Let's play another "What if?" game

[Taverner]

OK...what if Jimi, Janis and Jim (Morrison) survived to their 28th birthday...and in fact lived well into their 60s. However, instead, it was Charlie Daniels, Hank Williams Jr and Anita Bryant who didn't make it to their 28th...

And let's just say that instead of John Lennon dying in '80, it was instead Michael Bolton.

Would we be better off or not?

[NightWatcher]

1. Would you wanna see Janis as a judge on Idol? Morrison doing dinner shows in Branson?

Jimi, well, he would have returned to his home planet by now anyway.

But as I heard someone say, I'll trade the living Beatles for the dead ones anyday

[Taverner]

2. Paul and Ringo over John and George?

Don't get me wrong, I love Paul - and consider his 70s solo work to be some of the best

But George Harrison was a musical genius. And John, well even if he went Reaganzombie in the end he still did "Gimmie Some Peace"

[NightWatcher]

3. I meant, I'd gladly trade to get John and George back

[Maine-ah]

15. Keep John, George and Ringo.

Paul can go. :evilgrin:

[zen_bohemian]

12. oh to have John and George back....sigh....

I can just imagine Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin as American Idol judges LOL!!!! They would be even wilder than Steven Tyler.

[SCantiGOP]

14. I read an article on just this subject

years ago in some magazine. A guy goes back in time and saves the three you mention. Then, when he returns to the present, it turns out that Morrison is a TV preacher, Hendrix is a spokesman for Amway and Janis totally flipped out and is the charismatic head of a Aryan Nation group. It was a comical take on the traditional science fiction stories about someone going back and killing Hitler or something that seems like an unqualified good thing and it turns out to make things much worse.

[kentauros]

4. If Michael Bolton had died, Office Space might never have been made.

And that's a sad future indeed! :cry:

[madinmaryland]

5. Ok. They would all resemble Keith Richards. nt

[Taverner]

6. Unless Jim Morrison goes Jesusfreak in the 70's

And then puts out three albums of alienating gospel shit....

[SteppingRazor]

7. Impossible to answer, since we don't know what Jimi Janis and Jim would have done...

in the ensuing years. Who's to say that they wouldn't have gotten older and turned out a bunch of schlock? Morrison's trip was always a young man's one. I can't imagine that guy doing the LSD shaman bullshit beyond 40 or 50. It would be pathetic. And Jimi, well, I can easily see his career ending up the same as Clapton, retreating into the blues, playing the same safe stuff over and over again, night after interminable night.

I can't imagine an old Janis.

Anyway, point is, without knowing what they'd do with their later years, it's impossible to say whether we'd all be "better off." And what does "better off" mean anyway? One could argue that the fact that so many of the leading lights of 60s rock died by the end of the decade allowed others to step into the breach. All in all, I'm inclined to say we would be neither better nor worse off. Our opinions of Hendrix, Morrison and Joplin, though, would probably be far more negative than they are.

[Taverner]

8. I dunno, I think Jimi would have gone into Jazz

Probably do a stint with Mahavishnu Orchestra, and then go back to roots (blues) and then do adult contemporary

[Bake]

13. Effin' BLASHPHEMY!!

He would have continued to take the Strat where no one has gone before.

Adult contemporary? NEVER!!

Bake

[kick-ass-bob]

9. Sometimes we'd rather remember these people being younger

and we are forced to do so with those who died.

What picture do you think of when you think of, say, Eric Clapton?
This:




Or this:



And he's one that aged well.

[Chan790]

10. The second one?

I assume that's a universal response but I was -10 when that first picture was taken and I'm in my 30s now so I dunno.

[saras]

11. Without Charlie and Hank Jr., outlaw country would have been a lot weaker

That would not be a good change - it would imply more Garth Brooks and no Rick Rubin/Johnny Cash, for example.

Morrison would have burnt out Tim Leary style, I think, as soon as he got too ugly to get laid - he was no Iggy, that's for sure.

Jimi is a wild card. He was already expressing dissatisfaction with the whole rock life, but the whole rock life was just getting STARTED when he died - it's hard to imagine Jimi coming through the seventies intact. He was too sensitive.

Janis - same thing, kind of. She was just starting to work seriously at getting out of the heavy drug life, but hadn't succeeded yet. I don't know what she'd do musically without the extreme, but performing was so profound a part of her, it's hard to see where she could go.

In my own dreams, Janis became another Marianne Faithfull. Jimi stayed on top of the new stuff, got the gig with Bowie instead of Stevie Ray, and makes duet albums with Jeff Beck when he's not composing prog masterpieces with European prog bands. Morrison died, people forgot about his music, especially the Freudian shaman stuff, the Doors hired a young Sammy Hagar, and were a successful MOR band like Chicago up into the late nineties.