Had the Beatles never met each other...which would have been the most successful?
Coinstartled
Posts: 10,135 ✭✭✭✭✭
List in order of record sales. Solo or if they had landed in another group.
- McCartney
- Harrison
- Lennon
- Ringo
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Comments
McCartney
Lennon
Harrison
Starkey
I think John was a bit more talented than Paul, but Paul was more dedicated to music and John was interested in other things.
Harrison a HUGE step down and Ringo was not really a songwriter, so don't think he would have done much unless he found another great band.
CS, I notice you like music.
Are you an ex DJ or connected to the music industry? Do you sit in your house and play 45's all-day?
This, but for slightly different reasons. Lennon was immensely more talented than Paul, but Paul would have had far more radio success and album sales as he wrote more pop/top 40 kinda stuff.
pretty much, but sometimes coin gets out and goes to the park
you'll never be able to outrun a bad diet
The Coin outed as he ponders his next post.
You have me confused with the other Mark from the OFR.
I do believe Lennon had just as much if not more talent than Paul, but his songwriting interests weren't as much on the pop side and he wasn't as focused on the songwriting, so I think Paul would have had more success. Not meant as anything derogatory to Lennon, he just had other more important things on his priority list.
I don't buy Lennon as more talented. McCartney was a world class bass player AND world class songwriter. Lennon was a world class song writer. McCartney was a better singer.
If they had never met, I think their success levels look like this:
1) McCartney
(gigantic gap)
2) Lennon
3) Harrison
4) Starr
Completely agree, and I'll add that McCartney played pretty much every instrument very well.
And I also think you need to add another "(gigantic gap)" between George and Ringo. I like Ringo, and I liked some of his solo stuff, but I think his chances of having a solo career at all without first being a Beatle were essentially nil.
They released a movie around six months ago, sort of about that, called "Yesterday."
I didn't see it but the previews didn't look too bad. Like a typical formula movie.
The obvious answer is McCartney. Not even remotely debatable.
Lennon second, but not a close second.
Harrison a very distant third.
Ringo nothing more than an above average club drummer.
All of them have stated that that they weren't very good musicians, and i think that none of them could read music. But they knew their instruments like the back of their hands, and had an ear for creating new sounds. Together they were lightening in a bottle.
One thing all of them had was charisma - tons of it.
And don't forget George Martin who is rightfully known as the fifth Beatle and all four of them agree with that.
I'm just glad they met or we never would have heard Rubber Soul.
Lennon. Not even close.
Dave
For all you McCartney guys (I am also a huge fan of him), if you look into the actual number of #1 hits they wrote,both during and after the Beatles, it's VERY close and Lennon took quite a few years off. John was also quite a good "pop" songwriter, but evolved away from that, saying his early stuff was "garbage".
John was also an incredible guitar player, (as was Paul) some lead, but a lot more rhythm, which can be a lot more difficult than playing scales.
Both were phenomenal musicians, I don't see much of a gap either way.
Well my question was not who is your favorite or who is the best musician, but who would sell the most records.
On the first two criteria my answer would be Harrison.
But women buy most of the records and Paul had the made for TV look. He also wrote and performed Yesterday whick was heard by every American 128,493 times.
Lennon is not my favorite, but he’s the best song writer. He’d have written and sold the most, likely followed by Paul.
Dave
The most successful songwriters in terms of number one singles are John Lennon (1940-80) and Paul McCartney (b. 18 Jun 1942). McCartney is credited as the writer on 32 number one hits in the US to Lennons 26 (with 23 co-written), whereas Lennon authored 29 UK number ones to McCartney's 28 (25 co-written).
Dowlding`s research revealed that Lennon and McCartney shared the workload about evenly on only 17 songs, and most Beatles songs were written solely by one or the other. Lennon wrote 61 songs credited to ''Lennon-McCartney'' entirely by himself, and McCartney composed 43 on his own.
Both brilliant, yet different writers and the fact that they were in the same band "competing" with each other probably meant a lot as well.
Too close to call.
The composing side of the discussion is certainly important, but Elvis and Sinatra didn't write much of anything.
It is the performing side that is critical. McCartney had the distinct advantage as the better showman.
FWIW, Rolling Stone ranked him 3rd all-time.
Well, your question was who would have been more successful , not who was the better "showman". McCartney was by far more interested in resuming touring with the Beatles after they had decided to stop in 1966. John (and George) were not.
John did go back to playing live after the Beatles broke up.
Any successful performer NEEDS good songs to sing. Case in point is the Monkees who went from selling more records in 1967 than the Beatles, and Rolling Stones to nowhere when they decided to do their own writing and playing.
Neither Paul nor John were as good of entertainers as Elvis or Sinatra, who just might be the top 2 singer/entertainers of all time. Both of whom also became movie "stars" as well. Sinatra even won an Academy Award.
Interestingly enough after one of their first auditions for a record company, John was rated as having the better singing voice.
That's like finishing third in the Ugliest Dog contest though. There are some truly incredible, transformational bassists (Geddy, Les, Flea, etc.), but any average rhythm guitarist could perform bass duties as well as McCartney and in general, bassists are at the bottom of the pecking order in any band.
You guys are not giving credit due regarding Harrison. He was the best guitarist of the 3 by far far and away! He was right up there with Clapton.
I have got him ahead of Lennon. Agree that he was the best musician and maybe the best songwriter at least post Fab 4. Clapton though was a few rungs ahead.
Agree...….I said "up there" not as good! But very good.
When your top song is "My Sweet Lord", and you blatantly copied the chords from "He's So Fine", how good of a musician can you be?
Placing George Harrison and Eric Clapton in the same sentence is ridiculously silly. Clapton is one of the greatest guitar players of all time. Harrison is nothing more than a competent lead guitarist.
Harrison was the thinking man's Beatle.
Great here at the Bangladesh gig.
And he was smart enough to employ brilliant sideman Leon Russell, not a screeching Yoko or Linda as Lennon and McCartney did.
C'mon, Linda was amazing on the tambourine.
The bottom line with the Beatles is that the whole was much greater than the sum of its parts.
This isn't a unique phenomenon. It's happened with others who had fantastic bands but didn't do very well attempting solo careers.
I wouldn't call any of the Beatles solo careers a "flop", of course not. However none came close to attaining the spectacular creativity and success of the Beatles.