On This Day In Music History August 14

Ace Frehley, the founding lead guitarist and cosmic trailblazer of KISS, has had his cause of death officially confirmed, several weeks after he passed away at age 74. The Morris County Medical Examiner in New Jersey has ruled Frehley’s death an accident, confirming the guitarist died from blunt trauma to the head following a fall.

When Patti Smith walked into Electric Lady Studios in New York in September 1975, she was not trying to chase radio hits or craft a commercial product. She was trying to breathe life back into rock, fuse it with poetry and performance art, and speak directly to outsiders who felt like music had stopped speaking to them. On 10 November 2025, her debut album Horses reaches its 50th anniversary, standing tall as one of the most influential recordings in modern music.

Tangerine Records will continue its mission of honouring the genius of Ray Charles with No One Does It Like… Ray Charles!, a newly remastered collection arriving 21 November 2025. The release gathers together mid-1960s singles, B-sides, and rare non-album cuts that have never before been compiled in one place, capturing the soul pioneer in one of the most creatively explosive phases of his career.

When Elton John and Bernie Taupin released Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy in 1975, they weren't just delivering another album - they were telling their story. Now, fifty years later, the duo's most autobiographical work is being revisited in a lavish 50th anniversary reissue, restoring one of rock's most introspective and musically adventurous masterpieces to the spotlight.

Paul Daniel “Ace” Frehley, the original lead guitarist and co-founder of KISS, has died aged 74. The man who brought outer space to the stage and forever changed rock guitar passed away on 16 October 2025, only weeks after suffering a fall in his home studio that led to a brain bleed. Frehley had been on life support since late September, following what was initially described as a “minor fall”.

When the John Lennon Estate announced the release of the Power To The People deluxe box set, much of the attention naturally went to the remastered tracks, rare recordings, and newly unearthed video content. But among the archival treasures is something far less conventional—a quirky, avant-garde experiment called Clock. Filmed by John Lennon in 1971 during the creation of Imagine, Clock is as much a window into Lennon’s restless creativity as it is a document of the day-to-day rhythm of his life with Yoko Ono.

Fifty years ago, on September 12, 1975, Pink Floyd released Wish You Were Here, their ninth studio album and the follow-up to the phenomenon that was The Dark Side of the Moon. Few bands in rock history have faced the challenge Pink Floyd did in the mid-1970s: how do you follow up one of the most successful, best-selling and artistically defining albums of all time? Against that backdrop, Wish You Were Here emerged not only as a worthy successor but as one of the group’s most enduring works.