The five best supergroups that almost happened
I know of a man who adores the supergroup the Travelling Wilburys but doesn’t like the music of the individual constituent parts. In his less than esteemed opinion, they form something far greater than the sum of their parts and it would be foolish to listen to them in isolation. The tagline for his folly is as follows: “Together they are like Bolognese. Apart they are just servings of plain pasta, mince, and whatever else is in the sauce.”
It’s a ludicrous view. Supergroups are better than the sum of their parts? I haven’t found them to be that exactly, but I’ll allow there have been some great tunes there. To continue the anonymous goon’s culinary analogy, quite often supergroups are more akin to the meal you have to rustle up in a hurry out of random ingredients. That is a method that proves more hit-and-miss than the considered real McCoy of a recipe card.
As Ethan Hawke proclaims in Boyhood: “There is no favourite Beatle! That’s what I’m saying, it’s in the balance, and that’s what made them the greatest f—king rock band in the world.” Bands need to be a balanced broth, and sometimes supergroups can’t quite deliver this. However, it is human nature to be enthralled by the idea of them. They bypass our realities and head straight for the romantic view of rock ‘n’ roll.
With that in mind, below we have curated a list of some of the greatest supergroups that the world nearly witnessed. And despite all of the above, boy would we have loved to have seen them.
The five best supergroups that almost happened:
David Bowie & The Beatles
“It was New York, around 1974,” David Bowie recalled, “and I think it was around the first time they had gotten back together again. And I got a knock at the door at the Pierre Hotel where I had taken over a suite for months and months. It was about three in the morning and John was there and he had Paul with him!”
Continuing: “The two of them had been out on the town for the evening. And John says, ‘you won’t believe who I’ve got here’ and I said, ‘wow I thought you two had…’ and he said, ‘oh no, all that’s going to change’. It was great! We just spent the evening talking. That must’ve been the first evening they were back together since the big bust-ups. They actually asked me if I’d join the two of them and become a trio with them, and we’d change the name to something like David Bowie and The Beatles because they liked the idea of it being DBB.”
Sadly, however, the dawn brought about the same old problem that H.G. Wells wrote about in his Time Machine back in 1895, proving that the death of drunk patter in the morning sun is eternal – “It sounds plausible enough tonight but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.” As Bowie wearily concludes: “But, you know, the next morning it just never came to anything.”
Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Paul McCartney & Tony Williams
A legendary jazz arranger, the greatest guitarist of all time, a virtuoso drummer, and one of the greatest songwriters of all time certainly would’ve made for quite the mix. And it was so close to coming to fruition back in 1969 when Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix boldly sent a telegram to Paul McCartney in the hope they might convince him to join their new supergroup. It read: “We are recording an LP together this weekend. How about coming in to play bass stop call Alan Douglas 212-5812212. Peace Jimi Hendrix Miles Davis Tony Williams.”
Sadly, at the time that the telegram was sent McCartney was busy becoming the first person in history to go on a two-week vacation in Scotland. With that, the project hit the skids and Hendrix, Davis and Williams had to move on to separate projects. However, given Paul McCartney’s unbridled appreciation for Hendrix, it’s highly possible that if he wasn’t drenching himself in the highlands, he would’ve headed over for a jam.
R.E.M. & Nirvana
Kurt Cobain was a huge public admirer of R.E.M. The Nirvana rocker even famously declared: “If I could write just a couple of songs as good as what they’ve written…I don’t know how that band does what they do. God, they’re the greatest.” This admiration led to a friendship, and almost a supergroup to boot.
In the years that followed Cobain’s 1994 comments, his close friend, R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe noticed that his life seemed to be heading towards turmoil. Thus, to keep him feeling hopeful in a creative sense, he touted a collaboration between the pair. “I was doing that to try to save his life,” he told Interview Magazine. “The collaboration was me calling up as an excuse to reach out to this guy. He was in a really bad place”
Continuing: “I sent him a plane ticket and a driver, and he tacked the plane ticket to the wall in the bedroom and the driver sat outside the house for 10 hours. Kurt wouldn’t come out and wouldn’t answer the phone.” Sadly, this foretold the tragedy that soon awaited Cobain.
Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones & The Beatles
These three forces changed the world. If they got together the universe would surely have been put on notice. According to the producer and sound engineer, Glyn Johns, it very nearly happened. Johns claims that in 1969, he bumped into Dylan and the vagabond was rather excited given Johns’ recent involvement working with involved with both The Beatles and the Stones.
“He said he had this idea to make a record with the Beatles and the Stones,” Johns writes in his memoir, Sound Guy. “And he asked me if I would find out whether the others would be interested. I was completely bowled over. Can you imagine the three greatest influences on popular music in the previous decade making an album together?”
So, he did. He got firm yesses from George Harrison and Keith Richards, everyone else was noncommittal, but two flies in the ointment proved to be firmly against it: Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. The plan was simply that they “would pool the best material from Mick and Keith, Paul and John, Bob and George, and then select the best rhythm section from the two bands to suit whichever songs we were cutting.” But Macca and Jagger said, “absolutely not”.
Arctic Monkeys and Girls Aloud
Back in the day, BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge usually represented the chance for a pop artist to display an eclectic mix that strayed outside of the expected. Arctic Monkeys did the opposite—as an alternative act they decided to tackle one of the most mainstream tracks around in a subversive move for the ages.
At the time, Girls Aloud were chart-toppers of the highest order and their 2004 track ‘Love Machine’ was still getting widespread radio play. Enter the new cool kids to show that they were so cool that could risk being very uncool and still pull it off—that was the obvious motive and they just about pulled it off thanks that their competent musicianship which just about made it a bop all the same.
However, in 2007, the band actually revealed that they had indeed booked two weeks’ studio time in Wales to record with Girls Aloud. Whether that materialised has never come to light, but studios aren’t cheap, so it’s likely that something went down whether Girls Aloud ended up being present or not.
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