Just think how that would have changed our idols if he would have killed Dylan (and then got arrested) and Lennon would have lived. Imagine if Dylan had been gone since 1979 and Lennon was still with us.
Not making a statement, just saying it's strange how all of that turned on 1 man's choices with a gun.
Where the what-ifs of rock history go that's about as strange as they get. It raises the question of whether John, after Double Fantasy, would have produced music on a par with Plastic Ono Band or Imagine - or the Beatles, for that matter - had his life not been cut short....leaving aside the whole question of what might have happened had he started talking with Paul more often and simmered down about George leaving him out of I Me Mine.
Or how we would now perceive Dylan's career had it ended with Street Legal and Slow Train Coming, instead of his Christmas and Sinatra albums and whatever else he'll be doing from now on.
As things stand, it seems a sure thing that 90% of Dylan's reputation from now on will rest on what he recorded up to Blood On The Tracks...but had he been gone for the last 36 years, people would be writing about all the great things he would have done in that time, and presumably they wouldn't be envisioning something like Knocked Out Loaded.