WFMUs Beware of the Blog has links to a couple of early BeeGees’ songs that sound very much like Beatles and John Lennon songs. The first is “In My Own Time” (RealAudio archive), “which could be the musical result of Dr. Robert meeting the Taxman in the Rain.”
And there’s “Have You Heard the Word” (MP3), with a snockered Maurice Gibb practically channeling John Lennon.
The boozily Beatlesque result somehow found release, evidently without the permission of the principals, in 1970 as a single on the tiny U.K. label Beacon Records, with this one-off congregation identified as The Fut. Did they do a good job? Just ask the bootleggers, who have placed the track on countless Beatles boots, hoodwinking many a rabid Fab Four obsessive.
Again, did they do a good job? Just ask Yoko Ono, who in 1985 attempted to register “Have You Heard the Word” as a John Lennon composition.
If this is your cup of tea as much as it is mine, I recommend the Bee Gees’ lysergically-fortified Bee Gees’ 1st, their first album, remastered and released on the Rhino label, which has “In My Own Time” on it.