Every artist will want to push themselves to make something different whenever they reach the studio. While The Beatles could have spent the majority of their career making the same pop songs that they prided themselves on in their early years, John Lennon and Paul McCartney dared to dream bigger on every album, putting together that could stand on their own as timeless classics on projects like Revolver and Abbey Road. Although each song may have been a labour of love, there was a bit more labour McCartney put into one of his ballads.
As the band settled into becoming a studio-only entity for the second half of their career, they were also dealt a heavy blow with the loss of manager Brian Epstein. Not knowing how to manage the business side of their career, the various disagreements over Apple Corps and their different creative directions first reared their head when making The White Album.
Writing songs when they were on a meditation retreat in India, every member of the group had a different vision for what their songs should be, leading to many members being treated like backing musicians on various tracks. While Lennon had various dips into art rock on songs like ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’, and George Harrison came into his own as a songwriter on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, McCartney was honing his craft as a balladeer.
Outside of the fierce rockers like ‘Helter Skelter’ and the guitar exercise ‘Blackbird’, McCartney would turn in some of the finest ballads of his career on the album, including the jaunty song ‘Martha My Dear’. Written as an ode to his lovable sheepdog at home, McCartney created the song as a tribute to the kind of big band arrangements he loved growing up, even singing in the higher end of his range to get the right affectation to his voice.
Even though McCartney could deliver any of his songs with ease, the tricky part came when he had to track the song for the first time. As opposed to the traditional piano accompaniment he was used to playing on tracks like ‘Hey Jude’, McCartney wrote the figure for ‘Martha My Dear’ knowing that it was beyond his capabilities.
When talking about putting the track, McCartney remembered the struggle it took for him to get every note right, saying in Many Years From Now, “When I taught myself piano, I liked to see how far I could go, and this started life almost as a piece you’d learn as a piano lesson. It’s quite hard for me to play, it’s a two-handed thing, like a little set piece. In fact, I remember one or two people being surprised that I’d played it because it’s slightly above my level or competence, really”.
Outside of the raw dexterity it takes to play the song, there’s also an unconventional structure to the tune. Instead of the usual verse-chorus-verse structure, there are various movements in the piece that hang for only a few seconds before transitioning into the next section, almost like a pocket symphony McCartney created on the spot.
Even though the song would be a beloved deep cut for most fans, it would also be the root of Lennon’s problems with McCartney’s writing since he knocked out most of the track alone without anyone’s input. Considering how much has been made out of each band member finding their own creative voice during these sessions, ‘Martha My Dear’ is practically a preview of what McCartney would be getting up to on his first solo albums.
