On This Day in Guitar History: July 15
Edited by Sleuth · Reviewed
July 15 is a loaded date for guitar history. Instrumental-rock guitarist Joe Satriani was born in 1956, punk pioneer Johnny Thunders and .38 Special's Jeff Carlisi in 1952, and Yes's founding guitarist Peter Banks in 1947. The Rolling Stones' Some Girls hit number one in 1978, the same day Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton shared a bill at Blackbushe Aerodrome, and in 2018, Guns N' Roses' November Rain became the first music video from the 1990s to reach 1 billion YouTube views.
On July 15 in guitar history
1945 · Born
Peter Lewis, the Hollywood kid who became Moby Grape's rhythm guitarist, is born
Peter Lewis, younger son of actress Loretta Young, traded a commercial pilot's license for a rhythm guitar after seeing the Byrds live. By 1966 he'd co-founded San Francisco psych-rock band Moby Grape, known for an unusually dense three-guitar lineup.
Source: Peter Lewis (musician)
1947 · Born
Peter Banks, the guitarist who named Yes, is born
Peter William Brockbanks was born in Chipping Barnet, north London. He co-founded Yes in 1968, suggested the band's name, and played guitar on their first two albums before being fired in 1970 and replaced by Steve Howe.
Source: Peter Banks: Original Yes guitarist dies aged 65 · 2013-03-13
1952 · Born
Johnny Thunders, the New York Dolls and Heartbreakers guitarist, is born
Johnny Thunders was born John Anthony Genzale in Queens, New York. He co-founded the New York Dolls in 1971 with a Gibson Les Paul Junior in TV Yellow that became one of rock's most iconic guitars, then formed the Heartbreakers in 1975, both bands shaping the New York and London punk scenes.
Source: Johnny Thunders
1952 · Born
Jeff Carlisi, who wrote the riff to .38 Special's Hold On Loosely, is born
Jeff Carlisi was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and co-founded Southern rock band .38 Special in Jacksonville, Florida. He wrote the punchy, eighth-note riff to the band's signature hit Hold On Loosely, drawing on the Cars' Just What I Needed.
Source: Musicians born on July 15
1956 · Born
Joe Satriani, the best-selling instrumental rock guitarist alive, is born
Joe Satriani was born in Westbury, New York, and started teaching guitar in 1971 to students including Steve Vai. His 1987 album Surfing with the Alien went platinum and became the most successful all-instrumental rock record since Jeff Beck's Wired.
1958 · Passed
Julia Lennon dies, a loss that later produced one of the Beatles' most delicate fingerpicked songs
John Lennon's mother Julia was struck and killed by a car on Liverpool's Menlove Avenue when John was 17. A decade later in Rishikesh, India, Donovan taught Lennon a Travis-picking fingerstyle technique that Lennon used to write Julia, the only Beatles track he recorded entirely alone.
Source: 15 July 1958: Julia Lennon dies
1966 · Release
The Yardbirds release Roger the Engineer, Jeff Beck's only full album with the band
The Yardbirds released their self-titled UK album, later nicknamed Roger the Engineer, the only Yardbirds LP with Jeff Beck's guitar on every track. Recorded in roughly five days, it later ranked number 350 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Source: Roger the Engineer
1977 · Born
Ray Toro, My Chemical Romance's Brian-May-inspired lead guitarist, is born
Ray Toro was born in Kearny, New Jersey, and became My Chemical Romance's lead guitarist after meeting Gerard Way in the late 1990s. His double-tracked, harmony-stacked leads on The Black Parade drew comparisons to Queen's Brian May, an influence Toro has openly embraced.
Source: Ray Toro
1978 · Chart
The Rolling Stones' Some Girls hits number one on the Billboard 200
Some Girls, the Rolling Stones' comeback album and Ronnie Wood's first as a full band member, reached number one on the Billboard 200, where it held the top spot for two weeks. Keith Richards said at the time that the chemistry with Wood on guitar was finally right, and the album went on to six-times platinum certification.
1978 · Performance
Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton share a bill at Blackbushe Aerodrome for the biggest UK crowd of Dylan's career
Bob Dylan closed out the European leg of his 1978 world tour at Blackbushe Aerodrome in Surrey, in front of a reported 200,000 fans, reputedly the biggest UK audience he ever played to. Eric Clapton and his own band shared the bill, along with Joan Armatrading and Graham Parker and the Rumour.
1989 · Performance
Pink Floyd's floating Venice concert draws 200,000 fans and forces the mayor's resignation
Pink Floyd played a free concert from a floating stage in Venice's San Marco Basin, their first performance in Italy without Roger Waters. The 200,000-strong crowd left an estimated 300 tons of garbage behind, and public fury over the cleanup forced the city's mayor and entire council to resign days later.
2017 · Performance
The Eagles play their first show since Glenn Frey's death, at Classic West
The Eagles returned to the stage for the first time since founding guitarist Glenn Frey's death in January 2016, at the Classic West festival in Dodger Stadium. Frey's son Deacon and country star Vince Gill split his old guitar and vocal parts, and Bob Seger made a surprise appearance singing lead on Heartache Tonight.
Source: The Eagles' Classic West Appearance Marks First Concert Without Glenn Frey
2018 · Milestone
Guns N' Roses' November Rain becomes the first '90s video to hit 1 billion YouTube views
The music video for November Rain, released in 1992 as the third single from Use Your Illusion I, crossed 1 billion YouTube views, the first music video from the 1990s to do so. The nine-minute clip, directed by Andy Morahan on a then-record 1.5 million dollar budget, remains one of the most-watched videos of the pre-streaming rock era.
Source: On This Day in 2018, a Guns N' Roses Classic Becomes the First Music Video from the 1990s to Hit 1 Billion Views on YouTube · 2025-07-15
Why we track this
Six guitarists span the exact same calendar date, born as much as 32 years apart. Peter Lewis, Moby Grape's rhythm guitarist, was born in 1945, Yes's founding guitarist Peter Banks two years later in 1947, Johnny Thunders and .38 Special's Jeff Carlisi both in 1952, Joe Satriani in 1956, and My Chemical Romance's Ray Toro two decades after that in 1977. The Yardbirds released Jeff Beck's only full album with the band in 1966, Julia Lennon's death in 1958 later produced one of the Beatles' most delicate recordings, the Rolling Stones hit number one in 1978 the same day Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton shared a bill at Blackbushe Aerodrome, Pink Floyd's floating Venice concert cost a mayor his job in 1989, a Guns N' Roses video broke a YouTube record in 2018, and the Eagles played their first show since Glenn Frey's death in 2017. July 15 turns out to be one of the more loaded dates on the guitar calendar. This page collects what is documented for the date, and it grows every time we verify another event.
Start your own July 15
Whichever story on this page pulled you in, from a teenager teaching guitar lessons in Westbury to a nine-minute music video breaking the internet four decades later, the through-line is still six strings under someone's hands. Satriani's own documented set is a reasonable place to start if you want a workhorse nickel-wound gauge with real guitar-hero mileage on it.
EXL120 XL Nickel Wound Super Light (.009–.042)
Why this one: Joe Satriani's own documented D'Addario set, the standard rotation across his solo catalog since the late 1980s.
More guitar history
Read Joe Satriani's full documented gear and strings, revisit Keith Richards's sourced open-G rig, or dig into the full stories behind Johnny Thunders's TV Yellow Les Paul Junior, Peter Banks naming Yes, Some Girls hitting number one, November Rain's billion-view milestone, the Yardbirds' Roger the Engineer, Pink Floyd's floating Venice concert, the Eagles' first show after Glenn Frey's death, Dylan and Clapton at Blackbushe Aerodrome, Ray Toro's Brian-May-indebted lead style, Jeff Carlisi's Hold On Loosely riff, Peter Lewis trading a pilot's license for Moby Grape, and the loss behind Lennon's Julia. Check the news desk for what is happening in the guitar world right now, or head to the full history index to see which dates are live so far.