September 1975

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The summer ends on a less-than-peaceful note in Syracuse, New York. A so-called Great American Music Fair featuring the Jefferson Starship, Doobie Brothers, New Riders of the Purple Sage and others is marred when a crowd of five hundred attempts to storm the gate, an effort to make the fest a free show. Police and state troopers retaliate, and sixty are arrested in the melee that follows.
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In Geneva, Egypt and Israel reach an agreement for troop disengagement from the Sinai, with the installation of U.S. observers. The accord is approved by Oct. 10, and Israeli troops begin leaving the peninsula for the first time since the 1973 war.
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Jaws becomes the top-grossing film of all time.

Former Manson Family member Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme tries to shoot President Ford and is immedately arrested in California. On Sept. 22, Sara Jane Moore also makes an unsuccessful attempt on the president in San Francisco, and is likewise arrested.
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Top of the charts: Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" (pop single); Jefferson Starship's Red Octopus (pop album).
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The busing of Boston schoolchildren begins again amid protest demonstrations.
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NASA's unmanned probe Viking 2 takes off for Mars.
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A special about legendary Columbia Records executive John Hammond is taped in Chicago for NET (National Educational Television) Marion Wilson, Benny Goodman, Sonny Terry and John Hammond Jr. all perform for the man who signed up Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and Bruce Springsteen. But it's the man once dubbed "Hammond's Folly" who ends the proceedings. Bob Dylan, playing with what becomes the Rolling Thunder Revue's rhythm section -- bassist Rob Stoner and drummer Howie Wyeth -- and the tour's violinist, Scarlet Rivera, run through "Oh Sister," "Simple Twist of Fate" and two blistering versions of "Hurricane," his as-yet unreleased, stirring defense of former boxer and convicted (some say unjustly) murderer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.
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Folk-pop singer/songwrier Janis Ian earns her first gold record for the album Between the Lines. The album contains her single, "At Seventeen," which is climing the pop chart, where it will peak at #3. Between the Lines will eventually go platinum. "At Seventeen" is Ians first hit since 1967's controversial "Society's Child," a protest-love song about an interracial relationship that reached #14 on the pop chart.
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Hard rock band Slade's attempt at rock moviemaking, Flame, opens in St. Louis. The band, as popular in its native U.K. as it is overlooked in the U.S., stars as a prepackaged Sixties band. But despite the concurrent release of Flame, the book, and Flame, the sountrack, the the venture falls far short of capturing the American interest.
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The delicate balance among Lebanon's religious groups begins to teeter out of control. Fighting erupts between Christian and Muslim factions, beginning a drawn-out civil war that will kill thousands and reduce Beirut to ruin.
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British progressive-rock band Pink Floyd earn their third gold record, for the album Wish You Were Here, a thinly veiled tribute to Syd Barrett, the band's original guiding light in its early psychedelic days. One of their previous gold citations was for The Dark Side of the Moon, which also went platinum.
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Veteran Detroit soul vocal group the Spinners earn another of their many gold records, for the album Pick of the Litter, which contains their current hit, "They Just Can't Stop It (the Games People Play)," which is on its way to #5 on the pop chart. Among their other gold singles are "I'll Be Around" (1972), "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love" (1973) and the 1974 Number One hit with Dionne Warwick, "Then Came You." They will go on to earn another gold record in 1976 for the #2 pop hit "The Rubberband Man."

Patty Hearst is arrested in her Bay Area hideout along with other surviving SLA members. Eighteen days later, Rolling Stone magazine makes headlines with its investigative account of the early days of Hearst's abduction and subsequent undeground flight.
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Dickie Goodman, master of the novelty "break-in" record -- where excerpts from current hits are used to flesh out what, in Goodman's case, is inevitably some sort of parody of current events or fads -- earns his only gold record, for "Mr. Jaws," currently on its way to #4 on the pop chart. Goodman had many other such hits, including "The Touchables" (1961), "Ben Crazy" (1962), "Batman and His Grandmother" (1966), "On Campus" and "Luna Trip" (1969), "Watergate" (1973), "Energy Crisis '74" (1974) and "Mr. President" (1974). Before going solo, Goodman had scored several other "break-in" novelty hits ashalf of a duo with Bill Buchanan. The first of their duo hits, 1956's "Flying Saucer," was also the first "break-in" record and sparked controversy among the composers and publishers whose songs had been excerpted; Buchanan and Goodman capitalized on this publicity in their follow-up hit, "Buchanan and Goodman on Trial," and had mone more hit in 1957 with "Santa and the Satellite."
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The Bay City Rollers appear live on Howard Cosell's Saturday night ABC variety show in an obvious attempt to break the band (and Cosell's soon-to- be-canceled program) in the manner of the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show eleven years earlier.

David Bowie's "Fame" hits #1 on the Billboard pop chart, his first to reach the top.
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Soul singer Jackie Wilson ("Higher and Higher") suffers a heart attack while performing at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He suffers brain damage and lapses into a coma. Ironically, Wilson was in the middle of singing one of his biggest hits, "Lonely Teardrops," and was two words into the line "My heart is crying" when he collapsed. Wilson, 41, will remain immobile and mute until his death in 1984.
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Fifty thousand people watch the Jefferson Starship and Jerry Garcia and Friends for free in San Francisco's Lindley Park. Garcia's "friends" turn out to be the reunited Grateful Dead making their first public appearance in over a year.
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