Who would have been awesome if they'd lived longer(music artists)

Cafe Society
1

Seems like we’re really sentimental about musicians who leave us too soon. Often we speculate about what they would have done, how big they would have been, what new directions they would have gone in. But the fact is, many of these artists probably were on the verge of flaming out or had already ceased to be relevant.

So who do you think would have done amazing things if only they hadn’t died so soon, and who do you think was probably pretty much done anyway?

To me, the big one is John Lennon. Lennon was just starting to realize that he didn’t need drugs to inspire him to write, that family, and you know, life, could inspire as well:

On his Double Fantasy album: "“We’re involved in an experiment. Could the family be the inspiration for art, instead of drinking and drugs or whatever?.. I naively thought that as an artist you had to self destruct in order to create”

Now I know some people will roll their eyes, thinking “Oh God, so he was just going to basically be Paul McCartney in the 80s.” Yes, and no. Lennon probably would have been even bigger than McCartney and had huge adult contemporary and pop hits. No, it wouldn’t have been as revolutionary as what the Beatles did, but it would have been a nice way for his fans to grow up with him.

For the opposite case, I give you Kurt Cobain. Cobain was bitter about commercialism, even attacking Pearl Jam for the sin of having guitar solos. He would certainly have not gone along with Dave Grohl’s more commercial, but still artistically interesting, ideas and so the band would have broken up. It’s hard for me to imagine a drug fueled Cobain producing anything worthwhile as a solo artist, and when the grunge era ended so would any interest in what he had to say artistically. I honestly believe that he and Love would have been mainly tabloid fodder, interesting more for who they were than artistic accomplishments.

Of course those are just my opinions. Feel free to share your own.

2

Jimi Hendrix had limitless potential. Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, on the other hand, probably had their best work behind them.

In the jazz world, Booker Little is a good example of unrealized potential. He died at age 23.

3

Several classical composers, most obviously Mozart. Even though what he did write in his relatively short lifetime puts him at or near the top of many people’s list of Greatest Composers Ever, it’s not far-fetched to believe that, at 35, his greatest work would have been still ahead of him had he lived even a few more years.

4

Hendrix I wonder about. He pioneered electric guitar, but there was a lot of advancement in playing technique in the decaded after he died. I wonder if he would have continued to innovate, or just done the same things? Seems like most of the best players from his era continued to just play the same old way for the rest of their careers: Page, Clapton…

5

I would love to have seen how Buddy Holly’s music would have developed. He was already moving beyond his original sound when he died, and I have to believe that the changes in rock music in the 1960s would have inspired him even further.

6

My choice as well. Cat only made it to 23! :smack:

7

Jim Croce never greatly impressed me as a singer but he was an absolutely brilliant lyricist. I would have loved to see where his career could have gone. At the same time I really wonder how much his death fueled the public’s awareness of his talent. We’ll never know.

8

For the ones who died young, absolutely!

But I have noticed the creativity part of making new music tends to die out around 50 for most musicians.

9

Seconding Jim Croce. He was a marvelous lyricist. He could have been as influential as Dylan or Springsteen. Stevie Ray Vaughan could have gone on to be even bigger had he lived longer. Both of them were taken away from us in aviation accidents.

10

Admittedly, I am answering the OP’s question as: whose career would you have been most interested in had they lived longer?

Robert Johnson

Magic Sam

Brian Jones

11

I am going to sort of disagree about John Lennon. He spent a long time sitting around being unproductive and uncreative before putting out some very decent music in his resurgence before being killed. But it wasn’t innovative, new, trend setting, a new direction, it was just nice to have him making decent music again. And that is what we all wanted.

Paul McCartney, even with his longevity, (thank God) has always stuck with his own personal formula of “silly love songs.” And that formula has worked well but also never reached the point of creating anything that could be called a new sound.

John and Paul were getting along well with each other before John’s death but still doing their own thing. My own personal Double Fantasy is that after some more time had passed that they might have found the need to collaborate on some new project, some new sound, a 2nd generation Lennon/McCartney sound. Who knows what that would have been like. Sometimes one plus one equals more than two.

So yes, had John Lennon lived there might have been some amazing new sounds through collaboration with Paul, another artist, or another group. But John alone would have continued to be just about as exciting as Paul has been alone.

12

I disagree kindly with the OP about Cobain. Cred: I’m a lifelong Seattlite of the same age that lived and loved through the grunge era, also am friends of Cobain-family friends so have had a lot of grapevine hearsay…

Kurt’s anti-commercialism was very calculated and deliberate. He was ‘anti’ insofar as creative control, but was completely willing and able to use commercialism as a means to an artistic end. He was very creatively driven and I think he would have become more like Prince or Bowie, a vast shifting body of work alienating just as many fans as gaining. I agree, though, that Grohl would have come to creative headbutts wanting to spread his own wings and the band didn’t have more than 1 album left before (probably amicably) breaking up.

13

Hmmm, I just think too much of Cobain’s creativity was tied up in drug use and mental issues. If he’d grown up and moved past that, would his work be of any value anymore? And if he didn’t, but hadn’t died, would he turn himself into a punchline?

14

Thirded. Personally, there isn’t a single one of his songs I wouldn’t rate less than 3/5, most are 4/5 and 5/5.

15

Just thought of Jeff Buckley. Wasn’t he critically acclaimed and just getting started when he passed?

16

I think he would have pioneered new things that would have been creative and new – but which would have disappointed his audience, so he’d just be a niche performer. Think Joe Satriano.

17

What really aggravates me about Croce is that I grew up listening to his greatest hits album “Photographs and Memories” but I never dug deeper into his catalog. It wasn’t until maybe five years ago that I bothered to look. So much time wasted.

18

I would also say John Lennon. Not just for the music but I always wondered how he would have handled the Bush years as an out spoken liberal.

19

Heh. By then he would have been an old man and not all that interesting in his political opinions, which would probably have been pretty standard. What would be shocking, but not impossible, is him growing more conservative as he aged and raised a family. Who knows, maybe he would have been a Blairite?

20

The answer, of course, is Bradley Nowell from Sublime. Their last album before he died (“Sublime”) was not just fantastic, it was this close to finally making ska/punk much more acceptable to a mainstream audience. No Doubt dabbled with it, but went pop instead, but Sublime could have made it happen. Bands like 311 never really crossed over to rock stations like Sublime did. So close.

Also, I think Cobain had a lot more in him if he could have survived. I want to like the Foo Fighters, but I get bored before their songs are over. Something about their music is just uninteresting (except The Sky is the Neighborhood, which sounds like AWOLNation to me – love that song!).

Anyway, what do I win?