Happy birthday to Andy Summers of the Police! The guitar was not his first instrument. What did he start out on?

Answer: Piano

Here’s the rest of today’s Rock N’ Roll Diary!

• Happy birthday: Police guitarist Andy Summers, Kinks bassist Peter Quaife, Patti Smith, Burton Cummings of The Guess Who, and Tom Hamilton of Aerosmith.
• 1963: The Kinks make their live debut at the Lotus House in London.
• 1969: Jimi Hendrix and his Band of Gypsies play the Fillmore East in New York where the live album “A Band of Gypsies” is recorded.
• 1974: Mick Fleetwood telephones Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks and invites them to join Fleetwood Mac. Of course they accept, and the rest is classic rock history.
• 1976: The Cars make their live debut at a New Year’s Eve party at Pease Air Force Base in southern New Hampshire.
• 1978: The Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco goes out with a bang with performances by The Grateful Dead and The Blues Brothers.
• 1985: Rick Nelson’s tour plane catches fire and crashes. Eight people, including his fiancée and band members, are all killed.
• 1985: At Don Henley’s New Year’s Eve party, Gary Hart and Donna Rice meet for the first time.
• 1996: Paul McCartney receives his knighthood from the Queen.
• 2000: Sammy Hagar and Ted Nugent perform together at a New Year’s Eve show in Detroit.
• 2000: Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson is arrested after a fight with police at a hotel in Naples, Florida.

From the WZLX ticket stash…It’s a plethora of Aerosmith shows – they played the Boston garden in 1989 as part of a three night stand, and again in 1993 and then at the Fleet Center in 1997.