The Beatles chord George Martin thought was “corny”
The Beatles probably wouldn’t have been half the band they were without the help of George Martin. While never taking credit for his writing, Martin was integral to the Fab Four throughout their career, bringing a professional musicians’ touch to every one of their songs, whether that meant orchestral accompaniment or creative guidance. However, even though his influence was far-reaching, Martin was not the biggest fan of everything The Beatles put together.
When the band first decided to audition for Martin, he originally had doubts about working with them because of their lack of original songs. As the band started to rework their own material, Martin was continually surprised by their growth as songwriters, later telling Rolling Stone, “They blossomed like an orchid in a hothouse. Once they had their first success, they realised they had a way of writing they would appeal to the public.”
While Martin was knocked out by their first hits, he had a few stumbling blocks regarding their arrangements. After asking them to bring up the tempo of their song ‘Please Please Me’, Martin thought that there was something strange happening in their next single ‘She Loves You’.
Written in the key of G, the songwriting of John Lennon and Paul McCartney was starting to reach its peak form, telling the tale of someone telling his friend that he should get back with his girlfriend. As the song draws to a close, the final chord never sat well with Martin.
Instead of the usual harmonies that the band were used to pulling together, they decided to add a sixth interval between, suggested by George Harrison, which provided a distinct rub against the rest of the chords. Although Martin had wanted to change it, McCartney talked about how the band eventually got their way with it, recalling to Rolling Stone, “It was corny. He thought we were joking. But it didn’t work without it, so we kept it in and eventually he was convinced.”
Martin wasn’t the only one needing convincing of the song’s power. As Lennon and McCartney poured over the song on acoustic guitars in McCartney’s childhood home, he remembered his father having a problem with the song’s refrain, remembering, “‘Son, there’s enough Americanisms around. Couldn’t you sing ‘yes yes yes’ just for once?’ [I said] ‘You don’t understand, Dad. It wouldn’t work.”
As the band went to cut the song, though, the throes of Beatlemania were just starting. As Geoff Emerick would later recall from the session: “The huge crowd of girls that had gathered outside broke through the front door…Scores of hysterical screaming girls were racing down the corridors, being chased down by a handful of out-of-breath, beleaguered London bobbies.”
For the Fab Four, this was bound to become an all-too-frequent occurrence as they took to the road, with screaming fans chasing them down wherever they went, causing them to retire from the road in 1966. The Beatles may have started as one of the world’s most famous skiffle groups, but ‘She Loves You’ presented a different musicality that captured the whole world’s ears.
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