The Fifth Beatle Gets Frozen Out, Then Thawed: How George Martin Lost the Beatles (And Won Them Back) copertina

The Fifth Beatle Gets Frozen Out, Then Thawed: How George Martin Lost the Beatles (And Won Them Back)

The Fifth Beatle Gets Frozen Out, Then Thawed: How George Martin Lost the Beatles (And Won Them Back)

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 Picture this: It’s 1968, somewhere in the middle of the White Album sessions at Abbey Road Studios. George Martin—the man who elevated the Beatles, who taught them about hooks and harmonies, who arranged the strings on “Eleanor Rigby” and the orchestra on “A Day in the Life,” who literally shaped the sound of the most influential band in history—is sitting in the back of the control room. He’s got a large stack of newspapers and a giant bar of chocolate. And he’s waiting. Just waiting. Hoping someone will ask him for his opinion. 🍫Martin would sit there for hours, speaking only if he was called on by the Beatles. The man they called the “Fifth Beatle” had been frozen out. Kenneth Womack, who wrote a biography of Martin, called it a “cold war” between the producer and the band. How did this happen? How did the partnership that created Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—one of the most celebrated albums in rock history—collapse into Martin reading newspapers while eating chocolate, like a dad who’s been told to wait in the car? 🎸The Golden Years: When George Was in ChargeLet’s rewind to understand what was lost. When Martin met the Beatles in 1962, he was a classically trained producer at EMI with a background in comedy records and orchestral arrangements. The Beatles were four Liverpool lads who couldn’t read music but had raw talent and infectious energy. Martin became their musical father figure, teaching them studio craft, refining their songs, and translating their ideas into recorded reality.“I taught them the importance of the hook,” Martin recalled. He showed them how to structure songs, how to build arrangements, how to make their rough sketches into polished gems. He played piano on their records. He wrote orchestral scores. He suggested key changes and tempo adjustments. From Please Please Me to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Martin’s guidance was crucial to transforming the Beatles from a great live band into groundbreaking recording artists.The partnership was at its peak during Sgt. Pepper’s in 1967. Martin’s orchestral arrangements were essential—the strings, the brass, the wild ideas that pushed rock music into new territory. The Beatles trusted his judgment completely. The working relationship was creative, respectful, and insanely productive. Martin had earned the “Fifth Beatle” title through years of collaboration, thousands of hours in the studio, and an uncanny ability to understand what the Beatles wanted even when they couldn’t articulate it themselves. 🎹The Crack Begins: Time Magazine and TragedyThen came the Time magazine article in 1967. In their coverage of Sgt. Pepper’s, Time credited Martin as the “wunderkind” and “mastermind” behind Sgt. Pepper. It was meant as praise. Instead, it planted a seed of resentment within the band that would grow into something much darker.It became the beginning of a struggle over “Who’s the genius behind the Beatles?” The article suggested that Martin was the real architect, that the Beatles were executing his vision rather than the other way around. And while Martin’s contributions were enormous, the Beatles—particularly John and Paul, the primary songwriters—bristled at the implication that they needed Martin to be brilliant. “This was payback for taking credit for the Beatles myth,” Womack said.Then, in August 1967, manager Brian Epstein died. He had been their manager since the beginning, the man who believed in them when no one else did, who got them the audition with Martin in the first place. His death created a power vacuum and sent the Beatles into business chaos. They launched Apple Corps, tried to manage themselves, made questionable deals, and struggled without someone to organize their affairs. There was no one to mediate between the band and Martin anymore. Relationships were fracturing on multiple fronts. 💔The White Album: Chocolate and NewspapersBy the time the White Album sessions began in May 1968, everything had changed. The Beatles were no longer the cuddly mop-tops working together toward a common goal. They were four increasingly separate artists who happened to be in the same building.Martin found himself pushed to the sidelines. The Beatles were recording lengthy, repetitive rehearsal tracks. Paul would work in one studio with one engineer while John worked in another studio with a different engineer. Sometimes Martin had to attend simultaneous recordings—John working on “Revolution 9” in Studio Three while Paul recorded “Blackbird” in Studio Two. Only 16 of the album’s 30 tracks feature all four Beatles performing together.Martin sat in the back of the control room with his newspapers and chocolate, consciously staying in the background, waiting to be asked for help. Engineers described it as “a chocolate-and-newspaper strike.” When someone asked what George was doing during a particular take, they...
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