9 January – Mick Jagger's request for a Japanese visa is rejected on account of a 1969 drug conviction, putting an end to The Rolling Stones' plans to perform in Japan during their forthcoming tour.
4 May – 29 July – Led Zeppelin embarks on a tour of the United States, during which they set the record for highest attendance for a concert, 56,800, at the Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida. The record was previously held by The Beatles. Performances for the movie The Song Remains the Same are also filmed.
4 June – Ronnie Lane plays his last show with Faces at the Edmonton Sundown in London. Lane had informed the band three weeks earlier that he was quitting.
3 July – David Bowie 'retires' his stage persona Ziggy Stardust in front of a shocked audience at the Hammersmith Odeon at the end of his British tour.
4 July – Slade drummer Don Powell is critically injured in a car crash in Wolverhampton; his 20-year-old girlfriend is killed.
20 November – The Who open their Quadrophenia US tour with a concert at San Francisco's Cow Palace, but drummer Keith Moon passes out and has to be carried off the stage. Nineteen-year-old fan Scot Halpin is selected from the audience to finish the show; Halpin would later be awarded Rolling Stone magazine's "Pick-Up Player of the Year Award" for his historic performance.[3]
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The Royal Northern College of Music is established by the merger of the Northern School of Music (established 1920) and the Royal Manchester College of Music (established 1893)
The list of the top fifty best-selling albums of 1973 were published in Record Mirror at the end of the year, and later reproduced in the first edition of the BPI Year Book in 1976. However, in 2007 the Official Charts Company published album chart histories for each year from 1956 to 1977, researched by historian Sharon Mawer, and included an updated list of the top ten best-selling albums for each year based on the new research. The updated top ten for 1973 is shown in the table below.[10] The most significant changes from the original BMRB chart were that the album previously thought to be the year's best-seller, the soundtrack to the film That'll Be the Day, fell to tenth position, and Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano PlayerbyElton John moved up from number four to become the new best-selling album of 1973.
^Brett, Philip, et al. "Britten, Benjamin", Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed 12 May 2013 (subscription required)
