It’s 1956, and John wants to start a skiffle band. He gets a guitar, and Julia teaches him a few banjo chords. One day his guitar is stolen, so as a lark he grabs a banjo. The crowd loves it, and he never went back to guitar. There after, every garage band had to have a banjo. Bela Fleck credits John as a major influence.
Well, the link from Sahel/West African music
— played (often) on “spike lutes” (ancestors to banjos) — to American blues, and thence to rock’n’roll, would have been slightly more direct than it was in real life.
Paul McCartney played banjo when he started out. He can be heard on “I’m the Urban Spaceman” by the Bonzo Dog Band. He and John could have been the Banjo Brothers.
Paul was given a trumpet as a gift. He traded it for a guitar (a good deal for the music store owner – trumpets were more expensive). He could have ended up in a jazz band.
Alternative: People could have actually been influenced by George and all bands today would have a sitar.
Please don’t bring your banjo back,
I don’t know where it’s been.
I wasn’t hardly gone a day,
When it became the scene.
Banjos, banjos all the time,
I can’t forget that tune.
And if I ever see another banjo,
I’m going out and buy a big balloon.
Lennon/McCartney (1966 fan club Christmas flexi disc)
They don’t give a damn
‘bout any trumpet playin’ band
It ain’t what they call rock and roll
IIRC Lennon said something to the effect, “We’re musicians. If you’ve got an instrument we’ll get something out of it for you.”
Or both! “While My Banjo Gently Weeps”
George is disallowed to play in Hamburg because of his age. John and Paul kick him out of the band. None are ever heard from again.
The Zombies rule the charts for the next 2 decades.
George Martin doesn’t like George Harrison’s crack about his tie. He decides against signing them.
The group breaks up. McCartney makes it as a songwriter and solo act. Lennon goes to Paris and becomes a successful artists. Ringo gets gigs as a session drummer. George works in the grocery.
Brian Poole and the Tremeloes are the UK’s biggest act, but never breaks into the US. Still, Decca is pleased that they signed them instead of that Liverpool guitar band.
McCartney actually dies in that 1966 car crash and good thing, too, because Mac was tapped out musically and their next album was so bad EMI demanded their advance back and destroyed all copies of same. Unable to re-pay the advance, George absconds to India and is never seen again; the remaining two manage to scrape together enough cash to make good, and, on a happier note, Lennon never marries Yoko Ono, though Ringo somehow still ends up with Barbara Bach.
THE END (is never recorded)
John keeps the banjo, Paul doesn’t trade in his trumpet, George becomes a bus conductor like his dad. Ringo stays sick and in the hospital.
Years later, Ringo has been transferred to the U.S., George has become a ship’s steward again like his dad. By an amazing coincidence, they all meet in New Orleans and form a Dixieland quartet called “Colonel Mustard’s Bourbon Street Irregulars”
Oh, you mean The Rutles? Beautiful plumage.
This was totally believable up to this point.
In 1956, John starts a wind instrument band…
…we groove to Come Together’s tuba bass line.
…George writes the mega-hit, While My Kazoo Gently Weeps.
…Helter Skelter on piccolo evolves into Heavy Wind music. We’d have soloists shredding the bagpipes…
We’d have classics like A Day in the Fife, Oboe-Di, Oboe-Da, Penny Whistle Lane, Norwegian Woodwind, Here Comes the Saxophone…
That reminded me of this commercial, although it doesn’t feature any of the Beatles.
Buddy Holly decides to take a bus to his next gig instead of flying. Three years later the Crickets are mobbed upon arrival in London and blow everyone’s minds with appearances on popular BBC shows. The American invasion transforms British music and culture.
Four guys in Liverpool form a rock band named after the crickets and have moderate success.
Perhaps Johann Sebastian would be more believable.
I love the idea that no matter which different directions they go, they wind up together.
We had a couple over who’d met in college and married. This was years later and we asked them what would’ve happened if they hadn’t gone to that school. They realized that they’d both had the same #2 choice college, and both had been accepted there.
Enraged after his sacking from the band on 16 August 1962, Pete Best plots revenge. On 28 August he plants a briefcase bomb in the dressing room of the Beatles underground bunker, the Cavern. The subsequent explosion kills everyone in the room.
Today the Beatles are as famous as the other band killed in the explosion, Gerry Levene and the Avengers.
Pete Best, now 80 and languishing in HM Prison Wakefield, remains one of the most famous bombers ever in England.
In 1962, the Beatles decide to part ways with Pete Best. While they’re in between drummers, they play a gig in London with a session drummer who disappears in between sets, and while they’re waiting for him to come back, a drunk teen in a ginger suit makes his way onstage and swears he can play better than the session drummer, and they take him up on his offer.
That kid’s name is Keith Moon.
The rest is history.