The 1967 track George Martin called a masterpiece: “One of the best things we’ve done”
George Martin always had tunnel vision when it came to anything that The Beatles worked on.
The Fab Four were still a scrappy bar band when Martin first heard them playing, but when you listen to the way they grew over time, he had the kind of insight for what the songs needed often before the band even seemed to know. But even though he was far more trained than the rest of the band, Martin also knew that the lads could impress him with something that he had never heard before as well.
But during their teenybopper days, Martin was usually the one to help flesh out most of the songs. He has always been considered an honorary member of the band to a certain degree, but when the band were working on tunes like ‘Please Please Me’ or ‘Love Me Do’, he was the de facto boss of the session, usually telling them to play the song faster or dictating whether Ringo Starr would be playing drums.
Around the time of Rubber Soul, though, things started to turn a corner. They were no longer making songs solely to be played on the radio, and from that point forward, every single one of their songs felt like a new experiment. They didn’t want to be confined to making hits anymore, and when they ended up making their way to Revolver, they had outgrown the need to play live. There was no point in them playing if no one could hear them, so it was best that they hang it up after years on the road.
Then again, if you were going off the road at the time, that meant that you were as good as dead in the eyes of the public. Everyone convinced themselves that the band would eventually fade into obscurity or try their hand at making something that was a bit less popular, but John Lennon didn’t spend all that time experimenting just to retire and go back to his mansion the rest of his life.
They all had more to offer, and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ was the turning point for them. They had already begun experimenting with more psychedelic effects, but Martin helped create the kind of effects that no one knew were possible, whether that was bringing in some exotic instruments into the mix or managing to splice together two different versions of the song with completely different arrangements in separate keys and make the entire thing feel absolutely seamless.
Every rock star was floored by it, and Martin felt that it remained one of the highest points of his career even after they broke up, saying, “It started off with ‘Strawberry Fields’, and that wasn’t all hung up. It was quite straightforward, and I love that, I still think it’s one of the best things they’ve ever done, and it was very much John’s song. This was when the two of them became very separated to my mind: ‘Strawberry Fields’ and ‘Penny Lane’ were done at the same time, but they were completely different.”
But it’s that push and pull that made them perfect for each other in their own way as well. No one would have guessed that the band would have been able to go as far as they did, but a lot of it came from Lennon and Paul McCartney’s competitive streak, each of them trying to outdo each other at the right time whenever their partner came through with something that sounded fantastic.
That’s how all healthy partnerships should be, but the fact that Lennon and McCartney managed to find each other is the kind of thing that only happens once every millennium. No one would have imagined that they would have been perfect for each other, and yet songs like ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ are still prime examples of what they both could do when they pushed themselves beyond their capabilities.
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