OBVIOUSLY John Lennon, who goes on to take part in a Beatles reunion

i second that john Lennon suggestion, with reservations, given my view that his death was the first indicator that the 80’s were going to be more than a little unkind to most who were cool before punk. would he have been the exception?

I would either have to pick Jimi Hendrix or John Bonaham. I think both would still be contributing to music today and both would still be the best at what they do. Plus who could deny more Led Zeppelin or a possible Jimi Hendrix and SRV album… Compared to Stevie playing with Albert King or Riding with the King (eric clapton and BB King) it would blow those two out of the water!!!!

Yeah…I’lll take the bait. So, I stop Kurt from doing the deed, wrestling the gun from his strung-out, weak, and cold-sweaty hands. Nirvana breaks up two weeks later and Kurt goes on to record a solo acoustic album with Rick Rubin, consisting of three-note melodies and baby-talk lyrics.

Shortly after this attempt at career suicide, Cobain goes multi-platinum to his chagrin. Six months after the initial attempt, Cobain leaves the gas stove on while high and the next day Kurt, Courtney’s and little Frances Bean’s bodies are discovered in their suburban Seattle home.

I would have to go back to 1959, act as an engineer, tell the group that there’s a problem with the plane and that it can’t be used, thus saving Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P Richardson from certain death.

They would then go on to perform at the Winter Dance Party they were destined for and continue to produce top-of-the-range Rock ‘n’ Roll music causing it to survive through to present day and possibly further.

The only problem with this plan would be that a certain Don Mclean will have no inspiration to write American Pie in 1971.

Jeff Buckley. I’d make sure he was wearing water wings at all times.

I third the John Lennon choice. Today he’d be UKs Prime Minister, thus the country was never part of the coalition of the willing, and that’s just peachy.

Downside , what would happen to the likes of bono and geldof?

D. Boon, no doubt. The man was right in the middle of a full-on upswing that was going to make some serious stuff happen…

Most definately Jimi Hendrix. He had so much left to say musically. Almost 4o years after he is gone, so few can even come close to matching his amazing virtuosity. To see what he would have done boggles my mind.

I’d save Layne Staley and Bradley Nowell. They would both be still putting out good shit.

Also, Cliff Burton. Nothing against Newsted, but Cliff never would have allowed like Load.

Elvis. Get him back in shape and back to producing some real rock ‘n’ roll like he sang when he started out.

I agree with stopping the plane crash with Buddy Holly and crew…those guys left way too early

Going the other way..a lesser known…i’d take Lester Butler…this guy played harp on a rare-never released Blues album by Mick jagger, cuz jagger knew the guy had talent….his blues band “the red devils” can/is/was an awesome blues force…christ Rick Rubin did their one and only album “King King”…it’s an awesome album start to finish…. he OD’d on herion and his friends left him to die and didn’t take him to the hospital till 24 hours later….go to youtube.com and look up “lester butler”…u’ll see what i mean

also ran: Bradleeeeeeeeee-Sublime

Lennon and Tupac so they could team up and make a mashup album.

I’d go back in time to warn Doug Springsteen that his punk ass son is going to become really famous and go around telling the World what an asshole Doug was.
Bruce, what the fuck did your old man ever do to deserve that shit? You suck.

Nonsense, the correct answer’s Jeff Buckley. Imagine if he’d gone on to make four more records. The world would be a better place. Lennon, Cobain, Tupac, those guys had all made their masterpieces and had their moment. Jeff was going to have his before he decided to have a quiet dip in the Wolf River, silly bugger.

yeah we need to go get elvis back here cuz hes the man he is the HOMBRE ya know what im sayin he is the KING hes the MASTER OF ALL MUSIC he created the term GOOD STUFF without him we probly wouldnt even have music. elvis presley is and always will be the best

i heard he was abducted by aliens so if we can just figure out when they abducted him we can go back and snatch him up and give him a good record label before those nasty creatures can steal him from us

I would want to save Layne Staley and Dimebag.

Otis Redding. D. Boon excepted, can we really say that the others mentioned above didn’t actually reach their peak and have their impact? (Sorry, Jeff Buckley was a passionate but too cute singer whose schtick would have worn thin.) Yeah, I’d like to have had each and every one of them for a bit longer, but Otis Redding was on the cusp of true greatness when he died. How many more “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay”s and “Hard to Handle”s did he have in him?

I’d go back in time to warn ? to get insurance for his house.

I save Ian Curtis. Joy Division does the American tour and “Closer” goes mega multi-platinum. However, after an album like “Closer” there’s no way a band could ever be the same, so they still change their name and make the musical transition to New Order, only to achieve greater critical acclaim and commercial success, with Ian being such a @%#$&* brilliant lyricist. They are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, exactly 25 years after “Unknown Pleasures” was released.

Richey Edwards – Manic street preachers….. hope he’s still alive and enjoying life more then when he was in the spotlight.

I think we need to move on past wanting to bring back dead rock stars on all of these polls…

But to play along anyways, I’d keep Stevie Ray Vaughan off that helicopter and far away from that mountain in Wisconsin.

and i miss Jimi

John Lennon. Of course.

I would go back and rescue Kurt Cobain…and bring him to March 6th 2007, so he can winess Guns N Roses “Chinese Demcoracy” go number 1 on the charts, and finally come to the understanding that he didnt change ANYTHING….

john denver

sid vicious and nauseating nancy and kurt cobain and john lennon and thats about it

john lennon-DUH! i would be like “DUUUUUUCK!”

-Bon Scot
-Jimmy Hendrix
-James Brown
-Syd Barret
-Kurt Cobain
-Tupac
-Notorius B.I.G.
-Aalyah
-Lisa Left-Eye Lopez
-John Lennon
-George Harrison
-Bob Marley
-Ray Charles
-Janis Joplin
Hell,I’d save a lot of people

And John Bonham and Otis Redding, of course…

Buddy Holly or Jeff Buckley. Neither had the sense of ominous self destruction that marks a lot of rock deaths (Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin) and both died at the beginning of their careers.

Nobody would save Freddie? I would! Although I’m not sure how…

For purely selfish reasons. I want more Queen music.

Kurt Cobain…next question. You Cobain haters need to get a life. You still have your Poison albums to rock out to.

Obviously you have to save John Lennon. Throw Yoko in front of John just as Chapin opens fire. I guarantee Chapin gets a medal of honor if it turns out that way. The plus side of this is years later Noel and Liam Gallagher send John a demo and he tells them its shit and squashes their dreams of stardom.

john, you’re on crack if you think that album’s ever coming out. And if by chance it does, it’s going number one will only prove that more people than we thought need to cut their mullets. Hell, a Britney Spears album would probably go right to number one, but that doesn’t make her relevant.

and now, to the question at hand. I’d go save Joe Strummer, just so we could get another few Mescalaros albums out of him. Aside from him, maybe Gram Parsons or Robert Johnson.

fuck saving them, theres a few more who should die.

Randy Rhodes.

brilliant call on Randy Rhodes… fantastic

Tiny Tim

John Bonham, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain (Ill have to repost silas’ comment because its too true, “You Cobain haters need to get a life. You still have your Poison albums to rock out to.”), Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix,Jim Morrison, and loads others.

So, I watched the documentary about Arthur Killer Kane, of the New York Dolls. He did the reunion gig with them, and died like a month later, to lukemia. I would go back and tell dude to go to the doctor or something, catch it before it became incurable. Seems more preventable than some of the ones suggested here (wouldn’t Kurt have tried to kill himself again? Wouldn’t Layne Staley shoot up again?, etc. etc.)

Bring back Jerry Garcia!!

Guns N Roses fans have to “cut their mullets?” haha well Im from New York City..and they sell out every building they play here, whenever they play…oh yeah and none of us have mullets… Kurts greatest hit was when his brain hit the wall behind him….

I’d go back and save Kurt Cobain, and Nirvana would keep producing more and more hard to listen to albums, but will still be popular and all pop-punk bands will fail to exist.

lol who said Guns N Roses fans have mullets? What country to do they live in..EVERYONE loves Guns N Roses…they are the Rolling Stones of the late 80’s and early 90’s.legendary band….Kurt Cobain was a flash in the pan who only stays in the public eye today because he committed suicide…If Nirvana was still around they would be playing dive bars with Mudhoney and Blind Melon…anyway back to the topic at hand…I would go back and rescue John Bonham….Zeppelin!!

Back, back . . . way back! All the way to the glory days of the Mississippi Delta and save the true king of rock and roll: Robert Johnson.

And with my one free hand, grab Joe Strummer and ensure his return.

All you Cobain fans . . . do you really think you’d be that into him if he hadn’t of blown his head off? I seem to remember half empty concert halls on the In Utero tour.

It’s pretty pathetic that people are still whining about Cobain’s impact, GNR, and this whole 80’s vs 90’s crap. Get over it for goodness sake’s!!!

1. Nirvana was not a one hit wonder. They made an impact that has clearly lasted (as proven by half the comments here).
2. People still care about GNR, showing too that they clearly made an impact(other 1/2 comments here).

If I had the De Lorean I’d pretty much save as many as I could. I’d also get to both Axl & Kurt before they became big, told them what was coming, and have them work it out(and who knows, maybe form a band together).

Sterling Morrison

Thanks RS! for using my comment.

mark sandman , layne staley, dimmebag and strummer, very different from each other, all were the real deal…

This one’s a no-brainer. Hands down John Lennon

hands down buddy holly, just imagine where rock n roll would be now if he had lived longer, just imagine the people he would’ve influenced, i think rock would be in a completly different place if buddy holly had made it longer

Keith Richards (oh, wait, he is not dead yet, he is still BARELY hanging on), Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney (the REAL one, not the imposter that replaced him after the real one died), Jim Morrison, Tupac (no wait he is still alive), Elvis (Same as 2pac) and Britney’s career after K-Fed

If I were to list three artists that I wished lived a lot longer, I’d choose Buddy, Otis and Jimi.

If Buddy had lived, he may have hung out with Bob Dylan and he may have discovered the Beatles on a tour of Great Britain in the early 60s allowing the Beatles to reach America a lot sooner. Both Otis and Jimi could have been the biggest acts of the 1970s. There are a lot of could’ve beens in rock history but it’s fun to speculate what these guys could have done had they lived.

otis buddy or kurt

or sam cooke or marvin gaye

None of these people could hold John Lennon’s spectacles. He and the Beatles influenced pretty much every piece of rock music written today. Kurt who?

Oh god. It can only be John Lennon. Either himm or i would go back to 1983 and tell Michael Jackson to stay as he was. A good looking black guy who was a goddam genius.

Elliott Smith

Gotta be Stevie Ray Vaughan – the man was just starting to reach a high point and can you imagine another series of equally as amazing albums from him?

Second would be Jeff Buckley. I second whoever said the world would be a better place with more albums from him.

Third would be Lennon. I think that, were Lennon alive, a Beatles reunion probably STILL wouldn’t have happened, but we would have another elder statesman to show up occassionally and show people what music is supposed to sound like (McCartney with “Chaos and Creation…” and Harrison with “Brainwashed”)

Lynard Skynard…

John Lennon…..no contest..
Then for kicks we’d stop at Keith Moon’s house circa 1978 to prevent him from taking all that Antabuse…

Joe Strummer…Joey, DeeDee, Johnny

Funny…I don’t remember half empty concert halls during the In Utero tour. I DO remember an unplugged performance that became legendary and subsequent album that became the best selling of all time. Why save Lennon? So he and Yoko could go on to make more meaningless albums together? The Beatles = the most overrated bubble gum pop band of all time.

WOW Silas Necrophilia but be legal in your state cause youre sucking a dead mans dick. Yes we all loved Cobain but without the Beatles there would be no Nirvana. They’ve always listed The Beatles as a major influence just as any other band worth mentioning has. So throw some flannel shirt over your face and hide in shame.

Hands down John Lennon. He’d continue to tell “gimme a grammy” McCartney what a pansy-ass git he was, and at least provide some kind of “maybe leave this one alone, paul” balance for passive-aggressive McCartney whos cheesy, indulgent artistic ambitions have run amok without Lennon chiding him for 26 ysears. Lennon being alive could have saved Western Civ from the AWFUL “Liverpool Oratorio”…which of course, was nominated for a grammy.

I would look to Lennon to take on a less annoying Neil Young role going forward, presiding with tongue in cheek over the American rock scene from NYC, living his life peacefully with Yoko and Sean, making good music a la Double Fantasy, and occaisionally being one of Howard Sterns favorite guests and a SNL regular.

Hon Mention: Brian Jones, Gram Parsons, Elvis, and Kurt Colbain.

i’d bust into that house on Lake Washington and wrestle the gun out of the hands of that jujitso-knowin’, pony-tail-wearing mofo from LA that Courtney Love hired to take out Kurt Cobain. then i’d try to talk Kurt into an acoustic solo career (see Unplugged in New York), as Nirvana had split the previous February. In 1996, Dave Grohl admitted as much in a radio interview. But Kurt was still hated fame so much that he momentarily forgot the he loved his daughter and took his own life. Sure he did.

I agree with Lennon and Ian Curtis! Hell, with so many new bands using Joy Division as an excuse (and not an influence), it would be so much better to have the real one still playing. And yep, music would be much better if Lennos was still alive. Besides, I would have told him he MUST get rid of Yoko…

Hey Silas: Yeah, I remember that unplugged album too. Too bad it came out AFTER Cobain died. And did you really mean to say it was the best selling album of all time. Laughable! I liked Nirvana when he was alive . . . and believe me, they were nowhere near the height of their popularity when he died – hence, the half empty concert halls. At that time, the people were all jazzed up about how Pearl Jam’s “Vs.” was the greatest thing ever made. That only happened after, and because, he died. Thus, once again: all you Cobain fans probably wouldn’t have even have been into him if he had lived. So why would you want to bring him back?

Little story: I once got to talking to someone about music while in the library one day. We floated around to the Beatles and he kept going on about Lennon. In an attempt to (gently) get out of our conversation, I asked him what would have happened if Lennon had gone full blown Republican and supported Reagan. The very notion stunned the man so badly he didn’t know how to even conceive it. It interests me when everyone gives their take on what would happen. So… HOW DO YOU KNOW???

I’d love to bring back people like Brad Nowell who didn’t get a chance to feel how influential there music really IS!!!!
I love him and think Sublime is legendary.

ok, this thread’s about dead, but i’ll say this anyway. Brian, you can call Nirvana a flash in the pan all you want, and you may be right. but GNR is the same shit, only their singer didn’t die, (pity). Compare Nevermid to Appitite For Destruction. Both great albums, but look at what happened after. Nirvana released In Utero, great album, if a bit uneven. GNR stalled, released Lies (a transparent stopgap album). then they released the Use Your Illusion albums. Maybe one good disc buried in there. Better to burn out than to fade away into irrelevence, to paraphrase Neil Young. I dont give a shit about the mullet cont in NYC. listen to the fuckin radio and count the Nirvana clones vs. the GNR clones and tell me who’s irrelevant.

I figure they die when it’s time ,but it would have been cool if Hendrix had lived,just a little longer.He was scheduled to go into the studio with Gil Evens,who did arrangements fo Miles.And a project with miles was in the works.
So i’d say Jimi,just long enough to do one album w/ Miles

-jimi hendrix
-john henry bonham
-robert johnson
-stevie ray yaughan

I would’ve convinced Bob Marley to amputate his cancerous foot.

freddie mercury
layne staley
kurt cobain
jim morrison

sid and nancy would be awsome to still have around, i would be friends with them haha

Either Jimi, Keith Moon or John Entwhistle, the who really needed Keith on “It’s Hard” and “Face Dance”. But looking back on jimi you’d save him and hed just o.d. a few months later.

not a single person so far would have stopped the plane that carried lynyrd skynyrd on that doomed flight?

*john bonham
*Hendrix
*Bon Scott

id totally stop kurt from blowing his brains out, id be like duuuude no thats not the answer man, and yah im pretty sure id still love nirvana regardless of what happened, just like i still love korn becasue i remember “life is peachy” and “follow the leader”. nevermind the fact their previous two albums are balls.

oh and also
*layne staley
*janis joplin
*tupac
*robert johnson
*mama cass

i would no doubt save cobain and morrison…they could have lived so much longer lives..they would have been rocking out till they were 80 and i would still listen