Rock 'n' Roll History for
February 5


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1955 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
New York radio station WNEW announces the results of its annual music popularity poll. The winners are Perry Como, Patti Page, The Crew-Cuts and Ray Anthony.

1957 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Bill Haley arrived at Southampton on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth for his UK concert debut and was greeted by 5,000 fans. He was the first major American Rock artist to tour Great Britain. At the time, Haley had two songs that made the British Top 40, "Rock Around The Clock" (#1) and "Shake, Rattle And Roll" (#7), and would go on to have twelve more.

1961 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Gene Pitney gains his first taste of success when "(I Wanna) Love My Life Away" cracks the Billboard Hot 100 at #77. It will become his debut Top 40 single when it reaches #39, but fell off the chart after just one week. Over the course of his seven year hit-making run, he placed sixteen songs on that chart.


1962 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Ringo Starr appeared live with The Beatles for the first time when he filled in for an ailing Pete Best. They played two shows that day, a lunchtime date at the Cavern Club and an evening show at the Kingsway Club in Southport.

1966 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Petula Clark had Billboard's top tune with "My Love". It made #4 in the UK. It was a song that Petula later admitted she didn't really like, and tried to discourage Warner Bros A&R man Joe Smith from issuing it as a single.

February 5
The Beach Boys' cover version of the The Regents' 1958 #13 hit, "Barbara Ann" topped the Cashbox magazine chart and was listed at #2 by Billboard. The party atmosphere in the studio was staged and the lead vocal on the track is actually that of Dean Torrence of Jan And Dean.

February 5
An instrumental called "No Matter What Shape" by The T-Bones reaches the US Top Ten after being featured in Alka-Seltzer commercials. The group contained Dan Hamilton, Joe Frank Carollo and Tom Reynolds, who would go on have a number four hit in 1971 called "Don't Pull Your Love" as Hamilton, Joe Frank And Reynolds.

1972 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Paul Simon releases his first new song without Art Garfunkel, "Mother and Child Reunion", which will peak at #4 in the US. Simon got the idea for the song's title from a chicken-and-egg dish called Mother and Child Reunion that he saw on a Chinese restaurant's menu.

February 5
Neil Young's "Heart Of Gold" is released. The record will prove to be his only US number one solo hit. Background vocals were provided by James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.

1973 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" becomes his first US number one hit. To date, Sir Elton has had twenty-seven US Top 10 records and has placed a total of fifty-eight songs on the Billboard Top 40.

1976 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
51-year-old Rudy Pompilli, sax player for Bill Haley's Comets, passed away after a long battle with lung cancer, even though he himself was not a smoker. He had been with the band for twenty years and had played on their biggest selling records.

1977 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
An unknown singer named Mary MacGregor had the top tune in the US with "Torn Between Two Lovers", a song that she would later say that she has never liked. Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul And Mary co-wrote the song and chose MacGregor to sing it over several other established artists. The record reached #4 in the UK.

1983 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
After cracking the US Top 10 in 1978 with "Hold The Line" (#5) and again in 1982 with "Rosanna" (#2), Toto has their first and only Billboard #1 hit with "Africa". Over the next five years, they would reach the Top 40 five more times.

1993 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Backed by his former band mate Ron Wood, Rod Stewart records "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You" for MTV's Unplugged series. The resulting single will be certified Gold and reach #5 in the US and #20 in the UK.

2005 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Paul McCartney performed during the half-time show at Superbowl XXXIX (39) in Jacksonville Florida and pocketed a cool $3.3 million for his 12 minute performance. That translates into $278,000 per minute. Sir Paul played in front of an estimated TV audience of one billion and sang the Beatles songs "Drive My Car", "Get Back" and "Hey Jude", plus his James Bond theme song "Live and Let Die".

2006 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
The Rolling Stones played three songs during the half-time show of The Super Bowl in Detroit. After the event, The Stones expressed their displeasure over having Mick Jagger's microphone turned down during the song "Start Me Up". The line "You make a dead man come" was cut short and a barnyard reference to "cocks" in the new song "Rough Justice" also disappeared.

February 5
Barry Manilow topped the US album charts for the first time in nearly 29 years when his "Greatest Songs of the Fifties" sold 156,000 copies during the first week of February.

2007 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Apple Inc. settles a long-standing legal battle with Apple Corps, the record label set up by The Beatles. The computer giant maintained all of the trademarks related to "Apple" and would license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use.

2008 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
The Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced The Beatles to ancient Hindu meditation methods, died in his sleep at his home in the Netherlands. He was 90.

2010 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Las Vegas star Wayne Newton was accused of abandoning his personal airplane at the Oakland County International Airport in Michigan. The plane, worth an estimated $2 million dollars, was brought there for interior work three years earlier, but Newton claimed the job was botched so he never retrieved the aircraft. Six months later, Newton had the plane relocated, piece by piece, to his Las Vegas estate, which he later put up for sale.

2015 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
70-year-old Gary Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was convicted of attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one count of having sex with a girl under the age of 13, at Southwark Crown Court in London, England. He was held in custody for sentencing later in the month.

2016 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
After the British TV show This Morning aired Steven Tyler's Superbowl advert, the volume of his vocals caused the program's auto cue camera screen to literally crack.

2017 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Sonny Geraci, former lead singer of The Outsiders, passed away at the age of 70. He led the band to #5 in 1966 with "Time Won't Let Me" and fronted a group called Climax on their #3 hit, "Precious And Few" in 1972.

2023 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
At the 65th Grammy Awards, held in Los Angeles, several Classic Rock acts showed why their music was still relevant. Ozzy Osbourne's "Patient Number 9" won Best Rock Album and the track "Degradation Rules" won Best Metal Performance. Bonnie Raitt was cited for Song of the Year for "Just Like That", and The Supremes and Bobby McFerrin were given Lifetime Achievment awards.

2024 - ClassicBands.com

February 5
Country superstar Toby Keith passed away at the age of 62 after a battle with stomach cancer. Along with placing 58 songs on the Billboard Country chart, he also reached the Billboard Top 40 thirteen times.



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