Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for Rocktober 19th

Today you look at British guitar legends' roots in the Sixties and say Happy Birthday to a founding member of a band even though he didn't sing or play an instrument!

10/19/1966 (49 years ago today) - The Yardbirds arrive in New York City ready to tour with the twin-guitar line-up of Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Two gigs in and Jeff Beck quits the group after coming down with acute tonsillitis. The shows go on with just Page on lead guitar; Jeff, meanwhile, forms a new band featuring a young mod/singer named Rod Stewart. The Jeff Beck Group is about to become legendary (Ron Wood is the bassist) -- The Yardbirds, on the other hand, are about to implode but the seeds of Led Zepppelin are already sown. Busy year for those two guitar masters...

10/19/1968 (47 years ago today) - An 18 year old Peter Frampton meets Steve Marriott for the first time at a Small Faces show in London. The two hit it off immediately; this new friendship leads to their planning to start a new group together and by next April, Humble Pie is ready to rock. Underrated band for sure...

10/19/1946 - Happy Birthday to longtime Procol Harum co-songwriter Keith Reid, 69 years old today. Keith wrote the lyrics for every single Procol Harum song (that wasn't an instrumental or cover); he met Procol singer-pianist Gary Brooker in 1966 where they first collaborated on "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" -- their songwriting partnership continued at an intense pace until the band broke up in 1977. Procol Harum were rather underrated -- their albums hold up quite well all these years later -- and the occasionally hard-to-decipher-and-very-artistic-and-adult-lyrics had alot to do with it, making them (probably) the first (and maybe only) rock band to give equal credit to a lyricist along with all the other musicians in the line-up. Weird, but very cool...

Thoughts on the Calendar? Let us know right here on our web site and on the WBLM Facebook and Twitter pages with the hashtag #TommysCoffeeBreak.

"At the moment my eyes were open/They might just as well have been closed...", xoxo!