If the Beatles hadn't existed, but George managed to get a break in showbiz, would he have been relatively successful as a band leader/singer-songwriter?
Music would likely have perhaps been Stones/Elvis driven.
His voice was average, was quiet although likeable, was ''allowed" or simply produced about 2 songs per LP?
The Beatles altogether were a phenomenon, but I am not sure how successful they would have been as solo artists or parts of another band. Obviously John and Paul had songwriting talent, but without their ability to help each on their songs and compete to make better ones would they have been just as good? Also George didn't start writing songs until much later, so it is possible he might have ended up like a Jimmy Page. Maybe just a lead guitarist that sometimes would sing a lead vocal. Ringo definitely wouldn't have been a big star without being a Beatles.
shareThey all lifted each other up. But McCartney's talent was stupendous and unstoppable. Lennon would have no doubt become an important folk singer and songwriter. Harrison would have been a successful solo artist. And Ringo would have been a key component of some successful band.
shareI can't remember exactly, but there was a stage play a few years ago that speculated about The Beatles breaking up before they became famous, & meeting up again some years later. Paul had moved to America, changed his name & became a big pop star. I forget exactly how John, George & Ringo were depicted & what they ended up doing.
EDIT: It was a book that was adapted into a stage play-"Liverpool Fantasy"
https://www.amazon.com/Liverpool-Fantasy-Novel-Larry-Kirwan/dp/1560254971
It's 1987, and the Beatles are gathering in Liverpool for a reunion. It has been twenty-five years since John Lennon walked out of the Parlophone studios, taking George and Ringo with him. Paul, American-speaking and -acting, has become the world-famous Las Vegas entertainer Paul Montana, and he's visiting Liverpool for the first time since 1962, hoping to reunite with his boyhood chums, the once "hottest little quartet—in Liverpool." Father George, now a Jesuit priest, is recovering from a nervous breakdown; John is embittered, alcoholic, unemployed, and on the dole. His wife has left him, and young Julian has joined the fascist National Front. Ringo lives on the earnings of his entrepreneurial hairdressing wife while he and John sit in weekends with old rivals, Gerry and the Pacemakers. It is Lennon's curse that he can imagine what might have been. Liverpool Fantasy is a blackly comic meditation on the enduring hazards of friendship, the alchemy of collaboration, and what a world without the Beatles—that is, without idealism—looks like.
I think so, he lacked a bit of courage to step up but was undoubtedly a great melody maker and my close second favorite beatle
shareHarrison was a talented singer/songwriter and a first-rate guitarist. His voice didn't challenge those of Lennon or McCartney, but his songwriting did, on occasion. He wasn't "allowed" to have a song or two per LP, they were included because they were good. Proof of this assertion is his first album after the breakup of the Beatles, "All Things Must Pass" a critical and commercial success that hit No. 1, with three hit singles, and was mostly made up of songs the Beatles chose to ignore.
share