We’re cool!
I’m just not a “fat Brando” fan. But, I’m not sure I would want Dean in Apocalypse Now, but, maybe…On The Waterfront?
I was just speculating that Dean might have been an actor that showed up and learned his lines as he got older, not ad-libbed. Or maybe it would be Dean mumbling about eating a bug in AN.
Artistic license. Showing him as more popular makes it seem more tragic. They did a similar thing with Jerry Lee Lewis in “Great Balls of Fire” - the end of the movie showed him packing mid-sized venues instead of half-empty county fairs; making him seem more popular than he really was makes the whole story bigger and more important.
To eliminate my accidental hijack, I think Valens might have been big. I think he was the right guy at the right time to make his Chicano Rock take off. I’m not saying it would replace the Beatles, but it might have been bigger earlier. Probably that music might no longer relevant by 1968, but he could make political or social commentary music. Of course, there’s no way to know.
I wonder if the course of Trini Lopez’s career sheds any light on what Richie Valens might have become.
Lopez is four years older than Valens, but both released their debut singles at around the same time in 1958. Valens’ first few singles sold better, got more airplay, and charted higher than Lopez’s. I’m not sure if there was ever a “two Latin artists going head to head” thing in the minds of music executives, disk jockeys, etc. that may have taken a little bit off the top of Lopez’s early career.
In any case, small world: The post-Buddy Holly Crickets continued as a group and had gone through a few vocalists in the first few years after Holly’s death. Lopez travelled to Los Angeles and auditioned for a slot in the Crickets, recording some demos with the band in 1962.
In the end, Lopez was not invited to join the Crickets – but Lopez stayed in L.A. and became the house act of P.J.'s nightclub. None other than Frank Sinatra himself caught Lopez’s act one night. Sinatra soon after signed Lopez to his fledgling label Reprise Records.
Lopez would go on to chart consistently, if modestly, between 1963 and 1966. By 1968, he began performing regularly in Las Vegas and moved into kind of a “post-chart” phase of his career.
Oh, you Rascal! 
I was sitting here thinking to myself that there’s a reference here I’m just not getting. And then it dawned on me that I should have more careful chosen the phrase I used.
Hey, a career of bland ordinary songs worked for Paul Anka.
Those, and the fact that he wrote a song that became the theme to the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. Can you imagine the residuals he collected for that one song over the decades?
The dreck that he put out in the 1970s aside, his teen-oriented songs from the late 1950s were pretty good.
Yeah, “Diana” (1957) was absolute dynamite.
I’m so young and you’re so old
This, my darling, I’ve been told
I don’t care just what they say
'Cause forever I will pray
You and I will be as free
As the birds up in the trees
Oh, please stay by me, Diana
(blurgh)
According to Wikipedia, Anka and Carson each got about $200K a year in royalties from it. As the song was the show’s theme for 30 years, works out to about $6 million. Not bad. 
Anka had originally written the melody a few years earlier; the version that became “Johnny’s Theme” earned Carson royalties because, apparently at Anka’s suggestion, Carson wrote a set of lyrics for it, so that he could share in the royalties.
Anka’s original version:
Anka probably made a lot of money on residuals/royalties: he also wrote the English lyrics for “My Way,” and his 1970s song, “Times of Your Life,” originated in a jingle he had written for Kodak, which the company used in their commercials for years.
In all seriousness, I believe that had Holly lived, he might have made the Beatles irrelevant. Not that they wouldn’t have released great music, but Holly’s would have anticipated most of it and they wouldn’t have become the cultural phenomenon they did.
Maybe they should do a remake of La Bamba set in the Kelvin universe and we can find out.
Bear in mind that this is from the same decade that produced Witch Doctor and The Purple People Eater.
I would have been interested in hearing how he anticipated Sgt. Pepper. And I Am The Walrus.
If Chuck Berry couldn’t ‘make the Beatles irrelevant,’ I don’t see how Buddy Holly would have pulled it off.
Yeah, I think that’s definitely overstating things. Sure, it’s fair to say it’s likely Holly would have continued to evolve as an artist. But that’s no guarantee of commercial success. And even if he’d reached Beatles-like levels of innovation, that would in no way have precluded the Beatles themselves from doing so as well. They wouldn’t have been doing the same things.
What I imagine is that, between 1959 and 1962, Holly would have already become a megastar with the pop-friendly, hard-driving rock that made the Beatles stars, so their sound would not have been so astonishing and they wouldn’t have been the sensation they became. As talented and driven as they were, I’m sure they would have been successful regardless, but not fans-waiting-all-night-to-greet-them-at-JFK successful.
Naturally this exercise in hypotheticals can’t predict what creative evolutions each would have undergone. Would Holly have created Sgt. Pepper? Of course not, but he might have done something equally astounding.
And Chuck Berry couldn’t make the Beatles irrelevant because he was Black in 1950s America. No amount of talent could overcome that.
Look at Elvis Presley. He was a huge star in the fifties. But his career as a rock star faded in the sixties. (His only number one song after 1961 was “Suspicious Minds”, which held the number one spot for one week.) Acts like the Beatles changed rock and Presley didn’t change with it.
No reason to think the same thing wouldn’t have happened to Richie Valens and Buddy Holly if they had lived.
All true. That said,
Holly, OTOH, was writing much of his own music, and already starting to explore other musical styles before his death.
The problem I have with that is that Holly’s two biggest hits, That’ll Be The Day, and Peggy Sue, came in 1957. 1958 saw declining sales for Buddy Holly & The Crickets records. Richie Valens had a better 1958 than Buddy did.
He’d also already split with his collaborators. I would be very unsure that Buddy’s choices and direction were something he really could have pulled off. The album market for rock and roll in 1959 was limited to non-existent. Singles were where it was at for the most part. Brian Wilson couldn’t do it and he had a much longer string of hits than Buddy had. Brian Wilson didn’t have a second act, he needed the Beach Boys to express himself and that was that.
I have my doubts that Buddy was willing to sell himself as a persona the way that Johnny Cash did. That’s as much a part of the music biz, maybe more, than having the “magic” to come up with a new sound that people like. The latter tends to be far more fickle. Buddy didn’t show a lot of signs to me that he was willing to continue selling himself as a pop star or build something else out. I actually think he’d be more disappointing than anything.
All true – and yet Elvis remained a cultural icon and a huge live draw. And while he wasn’t pumping out #1 singles, his records consistently charted decently from 1969 through his 1977 death – especially on the Adult Contemporary and Country charts. And even on the mainstream Hot 100 Singles chart, 8 of his 11 singles released during 1974-77 reached the Top 40 (four in the top 20).
Elvis’s role in the cultural landscape simply changed. He became a throwback, a vintage act, and that was something he was able to trade on for several years after he stopped making movies.
Buddy Holly had kind of a different thing going on than Elvis did. Holly was more about the music and less about the hip-shaking visuals. Buddy Holly was, of course, an icon himself and had a readily identifiable look in the thick glasses and wavy locks. Holly would’ve no doubt evolved – he might have ditched the jacket & tie and gone outlaw like his contemporaries Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
I would have expected some kind of an evolution, also, for Richie Valens – both in music and in look. I do wonder if he’d have veered more towards country/folk or more towards the SF-area scene from whence (e.g.) Carlos Santana sprung. There could have been some interesting cross-pollination by Valens with other Latin artists of the late 1960s. And there was still would have been the outlaw route available to him, as well.