June 21, 1985 – Mötley Crüe release their third studio album Theatre of Pain which goes on to sell over four million copies in the U.S. and spawns the hits “Home Sweet Home” and the remake “Smokin’ In The Boys Room.”
June 21, 1975 – Ritchie Blackmore leaves Deep Purple to form Rainbow. Blackmore says, “I wasn’t interested in the direction they were going. I thought it was only proper of me to say: ‘Look, I’m going. I don’t want to break up the band, but I’m off. Get another guitarist and do your thing.’ I just didn’t want to be around for all that cool pseudo … They were shocked. My music was upfront music, hate music. Their music was becoming much more like ‘if you don’t like it, just click your fingers’”.
June 21, 1970 – Jim Morrison marries author Patricia Kennealy in a celtic pagan hand fasting ceremony. She claims to be a Dame of the Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani, a High Priestess in a Celtic Pagan tradition.
June 21, 1990 – Little Richard receives his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Says Richard: “Like everything I got, it took a long time to get.”
June 21, 2002 – The first Bonnaroo Music Festival premieres on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee. The name comes from Creole slang roughly translated as “best on the streets.” The founders got the name from the 1974 Dr. John album Desitively Bonnaroo.
Classic Rock Birthdays
June 21, 1961 – Kip Winger (born Charles Frederick Kip Winger), vocals, bass (Winger, Alice Cooper, Alan Parsons )
June 21, 1950 – Joey Kramer, drums (Aerosmith)
June 21, 1951 – Nils Lofgren, guitar, keyboards, vocals (Bruce Springsteen‘s E Street Band, Neil Young, Crazy Horse, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band)
June 21, 1944 – Ray Davies, guitar, vocals (The Kinks)
June 21, 1947 – Joey Molland, guitar, vocals (Badfinger)
June 21, 1976 – Michael Einziger, guitar (Incubus)
June 21, 1945 – Chris Britton, guitar (The Troggs)
June 21, 1957 – Mark Brzezicki, drums (Big Country)
Backstage Access:
Bruce Springsteen & the Business of the Unexpected
Rock Remembrances
June 21, 2001 – John Lee Hooker, American blues singer and guitarist, dies in his sleep. He was 83. Hooker’s songs have been covered by many artists including AC/DC, ZZ Top, The Yardbirds (“Boom Boom”), Led Zeppelin (“Boogie Chillen” sampled in “Whole Lotta Love”) and The White Stripes (“Boogie Chillen”), Jimi Hendrix (“Red House”), The Doors (“Road House Blues”) and George Thorogood (“One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”). He appeared and sang in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, won four Grammy Awards, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.
June 21, 1979 – Angus MacLise, Velvet Underground’s first drummer, dies of hypoglycemia and pulmonary tuberculosis in Kathmandu. He was 41. Malnutrition also played a part in his death, as MacLise was a heavy drug user who was never particularly mindful of his physical health. He quit the band in 1965, accusing them of “selling out.” MacLise’s wedding ceremony was presided over by renowned LSD guru Timothy Leary, and his son was recognized as a reincarnation of a Tibetan saint and became a Buddhist monk at the age of four. He was also a student of Aleister Crowley and was working on the film version of Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend before he died.
June 21, 2021 – Pat Lupo, founding member and bassist of John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band, dies in Narragansett, RI. He was 66. John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band were best known for the Eddie and the Cruisers soundtrack.
