Unless otherwise noted, all chart positions reflect the Billboard US pop chart.
1 Dick Clark reports from Times Square in the first New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, featuring Three Dog Night, Al Green, and Helen Reddy.
1 Guitarist Wayne Kramer of the radical proto-punk band the MC5 quits midperformance at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom, and the group breaks up shortly thereafter.
5 Bruce Springsteen releases his first LP, Greetings from Asbury Park.
5 Aerosmith releases its self-titled debut album, which includes “Dream On.”
6 Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” holds the No. 1 spot for three weeks. Its album, No Secrets, tops the Billboard chart for five.
8 The trial begins for the five Watergate burglars and their co-conspirators, ex-CIA agent E. Howard Hunt and ex-FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy.
14 Twenty-one countries watch Elvis Presley’s live Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite concert performance.
14 At Super Bowl VII in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Miami Dolphins beat the Washington Redskins, making the Dolphins the only team in NFL history to complete an entire season and a championship game without a loss.
20 Chief Justice Earl Warren swears in Richard Nixon, the only American to date to serve two terms as both president and vice president.
22 “Down goes Frazier!” sportscaster Howard Cosell cries as George Foreman knocks out Joe Frazier in the World Heavyweight Championship in Kingston, Jamaica.
22 The Supreme Court rules in Roe v. Wade that the Fourteenth Amendment’s “right to privacy” protects a woman’s right to an abortion in the first trimester, but states can regulate in the second and third trimesters.
27 The US secretary of state and ambassador to Vietnam sign the Paris Peace Accords with representatives from North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong, ending the Vietnam War.
7 Iggy Pop and the Stooges release Raw Power, produced by David Bowie.
8 The reggae film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, opens in the US.
17 War’s album The World Is a Ghetto hits No. 1 on the album chart. Billboard later ranks it the bestselling album of 1973.
18 Evel Knievel jumps over fifty cars on his motorcycle at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before a crowd of more than twenty-three thousand.
24 Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly with His Song” reaches the No. 1 position and eventually wins the Grammy for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Pop Vocal Female.
27 The American Indian Movement (AIM) occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota, protesting the US government’s failure to honor treaties.
1 Pink Floyd releases The Dark Side of the Moon, which becomes the No. 1 US album on April 28 and remains on the chart for over nine hundred weeks. Currently Wikipedia ranks it the fourth-bestselling album of all time.
11 The New York Times dubs Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow “a work of paranoid genius.” The Pulitzer Prize jury recommends it for the 1974 fiction award, but the fourteen-member Pulitzer advisory board finds it offensive and declines to give it the prize.
11 Approximately twenty people hold the first meeting of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) at Metropolitan-Duane Methodist Church in Greenwich Village.
20 Watergate burglar James W. McCord gives Judge John Sirica a letter stating that the White House pressured the burglars to perjure themselves.
4 The World Trade Center opens, the tallest building(s) in the world for a month, until Chicago’s Sears Tower completes construction in May.
6 New York Yankees Ron Blomberg plays as the first designated hitter in Major League Baseball.
7 Hollywood producer Jennings Lang throws a party to raise $50,000 for Daniel Ellsberg, on trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Barbra Streisand sings. Guests include John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, Joni Mitchell, David Geffen, and Hugh Hefner.
13 David Bowie releases Aladdin Sane.
13 The New York Times reviews Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women.
21 Tony Orlando and Dawn’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” rises to No. 1 en route to becoming the bestselling single of the year in the US.
28 “Walk on the Wild Side,” Lou Reed’s Bowie-produced homage to Warhol superstars, peaks at No. 16.
30 White House counsel John Dean encourages the Watergate conspirators to confess, so Nixon fires him. Counsel John Ehrlichman, chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, and Attorney General Richard Kleindienst resign.
5 Led Zeppelin draws 56,800 fans to Tampa Stadium, breaking the Beatles’ 1965 record of 55,600 at Shea Stadium. Zeppelin’s new album, Houses of the Holy, tops the album chart a week later.
10 The New York Knicks defeat the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association finals.
17 The Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities begins televised Watergate hearings.
1 Waylon Jennings releases Honky Tonk Heroes a few weeks after Willie Nelson delivers Shotgun Willie, kicking the outlaw country genre into gear.
7 Rolling Stone profiles counterculture “Jesus freaks” in a year that also sees the release of Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, the Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus Is Just Alright,” and Glen Campbell’s “I Knew Jesus (Before He Was a Star).”
19 The Rocky Horror Picture Show debuts in London at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs.
22 Mark Felt resigns from the FBI after Acting Director William Ruckelshaus accuses him of leaking information. Thirty-two years later Felt unmasks himself as Bob Woodward’s source “Deep Throat.”
25 John Dean testifies before the Senate Watergate Committee for five days.
29 Republican senator Howard Baker of Tennessee asks John Dean, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”
3 David Bowie performs his last concert as Ziggy Stardust at London’s Hammersmith Odeon.
4 Willie Nelson stages the first of his annual Fourth of July Picnics at Dripping Springs, Texas, with performers including Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson.
13 Queen releases their self-titled debut album.
16 In the British Parliament, Jack Ashley uses the term “domestic violence” while commending activist Erin Pizzey for opening the first spousal abuse shelter. In the US, domestic violence and marital rape are legal.
16 Nixon’s deputy assistant, Alexander Butterfield, tells the Senate Watergate Committee that Nixon secretly taped conversations in the Oval Office.
20 Bruce Lee dies from possible cerebral edema a month before Enter the Dragon premieres.
27 The New York Dolls release their eponymous first album, produced by Todd Rundgren and engineered by future Aerosmith and John Lennon producer Jack Douglas.
28 The Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, New York, with the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and the Band, attracts 600,000 and makes The Guinness Book of World Records for largest concert.
3 Stevie Wonder releases Innervisions, considered by many to be his finest album. Three days later a car accident outside Durham, North Carolina, puts him in a coma for four days.
11 DJ Kool Herc uses two turntables to extend the instrumental breaks of songs by James Brown and the Incredible Bongo Band at his sister’s birthday party in the rec room of their apartment building in the Bronx, later celebrated as the “birthday of hip hop.”
13 Lynyrd Skynyrd (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) arrive with featuring their Southern Rock anthem “Free Bird.”
26 Neil Young records 40 percent of Tonight’s the Night in one drunken evening, though he does not issue the LP for two years. Young calls it “the closest to art that I’ve come.”
28 Marvin Gaye releases Motown’s bestselling album to date, Let’s Get It On.
28 Undercover officers arrest Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman for attempting to sell cocaine.
31 The Rolling Stones release their No. 1 album Goats Head Soup, including “Angie,” one of the year’s top selling singles worldwide.
5 Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s first album, Buckingham Nicks, already demonstrates the sound they will bring to Fleetwood Mac when they join a year later.
13 Vince Aletti writes the first mainstream survey of the burgeoning disco scene in the Rolling Stone article “Discotheque Rock ’72: Paaaaarty!”
19 Country rocker Gram Parsons dies from an overdose of morphine and alcohol.
20 Jim Croce dies in a plane crash in Louisiana after scoring the second-biggest hit of the year, “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”
20 Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in the Houston Astrodome before a crowd of 30,492, the largest audience for a US tennis match, and ninety million television viewers in thirty-six countries.
5 Elton John releases Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, which holds the US No. 1 position from November 10 until January 4. Billboard will rank it the bestselling album of 1974.
6 The Yom Kippur War begins as Egypt and Syria attack Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
10 Spiro T. Agnew resigns as vice president of the United States, pleading no contest to tax evasion. His friend Frank Sinatra loans him $200,000 to pay taxes and legal fees.
13 The Allman Brothers’ “Ramblin’ Man” peaks at No. 2, blocked from the pinnacle by Gregg Allman’s future wife Cher’s “Half Breed.”
15 At A&M Studios in Hollywood, Joni Mitchell records her masterpiece, Court and Spark, while John Lennon’s Rock ’n’ Roll sessions with Phil Spector devolve into a train wreck.
15 In the CBS special Dr. Seuss on the Loose, the Sneetches learn not to discriminate against those who don’t have a star on their belly.
15 The Department of Justice brings suit against Fred Trump and his son Donald for not renting units in their Queens housing development to blacks.
17 The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) launches an embargo against countries that support Israel in the Yom Kippur War, sparking a worldwide energy crisis.
19 Bob Marley and the Wailers release Burnin’, featuring “I Shot the Sherriff” and “Get Up, Stand Up.”
19 The Way We Were premieres. Barbra Streisand’s theme song will become America’s bestselling single of 1974.
20 On All in the Family, George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley) enters Archie Bunker’s (Carroll O’Connor) home for the first time, after resisting for a year because he “never stepped into a honky’s household and ain’t about to start at the bottom of the heap.”
20 When Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox demands Nixon hand over the White House tapes, Nixon orders Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resign. Robert Bork assumes the position of acting attorney general and fires Cox. The press dubs it “the Saturday Night Massacre.”
21 The Oakland A’s beat the New York Mets to win the World Series.
26 The Who release their mod-themed rock opera Quadrophenia.
8 Civil rights hearings officer Sylvia Pressler orders the New Jersey Little League to allow girls to play.
9 Billy Joel releases his autobiographical Piano Man album.
11 Bruce Springsteen’s The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle includes “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” which becomes his show-closer for the next decade.
17 President Nixon tells the annual conference of Associated Press managing editors at Disney World that “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”
20 A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving airs for the first time on CBS.
21 Nixon’s attorney J. Fred Buzhardt announces that eighteen and a half minutes are missing from the White House tapes subpoenaed by Congress.
24 “The Love I Lost” by Philadelphia’s Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes hits No. 1 on the R&B chart, featuring the “disco beat” innovated by drummer Earl Young.
5 Paul McCartney and Wings release Band on the Run, which will become the United Kingdom’s bestselling album of 1974.
6 Chief Justice Warren Burger swears in Gerald Ford as vice president of the United States.
10 Hilly Kristal renames his dive bar CBGB & OMFUG (“Country, Bluegrass, Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers”), and it soon becomes the hotbed of New York punk.
15 The American Psychiatric Association removes homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
25 The Sting opens, eventually becoming the highest-grossing film of 1973, followed by The Exorcist. Warner Bros. waits until the day after Christmas to release the latter film.
27 Congress enacts the Endangered Species Act.
31 AC/DC and Journey play their first concerts, in Sydney and San Francisco, respectively.
31 The second New Year’s Rockin’ Eve airs, with Dick Clark, George Carlin, Linda Ronstadt, Billy Preston, and the Pointer Sisters.