‘Yellow Submarine’: The Beatles album George Martin called “filler at best”
Despite only actually being a band for a short amount of time, The Beatles got a lot done. In just over seven years, they emerged, achieved global fame on a scale no one had seen before, toured, quit touring, pioneered major new ground in the world of rock and production, experimented greatly and then called it quits. 12 albums in less than a decade is an incredible triumph, but according to George Martin, some of it is nothing but filler.
Especially after The Beatles quit touring, it seemed as though the band had been cut loose. No longer changed to the need to make their songs translate to a stage or be conducive to a live show, the band went wild in the studio. It also meant that their schedules were totally free as they stopped giving themselves deadlines for when an album needed to be completed, allowing them to play around with it as much as they wanted, dip off to India for a trip into mind-altering substances and meditation, and then come back and blast through several albums in one year if they wanted, churning them out as inspiration struck and struck and struck.
Some of it makes a lot of sense. Rubber Soul and Revolver make sense as the band’s first forays into countercultural sound. Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour undeniably act as a pair, both released in 1967 while the group were newly enamoured with LSD. Even the White Album, with its bloated tracklist, makes some sense as the first sign of trouble in the band as the members splintered off. But when thinking about 1969’s Yellow Submarine, it doesn’t seem to fit.
It would have fit if it had come before the White Album, joining the two prior albums to make an acid-fuelled trilogy. But when it was released in 1969, it felt like the band was stepping backwards rather than forward in a strange little blip in their discography.
That’s likely because it’s a soundtrack album. Connected to the animated film of the same name, there were likely some delays in the songs’ release due to the actual film needing to be made and polished. But even with previously released songs ‘Yellow Submarine’ and ‘All You Need Is Love’, along with the four new tracks, producer George Martin always felt like it was filler.
“The dregs of their inventory,” he called the album. “Pieces they would, in any case, jettison: junk, file-and-forget pieces.” To him, even at the time of making the record, it was as if the band were merely clearing out the rest of their trippy tracks to make room for what was coming next. He said, “I don’t fancy you will use the new songs as highlights embracing story points, but rather as filler at best,” always knowing that this album would never be counted amongst their best or even really considered as part of their legacy.
But when doing so much in so little time, surely it’s fine for one release out of 12 to be a forgettable miss. The boys needed at least some time to be lazy, and maybe Yellow Submarine was merely that time.
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