November 1975

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Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg detour from the Rolling Thunder Revue to Lowell, Massachusetts, to visit the grave site of Beat writer Jack Kerouac. While sitting on the grave, Dylan strums his guitar, face covered with white greasepaint, and Ginsberg improvises some poetry. Their tribute, like much of the tour, is filmed and later used in Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara.
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The Sex Pistols play their first gig at Saint Martin's College of Art in London, but only make it through five songs before they are literally unplugged. The band -- Glen Matlock, Paul Cook, Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten (né Lydon) -- will later spearhead the British punk movement.
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David Bowie appears on Cher's CBS television show and, in addition to singing his recent Number One hit, "Fame," performs a duet with the hostess on a medley of "Young Americans," "Song Sung Blue," "One," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Wedding Bell Blues," "Maybe," "Day Tripper," "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Youngblood."
 10
A New Jersey Superior Court judge prevents the parents of Karen Ann Quinlan, a drug-and- alcohol-overdose victim, who has survived on life-support equipment since April 15, from allowing her to die. The ensuing legal battle will galvanize right-to-die and quality-of-care exponents.

The Edmund Fitzgerald, a Lake Superior cargo boat with a 29-member crew, sinks in a storm. Singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot will memorialize the event in his 1976 Top 10 hit "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

The UN General Assembly adapts a pro-Arab resolution that equates Zionism with racism.
 11
Civil war breaks out in Angola immediately after Portugal grants it independence. The Communist-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), aided by Cuban "engineers," will gain the advantage, fighting off other Angolan factions, foreign mercenaries and South African troops. The U.S. will steer clear of direct military involvement; Secretary of State Henry Kissinger asserts that the situation is not parallel to the one that drew the U.S. into Vietnam.
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The pressures of instantaneous success get to Bruce Springsteen when, on unfamiliar turf in London, he reacts to the hype that's preceded him across the ocean. At his European debut in London's Hammersmith Odeon, Springsteen tears down lobby posters reading, "Finally, the world is ready for Bruce Springsteen." Fed up with the trappings of newly found fame, the Jersey musician puts on a lackluster performance; his return to the same hall, five nights later, is considerably sharper.

Rock & roll prime-time television meet again, under the usual inane circumstances, when Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen appear on an episode of Police Woman. The band, playing a rock group named the Chromium Skateboard, and the Commander deliver twenty-two speaking lines. The best line actually comes from an assistant director, who outlines some professional camera behavior for the group: "Please, try not to stare at Angie's [Dickinson, the show's star] tits."
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The J. Geils Band finish recording their live Blow Your Face Out set at Detroit's Cobo Arena. A show four nights before, at the Boston Garden, was also taped for the two-record package that will be released in 1976.
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The Who kick off a month-long American tour in Houston at the Summit. The show, closely monitored by the press following the apocalyptic tone of the band's latest LP, The Who by Numbers, is judged less than a triumph but certainly no disaster. At a party afterward, John Entwistle -- and not head mischief-maker Keith Moon -- is arrested for disorderly conduct and spends a few hours in jail.

The 36-year reign of Spanish dictator-for-life Generalissimo Francisco Franco ends with his death.
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British soul singer and critic Pete Wingfield's only U.S. chart enry, "Eighteen with a Bullet," reaches -- inevitably -- #18 on the chart, with a bullet.
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In a sequined home-team baseball uniform, Elton John caps off another high-flying, SRO tour with the second of two sold-out shows at L.A.'s Dodger Stadium.

The Reverend Charles Boykin of Tallahassee, Florida's Lakewood Baptist Church and some of the younger members of his congregation burn approximately $2,000 worth of rock & roll records. The reverend, attempting to revive the image of rock as the "devil's music," cites a particularly damning (and hopelessly untraceable) statistic: 984 out of 1,000 unwed mothers became pregnant while rock music was playing in the background.
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