If These Dead Rockers Were Still Alive...

There's never been a doubt in my mind that had Elvis lived he would have had a career revival - as the link suggests - at the hands of a guy like Springsteen. And Lennon have been the first - or last - act at Live Aid.

 

Lennon's harder tracks from the 1980 "Double Fantasy/Milk and Honey" sessions, especially the songs cut with Cheap Trick, were fairly punchy. And his guitar parts from Yoko's "Walking on Thin Ice," recorded the day he was killed, were nearly Hendrixian and also eerily presaged U2's trademark guitar sound.

He wouldn't be on the 'cutting edge' -- he never was -- but he would have been welcomed as an elder godfather by the alt-rockers later in the 1980s and 1990s.

It's actually pretty easy to imagine Lennon finding common ground with Cobain -- much of Nirvana's stuff is reminsicent of "Plastic Ono Band" as much as anything else.

And certainly for Live Aid, if not before, Lennon would have reunited the Beatles (ultimately, it would have been up to him). Not as a working band on a regimented schedule of album-tour-album-tour, but as a two-or-three times a decade thing.

Elvis would have had to get rid of Col. Parker for any kind of career renaissance. Parker was perfectly happy to keep him in a semi-dazed stupor and churn out by-the-numbers concerts with no particular interest in making any musical 'progress' just so long as the cash cow kept pumping out the money.

Although somebody like Springsteen or Lennon might have roused Elvis out of his slumber.

A really interesting story would be what would have happened if Buddy Holly had never died. Hell, he wasn't even as old as Elvis.

 

A-hem ... this article is good water cooler fodder and all, but I believe the Righteous Brothers had this ground covered in the mid-70s, no?



(Might be one of the worst songs ever recorded.)

 

Here's the Cheap Trick-backed version of "I'm Losing You."

#t=33

Not exactly Metallica but not exactly "Let 'Em In" or "With A Little Luck," either. I don't think Lennon was going to devolve into elevator-muzak territory.

 

Gram Parsons would have turned 67 years old earlier this month. Of course, while 26 was much too young for him to die, given his fondness for prodigious amounts of alcohol and drugs I doubt he would have made it anywhere close to 67 without a serious lifestyle change.

 

I think Elvis would have had a late-career comeback like Johnny Cash in addition to playing Branson.

 

It's a fun thought to think about Elvis not dying from the heart attack, but surviving, and in the hospital he realizes his entire career and life are being run by parasites and leeches, and he decides to get rid of 'em all.

He spends several months drying out, cleaning up and slimming down, hooks up with a manager interested in keeping him alive longer than the next concert run at Vegas, and lays low for a year or so and comes back in black leather, rough denim and singing stripped-down rockabilly.

His cable-teevee comeback special, 'Elvis '78,' features backup by the original Million Dollar Quartet of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash, and guest apperances by Lennon (who takes 'a sabbatical from his sabbatical' to take part) and Springsteen, himself returning to action from an almost 4-year hiatus from album releases (due to his legal and managerial hassles).

The show opens with Elvis and Lennon duetting on an 'unplugged' version of "Nobody Loves You (When You're Down and Out)," and ends with a full-cast E Street jam with Presley and Springsteen trading verses on the latter's newly-released "Badlands."

Ahhhh, what could have been ....

 

Don't forget the inevitable "Duets" Album featuring "Suspicious Minds" with Bono and "Are You Lonesome Tonight" with Kelly Clarkson.

 

I'm the other way on Elvis. He probably would've cleaned up at some point, but I don't think he had the ambition he would need to mount a meaningful career revival. He'd be into the cash grabs. I think he would've become a permanent lounge act.

He would've returned to movies ... with one of the Cannonball Run flicks, maybe even replaced Burt Reynolds as the star. Somehow, that series screams Elvis movie to me.

He would've guest starred on Dukes Of Hazzard (as a singer roped into doing a Boss Hogg political fundraiser in Hazard County, only to shown how corrupt Boss Hogg was by the Duke boys, performs at Daisy Duke's saloon to end show), The Master (with his own karate dojo) and Walker: Texas Ranger. He would've penned and sung the theme song to Touched By An Angel (which sounds like one of Elvis's mawkish song titles). He would have done, or approved his songs for, A LOT of commercials.

He would've had a brief "comeback" when he did a duet with Frank Sinatra in the early 90s on Kentucky Rain, but it's one of those "comebacks" that gets talked about, but didn't have any popular traction in reality. (EDIT: FUCK YOU DANOREGON FOR BEATING ME TO THE PUNCH AS I WROTE THIS! )

By the internet age, he would've been front-and-center to sue file-sharing websites and that would've led to the inevitable hook-up with Metallica.

These days, he'd perform for no more than 30 minutes in Vegas, but charge top dollar to 70-somethings suckered into believing they were re-living their 1950s youth. He'd whore himself out worse than the Rolling Stones do. There'd be In The Ghetto Blasters and Burning Love erotic candles.

He'd still be feted by rockers and rock intelligentsia (Rolling Stone would give each and every one of his records at least four stars), but with more of a jaded view, not unlike that of Neil Diamond. Perhaps he'd perform God Bless America at a St. Louis Cardinals World Series game.

Sorry Elvis. I love ya, but I'm just not seeing an artistic revival after 1977.

I do believe this ... he would've bailed out of Graceland at least 30 years ago and left that neighborhood to be the complete shithole it would otherwise have been instead just a partial shithole with a tourist trap in the middle of it.

 

I don't know if The Who's path would have been any different if Moon lived than it has been. It's always been Townshend's band and they would have probably still done the same "This time we really mean it, we're through" shit they have done since the early-80s. Townshend would have kept making solo albums and getting back with the band on occasion to tour. Reading Townshend's book you get the sense that the Who hasn't been as important to him over the last 30 years or so as it has been to Daltrey. I doubt that would have changed much if Moon had lived.

And while I may have never seen The Who with Moon I have seen them a number of times with Zak Starkey who is as close to a Moon clone as there probably is.

 

I like how the age progressed Keith Moon actually looks younger than he did in 1978.

 

Elvis had some aspirations to be taken seriously artistically: supposedly his '68 comeback special was mainly his own idea when network suits mostly just wanted him to croon Christmas carols on a studio stage.

Sure, if he had survived the '77 heart attack he could have gone right back to his lounge singer act, but in that case he would have been keeling over off the toilet again in a year or so.

For the same reason I don't buy the idea of Keith Moon surviving into his 50s, 60s or 70s. His self-destructive habits were too ingrained. If he didn't OD in 1978, he would have in '79.