Not Nice, Nice
Friday July 10, 2009
Classic Rock Almanac - July 10
• 1964 - The Beatles make a triumphant return to their hometown, Liverpool, greeted by 200,000 fans
• 1968 - Prog rockers The Nice are banned from London's Royal Albert Hall after burning an American flag on stage during a performance as an antiwar protest
• 1975 - Ten days after their wedding, Cher files for divorce from Gregg Allman (Allman Brothers Band)
• 1978 - Bill Wyman is out cold after falling off the stage during a Rolling Stones concert
Birthday Watch, July 10:
Ronnie James Dio - Black Sabbath, Rainbow - 1942
Jerry Miller - Moby Grape - 1943
Arlo Guthrie - 1947
Comments
Re: the Nice- the story has been incorrectly passed on for 40 years now. What was burned was not a real flag but a canvas with a partial painting of the U.S. flag, which
Emerson then spray painted the horizontal stripes onto. The bass player then stuck his bass into the painting, tearing it. Emerson was given a lighter and he set it alight as an antiwar protest. But no flag was used.
This is in Emerson’s autobiography, the Hanson biography of the Nice, and the ELP book by Hanson as well, but incorrectly mentioned as a real flag in Wikipedia and everywhere else…