70s Rock Music

70’s ROCK MUSIC

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TABLE OF

CONTENTS:

p10

1977

15 1/12

EAGLES

LED ZEPPELIN p6

PINK FLOYD p4

p18

LYNYRD SKYNYRD

2

p20

AEROSMITH

1325 p12

150000

DEEP PURPLE

p8

117

p16

QUEEN

2/3

GRATEFUL DEAD

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THE WHO

p14

3

12 4

ONE

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The Dark Side of the

Moon (1973) became Pink Floyd’s most

successful album ever.

ONE IN TWELVE PEOPLE OWN A COPY OF

THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON The

Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd,

13,723 occasions, and ‘Money’ on 13,731 occasions.

became one of the best-selling albums

Industry sources suggest that worldwide sales of

of all time and is in the top 25 of a list of best-sell-

the album total about 50 million. ‘On a slow week’

ing albums in the United States. Although it held

between 8,000 and 9,000 copies are sold, and a

the number one spot in the US for only a week, it

total of 400,000 were sold in 2002, making it

remained in the Billboard chart for 741 weeks. The

the 200th-best-selling album of that year – nearly

album re-appeared on the Billboard charts with the

three decades after its initial release. The album

introduction of the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart

has sold 9,502,000 copies in the US since 1991

in May 1991, and has been a perennial feature since

when Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for

then. Today, in the UK it is the eighth-best-selling

Billboard. To this day, it occupies a prominent spot

album of all time.

on Billboard’s Pop Catalog Chart. On the week

In the US the LP was released before the introduction of platinum awards on 1 January 1976. It therefore held only a gold disc until 16 February 1990, when it was certified 11× platinum. On 4th June 1998 the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album 15× platinum, denoting sales of fifteen million in the United States – making it their biggest-selling work here.

‘Money’ has sold well as a single, and as with ‘Time’, remains a radio favourite; in the US, for the year ending 20 April 2005, ‘Time’ was played on

of 5 May 2006 The Dark Side of the Moon achieved a combined total of 1,500 weeks on the Billboard 200 and Pop Catalog charts. One in every twelve people in the US under the age of 50 is estimated to own, or to have owned, a copy. Upon a chart rule change in 2009 allowing catalog titles to re-enter the Billboard 200, the album returned to the chart at the 189th position on 12 December of that year for its 742nd charting week. It has continued to appear on the Billboard 200 since then, reaching nine hundred weeks on the chart in 2015.

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Led Zeppelin performing on stage for a concert in San Francisco, June 1973

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For their first ever concert, Led Zeppelin practiced together for only 15 hours.

Jimmy Page recalls: “They don’t cheer too madly

already sold out. Fey refused at first, but Terry was

there, you know? We were really scared, because

persistent and said, “Barry, this group is called Led

we only had about fifteen hours to practice together.

Zeppelin. They’re going to be huge.”

It was sort of an experimental concert to see if we were any good. I guess.”

The following morning, Fey got a phone call from Max Floyd, the program director at Denver’s rock

Writing in his memoir Backstage Past, concert

station KLZ. “Who did you have on last night? Our

promoter Barry Fey remembers getting the call from

phone lines are jammed!” Luckily, Fey had a copy

Vanilla Fudge’s booking agent Ron Terry a little

of Led Zeppelin’s unreleased debut album, which

more than a week before the show, asking him to

he took over to the radio station. They immedi-

add another group to the Denver date, which was

ately put it on the air, playing it nonstop that day.

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150000 LONDON’S BIGGEST CONCERT EVER Queen live in Hyde Park, 1976, was a famous

There is more than one audio source of this con-

concert by the band. The concert took place on 18

cert as well as a video. According to Roger Taylor,

September, during the hot summer of 1976. The

the drummer of Queen, the complete show was

Hyde Park gig was a free concert, which drew in a

supposed to be shown on TV in early 1976 but

crowd of over 150,000, which was one of the larg-

was never aired. Since then, the footage has leaked

est audiences for any concert in London.

out to collectors, though in terrible quality. Over

After the success of A Night At The Opera, Queen wanted to pay the British fans for back their loyalty and support over the last few years by staging a massive free concert.

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the years, some of the footage has been showed in various documentaries and there are rumors of a future official release.

Freddie Mercury of Queen during a concert in 1979.

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Hotel California ranks 49th in the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, named Hotel California as one of the songs that shaped rock and roll. The Eagles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, and all seven former and present members of the group performed "Hotel California" together on stage.

That ‘Hotel California’ was originally going to be titled ‘Mexican Reggae.’ While there have been many theories that contemplate what the song represents, the Eagles’ band members have revealed in multiple interviews that the true meaning behind ‘Hotel California’ is a commentary on the hedonism and self-indulgence of America.

“It’s basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about,” Henley said in a 2002 interview. “We were all middle class kids from the Midwest,” Henley said. “’Hotel California’ was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles.”

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17 DECIBELS

THE LOUDEST BAND Deep Purple performed at the London’s

3,000 seat Rainbow Theater in 1972.

Their 117 dB of sound in such a small space left three fans unconscious. Of

course, The Guinness Book of World

Records took notice of the incident and crowned them the world’s loudest band.

The Guinness Book removed the section from their later versions completely

so that bands would stop harming the

audiences competing to be louder.

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FANS DIED IN A STAMPEDE TRYING TO GET TO THE WHO’S CONCERT With a combination of the venue’s festival seating and the

In 2004, the city of Cincinnati permanently repealed its

event being The Who’s first performance in Cincinnati since

long-standing ban on unassigned seating, a move which has

1975, fans gathered shortly after noon for the 8 p.m. show.

been criticized by some. The goal of lifting the ban was to

By mid-afternoon, the police had to be called in to help quell

attract more big-name acts. However, the city now mandates

the crowd, which by this time was swelling into the thou-

there must be nine square feet per person at a venue, and the

sands. By 7 p.m., a crowd estimated at 8,000 people had

number of tickets sold for each event is adjusted accordingly.

amassed outside the venue’s locked glass doors.

In 2014, Pearl Jam played at the arena and acknowledged the

As soon as the doors opened, ticketholders pressed forward.

When the doors were shut, people were smashed against each

tragedy. They dedicated a cover of the Who’s ‘The Real Me’ to those who died.

other and the building by the thousands of fans behind them

On the eve of the 35th anniversary of the tragedy, Cincinnati

who did not know the main entrance was closed. Deadly

Mayor John Cranley promised to have a historical marker on

crowd surges and rippling human waves of pressure knocked

the site of the tragedy in 2015. The marker was dedicated

people down and rendered them helpless; fighting for breath

at U. S. Bank Arena on December 3, 2015.

and ultimately caused the demise of eleven concert goers.

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From left: John Entwistle, Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend

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thirdsa

JERRY GARCIA’S MIDDLE FINGER Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia lost two-thirds of his right middle finger as a child, while steadying wood his father was chopping. Despite the accident, Garcia went on to play a mean guitar, and often showed off his missing finger in a sort of salute to fans. Today the Barley Mill Pub (a virtual museum of Dead memorabilia) in Portland, Oregon features an illustration of Garcia's right hand, encouraging us all to keep on truckin' regardless of life's little wood-chopping accidents.

Garcia is still very much a part of pop culture. In 1987, ice cream giant Ben & Jerry’s introduced “Cherry Garcia,” cherry ice cream studded with cherries and fudge flakes. It’s still a top-selling variety for the company.

In recent years the San Francisco Giants baseball team has celebrated Garcia’s birthday with Garcia bobblehead dolls.

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A tragic plane crash took place in 1977 claiming the lives of 3 band members of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Lynyrd Skynyrd disbanded in 1977 Lynyrd Skynyrd had established themselves as one of the most successful rock bands of the ’70s by the time they released Street Survivors in October 1977. The group’s career would come to a tragic halt just three days later, on Oct. 20, 1977, when their twin engine plane went down in a swamp in Gillsburg, Mississippi, killing three of the band members, the manager and both pilots on impact.

The group had put together a string of iconic hits including ‘Free Bird,’ ‘Gimme Three Steps,’ ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Gimme Back My Bullets’ prior to the release of Street Survivors.

Anticipation for the new album was so high that it went gold within days, and Lynyrd Skynyrd embarked on the most ambitious headlining tour of their career, traveling between concert dates in their own Convair CV-240.

Rock legend has it that Aerosmith had looked into renting the same plane earlier in the year, but passed on it due to concerns over both the safety of the plane, and the readiness of its crew.

Following the crash and the press attention that came along with it, Street Survivors became Lynyrd Skynyrd’s second platinum album. Out of respect for the band and their family members, MCA recalled the album’s original cover, which depicted the band members engulfed in flames. Devastated by the loss of their singer and the injuries sustained by the survivors, Lynyrd Skynyrd disbanded after the accident, leaving the survivors to try to make their own way with varying degrees of success and failure.

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From left: Joey Kramer, Joe Perry, Steven Tyler, Tom Hamilton, Brad Whitford

Commonwealth Ave. Aerosmith was formed in 1970. Between 1970 and 1972, the band they lived together at the second floor apartment (#41) on 1325 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. The band wrote and rehearsed many of the songs on their debut album at this apartment, including “Mama Kin,” “One Way Street” and the song “Movin’ Out” which was the very first song Steven Tyler and Joe Perry wrote together in Perry’s bedroom at the apartment.

In 2012, the band returned to Commonwealth Avenue to play a free concert outside their former apartment building. The city also dedicated a plaque for the building on the occasion.

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Index

A Night at the Opera, 8 Aerosmith, 19, 21 Barley Mill Pub, 16 Barry Fey, 7 Ben & Jerry’s, 16 Billboard, 5, 11 Boston, 21 Cincinnati, 14 Commonwealth Ave, 21 Convair CV-240, 19 Deep Purple, 13 Eagles, 11 Free Bird, 19 Gold disc, 5 Grateful Dead, 16 Hall of Fame, 11 Hotel California, 11 Hyde Park, 8 Jerry Garcia, 16 Jimmy Page, 7 Joe Perry, 21 John Cranley, 14 KLZ, 7 Led Zeppelin, 7 Los Angeles, 13 Lynyrd Skynyrd, 19

MCA, 19 Mama Kin, 21 Mexican Reggae, 11 Mississippi, 19 Money, 5 Nielsen Sound Scan, 5 One Way Street, 21 Oregon, 16 Pearl Jam, 14 Pink Floyd, 5 Platinum, 5, 11 Pop Catalog, 5 Queen, 8 Rainbow Theater, 13 RIAA, 5 Roger Taylor, 8 Rolling Stone, 11 Ron Terry, 7 San Francisco Giants, 16 Steven Tyler, 21 Street Survivors, 19 Sweet Home Alabama, 19 The Dark Side of the Moon, 5 The Guinness book, 13 The Real Me, 14 The Who, 14 Time, 5 U. S. Bank Arena, 14 23