[DBWI] Eric Clapton lives?

I was just watching a video on Youtube of a recent performance by Joe Bonamassa, Conor Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn. They toured last year, and played to sold out crowds at most of the shows. Seeing Clapton and Vaughn jamming together is kind of a big deal in my mind, considering Vaughn was supposed to be on the helicopter that crashed with Conor's father, the legendary Eric Clapton, twenty-eight years ago today (in a few hours after this writing). Pilot Jeff Brown made a critical error, putting the chopper into a ski slope in dense fog, killing all on board.

How might music history of the last three decades have turned out differently if the helicopter hadn't gone down? Or, taking a darker turn suppose Vaughn had been on board instead of Clapton? How might Conor Clapton's music career have gone differently with his father around for it?
 
I think the problem is that Clapton's career was petering out into respectable old age circa 1990 - he'd got over the Phil Collins years, and would have been a perfect fit for MTV's Unplugged series if he had lived to see it, but I can't see him being keen on grunge and alternative rock. Unlike for example Neil Young he was too wedded to The Blues, too wedded to a niche to adopt new styles.

The sad thing is that if Vaughan had been on the helicopter instead I doubt that history would be all that different either. In our world he was yet another talented guitarist who ended up never amounting to a great deal musically, albeit that his fans would probably strangle me for saying that. Like Frank Zappa and the sadly departed Steve Vai he has rabid fans, but his music doesn't interface with the mainstream.
 
Yeah, Vai was a real tragedy. I'll admit I thought Devin Townsend did it for a few years after the hung jury, but I feel bad having thought that knowing what I do now. Townsend had a great idea for a concept album about the ocean or something, but destroyed all his work in a fit of depression brought on by people thinking he'd murdered Steve Vai. In the 00s and this decade, though, he's made a great career for himself as the next Vangelis. I always remind people that the composer of those two Oscar-winning film scores has a background as a serious metalhead. If Eric Clapton living somehow butterflies away Vai's murder, I wonder how Devin Townsend's career goes...
 
I dunno. Maybe he does an awful accoustic cover of Layla that beats out Smells Like Teen Spirit for a Grammy, and Nirvana disbands after Kurt Cobain kills himself, instead of Nirvana and Cobain being the biggest names in rock since 91?
 
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