George Martin was never one to squash any of The Beatles’ sonic adventures. Not all of them understood the mechanics of getting a track together like he did, but he knew the best way for them to capitalise on their potential was to learn what Abbey Road Studios could do as they were recording. But for all of the effort that he put into making every song the best that it could be, he knew that some Fab Four projects were far from the fireworks shows that their mainline albums were supposed to be.
When looking through the band’s records, though, Martin has the clearest case for being ‘The Fifth Beatle’ around the time of Rubber Soul. The band relied on Martin to help flesh out the tunes and maybe add the odd arrangemental flourish, but when they started to work in new instruments and play around with the finer aspects of the studio, Martin was their partner in crime, making their dreams a reality.
And these weren’t small things that the band wanted to make. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ off of Revolver should have been physically impossible for them to pull off in the studio, but after finding out what John Lennon’s voice sounded like being run through a Leslie speaker, they found the sound that would pave the way for psychedelic rock going forward.
But on every single Beatles album, there are bound to be a few songs that are either filler or don’t hit the mark like they should. Martin was openly critical of how The White Albumneeded to be condensed when it was first released, but if there was anything that the band were tired of more than anything else by that time, it was having to create another movie based around their madcap personas.
Even if they tried directing one of their own, Magical Mystery Tour wasn’t going to cut it for their film company, so the next best thing was to do the least amount of work possible for Yellow Submarine. They had a small hand in the story, but since they only had to show up for one scene at the end, they figured they’d put the same amount of effort into making the record of the same name.
After all, half of the material in the movie was taken from older albums, so they only needed a few tunes to push it over the line, with George Martin calling the material, “The dregs of their inventory. Pieces they would in any case jettison: junk, file-and-forget pieces… I don’t fancy you will use the new songs as highlights, embracing story points, but rather as filler at best.” As with everything Beatles-related, though, even filler could be considered legendary by anyone else.
The whole point behind ‘Hey Bulldog’ was to make a filler song, but listening to the snarling electric guitar and the killer piano riff, this is by far one of the best rock and roll songs they had ever made. Lennon may not have thought very highly of the song later, but looking at the footage being filmed as they were cutting the song, he seems to be having the time of his life recording the backing vocals with Paul McCartney.
Is Yellow Submarine going to be at the top of any casual Beatles fan’s list? No. Does it have songs on it that any self-respecting fan needs to hear? Absolutely. That may seem contradictory, but looking at how the band operated throughout their history, two things could be right at the same time.
