Just a few notes on the listings…  Any songs that are struck through are actually sung by someone other than the specified ex-Beatles, whether it is Yoko Ono or Denny Laine.  Meanwhile songs in italics are instrumentals.  These two types of songs are far less likely to make the cut for the album, as there are not a lot of previous examples of these two types of song on the officially released Beatles albums.

While they both stumbled in Round Three and picked themselves up in Round Four, it isn’t until this round that John and Paul finally get what they’re going for.  Of course by this point, what they’re going for has diverged completely.  For John this meant commercial success.  While Lennon had sent his former drummer a congratulatory telegram for the Ringo album, he was probably a bit bitter and only have joking when he asked Ringo to wire him a hit song. 

For Lennon, being the last Beatle without a #1 single probably made him feel like a fraud or a fake whose success in The Beatles was a fluke – or even worse, all Paul’s doing.  So John took a look at what was popular on the radio in 1974, and decided to mimic that.  And what was popular at that time was Elton John.  So John essentially wrote his own Elton John song.  To make it even more convincing, he even had Elton play piano and sing with him on Whatever Gets You Through The Night, and despite Lennon’s initial skepticism the song became his first hit… and last during his lifetime.

Paul, on the other hand, had no issue achieving commercial success.  McCartney could have a hit singing Mary Had A Little Lamb (and did).  However the critical acclaim that the Beatles enjoyed eluded Paul in the early 70s.  For whatever reason, the critics had their knives out for him, whether they blamed Paul for breaking up the Beatles or they just felt his particular brand of whimsy was at odds with the anger and angst of the era.  To win the music journalists over to his side, McCartney was going to have to give himself a winning story of overcoming adversity to try and get the cognoscenti empathizing with him again.  In that vein, Paul decided to record his next album in a dilapidated studio in Lagos, Nigeria. 

However fate was going to make the recording of Band On The Run that much harder for him as 40% of the band ran away on the eve of flying down to Africa for this recording adventure.  This left Wings as essentially as the same one-man-band that recorded McCartney only with Denny Laine guesting on guitar.  (I can’t imagine Linda was adding much on the keyboards.)  Paul was so grateful, he even let Denny sing and co-write No Words for the album.  The gambit paid off and this was exactly the kind of hard-luck-story that made publications feel okay about saying that McCartney was cool again, even if in hindsight, bot Ram and McCartney are as good if not better than Band On The Run.

While John and Paul were finally fully recovered from their respective missteps, George hadn’t yet had his full-on landing-on-his-face moment like Wild Life or Some Time In New York City.  Maybe that’s why Harrison decided to tour America in ’74.  I can’t figure out why the one Beatle who hated touring the most agreed to this plan otherwise.  George, who was used to only have to sing a couple songs per show, was ill-equipped to be a front-man and soon wore out his already weak and fragile voice.  To make matters worse, while rehearsing and touring at night, George was trying to finish up an album he could plug on the tour during the day.  The result is the rather hoarse Dark Horse.  While the album is nowhere as disastrous as its reputation suggests, it’s not one of George’s best.  It took Harrison three years to craft the follow-up to All Things Must Pass and George just didn’t have the songs written yet.  There are only nine tracks on the album, one of which is a cover and another is an instrumental.  It’s almost as skimpy as Wild Life.  Still it’s kind of refreshing to finally hear George in a little less of an extravagant setting than his first two albums.

Ringo also wants to prove that Ringo wasn’t a fluke and that he could have hits on his own without relying on the other Beatles.  As a result, George and Paul are not to be found on Goodnight Vienna, leaving only John to help out.  Still Starr doesn’t have the songwriting chops to fill up an album on his own and once again makes an album with more than a little help from his famous friends.  This time around he’s got Harry Nilsson, Elton John, and Allen Toussaint helping him out as well as number of covers to fill out the album.  Still Ringo managed to release four singles from the album, and while it wasn’t praised as much as Ringo, it was still considered a worthwhile follow-up.

While Band On The Run is still one of Paul’s best-selling and critically lauded records, Walls & Bridges hasn’t had nearly the same longevity.  John himself decried the album as workmanlike craftsmanship in his later years. Which is a shame because, other than Plastic Ono Band, this is my favorite Lennon solo album.  Relocating to LA and hanging out with Harry Nilsson and the Hollywood Vampires got John in touch with a much more sympathetic back of studio musicians, especially Jesse Ed Davis.  The songwriting is far more personal than anything on Mind Games, and while the production is much better than on that album, you almost wish that John had gone for a stripped down, Plastic Ono Band­-styled approach to these songs.  If you can track down the out-of-print posthumous collection Menlove Ave, Side Two is precisely that: raw direct recordings that show how good the songs on Walls & Bridges really are.

This playlist opens with #9 Dream, the second Walls & Bridges single.  While the song itself is as weak and wimpy as anything on Mind Games, it works so much better with this more confident production.  It even became something of a minor hit.  From there we have the title track to Band On The Run.  I will admit that some of my favorite tracks on both that album and Walls & Bridges are not the singles, so I had a hard time balancing what I wanted to hear and what would make the most sense for this playlist.

After on title track, we get another with George’s Dark Horse.  While the brag that you shouldn’t have underestimated Harrison would’ve made more sense after the success of All Things Must Pass instead of 4 years later, when everyone has already got their expectations raised and then disappointed.  Still it’s a fun track and an ideal choice for the lead single, as well the name of George’s future record label and his personal avatar.

Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote the goofy Snookeroo for Ringo, while it’s not quite the humble-brag of I’m The Greatest from the last album it still works pretty well.  From the Elton John-written song to the Elton John pastiche and duet we have John’s hit Whatever Gets You Through The Night.  While I’m glad John was finally able to get his number one single, this song is a little too peppy and poppy for the real heart (and hurt) of the album, which are mostly anguished cries for forgiveness and mercy from Yoko Ono.

Another big hit single that isn’t as good to me as the album tracks is Jet.  I debated swapping it out for Mamunia, but I figured people will really want Jet on there, although I don’t really understand why.  Side Two ends with another single, George’s Ding Dong, Ding Dong.  While there are plenty of rock songs written for Christmas (including big hits for both John and Paul), there is a relative dearth of New Year’s Eve carols.  As such, this slight song manages to have the entire holiday niche to itself.

Side Two opens with sounds of wolves howling and John’s Scared.  There are a number of vulnerable, pained songs like this that I considered for this slot: the Harry Nilsson collaboration Old Dirt Road, the jazzy Bless You, even the How Do You Sleep? for Phil Spector/Allen Klein, Steel & Glass.  Really any one of them would’ve worked to introduce a darker undercurrent to Side Two.  From there we have the strident bop of Mrs. Vanderbilt, a tune that was little more than an album track.  In 2008 Paul had a web poll to add a new song to his live set list, and this was the track that the fans voted for given some belated acclaim.  I have no idea what the song is actually about, but it is one of my favorites from the album.

From there we go to Maya Love one of the funkiest tracks on Dark Horse.  I know it gets a lot of crap, but I personally always loved the cover of Bye-Bye Love that George recorded almost entirely by himself for this album.  I think a lot of critics were mad that Harrison had pretended that both his ex-wife Pattie and her new boyfriend, Eric Clapton, played on the track – especially he had rewritten a few of the lyrics to referenced that whole situation.  While that may have left a poor taste in lot of people’s mouths, I still like that version.  Just not enough to include it over Maya Love on this playlist.

Since we have the title tracks to Dark Horse and Band On The Run, it only felt right to include the Lennon-penned (It’s All Down To) Goodnight Vienna.  Besides it much more appealing than the other singles, the oldies cover Only You and the No-No Song which in hindsight knowing about Ringo’s battles with alcoholism is not nearly as cute or funny as it must’ve seemed when it was released at the time.

Speaking of songs whose perception has changed over time, there’s the achingly beautiful Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down And Out).  With all the accolades and praise that was heaped on John after his death in 1980, it’s hard not to hear this song without a bitter, knowing irony.  Even John knew this would happen – and how sincere or lasting this type of praise is.  George’s anger and apathy is even more apparently in the appropriately titled B-side, I Don’t Care Anymore.  Unlike the tracks on the album itself, this tune feels as ragged and rough and rushed musically as George’s vocals otherwise imply.  While he dismisses up top as merely a B-side, it may be one of George’s most sincerely felt and personal tunes.

After two bummer tracks like that we need some appropriately apocalyptic yet grandiose to close this playlist off.  Rivaling even Live and Let Die is the climatic Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five.  There’s really no other place to put a song like this except at the end of an album, even if it didn’t feature a brief snippet of Band On The Run as a reprise.  It is only fitting for a round that feels as much like a triumph over adversity as this round.  In a lot of ways this is the ending of the last part of the ex-Beatles story where things really line-up neatly.  The next round will focus on what each former Beatle wants to do with their life and career from here on out now that they have accomplished their goals and proven to the world, themselves, and their former band-mates that they are more than just that one band from the 1960s.