1979 in music
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1979.
Specific locations
Specific genres
Events
January–February
- January 1
- * Bill Graham closes San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom following a New Year's Eve performance by the Blues Brothers and the Grateful Dead.
- * During a New Year's Eve concert in Cleveland, Ohio, Bruce Springsteen is injured when a firecracker is thrown onstage from the audience.
- January 4 – The Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany, known for its connections to the early days of the Beatles, reopened.
- January 6 – ABC's American Bandstand featured the debut of the "Y.M.C.A. dance" using the hand gestures forming the letters YMCA during a broadcast with the Village People.
- January 9 – The Music for UNICEF Concert in held in New York City at the United Nations, starring the Bee Gees. Highlights are aired the following evening on NBC.
- January 13 – Singer Donny Hathaway dies after falling 15 stories from his hotel room in New York City. According to Hathaway's record company, Atlantic, the singer had been having some psychological problems.
- January 15 – MCA Records purchases ABC Records for a reported $20 million.
- February 2 – Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious is found dead from an overdose, a day after being released on bail from Rikers Island prison.
- February 7
- * The Clash kicked off their first concert of their first American tour at the Berkeley Community Theatre outside San Francisco. Bo Diddley opened the show.
- * Stephen Stills becomes the first major rock artist to record digitally, laying down four songs at The Record Plant in Los Angeles. None of the songs are released, and Ry Cooder becomes the first major rock artist to release a digitally recorded record.
- February 10 – Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" hit No. 1 on the Billboard magazine charts, and stayed there for 4 weeks.
- February 11 – 43 million viewers watch "Elvis!" on ABC, a made-for-TV movie starring Kurt Russell as Elvis.
- February 14 – Following her 1972 sex reassignment surgery, musician Wendy Carlos legally changes her name from Walter. She reveals this information in an interview in the May 1979 issue of Playboy magazine.
- February 15
- * Minnie Riperton appears on the Grammys as a presenter with Stephen Bishop.
- * The 21st Annual Grammy Awards are presented in Los Angeles, hosted by John Denver. The Bee Gees collect 4 Grammys for the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, including Album of the Year, while Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" wins both Record of the Year and Song of the Year. A Taste of Honey win Best New Artist.
- February 23 – Dire Straits begin their first U.S. tour in Boston.
- February 24
- * Friedrich Cerha's completion of Alban Berg's opera Lulu is premiered at the Opera Garnier in Paris.
- * Singer Johnnie Wilder, Jr. of Heatwave is paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio.
- February 26 – B.B. King becomes the first blues artist to tour the Soviet Union, kicking off a one-month tour there.
March–April
- March 2–4 – Weather Report, The CBS Jazz All-Stars, the Trio of Doom, Fania All-Stars, Stephen Stills, Billy Swan, Bonnie Bramlett, Mike Finnegan, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge and Billy Joel, plus Cuban acts Irakere, Pacho Alonso, Elena Burke, Los Papines, Tata Güines and Orquesta Aragón play at the historic three-day Havana Jam festival at the Karl Marx Theater, in Havana, Cuba.
- March 5 – MCA Records dissolves ABC Records.
- March 10 – James Brown performs at the Grand Ole Opry.
- March 15 – Elvis Costello gets into a heated argument with members of Stephen Stills' touring entourage at a Holiday Inn in Columbus, Ohio, United States. After Costello makes disparaging and racist remarks, he is punched by Bonnie Bramlett. Costello suffers a wave of negative press coverage after the incident is made public.
- March 27 –
- *Eric Clapton marries Patti Boyd, ex-wife of Clapton's friend George Harrison.
- *Simple Minds make their first television appearance, performing the songs "Chelsea Girl" and "Life in a Day" on BBC's The Old Grey Whistle Test.
- March 31 – The Eurovision Song Contest, the biggest music festival in the world, takes place for the first time in a country outside Europe – Israel. The show is broadcast live from Jerusalem to Europe and a few countries in Asia. The big winner of this night is Israel for the second time in a row. The winning song is "Hallelujah" sung by the group Milk and Honey, including Gali Atari. A few months after winning the song had been translated into more than 82 languages, and broke a new record by entering the Guinness Book of Records as the most translated song in the world.
- April 2 – Kate Bush begins her first, and for 35 years, only tour. She becomes the first artist to use a wireless microphone, enabling her to sing and dance at the same time.
- April 6 – Rod Stewart marries Alana Hamilton.
- April 7 – 110,000 people attend the California Music Festival at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. Performers include Aerosmith, The Boomtown Rats, Cheap Trick, Ted Nugent and Van Halen.
- April 12 – Mickey Thomas replaces Marty Balin as the lead singer of Jefferson Starship.
- April 13 – During a concert by Van Halen in Spokane, Washington, David Lee Roth collapses from exhaustion. A local doctor treats him for a stomach virus and advises him to "calm down".
- April 22 – The New Barbarians and The Rolling Stones perform two concerts in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, to benefit the CNIB, as part of Keith Richards' 1978 sentence for heroin possession.
- April 27 – Ozzy Osbourne is fired as lead singer of Black Sabbath. He is replaced in May by Ronnie James Dio.
May–August
- May 1 – Elton John becomes one of the first Western pop musicians to perform in Israel.
- May 2 – The Who play their first concert following the death of drummer Keith Moon. The band performs with new drummer Kenney Jones at London's Rainbow Theatre.
- May 4 – Release as a single of Gary Numan's "Are "Friends" Electric?" with Tubeway Army; it becomes the first synth-pop single to reach number one in the UK Singles Chart.
- May 8 – Iron Maiden, Samson, and Angel Witch share a bill at the Music Machine in Camden, London. Critic Geoff Barton coins the term "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" in a review of the show for Sounds magazine.
- May 12 – Disco music occupies eight of the top ten spots of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, for two weeks. The charts are led by Peaches and Herb's R&B ballad single "Reunited".
- May 14 – Kate Bush plays the final date at the Hammersmith Odeon on her first-ever tour, which also turned out to be her last tour.
- May 19 – Three of the four ex-Beatles perform on the same stage, as Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr jam with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Mick Jagger and others at a wedding reception for Clapton at his Surrey home.
- May 21 – Elton John plays the first of eight concerts in the Soviet Union, making him the first western solo pop artist to tour there.
- June 1 – The Alternative Tentacles record label is established by Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra.
- June 8 – Marianne Faithfull marries Ben Brierly of The Vibrators.
- June 9 – The Bee Gees equal Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles, with a record six consecutive number-one singles in the U.S. in less than a single calendar year with "Love You Inside Out".
- June 16 – Donna Summer becomes the first female to have the #1 single "Hot Stuff" and album Bad Girls for a second time.
- June 28 – Bill Haley makes his final studio recordings at Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
- June 30
- *Donna Summer becomes the first female artist to have 2 of the top 3 songs, Hot Stuff at #1 & Bad Girls at #3, on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. They will stay in the top 3 together for 4 weeks. In fact, all of the top 5 songs that week are entirely by women, both in Billboard and in Cashbox.
- *Tubeway Army reach number 1 on the UK Singles Chart with "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and become the first British act to have a synth pop hit single. The song will remain at number 1 for four consecutive weeks.
- July
- * EMI's first non-classical digital recording, of UK jazz-funk duo Morrissey–Mullen covering the Rose Royce hit "Love Don't Live Here Anymore", is recorded at Abbey Road Studios and later released as a limited edition vinyl EP.
- * George Martin's Associated Independent Recording opens its AIR Montserrat recording studio on the Caribbean island of Montserrat; the first album recorded here is Climax Blues Band's Real to Reel.
- July 1 – The Sony Walkman goes on sale in Japan.
- July 7 – The Bee Gees play to a sold-out crowd at Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium as part of their Spirits Having Flown Tour|Spirits Having Flown] tour.
- July 10 – Chuck Berry is sentenced to four months in prison for tax evasion by a Los Angeles judge.
- July 12 – "Disco Demolition Night", an anti-disco promotional event held by a Chicago rock station at Comiskey Park involving exploding disco records with a bomb, causes a near-riot between games during a baseball major league doubleheader, forcing the cancellation of the second game.
- July 14 – Donna Summer, for a third time in an eight-month period, scores a #1 single with "Bad Girls", ; and #1 album of the same name, which also tops the Billboard 200 for six weeks.
- July 21
- *With Bad Girls, Donna Summer's success continues as she becomes the first female artist to sit on top of 3 major Billboard charts: the Billboard Hot 100, the Hot Soul Singles chart, and the Billboard 200. Disco dominates the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with the first six spots, and seven of the chart's top ten songs ending that week.
- *Tubeway Army reach number 1 on the UK Albums Chart with "Replicas".
- July 28 – Aerosmith and Ted Nugent headline the World Series of Rock at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio. Also on the bill are Journey, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC and the Scorpions. Following the concert, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry quits the group after an argument with bandmates.
- July 31 – 250,000 turn out in Central Park for a free concert by James Taylor in a campaign to restore Sheep Meadow.
- August – Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin, having reunited after a three-year break, eventually record their first compositions since then, to be released a year later as 21 at 33.
- August 6 - Bauhaus releases debut single "Bela Lugosi's Dead", considered to be the first Gothic Rock release.
- August 18 – Nick Lowe and Carlene Carter are married at Carter's Los Angeles home.
- August 24 – Prince's first hit single "I Wanna Be Your Lover" is released in the US, reaching number one on the RnB and number 11 on the Hot 100, selling more than one million copies in the US.
- August 25 – "My Sharona" by The Knack hits #1 on the Billboard charts. This is the first time in over a year that a song hits #1 that is not either a disco song or a ballad, signalling the potential resurgence of rock.
September–December
- September 1 – INXS perform in public for the first time, at the Oceanview Hotel in Umina, New South Wales.
- September 2 – U2 enters the studio for the first time to record a locally released single.
- September 13 – ABBA begins ABBA: The Tour in Edmonton, Alberta, leading off a month of dates in North America.
- September 16 – The Sugarhill Gang release Rapper's Delight in the United States, the first rap single to become a Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
- September 17 – Ontario Court of Appeals rejects a government appeal against the previous year's sentencing of Keith Richards, which allowed him to avoid jail time for his 1977 arrest in Toronto for heroin possession.
- September 19–23 – Musicians United for Safe Energy stages a series of five No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden. Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Petty, James Taylor and Carly Simon are among the participants.
- September 22
- *Gary Numan hits number 1 on the UK Albums Chart with Pleasure Principle (Gary Numan album)|The Pleasure Principle], only two months after his Tubeway Army album Replicas had topped the chart.
- *The NewMusic, a Canadian weekly music and culture program, makes its début on Citytv.
- September 27 – Elton John collapses on stage at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles County, California while performing "Better Off Dead". He refuses to stop the show and resumes playing fifteen minutes later.
- October 10 – Joe Perry officially leaves Aerosmith.
- November 3 – Donna Summer becomes the first female artist to have 5 top 10 hits in the same year.
- November 16 – Infinity Records is shut down and absorbed into parent company MCA.
- November 17 – Donna Summer, for a second time, has two songs in the Top 3 of the Billboard Hot 100, and the first female to have 5 top 5 hits in the same year.
- November 24 – With "No More Tears " hitting the top spot, Donna Summer becomes the first female artist to score 3 #1 singles in a calendar year on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
- November 26 – Bill Haley & His Comets perform at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, in a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II. This was Haley's final recorded performance of "Rock Around the Clock".
- November 30 – Pink Floyd releases The Wall. It is one of rock's most well-known concept albums and one of the best-selling albums of all time. It is also the last album recorded with the line up of David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright.
- December – Iron Maiden is signed by EMI. They hire Dennis Stratton as a second guitarist.
- December 3 – In Cincinnati, a stampede for seats at Riverfront Coliseum during a Who concert kills 11 fans and injures 26 others. Band members were not informed of the deaths until after the show.
- December 8 – The 8th OTI Festival, held at the in Caracas, Venezuela, is won by the song "Cuenta conmigo", written by Chico Novarro and, and performed by representing Argentina.
- December 26 – Iron Maiden drummer Doug Sampson is replaced by ex-Samson drummer Clive Burr.
- December 26-29 – The Concerts [for the People of Kampuchea] are held over four nights at the Hammersmith Odeon in London to raise funds for victims of war in Cambodia. Queen, The Who, The Clash, Wings, Elvis Costello and members of Led Zeppelin all take part.
- December 31 – The eighth annual New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest|New Year's Rockin' Eve] special airs on ABC, with appearances by The Oak Ridge Boys, Village People, Chic, Blondie and Barry Manilow.
Also in 1979
- The Welsh Philharmonia becomes the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera.
- Michael Schenker leaves Scorpions during their tour in France and is replaced by Matthias Jabs.
- Stevie Wonder uses digital audio recording technology in recording his album Journey through [the Secret Life of Plants].
- Disco reigns supreme this year, with several number-one hits from The Bee Gees and Donna Summer. Several artists who were not regarded as disco acts, scored major successes by releasing disco-oriented singles or albums, including new wave band Blondie with their first US number-one single "Heart of Glass", Rod Stewart with "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?", and symphonic rock band Electric Light Orchestra with their UK No. 1 LP Discovery.
Bands formed
''See Musical groups established in 1979''Bands disbanded
''See Musical groups disestablished in 1979''Albums released
August
Release date unknown
3D – The Three Degrees An American Dream - The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band- Art of the Acoustic Steel String Guitar 6 & 12 – Robbie Basho The Beat – The BeatThe [Beatles Concerto] – John RutterBreaking Loose – HelixBuona domenica – Antonello VendittiBuy – James Chance & the ContortionsCalifornia – Gianna NanniniThe Candidate – Steve HarleyCasino Classics: Chapter One – Various artistsChance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella – Nurse With WoundA Classy Pair – Ella Fitzgerald and Count BasieThe Crack – The RutsDeltics – Chris ReaEP (Oingo Boingo)|Demo EP] – Oingo BoingoDisco Nights – GQDigital III at Montreux – Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Joe PassDivine Love – Leo SmithDon't Fight It – Red Rider Earthquake – Electric SunFine and Mellow – Ella FitzgeraldFrench Skyline – EarthstarFuture Now – PleasureGrosses Wasser – ClusterHair – Various Artists – SoundtrackIdentify Yourself – The O'JaysI Wanna Play For You - Stanley ClarkeThe Innes Book of Records – Neil InnesInvasion of the Booty Snatchers – ParletIs There More to Life Than Dancing? – NoëlJardin Au Fou – Hans-Joachim RoedeliusJohn Fahey Visits Washington D.C. – John FaheyThe [Kenny Rogers Singles Album] – Kenny RogersLenox Avenue Breakdown – Arthur BlytheLet's Drip Awhile – Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons - LiveLive & Direct - Taj Mahal - LiveLive! Go for What You Know – Pat Travers BandLiving Dub Vol. 1 - Burning SpearLoleatta Holloway - Loleatta Holloway
- The London Concert – Oscar PetersonLooking for Saint Tropez – TelexLots of Luv' – Luv' Lubbock (On Everything) – Terry AllenMaking a Name for Myself - Roger MillerMorning Dance – Spyro GyraA Night at Studio 54 – Various artistsNuba – Andrew Cyrille, Jeanne Lee, Jimmy LyonsOn the Road Again – Roy WoodA Perfect Match – Ella Fitzgerald and Count BasiePress Color - Lizzy Mercier DesclouxPush Pull - Jimmy LyonsRainbow's End – Resurrection BandRise – Herb AlpertRockit – Chuck BerryRock On – RaydioThe Roches – The RochesSilent Cries and Mighty Echoes – EloySky – SkyA Slice of the Top – Hank Mobley with Lee MorganSlumberin' on the Cumberland - John HartfordSongs of Love – Anita WardStar Trek: The Motion Picture – Jerry Goldsmith – SoundtrackStations of the Crass – CrassStreet Life – The CrusadersStone Crazy! – Buddy GuyTake It Home – B.B. KingTango Palace - Dr. JohnTeenage Warning – Angelic UpstartsThanks, I'll Eat It Here – Lowell GeorgeTiger in the Rain – Michael FranksTogether Again – The DublinersTrue Luv' – Luv' The Very Best of Leo Sayer – Leo SayerWalking on Sunshine – Eddy GrantWashes Whiter Than – Petra
Biggest hit singles
The following songs achieved the highest chart positions in the charts of 1979.| # | Artist | Title | Year | Country | Chart entries |
| 1 | Blondie | Heart of Glass | 1979 |  Chronological list of US and UK and Japan number-one hit singlesUS number-one singles and artist
Published popular music
Classical music
Opera
Musical theatreAin't Misbehavin'. London production opened at Her Majesty's Theatre on March 22.Carmelina Broadway production opened at the St. James Theatre on April 8 and ran for 17 performances. Starring Georgia Brown and Cesare SiepiEvita. Broadway production opened at the Broadway Theatre on September 25 and ran for 1567 performancesThe King and I London revival opened at the Palladium on June 12 and ran for 538 performancesMy Old Friends. Off-Broadway production opened at the Orpheum Theatre on January 12 and transferred to the 22 Steps Theatre on Broadway on April 12 for a total run of 154 performances.Oklahoma! – Broadway revival opened at the Palace Theatre on December 13 and ran for 310 performancesPeter Pan. Broadway revival opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on September 6 and ran for 551 performances.Saravá. Broadway production opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on February 23 and ran for 140 performancesSugar Babies Broadway revue opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on October 8 and ran for 1208 performances.Sweeney Todd – Broadway production opened at the Uris Theatre on March 1 and ran for 557 performancesThey're Playing Our Song. Broadway production opened at the Imperial Theatre on February 11 and ran for 1082 performancesTommy London production opened at Queen's Theatre on February 6 and ran for 118 performancesThe Venetian Twins. Opened at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre on October 26.Whoopee. Broadway revival opened at the ANTA Theatre on February 14 and ran for 212 performances.Musical filmsAll That JazzBalada pro bandituHairMetamorphosesThe Muppet MovieMusic Machine (film)|The Music Machine]Ochen sinjaja boroda OolkatalRadio OnRock 'n' Roll High SchoolRoller BoogieThe RoseSchlagerBirths
Deaths
Awards |