The one band George Martin regretted working with the most: “I once had a flirtation”
Every single production George Martin worked on usually had a sense of sophistication behind it.
Even if The Beatles gave him something that sounded absolutely ridiculous, he could normally turn anything into decent shape if he was working on it, whether that was putting together the basis of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ around one chord or organising the chaos that turned up on ‘I Am the Walrus’. But for all of the chances he took, Martin had to draw the line when he was dealing with noise for the sake of noise.
Hell, that was already happening to a certain degree when he was working with the Fab Four. ‘Revolution 9’ was far from the best thing they ever made, and while Paul McCartney urged John Lennon to reconsider when he motioned to put it on the record, the fact that it went through was a better indication of where the band had been going ever since they began work on The White Album.
But it’s not like Martin was going to dry up the minute the Fab Four called it a day. He had a keen ear for what made great productions, and while his work with America made for a few great tunes to kick off the 1970s, working with Jeff Beck and the Mahavishnu Orchestra was where he felt the most at home. These were acts that were bringing more complicated ideas to rock and roll, so it was a lot more fun for him to go into that world and see where those musicians could take rock.
Right as Martin began working with McCartney again in the 1980s, other genres were slowly starting to make a mockery of everything he had built with the band. Punk may have been a necessary art form for its time, but when looking at the spiky-haired crowd with a rudimentary knowledge of their instruments, all Martin could see were a bunch of kids that were blissfully ignorant of any kind of rules.
Granted, rules are meant to be broken, but UFO was a step too far for Martin. The hard rock juggernauts weren’t exactly known to be the most well-behaved band in the world, but when listening to their music, they seemed to have their shit together most of the time. But when they began bringing the party into the studio, Martin knew he had had his fill of any and all kings of heavy music.
There had been some great heavy moments with The Beatles, and while Martin was diplomatic about not naming the band directly, he said that working with UFO was enough for him to give up on making any stab at heavy music, saying, “I once had a flirtation with heavy metal, and I regretted it very much. [The genre] didn’t seem to have any sense.” That didn’t mean that he couldn’t work with the occasional heavy outfit when the time called for it.
After all, Cheap Trick had been called the American Beatles for years before Martin began working with them, and listening to what he got out of their music, he clearly knew what they were going for. It wasn’t necessarily on the same level as The Beatles or even one of their solo ventures, but the idea of having roaring guitars and making the vocals soar over the rest of the track was right in his wheelhouse.
Then again, not being ingrained in the world of heavy metal shouldn’t really be a knock against Martin by any stretch. He was simply cut out for other genres, and despite working with a bunch of different artists for the Sgt Pepper film in the 1970s, Alice Cooper was probably going to be the heaviest act that he was comfortable in the studio with.
