it was during one of these fights that something really bad happened.
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On October 12, 1978, Sid woke up to find Nancy dead on the floor at the Hotel Chelsea in New York City on West 23rd Street.
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She had a stab wound in her stomach.
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Sid was arrested that same day in charge with murder.
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According to police, during the police interrogation, Sid changed his story a few times before finally confessing to the murder.
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Bale was set at $50,000, the conditions being that he not leave New York City and that he also check in with the police every day and seek treatment for his issues at a methadone clinic.
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During this time, Sid ended up in Bellevue Hospital's psych ward.
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Now the while, his lawyer tried to keep him out of jail, which is lawyer finally succeeded in doing, at least for a little while.
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That all changed when Sid went to a club one night and got into a fight with singer Patty Smith's brother Todd Smith after Sid had hit on Todd's girlfriend.
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Sid was arrested for assault.
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Bale was set again for $10,000, but the bond was recovered by his old record label Virgin Records.
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The rumor was that Mick Jagger had quietly paid for Sid's lawyer during this time.
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However, it was actually Virgin Records and Sir Richard Branson who were covering all the legal fees.
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Sid was released from jail again on $10,000 bond on January 18, 1979, even though his trial had officially started on January 2.
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Sid stayed in jail for a couple more weeks to complete his court-appointed program.
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And on February 1, 1979, Sid was released from prison.
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Sid celebrated his release and being clean the only way he knew how he had his friend Peter Gravel get him some supplies and then went to his friend Michelle Robison's apartment on 63 Bank Street in Manhattan, where they were having a little get together.
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Sid's mother Anne was there as well, that evening at the party while talking about the future and making plans in the event of his acquittal.
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Sid Vicious took those supplies.
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Unfortunately, he had too many of those supplies that night and passed away in his sleep just three months shy of his 22nd birthday.
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He was found dead the next morning by his mother Anne Robison.
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His ashes, by the way, are scattered all over Nancy's grave.
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Sid's mother Anne ended up passing away the exact same way as her son in 1996.
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As with everything in life these days, there's conspiracy theories both concerning Nancy's death and Sid's last night alive.
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One conspiracy theory concerns Robbers, who supposedly broke into the couple's hotel room trying to steal money that Nancy had and it turned into a robbery gone wrong.
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Along with another one about Sid's mother purposely giving him too many supplies the night he passed away.
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One could, I suppose, say that maybe Sid had this thought about spending a good chunk of his life in prison and he figured it didn't seem like a good thing and that is why he left the way that he did.
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Who knows?
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Truth is, we're never going to know.
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Surprisingly, Oliver Stone has made a conspiracy movie about Sid and Nancy yet, although there was a 2009 documentary made called Who Killed Nancy, which made it seem like a dealer killed her.
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By the way, the 1976 movie Sid and Nancy starring a very young Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb is really good. I give that a high recommendation.
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Since the punk rock era, the pistols have become along with the clash. The symbols of punk rock and Sid has become its patron saint.
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What's ironic is that Sid's image is on every t-shirt, poster, and any other thing that can be bought or sold.
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That is something that I'm pretty sure Sid would stick his middle finger up at.
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The death of Nancy Spungin and the arrest of Sid Vicious of the pistols for her murder, October 12, 1978.
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Before we continue, we'd like to tell you about the music history today podcasts where we go over the events that happened on that particular day in music history.
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Music history today podcasts drops every single day, including weekends on this podcast network. Now, back to the music history in depth podcasts.
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October 15th is important in music history for a few reasons. Two events represent the final time for different reasons, while another event inspired a big hit.
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First off, the legendary club CBGB's in the East Village of Manhattan was the epicenter of the punk rock movement in America back in the 1970s.
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Groups that came out of there included Blondie, the Ramones, Bad Brains, the Talking Heads, and Paddy Smith, even the police played there once.
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In the early 2000s, the club got into trouble with the landlord. The landlord claimed that the club owed back rent of $19,000.
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The deeper reason was that I'm sure the landlord wanted to jack up the rent since it's in what is now a very desirable part of the island of Manhattan.
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Otherwise, why didn't someone famous just pay the landlord the $19,000?
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Anyway, CBGB's got evicted and nothing was going to stop it. Not even a movement to get the place turned into a national landmark did anything.
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On October 15, 2006, Paddy Smith took the stage at CBGB's. It would turn out to be the final performance at the club.
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For those wondering, the name CBGB's lives on for a while, but in Las Vegas at a new location. The original location is now as of right now anyway, and overpriced clothing store.
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To their credit, I guess the original location still has the original items from the club on its walls right next to the overpriced shirts and leather jackets.
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Yay progress. Oh, by the way, the location in Las Vegas, I believe, is now close. I think it's now where Hacasan, the EDM nightclub is at this point anyway.
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Yay progress.
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The final rock performance at CBGB's, October 15, 2006.
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This next final event is very, very sad. Someone once asked me if I could build a Mount Rushmore musical axe who would be on it.
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I said that you can't do one for music overall because there's just way too many people who have helped to shape it.
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You would have to build one for each time period and type of music. For example, for classical music, I would have to put Bach Beethoven and Mozart automatically up there with the four spots still kind of up for debate.
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For the early part of rock and roll, I eat a mid 50s. Let's say until maybe 1960.
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I would have to put Elvis Presley, Fat Stomano and Little Richard up there. However, I would also have to put this man front and center in terms of crafting rock and roll and also giving it its attitude.
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Chuck Berry was born on October 18, 1926 in St. Louis, Missouri. From the beginning, Chuck was interested in music.
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He performed during high school, but once he got out of high school, he settled into normal life, got married and worked on an assembly line, assembling cars.
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He still had the music bug, so he started performing with the Johnny Johnson trio. It was there that he honed his showmanship skills, having studied what T-bone Walker was doing on stage.
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One day in May of 1955, Berry went to Chicago, Illinois. He happened to meet the great muddy waters who told him to have a talk with Leonard Chess of Chess Records.
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Chess took a look at Berry. They saw that rhythm and blues was beginning to go down in popularity and they were looking to stretch their sound into new genres.
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They thought that Berry might actually be the person to help them do that.
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He had a bunch of hits in the first decade of his career from Johnny Be Good to no particular place to go to rock and roll music.
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Berry geared his music towards teenagers. He talked about good times, cars, girls, and fun. His stage act became legendary, especially when he bent down and hopped across the stage on one leg, which became known as the Duck Walk.
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He made a good living with his touring. In fact, he became the template for other artists to copy.
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In 1988, the Grammy Hall of Fame inducted Chuck's first big hit. Not only was it his first big hit, but it was also one of the first rock and roll songs.
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Maybelline was a song that was actually a reworking of the song Ida Red by Bob Willes and this Texas Playboys.
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The song is the template for rock and roll songs. It has cars, women, and a great guitar solo. Berry used to sing it during his club gig before he recorded it.
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Chess Records, though, wanted a few changes to it, including changing the name of the song from Ida Red. Chess didn't want to get sued for using the title, of course.
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A legend has it that someone looked on the floor at the studio and saw a box of Maybelline cosmetics thought that it would fit the song perfectly, but added an extra L to Maybelline to get around those pesky copyright laws.
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Plus, they added base to the song in order to make it sound less like a quote-unquote hillbilly song.
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They also changed the melody because even back then it was common practice to take songs and alter them a little without people getting too crazy about it.
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These days, if you did it, you get a multi-million dollar lawsuit and social media backlash to go with it.
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Maybelline was released in July of 1955, became a huge hit. There was number one on the R&B charts and crossed over on the Billboard's Pop Chart where it went top five.
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The Rock and Roll revolution was a full swing after that. As with most acts, with the good comes the bad, and Barry was no different.
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Barry was busted as a child for armed robbery. In 1962, he served one and a half years of a three-year sentence for transporting a minor across state lines. Some believe that that was a made-up charge based on racism.
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He also later in life got caught for a tax evasion and was also sued for filming women changing their clothes in a bathroom. The latter charge he denied but the suit was settled since it was a civil suit.
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Chuck continued to play almost a hundred shows a year worldwide, but then cut back to playing at least once a month at a local restaurant near St. Louis where he lived.
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I actually saw him perform at a college spring concert back in the 80s at my alma mater, the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
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Towards the end of his life as one would expect from a man who lived into his 90s, it wasn't easy to perform.
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He lived in Lado, Missouri, which is just west of St. Louis for 18 years. He played that monthly gig at the local restaurant and bar in St. Louis called Blueberry Hill, sort of appropriate.
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On October 15, 2014, Barry played his final gig there. It would be his final full performance.
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He passed away in 2017 at the age of 90.
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Chuck Barry playing his final gig at the Blueberry Hill restaurant and bar on October 15, 2014.
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This next event wasn't the end of anything, but it was the beginning of something else. Rick Nelson was a teen idol.
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From the age of eight, he was a performer on his parents TV hit show The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet.
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In the late 50s, he had teen harp throb hits like poor little fool when he was known as Ricky Nelson.
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Like many teen idols though, he found trying to have an adult career pretty tricky to navigate.
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On October 15, 1971, Ricky, who by that time had changed his name to Rick, played a Richard Nader oldies concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
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In a bid to distance himself from his teen idol image, he started out by playing newer songs and not his hits.
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When he did a cover of Honky Tonk Woman by the Rolling Stones, the audience booed him.
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Rick walked off stage at that point and had to be convinced to go back on stage and do his oldy hits.
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After that, like Taylor Swift breaking up in a relationship, Rick did whatever he artist does.
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He wrote a song about the experience.
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That song, named Garden Party, would turn out to be one of his biggest hits and would lead to a comeback.
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Rick passed away tragically in a plane crash on New Year's Eve in 1985.
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He left behind some great music and he was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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One of his biggest hits, Garden Party, was inspired by the real life garden party, which was held at Madison Square Garden in New York City on October 15, 1971.
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There are some pretty famous birthdays this week, including Singer Songwriter Christa Berg, entertainer Usher, Sir Cliff Richard, Singer Songwriter Thomas Dolby, Singer Songwriter Paul Simon, of course, of Simon and Garfunkel and Solo Fame.
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The great guitarist, the Red Rocker, Mr. Sammy Heygars, also celebrating a birthday during this week in Music History.
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Sammy, of course, of various bands, including Van Halen and a Solo career, the legendary opera singer, Mr. Luciano Pavarotti, the great Darryl Hall of Hall and Oats,
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MC Light Rapper extraordinaire, the jazz legend, the iconic Mr. Thelonius Monk, also speaking of Van Halen, the original lead singer of Van Halen,
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Mr. Diamond David Lee Roth is celebrating a birthday as well, as well as classical composing great to set a veriday, Singer Songwriter the extraordinary PJ Harvey,
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and the legendary bassist for the who, John and Whistle, all of them are incredibly important to Music History for various reasons and a huge happy birthday to them all, some of those unfortunately,
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and we could actually do an entire two or three podcasts just on all of those birthdays alone.
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However, with all due respect to all those greats and they are all great, let's get real.
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There is only one birthday that deserves its own segment this week, and that one is legendary, the iconic ex-Beetle himself, Mr. John Lennon.
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John Lennon was born on October 9th, 1940 in Liverpool, England. His father was a merchant seamen and was a way a lot.
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He eventually came home, but by then John's mother Julia had had an affair and was pregnant with that man's child.
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For some reason though, John's aunt called British Child Services and John ended up forced to live with his aunt.
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John's father came for John a couple of years later and was going to go to New Zealand with John.
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However, John's mother found out and confronted her husband.
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Legend has it that John's father forced John to choose between living with his father and living with his mother.
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After twice choosing his father, he cried when he saw his mother walking away and ran after her.
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This legend is, however, in dispute.
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What is known is that everyone involved decided that John should be reunited with his mother.
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The reunion unfortunately would not last for too long as his mother was struck and killed by a car in 1958.
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In 1956 though, John got his first guitar.
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By the end of that year John had formed his own group called the Quarrymen, named after a Quarry Bank High School.
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On July 6th 1957, there was a small annual church picnic in Liverpool, England.
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John's band played at the festival.
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The only reason why his group was playing there was because of a family connection to the people who decided to add a band to that picnic.
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At the picnic was Paul McCartney who went there to check out the scene.
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Paul watched the Quarrymen play and while he liked the band, he really liked John.
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John was not the best guitarist but he knew how to hold an audience with his charm.
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Paul was immediately struck by John's talent and after the show a mutual friend introduced Paul to John.
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Anyway, while Paul was hanging out with the band, no one paid attention to him.
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That is until Paul brought out his guitar that he had carried around with him most of the time and began playing.
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John now was the guy who was struck by someone else's talent, Paul's.
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And even though Paul was two years younger, Paul was a much better guitar player.
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Paul even taught John how to write down music on the sheet music paper and how to properly tune a guitar.
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John asked Paul to join the Quarrymen two weeks later and the rest as they say his history.
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The band would break up but John and Paul decided to form a new band.
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The new band went through a few member changes including getting Paul's friend George Harrison to play guitar,
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changing drummers, playing gigs in the different country, that being Germany.
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And playing in their hometown where a manager Brian Epstein found them while on his lunch break from running a record store.
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That manager had them work with a really good producer.
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That producer, Sir George Martin, would help Brian to craft the group with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and their new drummer, Ringo Star, into of course the Beatles.
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I'm not going to bore you with his time with the Beatles.
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Those details have been done to death in various books, TV shows and even movies.
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John still stands today as a symbol of the counterculture movement of the 1960s, the piece movement of the 1970s.
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And essentially the cool kid compared to Paul McCartney who's only crime on the pop culture coolness factors seemed to be that he lived a much longer life compared to John.
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At least in some people's eyes.
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I will tell you about one point in his life though, and that is unfortunately the end.
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In 1980 John had come out of his self-imposed exile after taking a few years off to help raise his new son Sean that he had with the Yokohono.
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He was partially inspired to write new music by a couple of things.
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The first was by a trip on a yacht that he took from Newport, Rhode Island to Bermuda where the yacht got into a major storm which sickened everybody except for John.
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As the crew was incapacitated, John had to steer the boat for a few hours at least.
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And as he steered, he thought about life and how fragile it was.
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He'd find out the hard way about that later in the year.
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Suddenly he had clarity about his music and he wanted to get back to songwriting which he did once the yacht pulled in a port in Bermuda.
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The second thing that inspired him was hearing the B-52s debut single Rock Lobster.
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John thought that it reminded him of the music that Yokohono used to do with one of her albums.
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Perhaps the world was ready for music like that again if Rock Lobster was such a big hit.
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John and Yokoh decided to both contribute music to his new album which was supposed to be at least the two album project.
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The first album was called Double Fantasy and the second one was going to be called Milk and Honey.
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Lots of demo songs were recorded and then John gave the demos to his producer Jack Douglas with one catch.
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Jack had to get musicians who John had never worked with before.
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Jack was told to not tell the studio musicians who they were recording for at all.
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Jack even got a couple of the guys from Cheap Trick to help do some of the recording.
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Since Jack was producing the new Cheap Trick album at the same time he was producing John's.
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John at the time did not have a record deal and no one knew that he was recording new music.
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John paid for the recording sessions himself and then his manager shrewdly leaked the story to the media that John was back in the recording studio even though the album was pretty much finished at that point.
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All of the record companies came running.
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On September 20th, 1980 John inked a new record label deal with a new record label called Geffen Records beating out a more experienced and better financed record label.
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Lots of them actually.
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Labelhead David Geffen's trick to getting John to sign on the dotted line was one of the oldest rules in selling.
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Always talk to the wife first.
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See David knew that Yoko's music was a part of this new album even though he had never listened to the demo tapes.
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By talking to Yoko first, he showed respect to her and her music and saw her as an equal on this album rather than everybody else who saw John as the driving force of the album.
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Just a little lesson for you kids out there.
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The album Double Fantasy came out on November 17th, 1980.
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The first single from the album was the song just like starting over, which some people thought was John talking about being back recording or about being with a new record label.
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It was neither of those things.
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It was just a general feeling that he had since he wrote the song in Bermuda once he got on land after that harrowing trip on the yacht.
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I guess it shook him a lot.
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He added the words just like to the title starting over because Dolly Parton had a song called Starting Over at that point in time that was getting popular as well.
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Just like Starting Over was one of the last songs that John finished in the studio and was supposed to be sung in the style of Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley, although John backed off of that part when recording the song.
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The song was recorded at the Hit Factory in New York City on August 8th and released in America on October 27th.
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At first, both the album and the single did so-so.
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It wasn't the critics' favorite album when it came out.
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The album debuted high and then dropped.
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In England, the single hit the top 10 pretty quickly and then dropped as well.
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In America on December 8th, the single was at number 6 and was still climbing at that time.
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But then fate or rather the ugly side of man intervened.
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December 8th started out like a normal day for John and Yoko.
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They had a photo shoot with famed photographer Annie Leibowitz and then they went to the record plant recording studio in New York City to work on songs for Milk and Honey.
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As they were getting into their limo, John signed autographs for some fans waiting outside his apartment at the Dakota Building on Central Park West.
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For one of those fans, he signed a copy of the Double Fantasy vinyl.
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At 10.50pm, John and Yoko came back to the apartment from the recording session.
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Outside the Dakota, waited the fan who John had only hours earlier signed a copy of his album for.
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As John walked up to the Dakota, the man, Mark David Chapman, pulled out a gun and shot John and then sat down and started reading a copy of the book that catcher in the rye while he waited for the police to show up.
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John passed away a short time later.
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Both the album Double Fantasy and the single just like starting over went to number 1 pretty quickly after John's death and stayed there for a number of weeks.
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Starting over hit number 1 in 8 different countries including America and was the fourth biggest single of 1981.
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Double Fantasy would go on to win album of the year at the Grammy Awards, considering how much they disliked it when it came out.
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They sure loved it once he unexpectedly passed away, which is a metaphor for life, I suppose.
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All I know is that this musical body of work was and is extremely impressive, everything from his work with the Beatles and his solo albums.
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It's my belief that even though he and Paul had great solo careers with many hits, they were actually better when they worked together.
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What I really know is that the world lost one of the truly great ones when he was killed outside of the Dakota Hotel.
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The iconic ex-Beetle solo great man of peace complications as they were.
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He was not a saint but he was not a sinner.
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He was human.
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The legendary Mr. John Lennon. Happy Heavenly Birthday John.
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October 9th 1940.
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As an added bonus to you people, here are some other John Lennon and Beatles related things that actually happened on October 9th throughout music history.
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For instance, on October 9th 1965, the song yesterday by the Beatles hit number 1 on the Billboard singles chart.
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On October 9th 1968, the Beatles recorded the song, why don't we do it in the road?
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On October 9th 1975, John Lennon's son, singer-songwriter, Sean Lennon was born.
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On October 9th 1984, Ringo Starr started his run as the narrator on the kid show Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends.
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On October 9th 1985, a part of Central Park in New York City was rededicated as Strawberry Fields.
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It's located across from the Dakota building on 72nd Street in Central Park West where John tragically lost his life.
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On October 9th 2000, the John Lennon Museum opened in Japan.
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And on that same day, Rolling Stone magazine published an interview book with every interview that they had ever done with John.
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It's called Lennon remembers the complete Rolling Stone interviews if you ever find it.
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On October 9th 2007, the Imagine Peace Tower, partially designed by Yoko Ono, was dedicated in Reykjavik, Iceland.
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And that is it for the Music History In-depth Podcast for October 9th through the 15th.
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Thank you very, very much for listening and or watching if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify.
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Thank you very much.