<band> would have been huge if <member> didn't die

[kytepunches]

Jeff Buckley would have been huge if Jeff Buckley Jeff Buckley didn’t die.

[Gibsonite]

Led Zeppelin are huge but it would be interesting to see what would’ve happened had they kept going either with or without John Bonham.

Depends on who they chose to play I think. They probably would've remained at the same level if they picked a good enough rock drummer. Besides, they were never really an A-List band to begin with

[the_man_incognito]

Cliff Burton alive would have made Metallica not laughing stock of heavy metal world…Black cd and everything lame after wouldn’t have existed..I like to think

Or, he would have left. Either because James' writing was changing or he wanted a different musical challenge..
I really think that James was more on the bandwagon of thrash when Metallica formed and he was along for the ride...
After the influence of Mustaine (along with his riffs they wrote together) and Cliff faded away, the songwriting drifted to more of an organic place for James...more heavy metal/hard rock...

I actually think Cliff would have embraced a direction change. He's frozen in time so we'll never know...but he's the one who had the band listening to Skynyrd, Thin Lizzy, etc....which is the influences that came into place during the Load era. People gave Hetfield shit for wearing a cowboy hat during that era too, meanwhile, Cliff wore a cowboy hat during the MOP era sometimes. The music definitely would have been different because he would have been allowed to contribute more than Jason, but I do think they'd have opened up their sound to different stuff than full on thrash, regardless of whether or not he passed away.

IMO, RTL and MoP aren't 'thrash' albums, but heavy metal albums with some thrash songs which was Cliff's influence already...only KEA is their true 'thrash' album and Cliff joined after it was written (or mostly written).
If Metallica would have just cut and paste the KEA formula for their subsequent albums,they would have been as popular as the Testaments and Exoduses of the world...