Had the Beatles continued after '69, what would have been their niche?

And their 1971 album, "Disc":
Side 1: a Yoko Ono song, with 75% of reverb produced by Phil Spector
Side 2:
- Heart of the Country (heavy metal version)
- Don't Worry Kyoko (sung by Ringo)
- Oh Yoko! (played on a moog synth, sung by Linda with Yoko herself on the backing vocals)

 

I can picture the Beatles playing acoustic guitars while sitting on stools and doing the three part harmony stuff much like CSN.

 

complete global domination

 

I think this is exactly it. I imagine a post-1970 Beatles as more of a "collective", where the four members write and record their own songs, in some cases with other band members playing with them, other times not. No attempt is made to cover up how separately they work, but most fans think they're still a group as always anyway. Beatles albums come out every year in the early '70s, and then become much rarer as the individual members start to put more and more material on solo albums. I suspect there'd be a tour at some point, just because of how much money there would be to be made.

 

Adult contemporary easy listening pop.

 

Okay, I'll play nice.

Things to consider:

John wanted to be an American.
John wanted street credibility.
John needed Yoko's attention.
Paul was overflowing with songs.
Paul wanted to play live.
Paul and John both wanted hits.
Paul was willing to see that that happened.
George learned to play slide guitar.
George was newly convinced by Something, that he was as good a songwriter as the others. Perhaps, but lacking discipline for sure.
George never wanted to play live.
Ringo believed that he would be an actor in the 1970's.
Ringo, at some point, would realize how much richer the other 3 were because of royalties.
Ringo wanted to drink.

With that said, they may have soldiered on one more album, I think that work would sound like early Elton John mixed with T. Rex, Bacharach and Wendy Carlos.

 

No more Silly Love Songs, but whats wrong with that?

 

Confessional singer/songwriter (POB) religious rock (ATMP) and indie rock (RAM) all to be considered innovations later in the pop/rock world.

 

I think they would have been similar to how they were on the White album.
That is just solo type projects.
Abbey Road was them trying to sound together but it wouldn't have lasted.
So for me the best of their early solo albums and singles would have been their sound.
Maybe a few harmonies here and there or a George guitar to make them sound more Beatles like.
So their niche would have been just how individually great 3 of the four were by themselves.

 

I wish I could come up with something humorous or clever but it's hard to dabble in hypotheticals when it comes to creativity. I just see four musicians that were best mates for many years until it was hard for them to be in the same room together for multiple reasons. It was time for them to move on and they did.
But I believe that John said that they would have most likely sounded like ELO. Hahaha.

 

They would have fairly quickly, certainly by the end of the 70's, dropped from the previous heights of their cultural significance. The era of melody in pop music by then was dead. And their songwriting wouldn't have featured the era's emerging musical genres in any way that was groundbreaking, like they were in the 60's.

 

It would have been more fighting and unhappiness and a break up in 1972. They had changed so much as people that it was an inevitability. I do believe that had John not died, they would have worked again in the 80's.

 

I think that you just did post something humorous and clever...

 

"Whatever made The Beatles The Beatles, also made the Sixties the Sixties, and anybody who thinks that if John and Paul got together with George and Ringo the Beatles would exist, is out of their skulls"
John Lennon

 

Agree.
I think Mtv made music such a bigger part of life that they do get together again somehow.

 

Yoko would've finally worn them down, and would have influenced them to go in a more improvised/Rock In Opposition direction. Their 16th album would've been produced by Fred Frith and feature guest appearances by Cecil Taylor, Keiji Haino, and Lindsay Buckingham. Lennon would've guested on the Residents' Commercial Album, while McCartney would secretly record an abstract rock album with Stephen Stapleton under the name Roar Roar Roar.

 

I'd like to know...

 

After Get Back (which should've been stayed as the original album's name) and Let It Be maybe they could had planned concerts together if there weren't any personal problems and all these issues with their financial stuff at Apple.
A Beatles live album instead of John's (and Yoko's) Live Peace and some more back-to-basics music on an album around 1971 probably.

AND, I believe, maybe the Beatles could had done some Prog Rock stuff around 1972/73 after seeing Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon live.
Both bands were into Psychedelic Rock earlier, and commercial-wise it worked pretty well on them...

I wonder how the Beatles would sound like in the 1980s, Ringo would be much pissed off because of the electronic drum computers...^^

[Edit:] And yes, they could make Glam Rock stuff, and after seeing/hearing Punk bands maybe they could had done music like Queen did on News Of The World, or Pink Floyd on Animals? ...I'm thinking too much right now. lol

 

OR, the fab four would have become singing waiters in Yoko's new Japanese Teppan Yaki Grille.

 

And they would cover 'God Save The Queen' by the Sex Pistols.^^

 

Funny how Harrison and McCartney did new wave style albums with Gone Troppo and Press to Play while Ringo took most of the drum machine decade off and had an album named Old Wave.

Mr. Macca did embrace electronica on McCartney II and might have convinced Lennon and possibly Harrison who already recorded Electronic Sound. A Beatles new wave/electronica album in 1980! Hey no wrong answer -this thread's about having a vivid imagination.

 

Please no...

Yeah that's better.
Deep Purple style, or, if late 1970s, Kiss style!

 

But only with solo songs written during the Beatles (mostly the Get Back sessions) you already have a '70 album:

Paul: Another Day, Every Night, Junk, Teddy Boy, The Back Seat of My Car
John: Jealous Guy, Gimme Some Truth, Look at Me, Oh My Love
George: Let it Down, All Things Must Pass, Isn't It A Pity? & Hear Me Lord

 

The White Album was heading in that direction.