This Week in Rock History: Bruce Springsteen And More

April 30, 1982 – Lester Bangs dies

“The difference here”¦is in the hype, the thick overlay of teenage-revolution and total-energy-thing which conceals these scrapyard vistas of clichés and ugly noise,” Lester Bangs wrote of rockers MC5 in Rolling Stone in 1969. Just as easily, the passage could have been describing his own complex, self-deprecating genius: Bangs, a widely influential music critic, analyzed rock & roll with verbose, acidic passion, lauding the raw intensity of punk and railing against what he perceived to be the growing sterilization of rock in the late Seventies.

A prolific writer, Bangs was infamous for writing all night in cough syrup-infused, gonzo benders. His work appeared in Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, NME and Creem (where he was an editor) before he died from an overdose of painkillers in his New York City apartment at age 33. He remains the subject of numerous article compendiums and biographies, including Jim DeRogatis’s Let It Blurt, and was portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous.

April 25, 1994 – The Eagles perform their Hell Freezes Over reunion show

In the Eighties, whenever pressed about an Eagles reunion, frontman Don Henley always retorted, “When hell freezes over” ”“ to no great surprise, because bad blood ran deep in the L.A. rock band’s breakup. Their 1980 live album, Eagles Live, credited numerous attorneys alongside the terse liner notes, “Thank you and goodnight” ”“ and after its release, the group split and each band member embarked on solo careers for the next decade and a half, to varied success.

The last active lineup of the Eagles (singer Don Henley, guitarist/singer Glenn Frey, guitarist Joe Walsh, guitarist Don Felder and bassist Timothy Schmit) reunited in 1993, in presence at least, for the music video for country singer Travis Tritt’s cover of “Take it Easy.” One year later, they reformed to record the Hell Freezes Over set on MTV, which was quickly released as a live album and debuted at Number One on the Billboard charts. The companion tour was also a runaway success, as were the album’s two Top 40 singles, “Get Over It” and “Love Will Keep Us Alive.” Hell Freezes Over has now sold over six million copies.

April 25, 2002 – Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes dies

The spitfire rapper and “L” of iconic R&B trio TLC, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes was a flashy fixture of Nineties hip-hop. Her rhymes brought both humor and poignancy to the trio’s many hit singles, including “What About Your Friends” (on 1992’s Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip), “Waterfalls” (on 1994’s CrazySexyCool) and “No Scrubs” (on 1999’s FanMail). Lopes was easily the most controversial member of TLC: she picked feuds with her bandmates in the press; burned down the house of her boyfriend, Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Andre Rison; and often wore condoms over her left eye (in homage to her nickname and also safe sex). She was the founder of the Lisa Lopes Foundation, a charity for neglected and abandoned youths.

Lopes died in a car crash while vacationing in Honduras. She was 30. Her grave at Hillandale Memorial Gardens in Lithonia, Georgia is visited annually by hundreds of fans, many of whom leave coins at the base of her the sculpted likeness ”“ for reasons that have never been explained.