The Man Who Records the Beatles
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Liverpool Echo
October 14, 1966
There was George with a milk bottle blowing down a straw, Ringo doppling rags in a bucket of water, John shouting merrily in the background. "We were playing around like children," said George Martin. He is the Beatles' recording manager. The session he describes is the one where "Yellow Submarine" was made.
"It's much harder work making Beatles records now than it was in the beginning," he says. Martin should know this better than anyone. It was he who gave them their big break, he who signed them to an EMI recording contract when no other recording manager wanted to know them. He who persuaded manager Brian Epstein that original drummer Pete Best would have to go.
"He was the quietest one. I thought he was the best-looking of the four, but he just didn't seem part of them somehow. He didn't share their thinking.
"It's an amazing thing now, the way they do think alike. As individual people, the Beatles have quite different personalities, but once they're working together, they seem to fuse into one. It's quite incredible. I've never seen this with any other group."
Again, Martin should be in an ideal position to assess this; he had been with EMI for 12 years before signing the group. Now, in partnership with three other record producers, Ron Richards, John Burgess, and Peter Sullivan, he has his own company, but still works with the same artists as he did before.
"The Beatles wouldn't work for anyone else," he says, talking of the delicate negotiations, which led to him leaving EMI and then signing a contract giving the company first option on his work. As well as recording the Beatles, he also waxes the Foremost, Billy J. Kramer, Cilla Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Matt Monro, David and Jonathan, and a new group which he is convinced will become very big stars-The Action.
But naturally, it is the Beatles who have first claim on his time. It is five years ago this month since Epstein discovered them in the Cavern. Martin met them in April 1962 and signed them to a contract in June 1962. Since then, they have all made each other famous and wealthy. Records they have made together now have world sales exceeding 200 million. Yet, oddly enough, it was not as musicians that the Beatles were introduced to Martin by Epstein, who was hawking demo discs round the London record companies.
"It was their songs that Brian was trying to sell," Martin recalls. "Listening to the group, I could tell that they had something quite different, but it was no more than a wisp. It was just a feeling in the back of my mind. It wasn't a case of me realizing instantaneously that 'here was the next big thing.' It was pure instinct. I suggested to Brian that he should bring the group down from Liverpool for a recording test, but even at that stage, I did not know what I was doing. It was purely instinct. You must remember how things were at that time. This was the age of the solo star with Cliff Richard, Billy Fury, and so on.
"Even after signing the Beatles, I spent hours going through each one, trying to work out which one would be the star. And then it came to me: why not treat them all equally? From the start, I found them tremendously likable people. I liked them as people, even when they were quite irreverent with this take-it-or-leave-it attitude. They had this sense of humor, which some people have described as cynical, though I have never found them like that. Though they still make fun of me at times, they treat everyone like this.
"What made it possible for us to work together was that basically we had the same sense of humor. They knew I had recorded Peter Sellers, and as they had always been Goon fans, they were prepared to accept me because of that."
Martin recalls the often quoted story of how he took the Beatles into a recording studio for one of their first sessions, and then invited them back into the control room to listen to the playback.
"Is there anything you don't like?" He said.
"Well," said George. "For start, I don't like your tie."
It was only afterwards that Martin discovered that John, Paul, and Ringo had later given George a rough time for that remark. "Be careful with him," said Paul. "Don't say things like that. This guy could ruin us."
Then Martin found the Beatles were easy to record. "You see, when they started, although they were playing numbers they had written themselves, there were still numbers that were part of their stage act, numbers they played every night. When they made their first album, we did the whole thing in one day. We just went into the studio at 10 a.m. and by 11 p.m. all the tracks had been done. Now we go into a studio, often not knowing what we are going to record. Paul or John may just have a basic idea, and we take it from there, bringing in extra musicians if we need them, and then writing in arrangements.
"We spent two months on this latest LP, sometimes working six or seven days on a stretch. On that 'Yellow Submarine' track, we had plenty of rags and a bucket of water with Ringo dopping them up and down to make a waves effect. George and Mal Evans, the road manager, were blowing down straws into milk bottles filled with water to give that bubbling sound; we were playing around like children in a sand pit. We had hooters, ship bells, everything. It was good fun, all very tongue-in-cheek. A children's record.
"I don't know whether we will do any more like it. John and Paul had just happened to write the song, and we were pretty unanimous that we would have to go the whole hog to get it really right. My experience with Peter Sellers is that once you start making comedy records, you can only use one idea once. It tends to be a once and for all thing.
"What I am sure of is that now all the Beatles recording sessions will be like this, with us all spending hours in the studio creating something new while we're working. Now the Beatles are being really creative. It's something quite new for the music business."
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