The Beatles probably would have never made it to legendary status without the help of George Martin. The producer didn’t just suggest different arrangements of their songs. His immaculate ear for melody helped the band go from a rough-and-tumble garage band to one of the most sophisticated musical acts of their time, making sonic adventures whenever they walked into the studio. Although Martin saw the potential at the start of their career, he felt that one of their first attempts at original material would never work.
When looking at the construct of the band’s development, Martin could have qualified as a band member. Compared to the kind of music that they were making in their early years compared to the late 1960s, the band had grown up exponentially thanks to Martin’s involvement, turning ordinary tunes like ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ feel like miniature films being played out in the listener’s mind.
Before the Fab Four had gone in to audition for a recording contract, they had already been passed up by some of the best in the business. When shopping their material around to different labels, manager Brian Epstein couldn’t get anyone to go for the band, infamously being told by one Decca executive that guitar groups were “on the way out”.
By the time that he had met with Martin as a potential taker, though, even the producer felt that Epstein was desperate. Recalling in Living in the Material World, Martin thought that the band weren’t suited to the comedic sounds of the label, saying, “I had built Parlophone [Records] as a comedy label. So when Brian came in with The Beatles, my sense was that he had hit rock bottom. He had been to so many places, and now he was ending up on a comedy label”.
Even though Martin saw the potential in The Beatles, he had to make one small suggestion about drummer Pete Best, thinking that he wasn’t up to recording qualifications. Although the band acquiesced by bringing drumming legend Ringo Starr behind the kit, Martin still wasn’t on board with the band’s original material.
While they were able to cut their debut single ‘Love Me Do’, Martin was initially not impressed by what they had to offer on ‘Please Please Me’. Sculpted in the vein of Roy Orbison’s ballads, Martin thought that the initial version of the song was too plodding, ultimately offering for them to record the Mitch Murray song ‘How Do You Do It’ instead.
When talking about the first pass at the song, Martin said it would benefit from a tempo change, saying, “I listened to it, and I said: ‘Do you know that’s too bloody boring for words? It’s a dirge. At twice the speed, it might sound reasonable.’ They took me at my word. I was joking, and they came back and played it to me, sped up and put a harmonica on it, and it became their first big hit”.
Whereas the first version of the song may have sounded too slow at the initial tempo, the energy of the recorded version captured the spirit of Beatlemania in the best way possible, paving the way for future masterpieces like ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. The Beatles may not have seen the subtle flaws in their songwriting, but it took George Martin to take them from a standard rock and roll outfit to musical geniuses in a few years.
