Alternate Universe Sunday: What if John Lennon had Been Killed in the Early 1980s?

So last night, The Wench and I watched the Beatles performance on SNL (EDIT: link removed since Youtube seems to have blocked the video), and she was all like "the Beatles? Are they still a thing??" (she's not as musically inclined as I am, but seriously...) and then she's like "Wait, how the fuck is John Lennon alive??"

She was seriously totally convinced that John Lennon had been shot sometime in the early 1980s, like, a few years before she was even born (I don't know if I mentioned it but the Wench is a few years younger than I am).  I was wracking my mind trying to figure what the fuck she was talking about?? I mean seriously, how could you be that fucking confused?  I know that until recently the Beatles hadn't made a decent album in years (most of her lifetime, to be fair, though I mean Real Love was a pretty huge album and coincided with their 30th anniversary anthology in '93, and she would certainly have been old enough to remember those!), but really, they're only the most famous rock band of all time.   On further conversation she also thought they'd broken up in 1969 (there she obviously got them confused with the Stones) and that George Harrison had actually died from his stint with throat cancer.
I really have no idea who she confused with Lennon who got murdered in the 80s, though...  Marvin Gaye?  Andy Warhol?  Jodie Foster?! No idea.

Anyways, she seemed pretty flabbergasted by their presence on the show; I thought their set was pretty good,  I quite liked "some people never know", and I think it highlights how in their dotage the Beatles have finally given up on trying to keep up with the young folks and gimmicky duets and all that shit, and as of these last couple of albums are back to doing music in their style which, if not quite on par with their classic albums like "Sgt. Pepper" or "Instant Karma", is way better than anything recent.  It's the best of their classic style with only a slight touch of concession to indie aesthetics (but then, they mostly inspired all the indie kids these days, so it's only fair).  From what I heard, the new album does have a couple of songs that were written back in the 70s but never recorded. All in all, I think Let Me Roll It is a pretty great album, though I think I liked the slightly less rock n' rolly Intuition album from two years ago a bit more.

Anyways, imagine what a shitty alternate universe it would have been, even with their various mistakes along the way, if the Beatles' last album had been Let it Be.    On the other hand, I do have to wonder what 45 years of more Rolling Stones albums might have been like; it might have spared us the horror of Mick Jagger trying to rap  (EDIT: sorry, link removed again; damn it, youtube!).


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