December 2021
Birthday – KEITH RICHARDS (78)
Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943), is an English musician, singer, and songwriter, who has achieved international fame as the co-founder, guitarist, secondary vocalist, and co-principal songwriter of the Rolling Stones. His songwriting partnership with Mick Jagger is one of the most successful in history. Richards is widely considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time. His career spans over six decades and his guitar playing style has been a trademark of the Rolling Stones throughout the band's career.…
Find out more »January 2022
Birthday – STEVE PERRY (73)
Stephen Ray Perry (born January 22, 1949) is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lead singer of the rock band Journey during their most commercially successful periods from 1977 to 1987, and again from 1995 to 1998. Perry also had a successful solo career between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, made sporadic appearances in the 2000s, and returned to music full-time in 2018. Perry has been dubbed "The Voice", a moniker originally coined by Jon Bon…
Find out more »Birthday – EDDIE VAN HALEN
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen (January 26, 1955 – October 6, 2020) was an American musician and songwriter. He was the main songwriter and guitarist of the American rock band Van Halen, which he co-founded in 1972 with his brother, drummer Alex Van Halen, bassist Mark Stone, and singer David Lee Roth. He is regarded as one of the all-time greatest guitar players in rock history and was well known for popularizing the tapping guitar solo technique, allowing rapid arpeggios to…
Find out more »Birthday SARAH MCLACHLAN (54)
Was born on January 28, 1968, in Halifax. She was placed with the McLachlan family, who later legally adopted her. She played music from a very young age, beginning with the ukulele when she was four. She studied classical guitar, classical piano, and voice at the Maritime Conservatory of Music. At 17, while she was still a student at Queen Elizabeth High School, she fronted a short-lived rock band called The October Game. One of the band's songs, "Grind," credited…
Find out more »Birthday – PHIL COLLINS (71)
Philip David Charles Collins LVO (born 30 January 1951) is an English drummer, singer, songwriter, and record producer, best known as the drummer/singer of the rock band Genesis and for his solo career. Between 1982 and 1990, Collins scored three UK and seven US number-one singles in his solo career. When his work with Genesis, his work with other artists, as well as his solo career is totalled, he had more US Top 40 singles than any other artist during…
Find out more »February 2022
Birthday – GORD DOWNIE
Gordon Edgar Downie CM (February 6, 1964 – October 17, 2017) was a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, musician, writer and activist. He was the lead singer and lyricist for the Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip, which he fronted from its formation in 1984 until his death in 2017. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and popular artists in Canadian music history. Downie has released seven solo albums, two posthumously: Coke Machine Glow (2001), Battle of the…
Find out more »Birthday – CAROLE KING (80)
Carole King (born Carol Joan Klein; February 9, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter who has been active since 1958. She is the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the US, having written or co-written 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100. King also wrote 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts between 1962 and 2005. King's major success began in…
Find out more »Birthday – DISCO (52)
Rarely does a dance movement fit so precisely within a decade. Seventies Disco was born on Valentine's Day 1970, when David Manusco opened The Loft in New York City, and it rapidly faded in 1980. When the Disco movement peaked in 1978-79, the demographic was predominantly white, heterosexual, urban and suburban middle class. But it didn't begin that way. For the first eight years, Disco was an underground movement. Then the film Saturday Night Fever (December 1977) helped turn the…
Find out more »Birthday – GEORGE HARRISON
George Harrison MBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician, singer, songwriter, and music and film producer who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian culture and helped broaden the scope of popular music through his incorporation of Indian instrumentation and Hindu-aligned spirituality in the Beatles' work. Although the majority of the band's songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums…
Find out more »September 2022
Birthday – FREDDIE MERCURY
Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara; 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991) was a British singer, songwriter, record producer, and lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. Regarded as one of the greatest lead singers in the history of rock music, he was known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range. Mercury defied the conventions of a rock frontman, with his highly theatrical style influencing the artistic direction of Queen. As a member of Queen, Mercury was posthumously…
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