This Day in Music
On this day in music, July 21, 1987, Los Angeles hard rockers Guns N’ Roses unleashed their debut album, Appetite for Destruction, via Geffen Records. Aided by three hit singles – “Welcome To The Jungle,” “Paradise City” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” – the album quickly rose to the top of the Billboard 200. It would eventually amass US sales of over 18 million, making it the best-selling debut LP of all time in America.
In 2004, the award-winning conductor and movie composer Jerry Goldsmith died, aged 75. Originally from Los Angeles, he was a classically trained pianist who began writing music for radio in the 1950s before moving into TV in the 60s, where he scored the popular US TV shows Dr. Kildare and Gunsmoke. His striking score to the 1968 movie Planet Of The Apes resulted in a slew of memorable movie soundtracks over the next 40 years, including The Omen (for which he won an Oscar) and Basic Instinct.
In 1973, Philadelphia singer-songwriter Jim Croce scored the first of two US chart-toppers with the self-penned “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” Three months later, the 30-year-old artist perished in a plane crash. His single “Time in a Bottle,” released that November, would become the third posthumous No.1 hit in the history of the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1977, controversial punk rock group the Sex Pistols made their debut on the British music show, Top Of The Pops, where they lip-synced to their third single, “Pretty Vacant,” a No. 7 hit in the UK. The band’s bassist, also the song’s co-writer, Glen Matlock, claimed that the tune was inspired by ABBA’s “SOS.”
In 2002, noted record producer Gus Dudgeon died, aged 59, in a car accident alongside his wife. Born Angus Boyd Dudgeon in Surrey, England, he was best remembered for producing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in 1969 and Elton John’s “Your Song” two years later. Dudgeon’s other credits included sessions with The Beach Boys, Joan Armatrading, Chris Rea, and XTC.
In 1994, Oasis made their US debut at Wetlands in New York City as part of an annual music industry convention called the New Music Seminar. The Manchester band would soon become Brit-pop icons.
BORN ON JULY 21
1922: Kay Starr (Singer)
1939: Kim Fowley (Producer)
1946: Barry Whitwam (Herman’s Hermits)
1948: Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam
1955: Howie Epstein (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers)
1958: Henry Priestman (The Christians)
1961: Jim Martin (Faith No More)
1981: Paloma Faith
