Could the Beatles have replaced John Lennon?

Lennon's talents were just average.
It's no secret that he held George Harrison back.

They would have a different sound but still would have been a good band.

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Lennon's talents were just average.

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Yeah. He's just one of the greatest songwriters to ever live.

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Lennon's talents were just average.

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Compared to who?

You can say Dave Grohl was more talented than Kurt Cobain, but look what happened to that band when Kurt was gone. You can't really successfully replace the people who connect to the audience. Especially a singer who is the voice of that art..

Dave is still riding those coattails strong though. I'll give him credit for making the most of it.

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Yeah. He's just one of the greatest songwriters to ever live.

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Exactly, thinking up the stuff they did was a million times more important than the mechanics of playing it.

Nope!

John Lennon has to be there just like Mean Joe Greene has to be in The Steel Curtain,

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There are a ton of Foo Fighter fans that have no idea Dave was in Nirvana, I was one of them.

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Plenty of wings fans probably felt the same

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Harrison wanted out too. So, assuming Paul could have gained legal ownership of the name and talked Ringo into staying with him, would the Beatles w/ Paul and Ringo + 2 have worked? Would have made a little money touring, but probably less successful than he was solo.

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But Paul getting the boot and the rest staying would have been long lasting good.

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As far as Lennon being so great, did he do as much as Paul and George after the Beatles broke up?

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Uh, yeah. He took an extended break in the 70s and still had similar success as a solo artist before he died. Double Fantasy was his best album and it came out weeks before he was killed.

As cheesey as they were, Wings had some really catchy songs. But it's been decades since Paul Mccartney wrote a decent song.

Van Halen sounded like a completely different band when DLR left and Brian Wilson was still involved behind the scenes, so I don't get these comparisons.

AC/DC isn't the Beatles. They only had a couple of hits before they had to replace Bon Scott.

George Harrison had a bigger solo career album than any post Beatle. Ringo actually has more hits on a songwriting credit basis than any other post Beatle. McCartney was the most successful overall with all of his “silly love songs”. Lennon was the least successful by every metric, but he also didn’t want to be. He wanted to make his weird avant garde bullshite with yoko.

If the Beatles had tried to replace him, I think they would have survived and been okay, but I don’t see them maintaining relevancy as a band for very long deep into the 70’s. Zeppelin had already made their sound anachronistic, and I think they needed Lennon’s edginess to progress and drive change rather than simply adapt or react to it.

The reality is they needed each other. They needed Lennon’s edginess to innovate. They needed Paul’s silly love songs and Ringo’s goofy fun songs for mainstream appeal, and they needed George’s emotional depth to be taken seriously. The Beatles was greater than the sum of its parts.