The Beatles recordings George Martin thought were “rubbish”
George Martin has always been the musical mastermind that helped enhance The Beatles’ hits. He was never one to take credit for the music of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but without his brilliant orchestras and his ear for different arrangements, some of the band’s greatest hits wouldn’t have been half as good as they were. Even though he could have justifiably been considered ‘The Fifth Beatle’, Martin knew when he heard something he didn’t like, and as far as he could tell, the German versions of their songs were absolute garbage.
As any struggling artist has to do, there comes a point when you have to do things for your fans rather than yourselves. The music might come before anything, but when the band decided to press their first singles, their higher-ups were convinced they needed to perform some of their greatest hits in German for the German market.
Even though anyone with working eardrums could get the band’s appeal in almost any language, they probably agreed because of their history with Germany. After all, the Hamburg touring circuit is where they cut their teeth, and people like Klaus Voorman and Jurgen Vollmer helped them get into the fashion of the day, including the now-famous mop top they were rocking every day.
Despite turning in German versions of ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, these versions sound like a cheap imitation of what they normally sounded like. Half of why ‘She Loves You’ was because of the added energy the band had from people busting down the door of the studio, but John Lennon may as well be singing about groceries he forgot to pick up from the shop on this version.
Martin was a lot more blunt about the songs not sounding good, remarking in The Beatles Anthology, “They laughed [and said]: ‘That’s absolute rubbish.’ So I said, ‘Well, if we want to sell records in Germany, that’s what we’ve got to do.’ So they agreed to record in German. I mean, really, it was rubbish, but the company sent over one Otto Demmlar to help coach them in German”.
No amount of perfect diction can get over the vocal inflexions that they put into it. Paul McCartney is trying his best to bring some sort of charisma to the final song, but it’s impossible to hear a track like this and roll your eyes over the fact that they had to be talked into recutting one of their older tunes.
Thankfully, the next few years saw the band getting a little more control over what they would do. In just a few months, they would have their first album of all-originals under their belt with A Hard Day’s Night, and the next few years saw them progressing with the help of Martin once they departed from the road.
In terms of the band’s greatest material, though, it’s a wonder how a song like this managed to get a release on the singles collection Past Masters. Those kinds of compilations are meant to encompass the best work of the band, and as far as the peak of the Fab Four, this is the kind of unnecessary remix that made them feel more like a product than a proper band.
