Or maybe they'd have ended up here anyway. Photograph: Rex Features/Henry Grossman
I've invented a new game ... well, I'm in the process of inventing actually, so please indulge me. What would the world's great rock stars be had they not become rock stars? Yes, I realise there are more important considerations to ponder in the short time we walk the earth, but I'm still curious. And it keeps me off Facebook.
My somewhat under-active imagination has been stirred by two events. Thursday's blog about the Martin Scorsese Stones film - specifically the photograph of a middle-aged Jagger, snug yet remarkably stylish in green cashmere scarf - and a recent encounter with Ray Davies in Hampstead. When I say encounter, I don't mean I spoke to him, alerted him to my presence or impeded his progress in any way; I just pointed him out discreetly to my daughter as one of the greatest men who ever walked the earth.
Now of course this game has to have rules - which I'm making up as I go along - but I think the fundamental one is that their projected other lives cannot be influenced by the cultural environment their real lives helped create. George Harrison cannot be a bus driver on the Marrakesh Express. Lou Reed cannot launder the profits from dope-dealing into a string of gender reassignment clinics. And John Lydon cannot run a wine bar in East Finchley called Rotten's.
So what about Lennon and McCartney? If the Beatles had never existed, would they have made it out of Liverpool? I can see McCartney as a To Sir With Love-style teacher in a rough secondary, committed to helping the kids, a bit of a geek perhaps, but essentially a good egg. Ringo was about right when he said he'd open a "hur" salon. Harrison might have taken his love of George Formby literally and become a window cleaner before retiring to Wales to be a sheep farmer - and part-time druid. As ever, Lennon's the ticklish one. He's still allowed to have married Cynthia in the game because that happened early on. I don't think he was as dangerous as he made out, so that rules out running the Liverpool underworld. He'd have made a great 70s trade union leader, but perhaps that's against the rules because of Working Class Hero; he'd be influencing himself. Something entrepreneurial I think, John Lennon - Dragon, the Laundrette King of the Northwest.
Jagger would have gone far whatever racket he picked. A well-read LSE boy, he'd have made it to at least junior culture minister by now. He might have made a good Derek Conway, especially with the fashion plate offspring. What about Sir Keef? This could be sad. Imagine, if you will, the same grizzled indestructible duffer minus the guitar, the licks and the chicks. I'd put him in a flat cap and dead man's suit. Something on the railways perhaps - do they still have wheel tappers? He'd spend quite a bit of time in the bookies I think, having told the missus he was going down the allotment. Leonard Cohen without the rock star trappings would still be Leonard Cohen the poet, attracting fewer beautiful ladies but still more than most of us could ever hope to handle. However, without the stardust, Janis Joplin would not have made an exception.
Ray Davies was a revelation. Anonymous because he chose to be, the flick of a gesture could have brought the street to a halt, but why invite attention? He blended in perfectly to a grey afternoon, a tall middle-aged man, not walking particularly fast, not hiding behind shades, well preserved, but then a lot of people in NW3 are. He looked like a semi-prosperous antiquarian book dealer, not Gutenberg bible level, but with a decent living nonetheless.
Well anyway, that's the gist of it. I'm not expecting Waddingtons to come calling anytime soon. I haven't included any current rock stars because I have enough trouble imagining them at all - with the exception of the beehive-lady with the tatts, and I'm not telling you what I think she'd be doing. Who wants to play?
