Pick a Day

Music History Events: Incidents

April 26, 1982 Rod Stewart is mugged on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard.

April 15, 1982 Billy Joel breaks his left wrist when a car slams into his motorcycle in Long Island. He has surgery on his hand and stays in the hospital for over a month.

March 18, 1982 Soul singer Teddy Pendergrass of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes is partially paralyzed following a car accident in Philadelphia, where his Rolls Royce skids off a road and crashes.

February 13, 1982 The 300-pound marble slab marking the grave of Lynyrd Skynyrd lead singer Ronnie Van Zant is stolen from a cemetery in Orange Park, Florida. Police find it two weeks later in a dry river bed.

October 5, 1981 Jud Strunk, comedian and singer/songwriter, crashes his private plane when he suffers a heart attack while taking off in Maine. The 45-year-old Strunk and his passenger are both killed. Known for the 1973 hit ballad "Daisy A Day."

March 22, 1981 After a U2 show at the Foghorn Tavern in Portland, Oregon, Bono leaves a briefcase behind with notes, lyrics and concepts for their second album, October. He's forced to come up with new ideas and lyrics on the fly, and the album suffers. The contents of the briefcase are finally returned to him in 2004 after they're recovered from a garage in Tacoma, Washington.

January 24, 1981 Aerosmith's Steven Tyler gets in a nasty motorcycle accident with his 17-year-old babysitter riding on the back. He spends the remainder of the year recovering, which delays the band's next album, Rock In A Hard Place.

October 4, 1980 On stage during a concert in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carly Simon collapses from nervous exhaustion. She keeps going, but cancels the rest of her tour when she can't go on the next night. She doesn't perform again until 1987.

September 21, 1980 Bob Marley, who had refused treatment for a spreading melanoma due to his religious beliefs, collapses while jogging in New York's Central Park and is hospitalized. Two nights later he performs the next date on his North American tour, the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh, but it sadly proves to be his last.

August 13, 1980 At his home in Woodstock, New York, Todd Rundgren and four guests are victims of an invasion when four masked men break in and strip it of anything valuable.

July 14, 1980 In France, Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry contracts a kidney infection and is flown to London after collapsing in his hotel room.

March 20, 1980 At Asylum Records in New York, 28-year-old Joseph Riviera holds employees at gunpoint, demanding to talk to either Jackson Browne or one of the Eagles. When informed that they lived in California, Riviera pockets his pistol and leaves the building, later surrendering to police.

November 28, 1979 Ringo Starr's home in Los Angeles burns down.

October 12, 1979 Jethro Tull lead singer Ian Anderson has his right eye torn open by a thorn, situated on a rose an adoring fan threw on stage at the band's Madison Square Garden concert.

May 9, 1979 Jazz singer Eddie Jefferson dies at age 60 when a dancer he once hired and fired shoots him outside of Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit.

April 13, 1979 David Lee Roth collapses on stage from exhaustion during a Van Halen tour stop in Spokane, Washington.

March 15, 1979 At a party following a Stephen Stills concert, Elvis Costello gets in an argument with Bonnie Bramlett of Delaney and Bonnie, and reportedly refers to Ray Charles as a "blind, ignorant ni--er." Costello pleads inebriation, and says he was just trying to outrage her.

March 4, 1979 Randy Jackson (of The Jackson 5) is involved in a serious car crash near Los Angeles, breaking both legs and nearly dying when a nurse at the hospital nearby injects him with methadone.

November 25, 1978 Playing The Spectrum in Philadelphia, Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler is hit in the face with a bottle thrown from the audience. The band leaves the stage and the show is cancelled after Joe Perry tells the crowd, "We love you, but you can't throw things at us." A firecracker was thrown on stage during an Aerosmith show the previous year.

October 23, 1978 Neil Young's Zuma Beach, California, home burns to the ground in a brush fire.

October 12, 1978 Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols is arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, who he found dead in the bathroom of their hotel room with a stab wound to her abdomen. Vicious dies of a heroin overdose before he can be tried for the murder.

October 4, 1978 Tammy Wynette claims that on this day she was kidnapped from a Nashville shopping mall and then beaten and dumped by the side of the road. Wynette struggled with an addiction to prescription pain killers, which contributed to her death in 1998. Her daughter claimed that she made up the story about the kidnapping, possibly to explain bruises inflicted by her husband.

August 18, 1978 The Temptations' Melvin "Blue" Franklin is shot four times in the hand and leg during an attempted carjacking in Los Angeles, but survives.

July 8, 1978 The Clash's Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon are arrested on drunk and disorderly charges following a concert at The Apollo in Glasgow, Scotland.

June 29, 1978 Peter Frampton gets in a bad car accident in the Bahamas, breaking his arm and suffering internal injuries. On the bright side, he gets to miss the premiere of the film he starred in, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is derided by critics and anyone unfortunate enough to see it.

December 8, 1977 A riot breaks out in Brisbane, Australia, when Blondie fails to appear for a concert.

October 13, 1977 R&B singer Shirley Brickley (of The Orlons) is shot to death by an intruder in her home, at age 32.

October 2, 1977 After a plot is uncovered to steal it, Elvis Presley's body is moved from its Memphis mausoleum to its final resting place in the Meditation Garden at Graceland.

June 5, 1977 Alice Cooper's boa constrictor - a star of his stage show - dies after the rat he is served for breakfast bites him. Cooper holds open auditions for a new snake, eventually choosing one named Angel.

February 28, 1977 An audience member attacks Ray Charles onstage, trying to strangle him with a rope.