The one Beatles album George Martin and Paul McCartney hated
When talking about the history of rock and roll, The Beatles are one of the few bands that are the hardest to criticise.
Not everything they made was perfect by any means, but when you look at how many people have been able to explain what the Fab Four did, it’s hard to really argue with every step they made throughout their career as well. Each record was a new adventure that paved the way for something else in rock and roll, but Paul McCartney and George Martin could tell when something wasn’t quite working right.
But when the Fab Four first started, Martin was more of a songwriting coach than a producer half the time. He was the one who suggested speeding up ‘Please Please Me’ so it sounded right, but after one or two moments of helping them in the studio, they started pumping out hits faster than he could record them. It’s insane to think that some of the greatest ballads the band ever made were given away to other people or were left over on B-sides, but over time, you could see them slowly starting to drift apart.
McCartney and John Lennon weren’t the same kind of songwriters that they were back in 1964, and when making The White Album, things had already started to go off the rails. Lennon refused to compromise his vision on many of his tunes, and while he wasn’t exactly asking for everyone else’s input, hearing the other members’ distaste for a song like ‘Revolution 9’ showed how far they had grown apart.
So, really, McCartney’s idea of getting them back together for the Get Back project should have fit like a glove. They were all ready to rediscover their love for playing again, but when the sessions started to hit a brick wall after a while, the choice to give the tapes to Phil Spector and let him decide what the mix should be was never going to sit well with McCartney or Martin when they heard the final product.
Compared to Martin’s productions, the producer felt like what the infamous ‘Wall of Sound’ producer did was a spit in the face to their standards, saying, “It was so uncharacteristic of The Beatles. It went against everything The Beatles wanted to do with the record. He tried to use the same techniques that he used on other people’s records, and it didn’t work.” And for an album that was about a back-to-basics approach, McCartney was beside himself when discussing the additions that Spector made to the tracks.
A song like ‘The Long and Winding Road’ was supposed to be a simple tune, but Spector’s choice to add strings and a choir went against what Macca envisioned, explaining, “I don’t blame Phil Spector for doing it but it just goes to show that it’s no good me sitting here thinking I’m in control because obviously, I’m not.” He would go on to write a detailed letter to the Apple offices , saying, “In future no one will be allowed to add to or subtract from a recording of one of my songs without my permission.”
But, really, the lack of communication really showed far the band had drifted apart. The rest of the band had settled with Allen Klein as their new manager, and since McCartney was consistently outvoted, Spector’s chokehold on the rest of the group would continue for a few more years, leading to Lennon having a falling-out with Spector after making Rock ‘n’ Roll and George Harrison saying that he hated the initial mixes of ‘Wah-Wah’ from All Things Must Pass.
There might have been a better way for everyone to talk things through, but given how badly Martin and McCartney were treated, it’s not exactly a shock that they maintained a great relationship later in their career. They understood what made their songs sound fantastic, and if they had themselves to work off, they would never have to worry about someone else mucking in their affairs.
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