The identity of the true “fifth Beatles” has been hotly debated for half a century, but the strongest argument can be made for Sir George Martin. As the band’s trusted and loyal producer, Martin served as expert and co-conspirator, booster and mad scientist, friend and father figure throughout their studio life. He shaped their songs in a way that is rarely appreciated but impossible to forget.
The fifth Beatle
Unlike most producers of his time, his creative daring fostered an environment in which it was acceptable to explore and expand the realm of possibility. He played with the Beatles, in the truest sense of the word – by picking up an instrument himself or simply allowing their curiosity and translating their abstract musical fantasies into reality.
“He was always there for us to interpret our idiosyncrasies,” George Harrison recalled. It is difficult and frightening to imagine the artistic development of the Beatles had they been paired with someone else. His role as confidant, advocate and implementer cannot be overestimated.
These are 10 of our favorite moments in the Beatles catalog that we owe to George Martin.
“Please Please Me” (1963)
When John Lennon and Paul McCartney first played “Please Please Me” to George Martin during their second EMI recording session on September 4, 1962, the song was a world away from the uptempo piece that would become their first number one. “At that point, ‘Please Please Me’ was a very dark song,” Martin recalled to historian Mark Lewisohn.
“It was like a Roy Orbison number, very slow, bluesy vocals. It was obvious to me that he desperately needed more oomph.” He suggested picking up the tempo in double time and suddenly they had a hit on their hands. “We were a little embarrassed that he had found a better tempo than us,” McCartney admitted in “The Beatles Anthology.”
“Yesterday” (1965)
When Paul McCartney first completed the song he had literally composed in a dream, the rest of the band members didn’t know what to play with it. The serious tone and plaintive lyrics didn’t really lend themselves to an effective drum pattern, strumming guitars, or even vocal harmonies.
Martin convinced McCartney to pick up an acoustic guitar and simply sing the song alone – a first in The Beatles’ history. He also suggested another premiere: a string quartet. At first the idea evoked thoughts of schmaltzy Mantovani kitsch and the young man resisted, but Martin assured him that it could be done tastefully. The part was the first of many elegant arrangements the producer would create for her songs.
“In My Life” (1965)
Lennon knew he had created something special when he completed this introspective text, adapted from a poem about his childhood in Liverpool. There was room for a solo, but an electric guitar seemed out of place on such a delicate piece. He knew he wanted “something baroque,” but the specific instrument eluded him.
Martin took it upon himself to deliver the desired result. “While they were having their tea break, I recorded a baroque piano solo, which John didn’t hear until he got back. What I wanted was too complicated to play live, so I played it on the piano at half speed and then sped it up, and he liked it.”
“For No One” (1966)
George Martin took a very collaborative approach when working out arrangements with his young protégés. There are many instances where Martin wrote down musical notation on the spot, extracted from the spontaneous whistling and humming melodies of the Beatles. But perhaps the most memorable moment occurred during the recording of this “Revolver” track.
When McCartney sang the solo he wanted from a French horn, he unknowingly hummed a note that was outside the instrument’s range and technically unplayable. Martin informed him of this, but the Beatle was undeterred. “George got the joke and joined the conspiracy,” McCartney later said. But studio musician Alan Civil was such a professional that he hit the high note and gave the song its emotional climax.
“Being for the benefit of Mr. Kite!” (1967)
McCartney discussed the arrangements for his songs meticulously with Martin, but Lennon took a much more impressionistic approach. After writing the lyrics to “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” adapted from an antique circus poster, he told Martin he wanted to give the song a carnival feel so you could “smell the sawdust on the floor.”
It was Martin’s job to work out the specific details. To achieve this effect, he took recordings of various fairground organs, cut them into small pieces and reassembled the tape fragments. The result was enormously effective – a disorienting whirlpool reminiscent of a demonic carousel.
“Within You Without You” (1967)
The Beatles had recorded the bitter George Harrison composition “Only a Northern Song” during the sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but Martin’s strong dislike of the piece – he later called it “the song I hated most of all of Harrison’s” – led to him blocking its inclusion on the album.
Instead, about a month later, Harrison presented his musical companions with the majestic “Within You Without You.” Martin oversaw a gorgeous East-meets-West arrangement that combined Indian instrumentation with a soaring string section. His recording on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” anchored Indian music on the soundtrack of the sixties.
“Lovely Rita” (1967)
Although all of the Beatles’ piano skills improved significantly over the course of their recording careers, no one played the keys quite like Martin. When McCartney’s “Lovely Rita” required smooth honky-tonk piano, the producer’s hands were used for the tricky parts. He also took on similar tasks on the bar ballad “Rocky Raccoon”.
“Strawberry Fields Forever” (1967)
The Beatles had spent more studio time on Lennon’s hallucinatory new song than on almost any previous track, recording take after take and consuming 55 hours of tape. Ultimately the decision came down to two different versions – a faster one with George Martin’s bombastic orchestral arrangements and a gentler, dreamier version. Lennon was torn – he liked the quiet beginning of one and the exuberant ending of the other.
“He said, ‘Why don’t you connect the beginning of the first to the end of the second?'” Martin explained. “‘Two things against it,’ I replied. ‘They’re in different keys and different tempos.'” While this is easy to fix today, it was a serious problem in the analog age. But the technically inexperienced Lennon was not deterred. “‘Well,’ he said, ‘you can fix this!'”
Using little more than two tape recorders and a pair of scissors, Martin and his star sound engineer Geoff Emerick performed a small mechanical miracle by adjusting the speed of both takes and literally cutting the two tapes together at the 60-second mark. It has become one of the most famous cuts in rock history.
“All You Need Is Love” (1967)
The Beatles recorded this Summer of Love anthem live for a worldwide satellite television broadcast. For the fade-out, Martin composed what could be described as an orchestral proto-mashup, with fragments of “Greensleeves,” Bach’s “Invention No. 8 in F Major,” and the big-band swing classic “In the Mood” permeating one another. But it was the latter title that almost got Martin into trouble for copyright infringement.
“EMI came to me and said, ‘You built this into the arrangement, so now you have to indemnify us against any possible lawsuit.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. I got £15 for this arrangement!’ They got the joke.” Fortunately, the label didn’t make Martin pay and compensated the publishers of “In the Mood”.
“Happiness Is a Warm Gun” (1968)
The strangest track in the Beatles canon this side of “Octopus’s Garden” owes its name to George Martin, who brought a magazine into the studio one day. “He showed me the cover of a magazine that said ‘Happiness Is a Warm Gun,'” Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1970. “It was a gun magazine. I just thought it was a fantastic, crazy thing to say. A warm gun means you just shot something.”
