It took more than four guys to get The Beatles to the top of the musical world. As much as John Lennon and Paul McCartney were considered a once-in-a-generation songwriting duo, it wouldn’t have been the same had they decided to stay with Pete Best or hadn’t been lucky enough to have someone like Brian Epstein in their corner when they were first playing gigs up and down Liverpool. However, when listening to their records, a lot of their greatest moments could be attributed to what they did with George Martin at the helm.
Then again, Martin was never a songwriter with the band by any stretch. He was the one who helped oversee everything, but for kids who were starting to break into the songwriting world, he was the one helping out with the arrangements of the tunes, whether that was having them speed up the tempo of ‘Please Please Me’ or suggesting a big opening chord and fade-out musical motif on ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.
And when they finally used the studio as an instrument, Martin was always there to turn their dreams into a reality. Lennon was never the most techno-savvy person in the studio, but when listening to the final versions of his songs like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ or ‘Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite’, a lot of it comes down to what Martin did behind the scenes, whether that was using different tape loops, orchestrating parts, or splicing two takes together seamlessly.
If any other producer were to be using these techniques today, they would probably be heralded as one of the members of the band, but Martin was always content to be in the background and treat the entire thing like a job in the same way any other producer at Abbey Road Studios did. Had he been taken out of The Beatles’ story, though, is there a chance that the band would have never succeeded at all?
Lennon certainly thought it would have sounded different, but he knew their working relationship was the key to making those songs work, saying, “We did a lot of learning together. He’d come up with amazing technical things like slowing down the piano. He’d also come up with things like, ‘Well, have you heard an oboe?’ [and we’d say] ‘Yes, that would be nice.’ He taught us a lot, and I’m sure we taught him a lot with our primitive musical ability.”
While it’s hard to say that Lennon or McCartney would have never grown without Martin’s assistance, they may not have had the confidence had the producer not been there. It takes a lot of encouragement for someone to think outside the box like they did, and if they had a typical producer shutting every single one of their ideas down in the studio, it could have easily become a nightmare for everyone to navigate everything.
Don’t believe me? Well, let’s look at the one album not produced by George Martin during the band’s career: Let It Be. Sure, they had another production genius in Phil Spector to help them work out their ideas, but given how ramshackle everything sounded and the cheesy production layers put on everything, it’s easy to see what the band was missing when Martin wasn’t there. It had been easy for the Fabs to take things for granted after a while, but whereas anyone else would have tried to put their stamp on a Beatles song, Martin always tried to serve their muse rather than go his own way.
So would The Beatles have succeeded without George Martin? Perhaps. They were a decent beat group in the 1960s, and far more unusual things have happened. But would they have had the same impact on modern recording and influenced legions of bands to dream bigger? Not a chance. The songs are works of art, but Martin helped turn many of their sketches into masterpieces, and despite everyone from Billy Preston to Epstein having been counted among honorary members of the group, Martin should always hold the distinction as the Fifth Beatle.