The “only genius of pop”, according to George Martin
“If anyone earned the title of the fifth Beatle,” Paul McCartney once proclaimed, “It was George.” As producer for The Beatles, the late George Martin was tasked with developing their sound and bringing their vision to fruition. He achieved this with near-alchemical skill. In doing so, he changed music forever and played a pivotal role in turning ingenious imagination into tangible masterpieces.
Some would even argue that the ‘Fifth Beatle’ somewhat underplays his impact. The firmest advocates of the silver-haired gentleman could argue that he was more akin to the orchestrator of a revolution. But he wouldn’t. No, Martin himself would humbly admit that a single genius illuminated the way for pop’s development, and he merely followed in his footsteps. And that genius wasn’t in the ranks of the Fab Four, either.
“If there is one person that I have to select as a living genius of pop music,” Martin declared. “I would choose Brian Wilson. Without Pet Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn’t have happened. Pepper was an attempt to equal Pet Sounds.” Given who he worked with, that is high praise indeed for The Beach Boys’ mastermind, but it is easy to see why he reveres Wilson so much. Even McCartney added: “I figure no one is educated musically ’til they’ve heard Pet Sounds.”
The album’s zenith, ‘God Only Knows’, is a dividing line in pop music. There is a before ‘God Only Knows’ and there is an after ‘God Only Knows’ with the masterpiece representing the moment that pop went baroque and stood firmly on the shoulders of all that had gone before to look ahead and forecast the beach-bright future. He brought classical ideas into proceedings along with technology to create something timeless and fresh.
This wildly innovative notion of stirring up creative invention through unconventional means didn’t stop with the initial bare bones of his piano ballads either. Wilson wondered, ‘What if you not only used technology to capture these as faithfully as possible, but you used the technology to inform the art itself?’ In turn, the spiritual broadstroke of the theme of the song was reflected in the music approach too.
The concept was seamless: to sing of joy without barriers. Sonically, the song looked to mimic this. As Wilson explained himself: “It’s not really in any one key. It’s a strange song. That’s just the way it was written. … It’s the only song I’ve ever written that’s not in a definite key, and I’ve written hundreds of songs.” This was melded even further as elements were layered by the technology. This was the moment that pop went baroque.
This subverting of musical forms was achieved, in part, by channelling a three-track recording of the instrumental onto a single channel of an eight-track tape to allow for seven overdubs and vocal takes to be added to the mix if needed. But the brilliance is that even though the song might have all of that studio wizardry in the welter, it is subsumed in pure beauty so that the listener can skip along its strange contours with butter-cutting ease, like assailing Everest in an elevator. And Wilson sent it back down for The Beatles and Martin to join him at pop’s new lofty heights.
This song, along with many other Wilson compositions, changed the musician’s thinking entirely. As the great composer Leonard Bernstein – who Martin also greatly admired – once said: “There is a new song, too complex to get all of first time around. It could come only out of the ferment that characterizes today’s pop music scene. Brian Wilson, leader of the famous Beach Boys, and one of today’s most important musicians, sings his own ‘Surf’s Up’.”
Continuing: “Poetic, beautiful even in its obscurity, ‘Surf’s Up’ is one aspect of new things happening in pop music today. As such, it is a symbol of the change many of these young musicians see in our future.” So, it seems Martin is far from alone within the great minds of music who credit Wilson as a “genius”. However, perhaps the peak of Wilson’s powers is in how he applied that innovation. As he declared of the purpose of his own work: “The concept of spreading goodwill, good thoughts and happiness is nothing new.”
When the pair met in 1997, Wilson was stumped when discussing the source of his genius, in his typical amiable manner, he simply said that the songs come from “down deep in my soul”. That’s a notion that Martin knew all too well. He made his name honing such divination, but evidently, he thought there was levels to such magic, too.
Is Brian Wilson a musical genius?
Well, you don’t just have to take Martin’s word for it, the usually scathing Pete Townshend is one of about another 100,000 musicians who have hailed him as a legend. “There’s not many people I would say that about. I think he’s a truly, truly, truly great genius. I love him so much it’s just terrible – I find it hard to live with,” The Who guitarist expressed.
“The genius of his music is the joy that’s in it,” Bono said of the man even the cynical Lou Reed described as a “beautiful” and ingenious musician. The U2 star continued, in typical form, “I know that Brian believes in angels. I do, too. But you only have to listen to the string arrangement on ‘God Only Knows’ for fact and proof of angels.”
