Tommy’s Coffee Break Calendar for May 11th

Turns out Lennon wasn't crazy... -- Zep meets Elvis! -- Happy Birthday to one of Britain's grittiest growlers...

5/11/1972 (48 years ago today) - When he made this claim, a lot of us thought he was just being paranoid: In an interview on "The Dick Cavett Show", John Lennon said he was under surveillance by the F.B.I., and his home telephone lines were being tapped -- Turns out to be true! -- Nixon and his cronies wanted The Beatle out of the country before the next election; like, if more youth were involved in a democracy, what would that be like for the old (out of touch) "establishment"? Scary stuff when everyone actually has a vote...

5/11/1974 (46 years ago today) - Another reason they've turned your phone into a camera: Led Zeppelin are in the audience for an Elvis Presley concert at the Forum in L.A. -- Wouldn't you know it, the show gets off to a rather shaky start when Elvis is forced to actually stop the band and (only half-jokingly) tells them, "Wait a minute fellas, let's, uh, get it together because we've got Led Zeppelin out there, let's try to look like we know what we're doing!" -- After the performance, all four Zep members hang out with Elvis for two hours backstage; The King asks for all of their autographs for daughter Lisa Marie.

5/11/1941 - Happy Birthday to one of the U.K.'s most distinctive-and-legendary vocalists, the notoriously snarky Eric Burdon, 79 years old today -- When a lot (and we mean ALOT) of the original British Invasion bands were busy being cutey-pies, Eric led The Animals into rather aggressive territory with a classic run of scorching and vaguely sinister singles: "It's My Life", "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place", "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", "Sky Pilot", along with some fiercely convincing blues covers that clearly posed a threat to their contemporaries legacies -- Ranked 57 in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Singers Of All Time", but we think Eric should have had a higher placement (after all, you were never going to mistake his voice for that of someone else, ever) -- Bruce Springsteen has often spoken reverently about what The Animals music meant to him growing up, so you got that to chew on...

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"It's my mind and I'll think what I want...", xoxo!