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The Beatles were in the middle “If I Needed Someone” during their second set at the Mid-South Coliseum Memphis when some yahoo tossed a firecracker at the stage. According to John Lennon, “every one of us — I think it’s on film — looked at each other, because each thought it was the other that had been shot.”
Professionals that they were, though, they kept right on playing, speeding up the tempo a little as adrenalin ran through them. Among Beatles aficionados this is known as the “Cherry Bomb Incident”; I don’t think that’s what the Runaways were singing about, but you never know.
Meanwhile, back in London, a young man named David Jones — who had within the last year started calling himself David Bowie — released a new single. As with all of his previous singles, “I Dig Everything” failed utterly to make Bowie a star. He would continue to labor away in obscurity for three more years before breaking through with “Space Oddity” in 1969.