October 1970

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  1
Jimi Hendrix is buried in his hometown, Seattle, Washington.

Curtis Mayfield has left the Impressions, a soul group, to begin a solo career and to found his own label, Curtom, Rolling Stone reports.
 2
Chicago's Aragon Ballroom permanently excludes rock & roll shows. Manager Scott Deneen issues this statement: "We can no longer guarantee the security and safety of people attending Aragon rock shows..." A few nights before, at a concert by jazz-rock band the Flock, nineteen-year-old audience member Terry Galasby, under the influence of LSD, began taking off his clothes. Removed to an upstairs security office by authorities, Galasby broke free and, declaring himself to be Batman, jumped out of the window, breaking an arm and fracturing his skull.

The Environmental Protection Agency, proposed by President Nixon in order to oversee most federal pollution-control activity, is established with congressional approval.
 3
Former Cream bassist Jack Bruce joins ex-Miles Davis sidemen John McLaughlin, Larry Young and Tony Williams to form one of the first jazz-rock fusion groups, Lifetime.
4
Janis Joplin is found dead of an apparent heroin overdose in her room at Hollywood's Landmark Hotel. The twenty-seven- year-old singer had just finished recording her second solo album, Pearl.
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The running battle between Vice President Spiro Agnew and FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson continues: Johnson, in response to Agnew's charge that rock music drives young people to drugs, plays rock music during a speech, saying that Agnew would do well to listen to song lyrics to understand what's happening in the country.
11
WNET, New York's public broadcasting TV station, begins "Fanfare," a series of programs on Fillmore East rock concerts.
 12
Bill Graham holds an auction of rock memorabilia and artifacts at New York's Fillmore East to benefit peace candidates. Among the items on the block are a guitar bashed to bits by the Who's Peter Townshend, Ian Anderson's flute, a multicolored bra tossed to the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia by an audience member at the Avalon Ballroom and a spiral notebook containing the original scrawled lyrics to Joni Mitchell's first album, Songs to a Seagull.

Two hundred students from Pretoria raid a Johhannesburg, South Africa, rock festival and assault audience members, claiming they object that the festival is being held on President Kruger's Day, a national holiday.
 13
Charles Reich's The Greening of America, an antitechnology examination of American society, is published and later becomes a bestseller.
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In a report bordering on bureaucratic paranoia, which even the White House calls "overly pessimistic," the CIA contends that 30,000 Communists have infiltrated the South Vietnamese government.
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President Richard Nixon, in a speech to a White House radio broadcasters conference, appeals for rock lyrics to be screened and those urging drug use to be banned.

Billboard predicts that "head shops" -- drug parahernalia boutiques -- will replace rack jobbers as record retailers to the youth markets. The magazine also reports that Las Vegas' International Hotel now offers "contemporary rock nightly in the Crown Room... giving hard rock a dignified look."
25
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In his first professional bout in almost four years, Muhammad Ali returns to the ring and knocks out Jerry Quarry in three rounds.
 27
Composers Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber unveil the soundtrack album to their musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" in a multimedia presentation at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in New York City.
 28
Baby Huey, born James T. Ramey in 1954, is found dead on the bathroom floor of a South Side hotel room in Chicago. Baby Huey had a minor underground hit in 1968 with the rollicking soul anthem "Mighty Mighty Spade and Whitey," backed by his band, the Babysitters. Huey had also appeared on Merv Griffin's television show and, after one New York performance, was asked by the Baron de Rothschild to play at his daughter's debutante ball in Paris. The death was ruled due to natural causes; Huey weighed over 350 pounds. He was recording an album for Curtis Mayfield's Curtom label at the time of his death.

Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser dies of a heart attack. Nine days later, Anwar Sadat succeeds him.
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Jim Morrison is sentenced to six months in jail and fined $500 for exposing himself in Miami.
 31
Top of the charts: the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There" (pop single); Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin III (pop album).


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