Samuel Fuller was directing The Big Red One.

Some people were making Herbie Goes Bananas.

Eight years later, it would contribute to one of history’s worst nuclear disasters.

Salman Rushdie was preparing to publish Midnight’s Children (1980).

Sam Shepard, who had recently finished starring in Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven…

…won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Buried Child.

He was also finishing his play True West (which would premiere in 1980).

Sammy Hagar released Street Machine.

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar published The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination.

Santana released Marathon.

Meanwhile, Carlos Santana released the solo album Oneness (as Devadip Carlos Santana).

The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Saxon released their debut album, Saxon.

Scorpions released Lovedrive.

Meanwhile, founding member Michael Schenker, who had recently returned to the band after being ejected from UFO, was similarly fired from this one (due to his alcoholism).

Seamus Heaney published Field Work.

Sid Vicious was found dead of an overdose on 2 February. His solo album Sid Sings was released posthumously later that year.

Also released in the wake of Vicious’s death was the soundtrack to Malcolm McLaren’s incomplete film The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle.

Shalamar released Big Fun.

Shirley Bassey released The Magic Is You…

…and recorded the title track to the film adaptation of Moonraker.

Sidney Sheldon was preparing to publish Rage of Angels (1980).

Simple Minds released their debut album, Life in a Day…

…and an immediate follow-up, and Real to Real Cacophony.

Siouxsie and the Banshees released their second album, Join Hands.

Sister Sledge released We Are Family.

S. J. Perelman passed away (on 17 October).

Solid Gold was about to premier on television.

Spyro Gyra released their breakthrough album, Morning Dance.

Squeeze released Cool for Cats.

Stanley Kunitz published The Poems of Stanley Kunitz.

Stephen King, who had just published The Stand…

…published The Dead Zone and The Long Walk (as Richard Bachman)…

…and was finishing (or had already finished) Firestarter.

Stephen Sondheim and Hugo Wheeler’s musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street opened on Broadway.

Steve Martin and Carl Reiner made The Jerk.

Martin, meanwhile, won a Grammy for his comedy album A Wild and Crazy Guy.

Steven McCaffery and B.P. Nichol published In England Now That Spring.

Stevie Wonder released Journey through “The Secret Life of Plants,” his soundtrack to Walon Green’s film of the same name, itsef an adatation of Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird 1973 book.

John Stewart, formerly of the Kingston Trio, released Bombs Away Dream Babies.

Supertramp released Breakfast in America, which would win the Best Recording Package Grammy in 1980.

Susan Musgrave published A Man to Bury, A Man to Marry.

Sylvester Stallone made Rocky II.

Syx released Cornerstone.

It eventually went double platinum.