The album that brought George Martin out of retirement: “This was an offer I couldn’t refuse”
By the 2000s, George Martin had done more for popular music than any other producer could have asked for. While The Beatles may have been the masterminds behind all of those classic songs, it was always Martin’s job to structure them properly, whether that meant bringing in different orchestral arrangements or going down the creative rabbit hole with them to create the most avant-garde piece of music the pop charts had ever seen. While he had effectively retired due to his hearing loss, there were still moments when he could step behind the board one more time.
Granted, Martin was the kind of person who knew the Fab Four like the back of his hand by the end of the 1960s. Even when working with Paul McCartney later on solo albums like Tug of War, he was more than happy to be that musical sixth sense in the studio, whether that meant tinkering with a guitar sound to get the right tone or turning ‘Here Today’ into one of the most sublime productions that Macca had behind him since ‘Yesterday’.
Even if the producer couldn’t do the tracks justice when putting together The Beatles Anthology, it’s not like Jeff Lynne wasn’t a capable substitute. He had already been in a glorified Beatles cover band without the covers when working with ELO, but when listening back to ‘Free As A Bird’ and ‘Real Love’, it’s understandable why some fans might be upset due to how electronically rigid it sounds.
The surviving Beatles couldn’t help but homogenise everything to keep up with John Lennon’s cassette tape demo, but by the time Cirque de Soleil proposed a project based around the band’s material, there was no way they could make everything sound like that again. This had to be the kind of adventurous project that made the band one of the most beloved acts in the world, and when Love came out, fans were not disappointed.
Compared to the endless string of demos on Anthology, this was a kaleidoscopic tour through the best moments of the band’s career. While some fans might have felt shortchanged hearing only fragments of their favourite songs on the record, hearing everything remastered with different songs mashed up was an inspired idea, building to some of the best crescendoes of their career, like blending McCartney’s screams from ‘Helter Skelter’ with the riff of ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ to create the doom-metal masterpiece they had in them all along.
And while Martin’s son, Giles, was now taking over for what his father had done, it’s not like ‘The Fifth Beatle’ wasn’t going to make sure everything was done right, saying, “It’s a funny word, ‘retirement’, because it suggests you’re giving up everything, and I certainly haven’t done that. But I’ve given up recording because my ears aren’t good enough. This, however, was an offer I couldn’t refuse when they asked me to produce the music for the show.”
Considering most of the project was recorded in the 1960s, this is one of Martin’s greatest works of his later career. Many of the tunes rely on everything bouncing off each other, and while it does sound like absolute chaos in some spots, it’s a testament to his craft that he and Giles were able to find some magic in these tunes that had been hidden away for years.
While Giles has taken over for every subsequent remix of The Beatles’ core studio albums as of late, Love is the best example of why George Martin should be given respect as ‘The Fifth Beatle’. He may not have come up with the core idea of every song, but if he hadn’t worked this kind of magic with them at all, The Beatles might have never made it past those bar-band stages in Liverpool.
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