September 17 Rock And Roll History

Are you ready to take a rock and roll trip back through time?  Here we go...

On this day in 1964, The Beatles played an unexpected show in Kansas City for which they were paid $150,000. Tickets were sold for $4.50 apiece. On that very same day the police were called to a Rolling Stones show in Carlisle, England after the thousands of fans in attendance started to get too rowdy with one another.

On September 17, 1967, The Doors appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, performing "Light My Fire" and "People Are Strange." Lead singer Jim Morrison had agreed to change some of the words to “Light My Fire” so that the song would be more appropriate for television, but when it came time to actually perform, he sang the song as written anyway. When Sullivan told the band that they were barred from ever performing on the show again, Morrison was unfazed—he just shrugged and is quoted as saying, “We just did the Sullivan Show.” Below is a clip of that performance.

On this day in 1969, reports were being made in several countries starting that Paul McCartney had reportedly perished in a car accident in Scotland three years prior, and that a look-alike had been appearing in his place for public events. When a reporter contacted McCartney to question him about this press, his recorded response was, “Do I look dead? I’m fit as a fiddle.”