This Day in Music History...

1966: In London, The Who begin their first headlining theater tour of England on a bill with Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages.

1968: Neal Cassady, the godfather of the Beat Generation and the inspiration for Jack Kerouac's On the Road, dies in Mexico at age 41.

1989: Guns N' Roses becomes the first act in 15 years (since Jim Croce) to have two albums in the Top 5 of Billboard's album chart: Appetite for Destruction and the mini-album G n' R Lies.

2007: Billy Joel becomes the first performer to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" at two Super Bowls. He sings the national anthem at Super Bowl 41 in Miami, after having done the honors in the same city 18 years earlier. Prince turns in an electrifying halftime show performance (without flashing a nipple). Peyton Manning leads the Indianapolis Colts to a 29-to-17 win over the Chicago Bears.

2008: NASA beams The Beatles' song "Across the Universe" to Polaris, better known as the North Star. The unique broadcast celebrates the 40th anniversary of the song and the 45th anniversary of NASA's Deep Space Network, which communicates with its distant probes, and the 50th anniversary of the space agency. Even at the speed of light, the signal will take 431 years to reach its destination; Polaris is 2.5 quadrillion miles from Earth.

2008: Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart of The Grateful Dead reunite for their first performance together since 2004. Deadheads for Obama is a get-out-the-vote concert in support of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco the night before Super Tuesday.