Today in 1962, the BBC banned playing the newly released “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett on the grounds that it was offensive. To use vernacular of the day, that was uncool.

Eleven years later, the BBC banned the Rolling Stones’ “Star Star,” but if you play the clip you can hear why (really):

The Kinks had the number one song today in 1964:

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Today in 1956, Harry Belafonte’s “Calypso” went to number one for the next 31 weeks:

Today in 1965, Daily Variety included this ad:

Madness! Running parts for four Insane Boys age 17-21.

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Today in 1963, ABC-TV’s “American Bandstand” moved from every weekday afternoon in Philadelphia …

… to Saturdays in California:

The number one album today in 1968 was the Doors’ “Waiting for the Sun,” their only number one album:

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The number one single in the U.K. todayyyyyyy in 19677777777 …

One yearrrrrr laterrrrrr, the Beatles recorded Eric Clapton’s guitar part for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” making him the first non-Beatle on a Beatle record:

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge reports:

… The Beatles’ George Harrison was heading in to London for a recording session for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. His neighbor, Eric Clapton needed a lift into London, so George offered to take him. George had a different idea though.
Harrison wasn’t happy with his own guitar tracks on the song so while driving, he asked Eric to come to the session and do a track on.
Clapton at first refused, saying that “nobody (famous) ever plays on the Beatles records!” but George insisted. Clapton came in and the invitation has its intended effect: the band members were completely professional and Eric’s solo sounded great.
As Clapton was listening to a playback, the thought his solo wasn’t “Beatle-y enough,” so the solo is run through an ADT circuit with “varispeed”, with the session engineer manually ‘waggling’ the oscillator: Engineer Chris Thomas has recalled: “Eric said that he didn’t want it to sound like him. So I was just sitting there wobbling the thing, they wanted it really extreme, so that’s what I did.” The effect sounded like the guitar was run through the Leslie rotating speaker of the Hammond B-3 organ cabinet.

The number one song in the U.S. today in 1975:

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The number one song in Britain today in 1954 was the singer’s only number one hit, making her Britain’s first American one-hit wonder:

The number one song in the U.S. today in 1964:

Today in 1967, the Beatles probably felt like they were the walrus (goo goo ga joob) after needing 16 takes to get this right:

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The number one song in the U.S. today in 1961:

Today in 1962, the Beatles recorded “Love Me Do,” taking 17 takes to do it right:

Three years later, the Beatles had the number one single …

… which referred to something The Who could have used, because on the same day the Who’s van was vandalized and $10,000 in musical equipment was stolen from them while they were buying … a guard dog:

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The number one song in the U.S. today in 1955 was written 102 years earlier:

The number one song in the U.S. today in 1966:

Today in 1970, Arthur Brown demonstrated what The Crazy World of Arthur Brown was like by getting arrested at the Palermo Pop ’70 Festival in Italy for stripping naked and setting fire to his helmet during …

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Britain’s number one single today in 1972:

On the same day, the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival was held on Bull Island in the Wabash River between Illinois and Indiana. The festival attracted four times the projected number of fans, three fans drowned in the Wabash River, and the remaining crowd ended the festival by burning down the stage:

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The number one song today in 1962:

The number one song today in 1984 announced quite a comeback:

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