Credit: Alamy

The classic artists George Martin thought would never be surpassed in “the history of man”

Thu 14 August 2025 15:00, UK

Every artist has to realise that their time in the spotlight usually comes with an expiration date. No one can manage to be at the top of the charts forever, but sometimes people like George Martin can find a way to work themselves into people’s hearts across multiple generations and never get old.

Then again, that probably wasn’t Martin’s intention when he first began working with The Beatles in the early 1960s. He was simply a comedy producer when the scruffy-looking lads from Liverpool walked into Abbey Road Studios, but after being turned away from every single record company that they auditioned for, Martin saw potential in those kids, and when they hit their stride, they rewrote the blueprint on what pop music could be. Things had been black and white, but the Fab Four and Martin added colour to the equation.

Outside of the fantastic songs that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were writing in the band’s early days, Martin served as the great translator of their ideas. None of them had a conventional knowledge of what a studio was supposed to be, but if they wanted some kind of effect on their voice or their instruments, Martin would move the Earth to make it happen, whether that’s Lennon’s Leslied vocal on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ or the circus atmosphere of ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’.

Despite Martin’s help with the band, though, he never considered rock and roll his favourite genre by any stretch. He was a trained musician, and anyone who was able to write out the sublime arrangements for something like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or ‘Yesterday’ had to have had a healthy diet of classical music instead of the usual Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis influences that everyone else gravitated towards.

But even with his stellar track record with The Beatles, Martin thought that they were only scratching the surface of what classical geniuses had done, saying, “If you look at the history of man, he’s been making music for 80,000 years. But it wasn’t until really the last millennium that we’ve known music in the Western scale that has achieved the grandeur that it has. There is a kind of curve from Palestrina upwards, through Bach and Beethoven into the wonderful treasure chest of music. What’s been written in the past 50 years that’s going to last in 100 years’ time?”

And it’s not like Martin is that far off in his assessment. Most pop music simply hasn’t had enough time to be considered truly timeless, but when listening to the biggest names in classical music, the first movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony is still one of the most omnipresent pieces of music in Western culture, to the point where most point can sing those first four notes without really thinking about it.

Then again, if there was any band whose music could last as long as the classical composers, it’s going to be The Beatles. Not everything they did was the most musically sophisticated thing in the world, but when listening to the arrangements that Martin put over everything, it could stand up next to the greatest classical movements in the world, like the finely-crafted musical experience in ‘A Day in the Life’.

We’re going to have to see how time looks back on The Beatles, but if it’s anything close to what has happened over the last 50 years, it’s going to remain timeless as the years go on. Because no matter how many times people may claim that the Fab Four are overrated, there’s a reason why songs like ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and ‘She Loves You’ never age.