Follow up question: When the alternate-universe Fabs hit the stage again, what song should they open the show with? My suggestion: Back In The USSR.
The story mentioned what happened in OTL: They were actually in NYC that night, but decided they were too tired. It is a very late show.
But does Uncle Walt still insist on changing the style of their big musical number from rock to barbershop?
By 1977, the Clash, Ramones and Sex Pistols had come along. The (ex-) Beatles were about as relevant as Glenn Miller was when Charlie Parker hit the scene.
I think they might have been able to sell a disc or two.
Have you seen this book?
I know of 2 short stories about the Beatles either staying together or getting back together. One is “Rubber Soul” by Spider Robinson, which first appeared in Omni Magazine. It involves Paul freezing John until they could fix him and bring him back. The other is a story whose title and author I can’t recall, published in Playboy Magazine, about the band being kidnapped around the time of the Lorne Michaels offer. Their families are held hostage until they play a concert at Shea Stadium. It has a bit of a twist ending.
The Beatles would just have introduced punk into their act.
Even with thos acts, the Beatles were still selling records.
If they had carried on, I think they would have returned to the stage. In the seventies, stage and monitor tech dramatically improved, and it became common that big acts had additional musicians like horn or string sections (listen to the fantastic “It’s Too Late To Stop Now” by Van Morrison from 1974), so they could have produced their album sound on stage and even could’ve heard themselves. Maybe they would’ve progressed in the studio on things like “Tomorrow Never Knows”, a masterpiece that strangely hadn’t been really explored and worked upon until 80s house and techno by other people.
I couldn’t agree with this more strongly.
Okay, back to The Fabs…
Maybe- or maybe not? The Beatles very successfully reinvented themselves from the early 60s love tune crooners to the more psychedelic and innovative later 60s. Paul McCartney with Wings showed he could move with the times. Imagine the Beatles dabbling with Punk or Metal.
They could have, but would they have wanted to? I get the impression that John and George lost interest in at least that aspect of being a Rock Star.
One might say John Lennon was a pioneer of punk, on his first solo album.
Sadly, by the late 70s, he was purveying dad rock.
Boy, you lost me there.
There are really two questions here. 1) What would the 70’s Beatles evolve into? Complex art rock like Yes? Back to basics hard rock or punk? Disco? Folk rock? Metal? Certainly their late 60’s work suggests they could have gone in any of these directions, if not all of them.
Question #2 is more important. Would we like what they evolved into? Beatles who sounded like the Moody Blues, or Chicago, or Fleetwood Mac, or Genesis, or the Bee Gees would not be the Beatles we grew up with.
“…those Ukraine girls really knock me out…”
Helter Skelter: “Am I a joke to you??”
Maybe a Beatles that stayed together would have been more open to the idea of making Billy Preston a more prominent or full time member? And from there explored soundtracks? More Motown?
Also, people often say ELO was what the Beatles would have become. I love ELO. I think Jeff Lynne is a legendary producer, but I’ve never quite seen the connection. Even with Jeff producing a couple of the later Beatles songs and George Harrison albums.
But more realistically…wouldn’t a Beatles that stayed together…wouldnt their albums just pretty much be The Grey Album by The Beatles (1973)
- Isn’t it a Pity (Featuring Billy Preston)
- Jealous Guy
- Silly Love Songs
- Photograph
- What is Life
- Mind Games
- Me and My Arrow (Featuring Harry Nillson)
- Band on the Run
In fact Im gonna make this on Spotify right now
I don’t think there’s any way in hell they’d have gotten back together even if they were all still living today.
There was the Bigger Than Jesus issue. Very few artists reach the “No More Worlds Left To Conquer” level that the Beatles did. Same reason Michael Jordan left to try baseball. That’s just a level very few people get to, even those at the top. George didn’t want to stay in the band because he was getting ADULATION from basically everyone else in the universe except two guys in his own band. Why would he want to keep going back to that?
The band got lucky that they could combine Lennon’s initial drive with McCartney’s breadth. But it was never as strong a partnership as Jagger and Richards. Jagger and Richards needed each other, it’s likely the best partnership in rock and roll history. If you look at nearly every other band it’s either one boss person and subordinates, or the partners break apart after time. Nearly always. Jagger and Richards were exceptional. Lennon and McCartney weren’t. Every album was less of a unified team than the one before. Lennon was not going to continue to care about competing with McCartney going into the 1970s, he had a completely different track in mind. McCartney deserved to take on the musical legacy more than the rest, he has done so to a great extent, that’s fine, but he didn’t need the others for that. Honestly, going solo was more honest than continuing to cobble together “group” efforts just to make a buck.
Adding one more to bookend it:
- All Things Must Pass (featuring Billy Preston)
I’ve given Harrison nearly half the album to write because I felt his material was the strongest at the time