Why June 16th Matters in Rock History
By Dave Basner
June 16, 2020
It’s June 16th and here are some reasons why this day matters in rock history:
In 1988, Pink Floyd played in Berlin. In East Berlin, 2,000 fans gathered at the wall to listen to the concert.
In 1996, The Smashing Pumpkins, Beck, Rage Against the Machine, the Beastie Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Yoko Ono and many others performed for over 100-thousand fans at the two-day Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco.
In 2007, the then 62-year-old Rod Stewart married his 36-year-old model girlfriend Penny Lancaster on the Italian Riviera.
In 2004, Velvet Revolver had the number one album in the country with their debut, Contraband.
In 1977,David Bowie put out his fifth album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, a concept record about a bisexual alien rock star.
In 1982, 38 Special’s Donnie Van Zant was arrested onstage in the dry town of Tulsa, Oklahoma for drinking in public.
And in 2013, Black Sabbath set a new record on the U-K chart for longest gap between number one albums when their latest release, 13, debuted atop the chart almost 43 years after their second effort, Paranoid, hit the top spot.
And that’s what happened today in rock history.
Photo: Getty
(H/T This Day in Music)