The night The Beatles laced George Martin’s tea with drugs: “They wouldn‘t let us leave”
There may not be another producer on the planet who could have done what George Martin did with The Beatles.
The man often hailed as the fifth Beatle extended far beyond the role of creative facilitator. He quietly nurtured The Beatles’ songwriting into a groundbreaking psychedelic force, combining his deep technical knowledge of the studio with their esoteric ideas.
In fact, without Martin, it’s likely some of the music we had from 1966 onwards would never have existed. When the band came, excitedly bounding into the studio, with the foundational ideas for the truly innovative ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, Martin didn’t flinch at its esoterica. He instead embraced its avant-garde vision and routed Lennon’s vocal track through a rotating Leslie speaker to give it that wildly futuristic sound.
But perhaps more important than his creative stewardship was the general care he placed on the band. At the best of times, he was their protector and at the worst, their babysitter, corralling this group of otherwise excited young idiots into focusing. He was loved, teased and mocked in the same way an endeared school teacher would be, but in allowing that to happen, he fostered a safe environment for the band to be comfortable with their greatness.
Could the same be said for Martin? Did the band protect him in the midst of their manic fame? No, not really, it doesn’t seem the same can be said. The great producer had to put up with endless pranks and misdemeanours, which he seemed to accept were par for the course. In the early days, the pranks would be as innocent as the music, but as the drugs got heavier, so did the tricks.
“Mal had this big teapot,” Harrison explained, as he began a great prank anecdote the way one would at the bar. “It was a big aluminum teapot, and I remember one specific incident where he made a pot of tea, and we doused the tea with uppers.”
It seemed like normal business for The Beatles in the late 1960s, experimenting with a string of different drugs. But this time, they wanted to include George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick in their trip, for the pair were growing tired of the session that was going long into the night. They simply weren’t on the same level as the band, and so they decided to force them into an altered state, whether they liked it or not.
The band then ordered that cups of tea were taken up to the control booth overlooking the studio. “‘Cause they were asking, ‘Can we go home now?’” Harrison continues. “‘No, you can’t, you bastard. Have a cup of tea!’ And then they were up there until 11 o‘clock at night.”
But the trick soon backfired on the band as McCartney explained, “Yeah, and then they didn’t want to go home,” adding, “They wouldn‘t let us leave.”
The prank rightly backfired on the band, who in turn learned that, however deep they were willing to go into the heart of studio darkness, Martin was willing to follow close behind and in essence, that was what made him the perfect producer.
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