Mark Shipper wrote an “alternate history” back in 1978 with the long-winded title, Paperback Writer: The life and times of the Beatles, the spurious chronicle of their rise to stardom, their triumphs & disasters, plus the amazing story of their ultimate reunion.
OK, so in an alternate universe, it’s pretty clear the Beatles would have written the same stuff as they did in our universe, but then done some post-production mashups that focused more on the instrumentation and not on the lyrics.
That said, on the track “Saturday Night” there’s a cool lead blues guitar line that’s repeated a lot - I really like that hook - is there a Lennon or McCartney or Harrision solo track in our universe that’s the same as that one?
Also, Michael Jackson would have gotten gender reassignment surgery and gone with a really unimaginative new name.
Well, after that horrible dance-musical they did in 1985—uncharitably described by Vincent Canby as “as if ‘Xanadu’ and ‘Footloose’ had a baby, and left it in a forest to be reared by nymphs, only to be found and raised by wolves instead”—they probably wished they had broken up. Which at least wasn’t as bad as Lennon’s shooting his mouth off with all those defeatist, pro-Soviet spiels back in '91 during Desert Storm. When USSR fell, he probably wished he was dead.
Well, to his due, he’s certainly mellowed out since. And I can’t give the man credit enough for his work with getting the Apple-Apple Records arrangements pushed through—I don’t think iTunes would ever have gotten off the ground if they hadn’t been able to launch with the Beatles catalog. I really don’t.
Early MTV certainly would’ve been different.
I used to have that book. A friend bought it and called me in a state of excitement telling me it was a great book full of little known facts about the Beatles - like did I know that Paul had recorded a solo album of romantic ballads before the Beatles were famous. When I saw it I realised it was a satirical novel. She gave it to me in embarrassment and disgust. I only remember bits and pieces now but the style definitely spoofed the real Beatles bios like Hunter Davies.
An oldie but a goodie… Almost as good as The Girl is Mine 
Y’know, if the Beatles had broken up, we never would have been treated to all those endless Beatles/Phillip Glass/Gary Newman syntho-pop things in the mid-eighties. I used to like electronic music.