This Month in Rock and Roll - October

This Month In Rock and Roll – October
By Hunter60

October 18, 1954: Invention of the transistor radio. The transistor radio helped transform the music industry. Before the invention of transistor technology, radios were tube driven which meant the radios were relegated to the home and required a AC power source. The transistors, much smaller, allowed for the size of radios to be drastically reduced and had a much lower power usage which allowed the use of batteries. The initial transistors were applied to calculators but were quickly applied to radios, including car radios. The portable transistor radio was especially appealing to teenagers and their culture in the late 50's and early 60's. Transistor radios were a major outlet for rock and roll and R&B at the time. Record companies like Motown and producers like Phil Spector actually began mixing their records to suit the low-fidelity output of transistors to maximize the appeal to their teenage audience.

October 1961: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards meet at Dartford railway station. When they met up at the railway station in Dartford, Jaggers and Richards were each on their way to their places on higher education. Jagger towards the London School of Economics and Richards to Sidcup Art College. This was not their first meeting. Apparently both had been born in the same hospital and had actually lived within a street of each other as children, Richards family having moved away when he was eleven years old. Jagger was carrying several records under his arms including selections by Chuck Berry, Little Walter and Muddy Waters. The two fell into conversation and shared their mutual love R&B and Jagger impressed Richards when he told him that he was singing with a group called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. Richards promptly joined the group. Jaggers mother was horrified to learn that Jagger was considering music as a vocation as opposed to the hobby it had been up to that point. She had no idea that Jagger and Richards would go on to become perhaps the second greatest rock and roll song writing team in history.

October 27, 1975: Bruce Springsteen appears on the covers of both Newsweek and Time magazines. Based on the strength of 'Born To Run', which had been released in August of 1975, Springsteen appeared on both covers simultaneously. It proved to be a double-edged sword to Springsteen; although he was receiving accolades that were normally reserved for statesmen, he was also being caught up in serious hype. The press clucked and fussed as to how a relative unknown could appear on these two venerable institutions covers. Times coverage was essentially negative Newsweek a bit more positive. Interestingly, the reporter who interviewed Springsteen for the piece tried to talk him out of going to New York for the Time magazine cover shot, convinced it would backfire on him. Obviously, Springsteen ignored her advised and went forward with the Time shot. It has been said that Newsweek perception of Springsteen's betrayal colored Newsweeks music coverage for years.

October 20, 1977: Lynyrd Skynyrd involved in plane crash. Coming off a slight slump in their career, Lynyrd Skynyrd was on the rebound with the release of 'Street Survivors". They had just added guitarist Steve Gaines who had gained a slot as the third lead guitarist in the band and had written several of the songs on the latest album. Gaines sister, Cassie, had also joined the band as a member of the backup vocalists, The Honkettes. Making the jump from a Wednesday night gig in Greenville, South Carolina to a Friday night gig in at the Louisiana State University at Baton Rogue in a propeller driven Convair 240, the flight became troubled. The pilot reported "fuel trouble" and "low on fuel" to the tower outside of McComb, Mississippi regional airport. Before they could make the airport for an emergency landing, the plane went down in a swamp eight miles out. Lead singer Ronnie Van Zandt, Steve and Cassie Gaines and assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick perished in the crash along with the pilot and co-pilot. Several others were injured. Although enough members of the band survived, they went from being a premier "Southern Raunchy Roll" band (as described by Van Zandt) to the ultimate 'ghost band'.


October 25, 1985: Artists United Against Apartheid release "Sun City". The mid-1980's were a banner time for recording artists uniting and performing for a variety of charities and various protests. Having recently left Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Stevie Van Zandt went to South Africa to do some research for an upcoming solo project. While there he became quite enraged with the South African policy of apartheid (racial segregation and oppression) especially as seen at an interracial gambling resort known as Sun City. Sun City attracted a coterie of international pop and rock stars for various performances. Van Zandt and Danny Schechter (a journalist with ABC) decided to put together a record similar to "We Are The World" but wanted it to be "a song about change, not chairity, freedom not famine". Gathering together a wide selection of artists including Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Ringo Star, Afrika Bambaataa, Kurtis Blow, U2 and Joey Ramone. In the initial writing, Van Zandt referenced several other musicians who had played at Sun City (making the not-so-hidden intimation that they supported apartheid) but later revised the lyrics so as not to alienate his fellow musicians. 'Sun City' never realized the same chart success as other charity records but it did raise a lot of money for schools in rural South Africa. One of the reasons that it never really found a commercial market was that many radio stations refused to air the record because of its clearly political message.


Notable October birthdays:

10/1/32 Albert Collins
10/2/71 James Root
10/3/54 Stevie Ray Vaughn
10/3/49 Lindsay Buckingham
10/5/05 'Fast' Eddie Clarke
10/10/46 John Prine
10/10/17 Thelonious Monk
10/16/77 John Mayer
10/18/26 Chuck Berry
10/19/44 Peter Tosh
10/20/50 Tom Petty
10/21/42 Elvin Bishop
10/22/45 Leslie West
10/23/56 Dwight Yoakam
10/25/1825 Johann Strauss
10/27/67 Scott Weiland
10/28/36 Charlie Daniels
10/29/46 Peter Green
10/30/39 Grace Slick