(Credits: Far Out / Bent Rej / Home & Studio Recording)
Fri 13 February 2026 18:00, UK
When approaching the conversation of the ‘Fifth Beatle’, there isn’t a soul on Earth who did more for the Fab Four than George Martin.
He might have been one of the single most unassuming geniuses of his time, but his subtle touches on all their material are what brought them from being a fairly decent bar band to one of the biggest names in British music overnight. They might have eventually grown into more complex musical thinkers as well, but that didn’t mean that all their ideas needed to be approved by Martin before they started working on their masterpieces.
Because of all his musical knowledge, Martin wasn’t exactly getting it right all the time. He did have the foresight to realise that Pete Best was not going to go the distance, but his decision to leave Ringo Starr on the sidelines while Andy White stepped in to cut their first record wasn’t exactly the best call. The Fab Four worked best when playing together, and while White did a fine job on ‘Love Me Do’, it doesn’t really have the same mojo it would have had if everyone played together.
And when the band went their separate ways, it would have been easy for Martin to become a casualty of their breakup. He was more than happy to move on to more interesting acts like Jeff Beck and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, but it’s not like he was ever going to work with Ringo Starr on his albums or watch John Lennon scream his pain out on the first few albums that he released.
In fact, Lennon may have been the most hesitant to work with Martin again after the band broke up. He was always trying to get the band back to a more raw sound than where they had ended up, and even if all of them were able to make the best out of their songs when working on Abbey Road, a lot of Lennon’s productions were a lot more stripped back. He wanted his vocals to be a little drier, and while it did have the sweet touch of Phil Spector’s production, not everything sounded pristine, either.
Take a track like ‘Instant Karma’, for example. The story about Lennon recording the whole thing in a day after writing the song in the morning is one of the most inspired stories of his solo career, but since he wanted to get the whole thing done in a few hours, hearing only the rough mix of it wasn’t going to stand the test of time the same way that ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ had.
That was just the way that Lennon wanted to make records at that point, but if ‘Give Peace a Chance’ was a good song, Martin felt that ‘Power to the People’ didn’t have the same kind of bite that it should have, saying, “I think [John and Paul] have suffered by comparison, because they’ve each indulged themselves in their own way. John’s become more obvious in a way … ‘Power To The People’ is a rehash of ‘Give Peace A Chance’, and it isn’t really very good. It doesn’t have the intensity that John’s capable of.”
Lennon’s heart was definitely in the right place, but it’s not like Martin is exactly wrong, either. The hook is definitely there, but given how little the song has to offer musically, it just sounds like the former Beatle had written half a chorus and figured that would be good enough for him to make a decent sloganeering single.
While it would take Some Time in New York City for Lennon to learn his lesson, ‘Power to the People’ was the first time it felt like his solo career was on shaky ground. There was no way that any former Beatle was going to fall flat on their face, but you know that things were going in the wrong direction when Ringo Starr was outpacing him on the charts.