From this point onward, it’s very difficult if not pointless to continue this thought experiment.  Not only is there no more new Lennon material, but both George and Ringo took extended hiatuses in the mid-80s.  Ringo did return with the All-Starr Band and the comeback album Time Takes Time while George did return with the Traveling Wilburys and the comeback album Cloud Nine.  While Time Takes Time marked the beginning of a series of pleasant-enough Ringo albums every three or four years from here on out, Cloud Nine proved to be the last studio album that George released until after his death 14 years later.  In fact, were it not for his death, George would probably still be halfheartedly tinkering around with Brainwashed.

Paul on the other hand can’t even stop making music while he sleeps.  Despite being seen as less experimental than Lennon, McCartney dabbled in everything from ambient electronica to classical oratorio.  Paul even recorded an album of songbook standards like Ringo’s Sentimental Journey and two albums of fifties rock covers like John’s Rock’n’Roll.  But even on these covers albums, Paul couldn’t help but penning an original or two.

While Paul tried to stay in the limelight by collaborating with whoever was hot at the moment (Michael Jackson, Elvis Costello, Youth, Kanye West), he never again was quite the hit-maker he was in the sixties and seventies.  While John’s tragic death gave his life the appearance a fairytale ending it didn’t really have, it also catapulted him in the public consciousness way above his old songwriting partner.  For years Lennon was seen as the tortured genius while McCartney was dismissed as a commercial hack.

In recent years though, there has been a reevaluation of Paul’s role in the Beatles (as well as Yoko’s) that has led to a definite diminishing of John’s beautification in the public eye.  I think a lot of problem is that if Paul releases a duff album (and he has) it is easier to ignore or forgive because he’s go like 30+ albums to choose from.  But since John’s solo career only lasted ten years, and five of them he didn’t release anything; every Rock’n’Roll or Some Time In New York City is that much more frustrating as it is another missed opportunity that we are never going to get back.

1982’s The John Lennon Collection was the first of seemingly never ending series of greatest hits compilations from John designed to make sure he kept having product in the marketplace.  Some were better than others, some even had specific themes or tie-ins, but mostly they all boil down to Shaved Fish plus Stand By Me and the Double Fantasy singles.  Five years later, Paul’s All The Best appeared, the first compilation to treat Wings as just one period in McCartney’s overall career.  Unlike Wings’ Greatest this one did use the two discs necessary to showcase Paul’s prodigious hit-making talents, although the specific hits featured would differ based on the territory it was released in and what songs were hits there.

1989 saw the release of both Best Of Dark Horse 1976-1989 and Starr Struck: The Best Of Ringo Starr, Volume 2.  While both of these tried to correct for the slights of Blast From Your Past and The Best Of George Harrison, since both Ringo’s and George’s biggest hits came from the first five years of their solo careers, which these new compilations couldn’t include, not of these packages felt inessential and are now out of print.  It wasn’t until Photograph: The Very Best Of Ringo Starr (2007) and Let It Roll: Songs By George Harrison (2009) that George and Ringo finally got some really comprehensive collections, although to add insult to injury, Let It Roll includes a number of George’s Beatles songs, even if they are the live renditions from Concert For Bangladesh.  And the tracks were personally selected by George’s widow, Olivia.  They even used a Beatles-era picture of George for the cover.

Really the only point of possible connection between the ex-Beatles’ career are the songs either right before or right after The Beatles Anthology when Paul, George, and Ringo all had tunes produced by ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne.  While George was the only one who let Jeff produce an entire album; if you take some of the tracks from Cloud Nine and add the two from Time Takes Time and the half of Flaming Pie that has Lynne’s fingerprints all over them, you at least have a playlist of former Beatles that has a consistent sound.  It’s more ELO’s Zoom than anything Beatle-y, but it’s something.  You can even add Free As A Bird and Real Love (the Phantom Menace of Beatles-dom) to give John as much of a presence on that playlist as possible.

While there are a few good songs and even a couple of decent albums (like the aforementioned Cloud Nine and Time Takes Time as well as Flowers In The Dirt) after John’s passing, none of it ever felt as vital or as essential as those seventies albums.  With George and John gone (and Ringo never much of a songwriter), by the 2000s the only new ex-Beatle material we’re going to get are either unearthed outtakes, or something new from Paul.  As McCartney has aged into the elder statesman and by-default Beatles spokesperson, he is far more content with his legacy.  He is no longer trying to prove to the world that he is more than just that band from the sixties.  He is ok with his place in popular culture and more than happy to go out and flog whatever video game or acrobatic circus the Beatles have licensed their name too.  While I’m glad he has found this personal contentment, I think we may have seen the last truly awe-inspiring work from the collective once known as the Beatles.