Dictators on Vinyl

History is full of men who thought they could conduct entire nations like orchestras – so let’s imagine what might have happened if they’d been let loose in a record shop instead of a battlefield.

Stalin would have been the prog-rock purist, frowning through his pipe smoke while nodding along to King Crimson. Complicated time signatures, endless five-minute mellotron solos – it all has the reassuring feel of a five-year plan.

Hitler? He’d be rifling the Wagnerian section and clutching a Zeppelin album under his arm. Not for the riffs – for the bombast and the mythological references. He’d loathe the Grateful Dead, too loose, too chaotic. Improvisation was never his style.

Mussolini would be drawn to the regimented stomp of early heavy metal. A man who loved trains running on time would also demand his riffs arriving on the beat. No jazz for him – no room for improvising trumpet players in the Fascist marching band.

Napoleon might surprise us. Tucked in his bicorne, he’d lean toward Pink Floyd or The Doors – psychedelic but with a martial undertone. Something with enough revolutionary spirit to march to Moscow by, even if it ends with everyone waking up in a snowdrift.

Caesar, of course, would be blaring Queen. “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” were written centuries too late, but he’d still have found a way to march into Gaul with Brian May’s guitar echoing across the amphitheatres.

And then Genghis Khan – the heavy metal fan avant la lettre. If throat-singing fused with distorted guitars doesn’t belong to him, who else? You can almost hear it pounding across the steppes, more effective than any war drum.

Alexander the Great rounds out the set, a cosmopolitan magpie with a taste for fusion. A Greek lyre woven into Indian sitar rock, a dash of Persian rhythm, maybe even a hint of Egyptian chant. His empire in miniature, pressed to vinyl.

All of which proves a point. Had these men spent more time head-banging and less time empire-building, history might have been a great deal less bloody – and the world’s record collections a great deal more entertaining.