Having sung Not Fade Away with the Stones in 1964, it seems fairly certain that, had Mick Jagger been assassinated, this might have been the song that doubled up as his epitaph. Pause to consider the events of this parallel universe a little longer and you realize that the Stones singer’s image would be transformed by the absence of the last 38 years.

Assuming that the Stones had decided not to continue without him, Jagger’s passing would have marked the end of a band at their absolute peak. Beggars Banquet would have been the last album released in the singer’s lifetime. The album’s opening song, Sympathy for The Devil would have acquired a chilling resonance in view of Jagger’s killers. Then, regarded by many as their creative high watermark, 1969’s Let It Bleed would have been as good a posthumous album as any artist has had released in their name.

The death of Mick Jagger prior to Brian Jones’ death in July 1969 might have had significant ramifications for Jones’ outcome. The Stones’ other guitarist – whose narcotic deterioration was hastened by a sense of being pushed out of the Jagger-Richard axis ­ may have rallied and found a way back into the creative centre of the band.

Furthermore, if Jagger died in 1969, so would the reputation that has increasingly undermined his rock’n’roll credentials in recent years – that of the shrewd, money-minded caretaker of the Stones brand.

Neither would we have had to put up with almost four decades of Keith Richards writing a series of increasingly generic R&B songs in the tuning of G. Or, at least, if we did – chances are that without Jagger to sing them, Richards would be strumming away in some LA club playing them to an audience of people who dimly remember that once upon a time this man used to come as part of an invincible double act.

Thank heavens that the FBI foiled the Hells Angels plans, but as the perfectly preserved legacies of Camden market t-shirt perennials like Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain attest, there’s also something to be said for not fading away.

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