Throughout every era of The Beatles’ career, George Martin practically served as their emotional translator. Whether it was suggesting what kind of break to use for a middle-eight or overseeing the orchestrations of some of their best tunes, Martin was essential for The Beatles to go from a rough-and-tumble bar band to one of the most celebrated rock acts in history. Even though he may have had a more musical upbringing than what the Fab Four were given, Martin admitted that one track stumped him when he tried to play it for the first time.
Then again, Martin was never one to back down from a challenge. Even when the band brought in wild genre experiments like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, Martin knew how to make the best of every situation, making various tape loops that felt like a cascade of noise going across the speakers whenever it came on.
Although Martin later admitted that some songs could never be replicated precisely how they did them, he was still eager to experiment at every turn. When John Lennon came in with wild ideas for a new song, Martin would help turn his sense of chaos into a musical tapestry of sound, including the various outlandish noises throughout ‘I Am The Walrus’.
By the time the band had fallen out during The White Album, Lennon wanted everything stripped back for the next record, not liking the sheen Martin would put on their usual output. After the next project was shelved in favour of working on Abbey Road, Martin was brought back into work on the band’s swansong, featuring one of Lennon’s most daring compositions to date.
After listening to Yoko Ono practice various classical pieces, Lennon thought that putting a tune to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata performed backwards would be interesting. Creating the basis for the song ‘Because’, Martin oversaw the harpsichord performance, which gave the song a slightly classical feel alongside the band’s soaring harmonies.
Even though Martin may have been able to play up to the song’s capabilities, he admitted to having trouble getting the right tempo, saying, “I’m not the world’s greatest player in time, and I would make more mistakes than John did. So we had Ringo beating a hi-hat all the time to us in headphones, so we had a regular beat. We didn’t have drum machines in those days. So Ringo was our drum machine, and that was the way we did the track”.
For all of the timing issues that Martin claimed to have, the final results became one of the highlights of the album, including the introduction of the synthesiser for the first time during the song’s instrumental bridge section. Then again, Martin’s finest moment would come on the record’s flipside.
Putting together various song fragments, the album’s second side featured a medley of different songs before Martin brought everything back to Earth on the track ‘The End’, leaving the group’s career off on the highest note possible. Martin may have been the most knowledgeable musician in the studio when The Beatles recorded, but even he could admit when a song was reaching beyond his capabilities.
