If the members of the Beatles showed up in 1970 as unknowns, how would their solo careers rate?

Absolute nonsense!
Lennon and McCartney would have soared to the highest levels because a great song is a great song! Beatles or no Beatles songs like...
Imagine
Instant Karma
Jealous Guy
Mind Games
Whatever Gets You Through The Night
Maybe I'm Amazed
Band On The Run
My Love
Silly Love Songs
Jet
Listen To What The Man Said
Goodnight Tonight
Coming Up
And so many others don't need the Beatles to be great hits because they are that on their own merits!

 

No. Yoko is with Jake from the aforementioned Schmeatles.

 

Very well, thank you.

 

silly question. music wouldn't have existed without the beatles (they invented it). plus, their beautiful tunes helped us avoid nuclear Armageddon. so the world wouldn't have existed, either.

 

To recap the 'rules" of our little thought exercise:

1. All four are complete unknowns who wander into London in 1970 to find a record deal
2. The music landscape has already been changed by The Schmeatles. From Sunderland.
3. None of the four carry any songs from the Beatles into this.
4. The solo output of our four unknown Scousers ends up being identical to that of the actual artists.

 

As mentioned earlier, in my make believe universe, The Schmeatles -Ron, Jake, Mike and Brillo - came out of Sunderland and rocked the universe with such hits as 32 Days a Month, She Digs You and Col. Benny's Stamp Collecting Club.

So let's assume music has already been transformed, and nuclear armegeddon was averted by same method other than releasing "All You Need Is Love" as a a 7"

 

So my earlier post stands!

 

The problem with this imagining, is more about the guys themselves being different.
The sixties would be different, but not unrecognizably so. There were plenty of other bands stretching the boundaries, and exploring the possibilities.
But the guys out of the Beatles would have been completely different. No fame, no experience, no track record, no record deals...

John's early solo material totally depends on his identity. I like it, I've had it for years, but without the back story, it is some damaged guy nobody knows with a lot of pain..... sometimes that sells sometimes it doesn't.

McCartney learned how to write in the Beatles. John was his foil. Their competitive nature was what drove them on, and led them to becoming who they did.
McCartney suffers the same problem as Plastic Ono Band.... it needs who Paul was to succeed. There are two songs on that album that could have been picked up, but the reality is, there is no way people would have been as taken with that album, without the history of the guy who made it.
It isn't that it is bad. It is that if this was some new guy you had never heard of, it would be one of those seventies albums where you like a couple of tracks, but the rest is kind of unfinished, a bit scrappy, underwhelming.... folks can argue, but that's the simple truth.

George is even more interesting, because All Things Must Pass is driven by George trying to catch up with John and Paul. Years of trying to not be the other guy, but a force in his own right.
As has already been said, George would not have had Specter, Clapton and all those other people. Very likely, he wouldn't have had the songs ... or at least not these songs.

For the artists and the fans there is a history that is inextricably linked to the albums, and without it, they don't exist, at the very least not in this form.

All three had the abilities and drive to succeed, but so many thousands of other people do too. The Beatles was their chance, and they took it, and the rest is history

 

Indeed. And we're in agreement about Paul being a big star. Still lean toward John being a beloved cult artist, not a giant rock star.

 

I see McCartney being like Rod Stewart, so doing well.
And we still get Faces covering Maybe I'm Amazed

 

I think the easiest way to set aside all the what-ifs is to simply try to judge each of their solo outputs entirely on its own merit and avoiding the Beatles baggage.

So, let's say that you take all of George Harrison's solo work and put a different name and face on the artist behind it. For example, what if Al Stewart shows up and writes, records and releases those records. Does this bizarro world version of Al Stewart, singing My Sweet Lord (and still getting sued for it, probably!) have a bigger career than the actual Al Stewart?

Divorce the Beatles from this. How good was the actual music in relationship to the best of the other music being made at the moment?

 

Maybe I'm Amazed by itself probably gets unknown Paul McCartney to the top. It's as a good a song as anyone else on the planet wrote back then.

 

Harry had 8 or 9 albums before he lost the plot.
(The number depends on if you like old standards or not.)

 

I fear that Ringo never would been a star. He likely would have been limited to being a mostly obscure drummer in a band.

 

Did Harry really lose the plot or was he just lazy and liked to drink a lot?

 

...yea, I think everyone's going to deep. The basic question is, if The Beatles had existed with four OTHER guys and music took the exact same turns we know it to have taken, and J, P, G and Richard were, simply, four new random solo artists who put out the stuff they did, how would they each have fared. It's sort of a roundabout way of asking, if the albums of the solo Beatles were put out by anyone else, would they have been successful. Am I close?

 

Exactly.

 

I have a lot from each of them, and I enjoy them all to varying degrees...

So far as them being unknowns, Paul was the most likely to succeed.
John may have been one of those guys with a cult following, and a couple of minor hits.
George would likely have had a couple of minor singles.

 

I personally was never impressed with any of their solo albums, Lennon probably least of all. And Ringo doesn’t even rate.

 

I think I'm just going to listen to my Schmeatles albums...

 

I think Ringo makes it only because of the strength of his singles between 71-75. The All Starr band would never have happened, and Ringo fizzles into obscurity when the 80's hit. Sentimental Journey never happens.

Paul makes it...also due to single strength. Others have mentioned it..the LP McCartney is completely different. I'm not sure Ram or Wild Life happen either. (which might have been a good thing...depending on who you ask)

George doesn't put out a three LP set. He has modest success initially and fades out right about 1975. No Wilburys. No Bangladesh concert.

John doesn't make it. Plastic Ono Band doesn't sell. He heads off to be a fisherman.

 

Paul would be at the level of Rod Stewart, John would be at the level of Sly Stewart, George would be at the level of Al Stewart. and Ringo would be at the level of Jackie Stewart.

 

that's why this is pointless - the music was inspired or affected by the Beatles baggage. They would have written different songs with different people playing etc. How Do you Sleep would never have been written. Someone else, or no one would have played slide guitar on it.

 

As a solo debut, the Plastic Ono Band album would have blown minds.