The Rolling Stones staged one of the most unusual intended for TV music specials ever on this day in 1968. Their Rock and Roll Circus included performances by them, the Who, Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithful, Taj Mahal and John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience under the name the Dirty Mac surrounded by big top trappings with Mick Jagger as the ring master.
The 15 hour marathon proved so exhausting that Mick considered the Stones set to be unacceptable, leading him to nix the planned TV airing of it by the BBC. The distilled recording of it was not released for another 28 years.
Other Noteworthy Classic Rock events on December 11 include...
1944 Booker T. Jones born.
1958 Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx born.
1961 Darryl Jones, Rolling Stones session bassist, born
1964 Sam Cooke is shot and killed during a dispute with a woman at a LA motel.
1967 Jethro Tull forms.
1969 Film The Magic Christian with Ringo Starr and Peter Sellers has London premiere.
1970 John Lennon releases Plastic Ono Band.
1972 First US Genesis concert takes place at Brandeis University near Boston.
1973 Ace Frehley gets shocked by an ungrounded lighting fixture during KISS concert.
1982 The Jam does its last concert in Brighton, UK.
1987 Bono gets arrested for spray painting graffiti on a fountain during a free U2 concert in San Francisco.
1988 Don Henley, Tom Petty and Graham Nash do a concert in Los Angeles honoring Roy Orbison following his death a few days earlier.
1998 A bottle strikes Chris Robinson during a Tucson, Arizona Black Crowes concert. A security guard trying to arrest the person that threw it is stabbed.
2002 David Lee Roth sues Van Halen for leaving him out of negotiations to renew the group's contract with Warner Brothers Records.
2002 Guns N' Roses remaining tour dates get cancelled due to Axl Rose and others failing to show up on time.
2005 Movin’ Out, musical featuring music of Billy Joel, ends 3 year Broadway run. Joel does two songs at the close.
2008 Auction of shotguns from Eric Clapton collection brings close to half a million dollars.
2010 Charlie Gilmour, adopted son of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, scales British war memorial during protests over student tuition hikes. Later is arrested despite apology.
2010 Paul McCartney does 4 songs and appears in skits on Saturday Night Live. 2010 Bob Weir and Mickey Hart join Sammy Hagar during Red Rocker’s holiday benefit concert in Mill Valley, California.
2012 Ravi Shankar dies following heart valve replacement.
2016 Bob Dylan is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but skips the ceremony.
