The Beatle George Martin called “one of the great people of our time”
It’s hard for someone like George Martin to be all that biased when it comes to The Beatles.
He was the one who plucked them out of Liverpool when they were still an amateur bar band, and while he may have steered them in the right direction, he was made privy to some of the boldest reinventions the rock world had ever seen whenever they walked into the studio. But among all of the Fab Four, Martin felt that some of their contributions meant much more than just a bunch of catchy tunes.
If Martin was going to work with them at all, though, he wanted to do something a bit more sophisticated than the traditional rock and roll music. He would go on to work with everyone from Jeff Beck to the Mahavishnu Orchestra, so it wasn’t like he wanted them to play Chuck Berry covers for the rest of their days. There was a spark of creativity in them, and when they started to go outside the conventional recording techniques on tunes like Rubber Soul, it was bound to get a lot more exciting for him as the years went on.
Because with every album, it seemed like Martin was slowly starting to get an education of his own whenever he began working on something new. There was no clear plan for what a song like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ were going to be, but he could always be the one stitching things together. And it’s not hard to see that rub off on the band, either, especially on Abbey Road when they weaved together the entire second side of the record into one glorious medley of tunes.
But of all the members of the band, John Lennon was the most primitive with his musical ability. He was the first to say that he could hardly play guitar correctly, but a lot of his disadvantages worked to the band’s strengths whenever they came up with new material. He had a fantastic ear for pop hooks, and he would always give Martin a challenge whenever he walked into the studio.
No one would have asked to splice two completely different takes together, but Lennon was almost challenging Martin to make something new whenever he stepped behind the board. So when that massive voice suddenly fell silent, Martin understood that the world had lost one of the defining voices of pop music.
Martin had already been working with Paul McCartney again during the 1980s when putting together tunes for albums like Tug of War, but he felt that Lennon’s murder in 1980 left a hole in the world that was never going to be filled again, saying, “[He was] one of the great people of our time. I wouldn’t say he was a great musician as such, but he was certainly a great man. His astringency lent a lot to the sweetness of Paul. The real point is that he was a true original, with a zany sense of humor that could elevate the meanest of spirits.”
And that’s before you even touch on the kind of activism that Lennon picked up on in later life. He certainly had a checkered past that no one should ignore when bringing up his life, but by the end of his days, he sincerely wanted to make the world a better place through his music, whether that was trying to sway an election with his protest songs or preaching his causes of peace and love.
Although Martin did eventually get time to work with some of Lennon’s final compositions with tunes like ‘Grow Old With Me’, that didn’t stop him from doing his own fair share of grieving in the process. The Beatles were as close to brothers as any band ever got, so losing one of their own was like Martin watching one of his colleagues struck down long before the world was ready for them to take his final bow.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.