• Because The Grateful Dead refused to sign the Screen Actors Guild’s 1947 Anti-Communism Loyalty Oath as a condition of their membership, the oath—a remnant of the Hollywood Blacklist of the McCarty era—was made optional and later removed from SAG bylaws.
• The original title for The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead album [Sire-1986] was Margaret On The Guillotine which later became the title of a song on Morrissey’s solo debut album Viva Hate [Sire-1988].
• Initially considering The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds [1966] a Brian Wilson solo album, Capitol released the album’s first single “Caroline No” under Wilson’s name.
• The Ramones’ self-titled debut [Sire-1976] reached Gold status (500,000 copies sold) in 2014, thirty-eight years after its release. And speaking of rockers from Queens...
• Kevin Shields, the mastermind behind Irish shoegaze legends My Bloody Valentine is actually a native New Yorker: he was born in Jamaica, Queens in 1963 and lived in the NYC-metro area until his Irish parents moved the family to Dublin in 1973.
