The UK has voted to form what would be the most powerful band in the world and opted for a range of wrinkly rockers, including Sir Elton John, Phil Collins and Sir Paul McCartney, ahead of a host of musical greats and forcing One Direction’s Harry Styles into the wings.
To launch a competition from bespoke offers to win tickets for Barclaycard Presents British Summer Time, people were asked to pick their favourite lead singer, drummer, bass player, guitarist and piano player. The competition is open now and will run until Sunday, 30th June. People can enter here: www.bespokeoffers.co.uk/bst
Legendary Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury (40 per cent) beat Mick Jagger, Bono and Michael Jackson to front the band while Sir Elton (27 per cent) was chosen for the piano ahead of Stevie Wonder, Brian May (30 per cent) ahead of Jimi Hendrix to play guitar, Paul McCartney (25 per cent) on bass instead of The Who’s John Entwistle and Phil Collins (33 per cent) on drums ahead of Ringo Starr.
Harry Styles finished bottom of the pile as a contender for lead singer with just four per cent of the vote.
The collective age of the bespoke band, assuming Freddie Mercury was still alive, would be over 300 as all members are over 60. Despite the likes of Madonna, Karen Carpenter, Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks gaining votes the winning act is all male. More than half the people that voted were under 45.
The nation’s bespoke band has combined record sales of over 700 million and would be worth in excess of an estimated £1 billion. Surprisingly, despite album sales of over 200 million, none of the Rolling Stones line up made it into the band and the closest to making the grade was Ronnie Wood.
Were it left up to the UK’s men, Jimi Hendrix would have been on guitar (23 per cent) but a huge 37 per cent of UK women voted for Brain May. Gary Barlow definitely has the X Factor when it comes to female voters as nearly twice as many women (24 percent) than men (13 per cent) voted for the Take That singer to be on piano.
Despite hailing from the North West, Sir Paul got more votes from the North East and East Anglia whilst The Beatles drummer, Ringo Star only finished third in the North West (14 per cent), losing out to Phil Collins (30 per cent) and Keith Moon (18 per cent). The East Midlands would have preferred Stevie Wonder to Sir Elton on piano.
