Jackson - 1973: rock at the crossroads

Unless otherwise noted, all chart positions reflect the Billboard US pop chart.

Dick Clark reports from Times Square in the first New Years Rockin Eve, featuring Three Dog Night, Al Green, and Helen Reddy.

Guitarist Wayne Kramer of the radical proto-punk band the MC5 quits midperformance at Detroits Grande Ballroom, and the group breaks up shortly thereafter.

Bruce Springsteen releases his first LP, Greetings from Asbury Park.

Aerosmith releases its self-titled debut album, which includes Dream On.

Carly Simons Youre So Vain holds the No. 1 spot for three weeks. Its album, No Secrets, tops the Billboard chart for five.

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.

Twenty-one countries watch Elvis Presleys live Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite concert performance.

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.

Chief Justice Earl Warren swears in Richard Nixon, the only American to date to serve two terms as both president and vice president.

Down goes Frazier! sportscaster Howard Cosell cries as George Foreman knocks out Joe Frazier in the World Heavyweight Championship in Kingston, Jamaica.

The Supreme Court rules in Roe v. Wade that the Fourteenth Amendments right to privacy protects a womans right to an abortion in the first trimester, but states can regulate in the second and third trimesters.

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.

Iggy Pop and the Stooges release Raw Power, produced by David Bowie.

The reggae film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, opens in the US.

Wars album The World Is a Ghetto hits No. 1 on the album chart. Billboard later ranks it the bestselling album of 1973.

Evel Knievel jumps over fifty cars on his motorcycle at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before a crowd of more than twenty-three thousand.

Roberta Flacks 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.

The American Indian Movement (AIM) occupies Wounded Knee, South Dakota, protesting the US governments failure to honor treaties.

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.

The New York Times dubs Thomas Pynchons novel Gravitys 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.

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.

Watergate burglar James W. McCord gives Judge John Sirica a letter stating that the White House pressured the burglars to perjure themselves.

The World Trade Center opens, the tallest building(s) in the world for a month, until Chicagos Sears Tower completes construction in May.

New York Yankees Ron Blomberg plays as the first designated hitter in Major League Baseball.

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.

David Bowie releases Aladdin Sane.

The New York Times reviews Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book by and for Women.

Tony Orlando and Dawns 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.

Walk on the Wild Side, Lou Reeds Bowie-produced homage to Warhol superstars, peaks at No. 16.