8 Pop Stars Who Almost Joined Different Bands

Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/8-pop-stars-who-almost-joined-different-bands/

Music history is full of near misses. A phone call that never gets returned, an audition that goes sideways, a scheduling conflict that changes everything. Some of the biggest names in pop and rock came within a whisker of joining a completely different act before fate, or a rejection, pushed them toward the career we actually know.

These stories rarely make the highlight reel, yet they shaped the sound of entire decades. Here are eight artists who nearly ended up singing, playing, or drumming for a band that isn’t the one that made them famous.

Elton John and King Crimson

Long before he was filling stadiums, a young session singer named Reg Dwight, soon to become Elton John, was considered by a studio executive to be King Crimson’s new singer for their second album, and Robert Fripp wouldn’t agree to anything until he’d heard John’s music. Fripp listened to Empty Sky, John’s debut, hoping to hear something that fit the band’s sound.

It didn’t work out. Fripp later wrote that Elton had been booked to sing all the songs on the album for 250 pounds, but his style didn’t seem right for Crimson, so the sessions were canceled. Elton John went on to build a solo career that made King Crimson’s prog rock look like a footnote by comparison, though the story remains one of rock’s great what ifs.

Sheryl Crow and Fleetwood Mac