John Lennon – Madison Square Garden, August 30th, 1972

People may think of Lennon as being one of the two major voices in The Beatles, and so, given his importance to the band, you’d think that he’d have been willing to cement his status as a solo artist in a live environment and taken every opportunity to showcase his prowess in this domain. In actuality, Lennon only performed live a total of ten times in the decade following the band’s split, not including television appearances.

Most notable of all of these were his back-to-back performances at Madison Square Garden in New York in August 1972, playing to an audience of approximately 40,000 people in the course of one day as part of the One to One benefit concert.

Throughout the show, which was released as a live album in 1986, Lennon is aided by the Plastic Ono Band, and his voice is at its raspy best on songs such as ‘Well Well Well’, while songs like the encore number ‘Give Peace A Chance’ are transformed into rapturous proclamations that the audience bellows back at the stage. It may have been a rare occurrence for Lennon to appear on stage without The Beatles, but this proves that he’d have been more than capable of delivering on this level.

Paul McCartney – Wings Over America Tour, 1976

Alongside Lennon as the other primary songwriting force in The Beatles, McCartney was always destined to thrive in the years after the band’s split, and the fact that he managed to form another world-beating band only a couple of years later should be a great indication of how untouchable his position as a superstar was.

While Wings aren’t necessarily seen as being superior to McCartney’s old outfit, when they were at their peak in the mid-1970s, they came mighty close to eclipsing the power that The Beatles had as a live act, and their debut tour of America, known as the Wings Over America tour of 1976, is a snapshot of the band at their most formidable.

Footage from four dates of the tour was compiled into the 1980 concert film, Rockshow, while the live album that was recorded and released after the tour’s culmination also showcases just how flawless and in sync Wings were as a group. Over the entire tour, McCartney shows why he was the ultimate rockstar, accompanied by a band who were entirely in tune with his vision. There’s a reason why Wings were the closest thing we ever got to The Beatles after 1970, and why they were perhaps an even more formidable spectacle on the stage, and McCartney’s indelible hooks and performances are a huge factor in that.

George Harrison – The Concert For Bangladesh, 1st August 1971

For all of the contributions made to The Beatles’ discography by Lennon and McCartney, it’s something of a shame that Harrison’s input gets overshadowed by that of his peers. Always a formidable songwriter, it wasn’t really until the later period of the band, by which time they’d retired from touring, that he was given a greater opportunity to shine, and his step into solo life was an even greater chance for him to demonstrate his worth.

The release of his 1971 triple album, All Things Must Pass, only goes to show just how much of a backlog of exemplary work he was sitting on, and during his benefit show, The Concert For Bangladesh, he demonstrated some of his Beatles highlights and all of the material that they missed out on from their most underappreciated songwriter.

Accompanied by an all-star cast of friends including Bob Dylan, Ravi Shankar, Eric Clapton and, of course, the ever-faithful Ringo Starr, The Concert For Bangladesh is not just an illustration of Harrison’s sublime talents, but one of the greatest concerts of all time. You have to wonder whether Lennon and McCartney were watching on and kicking themselves for not utilising Harrison to a greater effect, and similarly, Harrison ought to have been laughing back in their faces.

Ringo Starr – Rosemont Theatre, August 22nd, 2001

It was never going to be quite as easy for Starr to forge himself a solo career after the split of The Beatles. With all of the songwriting brilliance shared between the three other members and their stunning individual vocal ability, the drummer was unfortunately less blessed in both regards, and while being an outstanding drummer can get you so far, it doesn’t lend itself to becoming an acclaimed solo artist.

That being said, what Starr was capable of doing was bringing joy in droves, all wrapped up in an unmatched amount of endearing charm and a passion for being on the stage, whether behind a drum kit or a microphone. All he needed was a band of other exceptional musicians to help him bring this on the road – or one might say, an All-Starr Band.

The All-Starr Band went through a number of different iterations following his comeback tour of 1989, with him at one point being accompanied by former Eagles Joe Walsh and Timothy B Schmit, among other musicians. However, the version that appeared at the Rosemont Theatre in Illinois in 2001 with the likes of Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter, Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson and Prince collaborator Sheila E is perhaps the finest he assembled, and over the course of a 90 minute performance, Starr and co are simply having a blast playing a mixture of his own classics and old favourites.

It’s proof that you can, indeed, get by with a little help from your friends.