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.

This was a tough one to decide how to divvy up.  John’s 3 pre-Plastic Ono Band A-sides are some of his most iconic work.  Yet I’d hate to short-change my favorite solo Lennon albums just to make room for all of these tracks.  Especially since, in contrast, McCartney only has like half an album to pick from.  I even toyed with the idea of pairing Paul’s debut with just those three singles and then matching Plastic Ono Band with Ram.  I ultimately decided against this because not only are there not enough John songs to work with but because McCartney and Plastic Ono Band are so similar in their own ways.

Putting aside McCartney’s soundtrack to The Family Way and Lennon’s three albums of experimental non-music with Yoko, these are both John and Paul’s first real albums.  There are some interesting parallels.  Both are very stripped down and intimate.  For Paul this means a cozy and quaint like quiet at home in front of the fire; for John this means an intense and exposed like a raw-nerve.  

Paul was probably trying to scoop the Beatles’ break-up to promote his solo album and so he pads his debut out with a few instrumentals that feel far more “unfinished” than any of John’s experiments with Yoko that actually got the Unfinished Music moniker attached to them.  He has also included a completely unnecessary instrumental retread of a song that had already appeared on the album (Junk).  This gives McCartney something of a rushed feel, which adds to its rough-hewn charm, but also makes the album feel a little under-done.  It even ends with an unnecessary, heavy-panting drum solo from Paul.  He’s not a bad drummer, but Ringo is much better, and it took a lot of time and cajoling to get him to play even the one quick drum solo he has at the end of the Abbey Road medley.  McCartney was released on 4/17/1970 and Plastic Ono Band came out 238 days later on 12/11/1970.   So clearly John had more time to work on his response, as well crafting three pretty popular singles while Paul was stretching just to fill his one LP.

While Paul used several songs that had been bandied around since the Beatles days (Teddy Boy for Let It Be and Junk for The White Album as well as Hot As Sun which actually dates from 1959), John was deliberately writing from the perspective of a post-Beatles life.  Plastic Ono Band was recorded while John was deep in his fascination with Dr. Janov’s primal scream therapy, and it shows (for good or for ill).  This album may be John’s finest record as a solo artist.  It is painfully honest and sometimes embarrassingly direct.  It can be a bit much to take, but it is a painful and powerful listen.  It’s a shame he never again tried anything so vulnerable and confessional.

Without each other to turn to any more, Lennon and McCartney are turning to their newly minted spouses as their new sparring partners and sounding boards.  Paul credits wife Linda with backing vocals while John gives Yoko credit for “wind” (?!).  Paul played all the instruments on his album while John used Ringo on drums and Beatles’ longtime associate, Klaus Voorman, on bass, so both keep the sound and the sidemen very much in the Beatles family.

While both John and Paul and trying to live up to the initial ethos of the Get Back project and make things a little less-produced, George is taking his new-found freedom to go all out.  He releases a three-LP set and let’s Phil Spector go to town with his “wall of sound”.  While Plastic Ono Band was also technically co-produced by the notoriously lush (in both sense of the word) Spector, you could hardly tell by listening to it.  Notice that being “stripped-down” does not necessarily mean “unplugged”.  George’s lush productions feature lots of acoustic guitars, while both Paul and John used more distorted electric guitars in general.  I had toyed with the idea of using the collection of primarily All Things Must Pass demos that was released as Early Takes, Vol. 1 as the basis of this first round since it more closely mirrored Paul and John’s aesthetic during this period, but ultimately it felt a little disingenuous to poor George who was finally getting a chance to shine here.

Since George did release one three album set on his first time out of the gate and then waited nearly three years to deliver a follow-up, I have used one disc per hypothetical album.  To the surprise of many, Harrison’s was the biggest hit initially.  And all of the big hits from All Things Must Pass come from this first disc, including the double-A side of My Sweet Lord/Isn’t It A Pity, as well as What Is Life. 

For Ringo’s songs, I generally stuck with his singles rather than his full albums, since he didn’t have many full albums to draw from at first.  His first album, the standards covers collection Sentimental Journey actually pre-dated the “end” of The Beatles, and therefore, I felt was as disqualified as Two Virgins or Wonderwall Music.  His second album, also from 1970 and also all covers, is the country flavored Beaucoups Of Blues which was recorded in Nashville with Pete Drake and a bunch of profession session musicians.  The title track was released as a single with the non-album B-side, Coochy Coochy.  This song is the only the third solo songwriting credit that Ringo has received after Don’t Pass Me By and Octopus’s Garden, so I thought it was fitting that it should be included.

Already violating the “four songs apiece” rule, I have opened this round with The Lovely Linda and closed it with My Mummy’s Dead, two sub-one-minute ditties to work as an invocation and benediction for the album, mirroring each at the start and the beginning.

For the first real song, I have used John’s majestic Instant Karma! as it is a good opening.  While there were no singles officially released from McCartney it was always clear from the beginning that the stand-out track was Maybe I’m Amazed (which was belatedly released as a single from the live Wings Over America album).  While some of the luster of George’s My Sweet Lord has dimmed from the plagiarism lawsuit, it still is one of the biggest hits of George’s career, and it’s hard to deny it inclusion in this opening triumvirate of hits.

But such over-the-top grandiosity can’t be maintained, and we go from here to Ringo’s humble Beacuoups Of Blues.  For the next track, I picked Cold Turkey a song that John had even tried to get the Beatles to record after Abbey Road but was vetoed by Paul and George because it was too blatantly about drugs.  Still it is a cool, rollicking, funky song that reminds me a little of Come Together.  I would’ve loved to hear what bass part Paul would’ve come up for it since it is so prominent.  Perhaps as a joke, this song is followed up by Junk – a song that is not actually about junk as the drug slang term, but actually sung from the point of view of items being left outside for a garage sale.  The album side wraps up with Isn’t It A Pity a song that apes “Hey Jude” both in its length and its endlessly repeating chorus at the end.

Side two opens with the raw emotions of John’s Mother which are immediately undercut by Paul’s little less sincere maternal paean Teddy Boy.  From here we get a pair of country numbers featuring Pete Drake on pedal steel.  First we have the one of the few fun songs from this period of George’s Behind That Locked Door followed by Ringo’s goofy one-chord jam Coochy Coochy. 

God may be John’s big statement from Plastic Ono Band but I wasn’t sure about including a song with the line “I don’t believe in Beatles” on even a completely made-up Beatles album.  Give Peace A Chance is a great slogan and catchy chorus, but there’s no song there, and even less of a recording, so I chose to leave that off.  Instead I have decided to give Lennon’s final slot to Working Class Hero.  It is one of my all-time favorite John tracks ever.  Then again, I’m a huge Dylan fan.  From there we go to the rather straightforward riff rocker of Oo You before closing with George’s Let It Down.  I know I skipped What Is Life but frankly, I have never been too much of a fan of that song.  I’m trying to temper some of my more obnoxious contrarian tendencies and include most of the big hits and singles, but I think I will just pass here.

It is an odd and not terribly coherent listen as a playlist, but it does contain some of their best music as a foursome.  Perhaps they were still riding that Beatles-high, or were all trying to prove something to each other, but this is a good batch of songs, and unlike some rounds, I had a hard time whittling these down to a mere fourteen tracks.