I think all three would have hit it off at the start....with Neil taking George's place. I think they would have created some fantastic music together....toured a few times and broke up alot sooner than the Beatles did. This would have mostly been due to all three having extreme talent along with all three wanting to be in control of the group.

Imagine if Paul Hester tok Ringo's place? Wow, what a group that would have been!

Anyway, I thought I'd add some craziness to the mix with these thoughts.

If Neil had grown up in Liverpool in the 60s....it wouldve been pretty funny having a 5 year old on lead guitar.

While he would've been able to do the Cavern lunchtime gigs during his lunch break from primary school, his mum would never have allowed him to participate in the evening gigs, especially those in the rough parts of town and then certainly would have frowned on him hanging around in coffee shops eatting bacon butties and cadging ciggies off people

And Hamburg! Forget it!

It's an interesting idea. Probably everything would go almost completely differently for him. I think he would have gone into chartered accountancy, actually.

That or the Royal Navy!

Oooh, or both, perhaps. He could have become a chartered accountant in the Royal Navy, and then through an implausible series of events, find himself willingly dragooned (for the good of the nation or, if they were calling it that at that point, the empire) into working for MI-6 on a project of utmost importance that ends up averting something awful that would otherwise have happened, like somebody blows up Big Ben??

In fact, who's to say that didn't actually happen? Big Ben is still standing after all. The possibility is a provocative one.

And if that's the case, we may have to face up to the fact that OUR Neil is in fact some kind of alternate-reality time-travel impostor!

EDIT: Jeez folks. renzo, Martine...I apologize.

I always get so caught up in these hypotheticals.

- what would the songwriting partnership have been though, Finn/Lennon, McCartney/Finn etc?

- the Beatles may never have split up and Paul would simply have got a hearty slap when he came to rehearsal with "Hey lads, I've got this great idea of doing a song about Frogs'.

I think Neil's early development through maturity as a songwriter was very much a solitary road. Didn't they say that Tim and Neil never really wrote together when they were in the Enz?

Today he is a strong, confident, self-assured voice as a songwriter, and he collaborates very comfortably with Tim and others. But the confidence that he has, to be able to do that, is a strength that was born of solitude.

I doubt he'd be anything like the songwriter he became if he came of age in a vastly different creative environment.

Albeit, from what I hear, for many of your "Lennon/McCartney" credited numbers, the song itself was either a John song or a Paul song, with maybe a suggestion here or a bit added there to complete it from the other partner. Of course, many other L/M's were more thoroughgoing in their collaborative aspect. But the point is, Lenny & Macco were very much interested in forging a partnership. I don't think Neil really was, until he'd already fully found his mature voice.

If anything, I'd be extremely doubtful that the Beatles could have had room in their dynamic for another dominant creative voice. If Neil were kicking around at that time, perhaps he'd have served as rival or competitor or foil rather than collaborator.

Another wrinkle is influences. If Neil came up back then, then much of the music that formed his backbone and foundation, most of the music that influenced him would be totally missing. A Neil Finn influenced by the best artists of the 60s and early 70s is not going to be the same Neil, if you subtract those strong influences and substitute those artist's influences.

Crowded Beatles?

quote:

Originally posted by Ellefinn:
Crowded Beatles?

lmao Beatle House

Cool and interesting topic...

I still would like to see and hear Neil and Paul record an album. 12 new Finn/McCartney songs...

as a related note....I just saw in Neil's 40th B Day interview that the song he had wished he had written the most was "Across the Universe". Maybe in a past life he assisted John with this song.

Except that John wrote "Across the Universe" during Neil's current life, and I've never run across a mention that Neil helped John write this song when he was 8 years old or anything in any biography....so that shoots that theory all to pieces, doesn't it?

hehe haha second one from Martine....you got me again......sheeeesh!

having just finished reading a biography on the beatles, i finally figured out my reply to this thread...
He and Lennon wouldn't have gotten on very well at all personality wise..
he and Sir Paul might have..
personally I think he'd have seen what a spectacular guitarist Harrison was going to be and nicked him! maybe bringing Paul in as well...
i don't think he and Lennon would've gone as far as writing songs together as I don't think they'd have liked each other enough.. Lennon comes across from various accounts as a bit of a bully.. I don't think Neil would've liked this..

so.. if Neil had grown up in Liverpool in the 60's.. the world might've had McCartney/Finn or Harrison/Finn.. and would certainly have had more Harrison songs from that era.. which would be great..
but on the other hand, Lennon may never have made it without the others.. and that would be bad!..

thanks for that response Vereor. Very interesting. I should re-read the Beatle biography to get more of a feel for the younger version of the Beatles. Your insight gave me a great feel for that.

neil sure looks and belts that revolution line of saturday sun like a beatle! (on jools). i still think him and paul have to hook up....

quote:

He and Lennon wouldn't have gotten on very well at all personality wise.

That's very true! - Lennon was out of control in the 60's.The numerous "Muggings" in Germany that he orchestrated & that he was a mean drunk.Two brandy Alexanders & he was all sweetness and light.5 or 6 Brandy Alexanders and he was your worst nightmare.He must have been acting like a real arsehole to be kicked out of the Troubadour Club IN 74.Lennon had a big problem with alcohol.He actually stopped drinking & switched that addiction for another - Acid.The story goes that he used to keep a bottle of liquid acid on a shelf in his music room at the Dakota Building in New York.And According to various people in his life at the time he was always out of it.







1974--John Lennon and Harry Nilsson are ejected from the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles for causing a disturbance during The Smothers Brothers' act. Out of their minds on Brandy Alexanders, Lennon and Nilsson get a little too rowdy for the management’s taste. The Smothers Brothers said that they were partly responsible, having talked to the drunken Lennon from the stage; they also accused the newspapers of blowing the incident all out of proportion, even though there are photos that clearly show John lashing out at those who are escorting him off the premises. Lennon and Nilsson sent flowers and apologies to The Smothers Brothers the next day. A club waitress claimed that Lennon assaulted her, but that charge would be dismissed. Says Tommy Smothers: “It was a big Hollywood opening. During our first set, I heard someone yelling about pigs...it was fairly disgusting. I couldn’t figure out who it was. But I knew Harry and John were there. The heckling got so bad that our show was going downhill rapidly. No one cared, because it was just a happening anyway, but there was a scuffle going on and we stopped the show. Flowers came the next day apologizing. My wife ended up John Lennon talks about being thrown out of the Troubadour nightclub in Los Angeles in a interview on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1975.with Lennon’s glasses because of the punches that were thrown. Then he went outside because he was still angry and kicked the car parker.” Says John: “I got drunk and shouted...it was my first night on Brandy Alexanders, that’s brandy and milk, folks. I was with Harry Nilsson, who didn’t get as much coverage as me...the bum. He encouraged me. I usually have someone there who says ‘okay Lennon, shut up.’ There was some girl who claimed that I hit her, but I didn’t hit her at all, you know. She just wanted some money and I had to pay her off, because I thought it would harm my immigration. So I was drunk...when it’s Errol Flynn, the showbiz writers say ‘those were the days, when men were men.’ When I do it, I’m a bum. So it was a mistake, but hell, I’m human. I was drunk in Liverpool and I smashed up phone boxes, but it didn’t get into the papers then.


Neil Finn & John Lennon - I don't think so.

quote:

Originally posted by renzo:
neil sure looks and belts that revolution line of saturday sun like a beatle! (on jools). i still think him and paul have to hook up....

I'd love it if Neil and Macca worked together

we're on fantasy island but what the hell...

i definitely agree that jl was a thug as a teen and never really fully let that go (see julian's comments about what happened to him for giggling when he saw j&y naked at the kitchen table in the mid-70s). such a troubled man i think, who never came to grips with his situation.

i think neil's about as straight as macca though. to the extent that john would have seen him as a wimp, john was clearly astute enough to recognize talent - i think he would have been attracted to the talent and found a way to make it work for a while. he seemed to like corrupting folks too (especially if it gave him an opportunity to disabuse the child of any notion of respect for parents) so i think he would have found neil an interesting challenge on that front.

i think the same holds for neil in reverse - would have found john to be a lout but a talented lout. neil's demonstrated enough flashes of being susceptible to being disrespectful to authority / other's property or feelings too i think - i think it's mentioned in SSS that he assembled the hotel furniture in the swimming pool(?), they all enjoyed purposely having fender benders with the rental cars (Enzology), and neil studiously read the Little Red Schoolbook that timbo gave him (Enough Rope w/ Andrew Denton).

i think there would have been enough sparks on both sides to see a musical union. talent loves talent.

caveat is that i think neil would have to have been younger than john (as was macca w/ john and as was neil w/ tim). and, much like macca, over time i think john would have tired of neil as being too straight. and i think neil would have been ready for new challenges too after the creative relationship mellowed. i don't think neil's anywhere near as insensitive as paul was though so i think it wouldn't have been such a harsh dissolution. can't imagine neil buying extra shares of northern songs (at least w/out disclosing) for one thing, and can't imagine him offending the others in the studio the way macca did. in macca's defense, i don't know how anything would have gotten done without some bossiness towards the end. that was a band that clearly had to end or at least pause. so glad they broke up and kept it that way. (would have been interested in a songwriting reunion between jl and macca though in the form of a nerk twins album (a la finn bros 1) or a collaboration on some tracks on each other's solo lps - a la catherine's wheels, strangeness & charm).

don't know how neil would have survived the sex and violence of hamburg and liverpool though. wonder if he would have been pete bested or, alternatively, done a stu sutcliffe and exited.

the speculations are endless

So very hypothetical, but here goes...

Had Neil grown up in Liverpool in the 50s & early 60s like John and Paul, he would be a somewhat different person than the kid from Te Awamutu. How different is hard to say, it's the old nature vs nurture question, but the surrounding culture plays a significant role in who we become.

So I think he would have got on with both. They would have loved him because he had actual musical training (in my hypothetical universe, Neil-in-Liverpool has the same family and accoutrements as he had in reality), something both John and Paul craved but lacked. As for the rough and tumble of adolescence in that time, working class kids were usually what in the US were called hoods. They were rough. John wasn't unusual from what I understand -- it does seem he was an alpha male by nature, and of course had a painful childhood with the defensive exterior that breeds. What was unusual coming from his background was his strong artistic side and his intellectual bent.

Just as happened with Lennon/McCartney, I expect the early stuff would have been truly collaborative and then, as they matured as artists, Neil/John/Paul would have diverged artistically. Difficult not to when you have such powerhouse talents in the same little band.

As far as pairings go, I thing Neil and John would have been the one. Indeed, Neil's stuff sometimes has Lennonesque echoes to me, particularly in chord changes and phrasings. Neil's unique grasp of poignant beauty combined with John's straight from the heart power? Mmmm. I can dream.

Neil and Paul I don't see being as potent a combination, as they might dwell in the facile pop they can do so well and miss out on the stuff that moves my heart.

All just my opinion, of course.

I think a Finn/McCartney collaboration is way overdue.I bet some Fab tunes would surface from it - should it ever happen.Surely the Egos could be left @ the door and this actually eventuate.Times a Ticking Lads.

Okay, but what if John and Paul had grown up in Te Awamutu ?Would it just be swapping sides or something bigger?