The song George Martin couldn’t live without: “A marvellous opera”
Throughout The Beatles’ history, George Martin earned the distinction of being the unofficial fifth member of the group. Although many contributed to making the band what they were, Martin’s inherent musical knowledge helped inform where the band would take their music across their career, making for some of the most outlandish performances on a rock record. While Martin could be relied on to steer the band in the right direction, he got everything he knows from years of musical training.
Before he had met the Fab Four, Martin initially found his calling while working in comedy music. After taking up the oboe in music school, Martin became a musical force of nature at Abbey Road Studios, creating different sound effects for comedians like Peter Sellers.
When talking about his true passion, though, Martin gravitated towards the show-tune stage. Discussing his favourite songs of all time, Martin talked about the emotional power he got from listening to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Bringing back the operatic side of the stage production, Martin thought the composer had delivered “a marvellous opera” on BBC Radio 4, singling out ‘Bess You Is My Woman Now’.
Although the colossal musical is known best for the immortal ‘Summertime’, this stellar ballad would have a drastic effect on the way that Martin looked at music. Becoming infatuated with classical music, Martin hoped to follow in Gershwin’s shoes when he started producing a ramshackle group out of Liverpool called The Beatles.
While there was hardly that much in common with what The Beatles and George Gershwin brought to the table, the Fab Four were appreciative of what Martin was able to get out of their primitive songs. When talking about the band’s early days, John Lennon commended Martin for helping the band realise their musical ideas, recalling in Anthology, “He had a very deep musical knowledge and background. He taught us a lot, and I’m sure we taught him a lot because of our primitive musical ability”.
Outside of the conventional pop songs the band would make on tracks like ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please Please Me’, it was Martin who helped them reach for different musical influences all the time. As the band prepared to do bold experiments in the studio after their initial mop-top period, it was Martin’s job to help turn those ideas into fully-fledged musical pieces, which often involved various classical arrangements.
Across songs like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘I Am The Walrus’, Martin flexed the musical chops that he had learned from listening to the likes of Gershwin, whether that meant providing a delicate string arrangement on the former or building to a controlled musical chaos on the latter. Instead of the arias that Gershwin would compose, though, Martin was trying to bring that level of musical sophistication into a rock and roll context.
Despite all the songs being credited to Lennon, McCartney, or Harrison depending on the Beatles track, Martin’s indelible impact on the group could never be denied. While the four members of The Beatles were the only people to know what Beatlemania truly felt like, they would have to credit George Martin with bringing an heir of musical sophistication to every song they composed.
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