DBWI: The Beatles had kept on going?

I still find it interesting that they went for a more Stripped down sound for the follow-up.

Yeah.. I think Brian was just tired of all that tape editing, to be honest. He was pretty frazzled after compiling Smile, and happy to take a back-seat & let Carl run the show for an album or two. To his credit, Carl tried something different instead of reverting to Chuck Berry-influenced Rock'n'Roll.. but no-one expected them to try soul!
 
Can you really see the Beatles surviving Psychedelia? Really?

I dunno, I'm guessing the best we could have had from them in 1967 would be a clunky "period piece" of an album?

It probably would have flopped, given the sheer volume of great albums that came out that year.. I mean, could that out-do Pink Floyd's spacey improvisation, Frank Zappa's keen social commentary, The Doors darkness, or the Beach Boys studio skills? Even if they went straight-ahead rock, Jimi Hendrix had the market cornered.
 
I dunno, I'm guessing the best we could have had from them in 1967 would be a clunky "period piece" of an album?

It probably would have flopped, given the sheer volume of great albums that came out that year.. I mean, could that out-do Pink Floyd's spacey improvisation, Frank Zappa's keen social commentary, The Doors darkness, or the Beach Boys studio skills? Even if they went straight-ahead rock, Jimi Hendrix had the market cornered.

Look at what happened to Herman's Hermits and the rest of the botox faced, sunshine pop aging hipsters picking up grandmothers at the hotel bar. The Beatles together isn't going to be pretty and it will have devolved into sad and lame.
 
I realized how great Tomorrow Never Knows is on their last album, imagine an entire album like that!

A whole album of massive beats & weird noises? Well, it'd be.. umm.. *unique*.. that's for sure! I don't know if many people "got" Tomorrow Never Knows in 1966, outside a small cabal of drug-users. I think a lot of contemporary reviews were rather bemused by it.

Maybe the likes of James Brown or Sly Stone wouldve picked up on it, and incorporated it into their funk sound & made something of it? With a bit of work, it could be some sort of music to dance to, I suppose.

[OOC - I'm picking one of the butterflies is that techno remains very much niche, instead of nightclub, and funk/disco - or something like that - remains the prime force in dance music]
 
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