What If's in Music

Some great points made about the Syd Barrett situation. I didn't know that the rest of the band considered keeping him "on staff" as a songwriter (per a suggestion of mine in an earlier post), until I passed the time this afternoon, by watching a Pink Floyd documentary this afternoon, where David Gilmour, or Nick Mason mentioned that they wanted to keep him around as sort Pink Floyd's version of Brian Wilson, but that it turned out to be a totally unworkable proposition.


How about 'Career Divergences'

Jimmy Paige passes on the Yardbirds contract & trys working his vision in different venues & contacts.

Actually Jimmy Paige passed once on playing with the Yardbirds - back in 1965, when they offered the lead guitar slot to him, after Eric Claption left in a snit, due to the hit song "For Your Love", not being enough of a blues song for his tastes. Paige had a nice session musician career going on at the time, and didn't want to end it, to play with a band. So, he referred Jeff Beck to the group. Ironically, Jimmy ended up joining the Yardbirds a year later, to play bass (which was only done for a short time - he switched over to guitar, and Chris Dreja, the rhythm guitarist, was moved to bass), because he was sick of doing session musician work and desperately wanted to join a decent band (he happened to be on hand after a Yerdbirds show, when Paul Samwell-Smith said he was quitting the band, so he offered to take over playing bass).

Paige stuck with the Yardbirds to the bitter end in 1968, and seems to have tried to keep his musical avenues open for other things after the band called it quits, due to the fact that he played guitar in the recording session for Joe Cocker's version of the Beatles' song "With a Little Help From My Friends", that was a big hit. Paige also tried forming a super group that would have had Keith Moon on drums, John Entwhistle on bass, and either Terry Reid or (preferrably) Steve Marriot as the singer. Jimmy jammed with Keith and John, and things looked good musically, but they couldn't get any of the singers they wanted to commit, so the venture fell throough.

Maybe Jimmy decided that he didn't really want to do session work again, and with regards to the band thing, since it looked like he was going to have to start a band with basically unknown musicians (or little known musicians in the case of John Paul Jones, who was a session basisst, but unknown to the general public), what better way for the new band to get some stage time, than to play as a faux version of the Yardbirds, to meet remaining contractual obligations for shows that had been booked before the real Yardbirds called it quits?

In The Vein of The Yardbirds, here's another what if - back in 1984, Jim McCarty, Paul Samwell-Smith, and Chris Dreja, who were all members of the Yardbirds during their heyday in the 60s, formed a group, and released an eponymously titled album called "Box of Frogs." They even got Jeff Beck (who of course played guitar with the Yardbirds in 1965 & 1966, on some of their most successfull albums), and Rory Gallagher (I cut a goodly amount of my lead guitar teeth in the early 80s, by learning Rory Gallalgher - the guy was a fantastic guitar player) to play guitar on some of the album's tracks. John Fiddler provided vocals (and was a good match for the band - Keith Relf was no longer alive, due to having electrocuted himself, while working on a guitar amp in 1976). While the album wasn't a smash hit, it did reasonably well. The song "Back Where I Started was a Top 10 hit in the US. In short, the Yardbirds (albeit under a different name), had a very good chance to sucessfully revive the band.

There was talk of doing a tour, and Jeff Beck even said he was willing to do one, but surprisingly, Dreja, McCarty and Samwell-Smith, nixed the idea of touring. Jeff Beck and John Fiddler got fed up, and basically walked away from Box of Frogs, never having anything to do with McCarty, Dreja, and Samwell-Smith. Another Box of Frogs album was released, but it did nowhere near as good as the first one did, and the group broke up.

The Yardbirds did eventually re-form in the early 90s, and they're still active musically, but they're nowhere near as big as they were in the 60s, or as they were for that short period of time (1983-84) as Box of Frogs. What if they had decided to do the tour that was suggested, after the first Box of Frogs album was successful? Would it have truly catapulted the Yardbirds back into the bigtime?
 
Bumping it with...... what if Duane Allman wasn't killed?

Allman was killed at the band's mainstream success and never recovered after his death,even though having one more top 40 single ''Ramblin' Man".

If Duane wasn't killed,the band would have brought more success and probably brought blues rock not only into the mainsteam,but to keep it into the main stream,even with rap and metal getting into the stream too.
 
Some Metal PODs.

Toni Iommi blows off the last day of work at his day job.

Bruce Dickinson stays in the Army.

Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley is the one to walk away from the wreck instead.

Cliff Burton misses the bus.
 
Or that bus driver wasn't screwed up and Burton didn't die.

Some other ones:
What if Clapton's son didn't die?
What if Rick Allen wasn't involved in that crash?
What if Freddie Mecruy didn't get AIDS?
What if the signer of INXS didn't die?
Or Hendix?
Or Lennon?
Or Bon Scott?
 
Cliff Burton is a big one.

What if Cobain had lived?

What if Dave Grohl had become Pearl Jam's new drummer in 95? (or 94 can't remember which year it was)

What if the Smashing Pumpkins had stayed together and Corgan not decided to change the direction of his sound?
 
A little farther afield...

WI Patsy Cline takes another flight (or a bus:p) & doesn't die?

WI Jim Reeves also takes another flight (or a bus:p) & doesn't die?

WI Rick Nelson also takes another flight (or a bus:p) & doesn't die?

(OK, I love GA aircraft, but...:eek: Maybe musicians just shouldn't fly at all.;))
 

Heavy

Banned
WI: Little Richard never receives the apocalyptic vision that impels him to quit playing rock music (for the first time) and enter a seminary?

See, I reckon he'd be almost uncontested by then. All the other Tier A rock artists have either derailed their own careers in one way or another (Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry), gotten too old (Bill Haley), died (Buddy Holly), joined the army (Elvis Presley) or started exploring other sounds (Ray Charles).

Maybe he'd end up getting arrested on a sodomy charge and spend the 1960s in jail? That would be depresssing.
 
What if Metallica never discovers the existence of Napster? Huge butterflies for both the music industry and Metallica's popularity
 
Or that bus driver wasn't screwed up and Burton didn't die.

What if Freddie Mercury didn't get AIDS?
What if the signer of INXS didn't die?

Freddie & Queen were great at trying a variety of styles, I'm guessing that will continue through the 1990s and into the 2000s - it'd be interesting to see what elements of modern rock they incorporate into their sound.. I can certainly see parts of 1990s funk-metal & possibly nu-metal reworked into some Queen songs. As well as that, in OTL Freddie died in late 1991 - just months after Nirvana released Nevermind, so he never really had a chance to formulate Queen's response to grunge.

INXS is a tragedy. If Michael had just stuck around for a bit longer, they would've caught the wave of new millenium 80s revival, and it's quite conceivable they could come up with some new songs worthy of a late career revival.
 
What if Karen Carpenter wasnt anorexic and lived? It would be interesting to see how the Carpenters would have fit into the 80s.
 
What if Karen Carpenter wasnt anorexic and lived? It would be interesting to see how the Carpenters would have fit into the 80s.

Would be interesting if she did more drumming work too - from what I heard, she liked drumming more than fronting the band, and I remember seeing some youtube clips of her drumming for a tv special.. she's not bad at all.
 
What if Mozart hadn't suffered from celebrity burn out, and still been alive and composing into at least his late fifties? What would he have written, with the Times changing so drastically around him?

What if Beethoven hadn't gone deaf? That didn't actually stop him musically, but it crippled his social life, making him bitter and depressed- admittedly he always was an awkward sod, so it will not be that much of an improvement, but what would a (relatively) happy Beethoven have done?
 
If Micheal had lived,INXS would had a few no 1 albums and singles.

What if Brian Wilson hadn't had that mental breakdown?
What if Smile was released?
 
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