“It’s boring”: The producer John Lennon could never work with
When The Beatles recorded Let It Be and hired someone other than George Martin to handle the final overdubs and production, many people wondered what had happened to sever a relationship that was previously thought to be inseparable.
What had happened was more down to the turmoil brewing within the ranks of the band rather than there being any issues with Martin’s work with the band. The initial sessions, which were recorded when the album was still going to be given the title of Get Back, were abandoned due to disputes between members over how the record ought to sound, and with John Lennon adamant that it should still be finished, he opted not to invite Martin back, with him and George Harrison deciding that they should bring in an outsider.
Phil Spector handled the final mix that rescued what would eventually become Let It Be, which Martin would later call “over-produced”, but if the band’s decision to work with a new producer wasn’t already a sign of a new era beginning, then the band’s subsequent breakup that they’d been shielding from the public would all but confirm it.
Entering into their respective solo careers, all of the individual members of the band ended up working with different producers, so as to draw a line under their time with The Beatles and treat their own output as a fresh start. The last thing they wanted for their own ventures was for it to eternally be thought of as a continuation or extension of what they’d done in the past, and moving on from their ties with Martin was perhaps the best thing to do in that situation.
Lennon briefly continued his working relationship with Spector on his first two solo studio albums, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, before moving on to handling everything himself from Mind Games onwards. He’d already learnt the ropes from both Martin and Spector, and wanted a little more freedom to approach things in his own way.
He was, of course, grateful for the work that his previous producers had done with him in the past, but taking this leap of faith into dictating his own sound and direction, as both McCartney and Harrison had done by this time, was important to him.
In a 1975 interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon expressed his admiration for other producers, but claimed that there was no way he could return to working alongside others, especially those with a way of working that felt like the complete opposite of his own approach.
“I don’t want to make myself so painstaking that it’s boring,” he claimed. “But I should maybe think a little more. Maybe. But on the other hand I think my criticism of somebody like Richard Perry would be that he’s great but he’s too painstaking. It gets too slick and somewhere in between that is where I’d like to go. I keep finding out all the time – what I’m missing that I want to get out of it.”
While Perry was a celebrated producer who had worked with his former bandmate, Ringo Starr, by this point, he knew exactly what he was capable of bringing to a recording and knew that it was special, but to think that the ever-impatient Lennon would be able to hack working with him, that’s certainly a tough ask.
