31 OCTOBER
In Music History
1975 Southern rockers The Marshall Tucker Band headline a fundraising concert for presidential nominee Jimmy Carter.
1970 James Taylor's LP Fire and Rain is certified gold.
1970 Michelle Phillips, of The Mamas & The Papas, marries actor Dennis Hopper; the marriage is annulled seven days later.
1970 Linn Berggren (of Ace of Base) is born in Gothenburg, Sweden.
1967 The Stooges make their live debut at a Detroit, Michigan, Halloween party.
1967 Adam Schlesinger (bassist for Fountains of Wayne) is born in New York City.
1967 Vanilla Ice is born Robert Matthew Van Winkle in Dallas, Texas.
1966 Adam Horovitz (aka Ad-Rock of Beastie Boys) is born in Manhattan, New York. He shouts out his own birthday in the song "The New Style."
1965 Lead singer Wayne Fontana leaves his group The Mindbenders.
1964 "Baby Love" by The Supremes goes to #1 in America, giving them their second chart-topper (following "Where Did Our Love Go") and making them the first Motown act with two #1 hits.
1964 Landing in Boston, Ray Charles is arrested when heroin and marijuana are found when he is searched at customs. He enters rehab to avoid jail.
1963 Guitarist Johnny Marr is born in Ardwick, Manchester, England. Along with lead singer Morrissey, he's the creative force in The Smiths. After that group breaks up in 1987 he does time in The Pretenders, Modest Mouse and The The before touring and recording as a solo artist.
1961 U2 drummer Larry Mullen is born in Artane, Dublin, Ireland.
1960 The Everly Brothers record "Ebony Eyes."
1960 Elvis Presley records "In My Father's House," "Joshua Fit the Battle," "Swing Down, Sweet Chariot," "I'm Gonna Walk Dem Golden Stairs," "If We Never Meet Again," "Known Only to Him," "Crying In The Chapel," and "Working On The Building."
"Monster Mash" Rules Halloween
1962The "Monster Mash" rules the airwaves, becoming the most popular Halloween song of all time.
Read more31 OCTOBER
Featured Events
2011 The album Lulu, a baffling collaboration between Metallica and Lou Reed, is released. The first single, "The View," reaches peak lunacy when James Hetfield screams, "I am the table!"
2010 Demi Lovato deletes her Twitter account and enters rehab after suffering a nervous breakdown on the Jonas Brothers tour. Stress from the tour and other commitments, including promoting her movie Camp Rock 2, led to an eating disorder and a dependency on drugs and alcohol - she had also broken up with her tourmate Joe Jonas, who had taken up a new girlfriend, Ashley Greene. Lovato leaves the facility in January 2011.
2008 In Notttingham, England, 1,227 people in zombie garb perform the dance from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, setting a new Guinness World Record for largest gathering of zombies. The stunt pushes the song back into the UK chart, where it lands at #35.
1992 "End Of The Road" by Boyz II Men is the #1 song on the Hot 100 for the 12th consecutive week, breaking the record held by Elvis Presley's two-sided "Don't be Cruel/Hound Dog," which was #1 for 11 weeks in 1956. The group is displaced three months later by Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You"; in 1995, Boyz II Men ties Houston's 14-week record with "I'll Make Love To You."
1991 After meeting up at their ex-manager's funeral, Spinal Tap announce a reunion. "It was destiny and also because none of us were really making a great amount of money," bass player Derek Smalls says.
1983 Stephen King buys WLBZ, a radio station in his city of Bangor, Maine, so he can hear "Cro-Magnon rock and roll." He changes the call letters to WZON, a reference to his novel The Dead Zone. King later buys two more Bangor stations, WZLO and WKIT, which he holds until shutting all three stations down at the end of 2024.
1964 Unseating The Beatles' 14-week run at the top of the US albums chart with A Hard Day's Night, Barbra Streisand hits #1 with People, which stays at the top for five weeks.
©2026 Songfacts®, LLC