NEAR MISS: ALTERNATE HISTORIES OF ROCK’S GREATEST PERSONNEL DECISIONS

OK, so what’s this book about and what’s an “Alternate History” anyway? If you’re a sports fan as well as a rock ‘n’ roll fan — like me — you’ve probably spent more than a few idle hours wondering: What if? What if your favorite team had drafted a different player? What if that rumored trade had actually gone through? What if they’d hired a different head coach? Would the franchise have been better off? Worse off? Would championships have been won or lost? These are the kinds of questions that keep fans up at night, and they’ve always fascinated me.
That fascination collided with rock history back in 2024, when the great guitarist John Sykes passed away. My Google feed filled up with tributes and retrospectives, and I clicked on one from an online guitar magazine that stopped me cold. The article mentioned that Sykes had actually been in the running to replace Steve Clark in Def Leppard after Clark’s tragic death in January 1991 from alcohol-related causes. The process — which few people knew much about at the time — reportedly included Sykes, Vivian Campbell (who ultimately got the job and remains Def Leppard’s guitarist to this day), Gary Hoey, and Adrian Smith, from Iron Maiden (Although he had left Iron Maiden during that period of time).

That sent me down a rabbit hole. I started digging up everything I could find about those auditions: who was really considered, what the band’s thinking was and what the candidates brought to the table. And the deeper I dug, the more I found myself asking the bigger question: What would Def Leppard have sounded like — and looked like — if John Sykes had gotten the gig instead of Vivian Campbell?

That question led to another. I recalled reading about George Lynch being seriously considered for the guitarist slot in Ozzy Osbourne’s band after Bernie Torme and Brad Gillis’s brief tenure following the death of Randy Rhoads in 1982. Lynch, of course, would go on to rejoin Dokken, while the job ultimately went to Jake E. Lee. But what if it hadn’t? What would Ozzy’s mid-1980s output have sounded like with Lynch’s savage, percussive style behind him instead of Lee’s more melodic approach?

And then another. And another.

Rock ‘n’ roll history is littered with near-misses, almost-wases, and roads not taken — personnel decisions, auditions, handshake deals that fell apart, and chance encounters that changed the course of bands and careers. This book is an attempt to explore some of the most compelling of those alternate histories: to take a documented fork in the road, pick the path that wasn’t chosen, and follow it as rigorously and honestly as possible to see where it leads.

This isn’t fan fiction, and it isn’t hero worship. Where the historical record exists, I’ve used it (with the assistance of AI). Where speculation is required, I’ve grounded it in what we know about the personalities, the business realities, the creative dynamics, and the industry pressures of the time. These are “what-if’s” treated with the same seriousness a good sports analyst brings to a trade retrospective.
If you’re a rock ‘n’ roll historian like me, I think you’ll find this stuff endlessly interesting. I hope you enjoy the read.
Rock on.