Novelty songs first appeared in the late 19th century and were popular on the radio into the 1980s. One of the weirdest and most successful was 1966’s “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” by Napoleon XIV.

In this excerpt from the book Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever, two people who worked at promoter Bill Graham’s historic concert hall describe for the first time the night Paul McCartney — in disguise — and future wife Linda Eastman attended a show.

For their final album Goodbye the members of Cream — bassist Jack Bruce, drummer Ginger Baker and guitarist Eric Clapton — decided each would contribute one studio track; the rest of the album would be live cuts. The guitarist said in Conversations with Eric Clapton that The Band’s debut album inspired him to pursue a new direction for his last song.

New wave band Talking Heads, fronted by David Byrne, got its name from an issue of TV Guide. In the liner notes of Popular Favorites 1976–1972: Sand in the Vaseline, bassist Tina Weymouth said the magazine “explained the term used by TV studios to describe a head-and-shoulder shot of a person talking as ‘all content, no action’. It fit.”

Guitarist Spencer Davis, bassist Muff Winwood, and Muff’s 14-year-old brother Steve Winwood on keyboards and vocals formed the Spencer Davis Group in 1963. The group had №1 hits in the UK with two songs by Jamaican-born Jackie Edwards: “Keep on Running” and “Somebody Help Me.” In 1966, manager Chris Blackwell decided the band had to write a song of their own.

In 1967, Procol Harum released one of the few singles to sell 10 million copies worldwide: “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” The members who recorded the №5 hit — Gary Brooker (vocals and piano), Matthew Fisher (Hammond M-102 organ), David Knights (bass), Ray Royer (guitar), and session drummer Bill Eyden (later replaced by Bobby Harrison) — had an important “sixth member”: lyricist Keith Reid.

Palisades Park was a popular New Jersey amusement park that was open from 1898 to 1971. The park was located atop the New Jersey Palisades overlooking Manhattan. Game show creator Chuck Barris, the host and producer of The Gong Show, wrote “Palisades Park.” Freddy “Boom Boom” Cannon, a Massachusetts native, had a №3 hit with the tune in 1962.

One of the sweetest ballads recorded by the Turtles was the 1968 hit “You Showed Me.” The track was part of The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, a concept album on which the group poked fun at musical genres by pretending to be different bands for each track. “Nature’s Children” was the “band” that contributed “You Showed Me.”

When San Francisco’s Big Brother & the Holding Company released “Piece of My Heart” in 1967, the song’s highlights were Sam Andrew’s wailing, distorted guitar solos, which would help define acid rock, and blues belter Janis Joplin’s spinechilling wail.

The raw sound of Dave Davies’ lead guitar on “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks has been called the blueprint for the power chords of heavy metal and punk rock. Written by Ray Davies, the song topped the British charts and introduced the Kinks to America, where it was a №7 hit. But the song that revolutionized rock was recorded in a variety of styles before the raucous single was released in September 1964.

“People Got to Be Free” was released by the Rascals in the summer of 1968 during Civil Rights Movement protests. Felix Cavaliere and Eddie Brigati were inspired to write what became an anthem for racial tolerance after they were threatened during a tour of the South.

Beatlemania in Australia reached its peak in June 1964 when the Fab Four staged a three-week tour of the country. Hundreds of rock groups sprouted as a result, formed by teens who hoped to emulate their heroes from Liverpool.

In the early 1960s, Archie Bell & the Drells were a struggling Houston vocal group performing their brand of Texas funk at local talent shows. In 1964, the group recorded a demo of a song called “Tighten Up.” Although they often performed the song live, the demo was soon forgotten.

Steppenwolf, fronted by singer John Kay, was a favorite of Bill Graham, the mercurial producer who brought Fillmore East to New York’s East Village in 1968. The band’s success with hits like “Born to Be Wild” and “Magic Carpet Ride” quickly won them headliner status.

Enjoy this excerpt from Fillmore East: The Venue That Changed Rock Music Forever on the anniversary of the rock mecca’s opening in New York City.

“Birthday” was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and appeared on the Beatles’ 1968 White Album. The raw rocker only took one day to compose and record at Abbey Road Studios. “We thought, ‘Why not make something up?’ So we got a riff going and arranged it around this riff,” McCartney recalled in Many Years From Now.

Rick Allmen opened the Café Bizarre in 1957, one of the first Beat Generation clubs in Greenwich Village. Odetta was the opening night headliner. Jazz acts followed and Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg had readings there. Larry Love, the Singing Canary, landed his first paid engagement at the Bizarre in 1962. Love later changed his name to Tiny Tim.

Janis Ian was 14 when she wrote her 1967 hit single “Society’s Child,” a controversial song about how social pressure doomed an interracial romance. “I was sitting on a bus in East Orange, NJ, where I was living with my parents, and I saw it happening around me,” Ian told Songwriter Universe.

Nils Lofgren is best known for his solo work as a singer-songwriter and as a guitarist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band and Neil Young’s band, Crazy Horse. But in 1968, Lofgren was 17, a struggling musician who’d left Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, MD, and headed for New York City.

The Anderson Theater at 66 Second Avenue was named after theatrical agent Phyllis Anderson. The hall opened in 1957 and presented Yiddish plays through the 1960s. In 1968 Crawdaddy magazine sponsored a series of rock shows that featured the Yardbirds, Traffic, Procol Harum, Moby Grape, and Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin.