When discussing who might be considered the unofficial fifth member of The Beatles, George Martin holds the title hands down. Although musicians like Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best may have the distinction of being musicians alongside John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison in the early days, it took Martin’s creative ingenuity to bring them to a higher plateau on every single record. Though many tracks were made classic thanks to Martin’s contributions, he still had a few regrets about how he worked off of every band member.
If Martin had decided not to give The Beatles a shot, the band could have ended up in a far different place. As opposed to their failed audition with Decca Records, Martin initially thought that he was being asked to audition the band out of pity. Since manager Brian Epstein couldn’t find anyone to take them, The Beatles’ decision to go with Parlophone Records was a joke, known as a comedy label for acts like Peter Sellers.
Although Martin wasn’t particularly thrilled with the musical ability of the band at first, he saw the potential for them to grow as musical thinkers, which he would refine on every subsequent project. While the band may have needed help putting the pieces together when making their first songs like ‘From Me To You’ and ‘Please Please Me’, Martin recalled how quickly they blossomed.
Discussing their creative process, Martin remembers Lennon being the most laissez-faire of the group, recalling in Lennon’s biography, “If we’d do a song of Paul’s, he’d get hold of his guitar and tell George what he wanted him to play in the middle. When John recorded a song, he let other people do what they were going to do. John would be entirely focused on his part of things and leave the others to get on with theirs. As long as the end result was up to standard, he’d be happy”.
While it was clear that Lennon and McCartney steered the ship, Harrison was always blossoming as a songwriter in the background. Despite not being as prolific as his bandmates, Harrison’s songs were always one of the most intriguing parts of Beatles albums, whether it was the R&B groove of the song ‘Taxman’ or the bitter melancholy behind ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.
Although Martin would focus on making any song as perfect as it could be, he did regret not recognising Harrison’s talent at the time, explaining, “Paul was [John’s] springboard, of course, and George had a huge amount of input, which, to my eternal regret, I didn’t sufficiently recognise at the time…George would work away like a Turkish carpet-maker at whatever it was, whether mending a car or constructing a song”.
By the time the band got to making Abbey Road, Harrison’s contributions would end up being the greatest on the album, with the sunny ‘Here Comes the Sun’ or the aching love song ‘Something’. Lennon and McCartney may have had unspoken creative control over the group, but by the time Harrison released All Things Must Pass, he was more than capable of surpassing the songwriting prowess of his bandmates.
