Today in Rock History – 20th APRIL:

BIRTHDAYS
1920: Tito Puente
1945: Jimmy Winston (The Small Faces)
1948: Craig Frost (Silver Bullet Band / Grand Funk Railroad)
1951: Luther Vandross
1967: Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater / Neal Morse Band / Flying Colors / Transatlantic / The Winery Dogs / Liquid Tension Experiment / Metal Allegiance / Sons of Apollo)

1971: Mikey Welsh (Weezer)

EVENTS
1968: Deep Purple played their first live show, in Tastrup, Denmark.
 
1969: Death of drummer, Benny Benjamin a.k.a. Papa Zita, of The Funk Brothers [aged 43].
1979: Death of Billy Duffy, lighting director for Kate Bush [aged 21].
1981: Split Enz played a concert at Regent Theatre, Dunedin ~ I was there!
1991: Death of singer / songwriter / guitarist, Steve Marriott of The Small Faces & Humble Pie [aged 44].
1992: The ‘Concert For Life’ Freddie Mercury tribute at Wembley Stadium featured Queen, Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Tony Iommi, David Bowie, Mick Ronson, James Hetfield, Elton John, George Michael, Seal, Annie Lennox, Def Leppard, Axl Rose, Slash, Extreme and others.
1993: Aerosmith released ‘Get a Grip’, which became their first album to debut at No.1 and went on to sell 20 million copies.
2013: Black Sabbath played a concert at Vector Arena, Auckland ~ I was there!

I took this shot at the Black Sabbath gig 12 years ago ~ what a wicked concert! I also headed over to Melbourne and caught them there too. That show was filmed for the Sabbath ‘Gathered in Their Masses’ DVD (see “Into The Void” below), but the Auckland performance was definitely the better of the two!