Hacker News Reader

The question is, would the Stones be as popular today if they also split up after 7 years at the top? I'd argue they would since all of their best work (with the exception of Exile on Main St. - which was released in their 8th year) was released in this time.

Of course I'm not going to argue that anyone is as popular as the Beatles, but I'm pretty sure the Stones would also have had universal long lasting popularty if they had only been around for the same amount of time.

You also can't compare the wealth of McCartney to Jagger. Firstly, McCartney had a very successful solo career after the Beatles, during which time he released way more albums than the Stones in the same time period and did his own share of touring. Secondly, McCartney owns a significant music publishing catalogue and has other business ventures.

I had the impression most of their fame came from the fact that they are the oldest rock band alive.

You take that back!

Oh, is there an older rock band?

GP is arguing that their fame is derived from attributes other than their age, not the fact that they are indeed the oldest rockers around

I can base this only on my father's anecdotes as a guitar player from that time, but he told me that the musical complexity and chord progressions used in the Beatles' songs were significantly different than the music he had heard from other bands of the time. I'm not sure if one would say "mindblowing", but they were the kind of musician that inspired other musicians, not merely audiences. [According to my father, at least]

> You also can't compare the wealth of McCartney to Jagger. Firstly[...]

I'd say firstly because even if they had 100% comparable careers comparing the current net worth of two people makes no sense when you're trying to establish what was a more "successful" approach in terms of earned income.

Maybe Jagger made way more money than McCartney and just spent it all on private jets, gambling etc., while McCartney invested it.

Or the question is, would the Stones be as popular if Mick Jagger was shot in 1980?

I don’t get how this is a fair comparison. The Beatles could hardly still be playing.

The Beatles broke up a full ten years before John Lennon was shot. That only cemented their fame, it didn't do much to create it nor did it do anything for the band while they were active.

Plenty of bands from then have toured with original members of a couple replacements years after they initially broke up. The Rolling Stones, for instance have changed much of their line-up. Pink Floyd is another example.

What does that have to do with the Beatles?

If John Lennon had not been killed, the Beatles could have toured in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010’s by reuniting or replacing a different member or two. Many other bands of that era have broken up and then reunited to tour.

> the Beatles split up after a mere seven years at the top

Not exactly. The Beatles, as a business, continues to this day. It's controlled by the remaining living Beatles and their direct heirs. (Basically, Paul, Ringo, Yoko (John's Wife), and Dhani Harrison. They're pretty active with various ways to re-introduce, such as actively promoting the movies, the Beatles Rockband game, the Love remixes, ect.

The Beatles even reunited in the mid-90s to make the Anthologies. They used demo recordings approved by Yoko to work with John. In the films they openly admit that, if John was still alive, they'd probably have reunited in the 1980s.

The difference between the Beatles, and other bands, is that they can't bring in replacement musicians. They decided that it's only the Beatles when it's John, Paul, George and Ringo. This is unlike the Beach Boys where there is a "Beach Boys" touring band that only has Mike Love and session musicians. (Still a fun show, BTW.) Otherwise, Paul and Ringo could get together, bring in some session musicians, and call themselves "The Beatles."

And, an edit that I should add:

Some bands that stay together for a long time change in ways where the band is fundamentally different than when they had their main popularity. For example, with the Moody Blues, the years after Mike Pinder are so different that they almost sound a different band with some of the same band members. Asia had so many band member changes that, when the original lineup wanted to reform, there were two bands that used the same name.

"Yes", when it only had one original member, had the rest of the members from their popular years reform and make an album that sounded more like "Yes" than what the actual "Yes" sounded like.

Many musicians say that performing is the most fun thing they do. If that's the case then the Rolling Stones take it. Basically, don't take life as optimising a single metric. It's a balance (or a Pareto frontier, if you're formally inclined). The core members of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles certainly have enough money and enough fame. Are they happy though?

The efficiency comparison is somewhat off due to the Allen Klein situation re the Stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Klein#The_Rolling_Stones

on edit: also McCartney did not just make that money based on his Beatles work.

Doing this kind of analysis is fun but the assumption that wealth maximization was a driving factor for these bands is laughable. Go watch "Crossfire Hurricane" and you'll see that touring is the glue that holds the Stones together. And IIRC, it effectively saved Keith Richard's life when he was toeing the point of no return with heroin.

It's also the case that the Beatles spent their time after the Beatles doing mostly less critically and commercially successful solo work - over 60 solo albums between them, and that's with Lennon dying young! Paul and Ringo still love being Paul and Ringo enough to tour, and for that matter some of Paul's billion comes from his less-celebrated solo material - he makes half a million a year in royalties from Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time alone. Difficult to imagine they wouldn't have been more successful still if they'd been able to reconcile their differences and stay together as a band.

There probably are bands where get famous and then split up because our competing writers want to go in different directions was a "model", but I'm not convinced the Beatles was one. Or that there was much science behind the Stones' division of responsibilities

Part of the ex-Beatle's wealth (particularly Paul's) is savvy investments. McCartney bought up Michael Jackson's back catalog, for example. There's lots more here and obviously the Stones didn't just bank their loot (and I'm not really arguing with you) but I think to have a decent comparison we would need to define terms and draw boundaries pretty carefully. I have a splitting headache so don't really fancy doing the research, but a proper apples-to-Apple comparison should probably be limited to tour revenue, LP/single sales revenues, and image, name, and catalog licensing. That's the money in, which is really the first order measure of wealth generated.

How much of McCartney's fortune was generated post-breakup in 1970 vs. that earned during the Beatles hey-day? I'm considering his Beatles catalog royalties to be part of the before-breakup period. Still paying him money today, that, alone, has probably earned him hundreds of millions.

I'm guessing here but I suspect the Stones catalog, even though its probably larger, doesn't generate as much revenue as the Beatles. The number of artists who cover the Stones music isn't anywhere near those that cover Beatles songs.