April 1977

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  1
 2
Top of the charts: Daryl Hall & John Oates's "Rich Girl" (pop single); Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (pop album). Rumours will spend a total of 31 weeks (non-consecutive) at #1, a longer period than any other Seventies album.
3
 4
British CBS releases the Clash's eponymous first album, a fourteen-song aural firebomb that contains such punk battle cries as "White Riot," "Police and Thieves" and "London's Burning." Claiming that the album is too harsh for American ears, American CBS will refuse to release it until 1979, and even then will delete some of the more virulent songs from the selection. In the meantime, Americans with tough ears will buy 100,000 imported copies of The Clash, making it one of the biggest-selling import records of all time.
 5
At a three-day rally billed Japan Celebrates the Whale and Dolphin in Tokyo, Jackson Browne, Richie Havens, John Sebastian, Country Joe McDonald and J.D. Souther help to raise $150,000 for the effort to save the whales and dolphins from the nets of the international fishing industry.

U.S. ambassador to the UN Andrew Young accuses Britain of institutionalizing racism more than any other country. Over the next few months, he further upsets diplomatic waters by naming the Soviet Union the most racist country, by alleging that Sweden treats blacks as badly as they are treated in Queens, N.Y., and by saying, in a Playboy interview, that former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford have "no understanding of colored people anywhere."
 6
Former Beatles and Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein is indicted for tax evasion.

Led Zeppelin breaks the record for single-act concert attendance in Pontiac, Michigan, 76,229.
 7
Rolling Stone reports that the upcoming tour of Todd Rundgren's Utopia will raise the ante for onstage high-tech theatrics: At a cost of nearly $200,000, it features a 25-foot pyramid, an 18-foot sphinx, fire jets, water fountains and lasers synchronized with digital recording devices.

The Clash's eponymous debut album is released in the U.K. Though it will eventually sell an astounding 100,000 copies as an import in the U.S., CBS Records refuses to release it domestically until much later, deeming it crudely produced and lacking in commercial potential.
 8
The Damned's performance at New York City's CBGB marks the first appearance of a British punk group in America.

According to Customs officials, up to 30 marijuana-laden aircraft enter the U.S. from Mexico each day.
 9
10
 11
After performing for an audience of 40,000 in Sydney, Australia (the largest concert crowd in the country's history to date), Alice Cooper is placed under house arrest at his hotel until he posts a bond for $59,632 -- the sum which a local promoter, H.G.M. Attractions, claims to have paid Cooper for a 1975 Australian tour he never made. Cooper and H.G.M. will arrive at a court settlement that divides the money between the two parties when it is found that H.G.M. did not fulfill its part of the 1975 agreement either.
 12
 13
D-day for the ERA: As the Florida Senate rejects the amandment, the tally of states that have ratified the ERA stands at 35 of the necesary 38, stalling the long and hard-fought battle for constitutional recognition of women's rights. The struggle will continue, unsuccessfully, until June 30, 1982.
 14
 15
Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd present a gold disc awarded them for One More from the Road to Mayor Maynard Jackson of Atlanta, Georgia, in appreciation of their Atlanta fans. Another gold disc is awarded to representatives of Atlanta's Fox Theater, where the album was recorded live. In the afternoon, members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, along with James Brown and other prominent Georgians, are honored at a ceremony before the Atlanta Braves' opening home baseball game.
 16
Stevie Wonder enters the soul chart with what will become another of his many Number One smash hits, "Sir Duke," a rollicking tribute to Duke Ellington that will top the chart in May.
17
Led Zeppelin's final tour of the U.S. is plagued by violent rioting over ticketing problems and postponed shows, beginning in Miami and spreading to Tampa, Houston, St. Louis and Cincinnati.
 18
Heiress, kidnapping victim and SLA member Patty Hearst pleads no contest to armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
 19
The Supreme Court upholds the right of school officials to spank unruly students.
 20
 21
Rolling Stone reports the rampant rumor that new Capitol recording artist Klaatu is actually the Beatles reunited. Fanning the flames further, Klaatu's manager says, "They want to maintain a low profile and be known solely for their music... they are not the Beatles."

Jesse Winchester, the American folksinger whose career was cut short when he fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft, performs his first concert on U.S. soil in ten years.
 22
 23
24
Joan Baez and Santana, among others, perform a free concert for inmates of California's Soledad Prison. The concert was arranged and sponsored by Bread and Roses, a charitable foundation set up in 1974 by Baez' sister Mimi Fariña.
 25
At a concert at the Saginaw, Michigan, Civic Center, Elvis Presley makes what will be the last recordings of his life. Three songs from the show will appear, in heavily overdubbed mixes, on the posthumously released Presley album Moody Blue.
 26
Studio 54, destined to be the world's most famous disco during the height of the disco phenomenon, apens its carefully guarded doors for the first time. A converted television sudio on New York City's West Fifty-fourth Street, the club is done up in the height of glittering chic: metallic-black walls, neon-light sculptures, spotlit dance floors for those who want to be seen, shadowy alcoves furnished with plump couches for those involved in more private pursuits. But the décor and even the nonstop dance music take second billing to the rich, the beautiful, the famous and the infamous who annoint Studio 54 as the place for celebrities to spend those feverish hours between midnight and dawn; it is they who attract the throngs outside who wait for hours, hoping that the doormen will like their looks or their promises enough to let them past the velvet ropes and into Studio 54.

The Federal Drug Administration requires environmental- hazard warning labels on all containers using fluorocarbons.
 27
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 29
 30
Aretha Franklin, enters the soul chart yet again, with "Break It to Me Gently," which in its fourteen weeks on the chart will peak at Number One for one week on June 18. It is her second soul Top Ten hit of the year -- the first was the #10 "Look Into Your Heart" -- and will later be followed by one more big hit, the #16 "When I Think about You."

Approximately 2,000 protesters invade the construction site of a nuclear power plant in Seabrook, N.H. The next day over 1,000 are arrested and held in makeshift jails.


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