None of the Beatles ever claimed to be the most accomplished musicians in the world. They were simply out there to have a laugh when they first started, but once they began gaining traction, they knew that there was a chance for them to become a big enough band to rival Elvis Presley in his prime. Nothing could have prepared them for what lay in store for them later, but as long as George Martin had control of the studio, they were in safe hands whenever they made their classics.
But given where Martin had come from, his experience working with a rock band didn’t make that much sense. He was always the kind of reserved producer behind the scenes working on comedy recordings, so when four scruffy lads from Liverpool arrived at Abbey Road Studios, he saw potential rather than the future of music. They were rough around the edges, but with a little polish, they were bound to be massive.
Although it took them a while to convince Martin that they could write their own material, John Lennon and Paul McCartney quickly found something that no one had heard. They were children of their influences like Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley, but you weren’t going to see someone like Buddy Holly use strange chords like on ‘From Me To You’ or have that same cinematic opening to one of their songs like on ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.
Not everything made sense on paper all the time, but it was Martin’s job to make it a reality. They may have involved slaving away for hours with McCartney at the piano, trying to get the right idea, but while George Harrison kept to himself when writing his classic tunes, Lennon seemed lost in the woods whenever he started discussing what bells and whistles needed to be added to his tunes.
“In terms of asking me for particular interpretations, John was the least articulate.”George Martin
Whereas most of the band knew nothing about music theory, Lennon never even bothered to learn the rudimentary parts of his guitar. He played what he could after learning his traditional banjo chords, but even with the basic mechanics of the instrument down, he didn’t know the first thing about what scales were or how to find out what the best key for someone to solo in was when taking a lead break.
So when Lennon gave Martin a prompt, it normally had to do more with the feeling of the song rather than the actual notes, saying, “In terms of asking me for particular interpretations, John was the least articulate. He would deal in moods, he would deal in colours, almost, and he would never be specific about what instruments or what line I had. I would do that myself… John was more likely to say, as in the case of ‘Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite!’, ‘It’s a fairground sequence. I want to smell the sawdust when I hear that song.’”
That might have come with its own set of challenges, but Martin always chose the right sequence that Lennon wanted. ‘The Intellectual Beatle’ may have been a little bit cheeky when he asked for something that was impossible to create, but since it often resulted in songs like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘A Day in the Life’, what Lennon did was revolutionary compared to every other artist in rock and roll.
So in this case, the fact that Lennon knew very little about music theory worked to his advantage. He couldn’t always translate what he was trying to hear when following his muse, but if they hadn’t at least tried to make his dreams a reality, some of the greatest techniques anyone had ever thought of would have never worked.
