Today in 1984, Prince played the first of seven nights at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit at the start of his 87-date North American Purple Rain tour. The outing marked the live debut of his new band The Revolution. The band achieved two number-one Billboard 200 albums (Purple Rain and Around the World in a Day), six top ten singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and won three Grammy Awards. The band officially disbanded in 1986 after the Hit n Run - Parade Tour, which supported Parade, the soundtrack for Under the Cherry Moon.
Also, Today In:
1957 - Jackie Wilson made his U.S. chart debut with "Reet Petite."
1963 - The Beatles appeared on London's U.K. Royal Variety Show. The show was attended by the Queen Mother. This was the famous show where John Lennon thanked the audience for the applause and made the quip about those in the front row just "rattling your jewelry."
1968 - Rock's first supergroup, Cream (featuring Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker) played their final gig on U.S. soil on Long Island.
1972 - Johnny Nash started a three-week run at No. 1 on the U.S. singles chart with "I Can See Clearly Now," his only U.S. chart topper. In the 1980s, Nash's song was used in a television advertisement for Glass Plus window-cleaning solution.
1988 - Talk Is Cheap by Keith Richards and his X-pensive Winos cracked the Top 30 album chart.
1989 - Roxette scored their second U.S. No. 1 single with "Listen To Your Heart."
1993 - Depeche Mode's Martin Gore was arrested at the Denver Westin Hotel after refusing to turn down his music.
2002 - Elton John and Bernie Taupin received the Music Industry Trusts Award in the U.K in recognition of their contribution to music in the U.K. Previous recipients of the award include Ahmet Ertegun, George Martin and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
2003 - Skid Row's Sebastian Bach started his recurring role on Gilmore Girls in the episode "The Festival of Living Art," as a guitarist who joins Lane Kim's band.
2016 - Justin Timberlake and Gwen Stefani lent their voices to the animated film Trolls. Timberlake plays Branch, a paranoid troll who's in love with a princess, while Stefani is resident disc jockey DJ Suki.
Birthdays:
Singer-songwriter Delbert McClinton is 79.
Chris Difford of Squeeze is 65.
James Honeyman-Scott, guitarist for The Pretenders, was born today in 1956.
Sean Combs is 50.
