{"id":227125,"date":"2025-10-26T21:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T21:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/227125\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T21:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T21:47:09","slug":"the-beatles-album-george-martin-and-ringo-starr-called-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/227125\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles album George Martin and Ringo Starr called a mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sun 26 October 2025 19:00, UK <\/p>\n

The Beatles<\/a>, famously, didn\u2019t always agree.<\/p>\n

The heat of their feuding was sparked by the conflict between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were constantly at odds over their contrasting approach to songwriting. Experimental, or honest? Catchy, or challenging? The best Beatles tracks are an amalgamation of it all.<\/p>\n

Because of this, there were very few tracks that they all agreed were perfect. Sometimes, the answer to this was mania. Fuck trying to ensure each melodic line, each hit of the hi-hats, each rhyming couplet was perfect, pristine, prim, and proper. As a fellow Liverpudlian, there\u2019s one thing I know for sure that scousers do best: Throw caution to the wind. Go all in.<\/p>\n

No album represented this new ethos from the Beatles than White Album<\/a>, a blank sleeve and 30 tracks of madness and mania. Lucky for the four-piece, some of their biggest hits came from the album. Think the luscious \u2018Blackbird\u2019, copied a million times over by every singer-songwriter with an old acoustic guitar and a dream, and \u2018Helter Skelter\u2019. Or take the dizzying \u2018 Rocky Raccoon\u2019 and \u2018Happiness is a Warm Gun\u2019 as evidence of the project\u2019s worthiness.<\/p>\n

And yet, even still, not everybody was happy. This time, it was George Martin, their producer, who had the biggest issues with the project. \u201cI thought we should probably have made a very, very good single album rather than a double,\u201d he admitted in Anthology<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite his nerves, Martin knew he was fighting a losing battle against the formidable Lennon and McCartney duo: \u201cBut they insisted. I think it could have been made fantastically good if it had been compressed a bit and condensed. A lot of people I know think it\u2019s still the best album they made. I later learned that by recording all those songs, they were getting rid of their contact with EMI more quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d have to agree with Martin on at least one front: What use does the song, \u2018Wild Honey Pie\u2019, serve on the album? Under a minute of whizz-bop jangles and ominous, warbled vocals. Put this down to one of their LSD trips<\/a>, because something is surely amiss on the track.<\/p>\n

Though Martin never explicitly addressed exactly what he wanted to remove from the album, he could\u2019ve been ostracised for a comment like that. But, cool as ever, Starr happily admitted that there was truth to his argument. The drummer, instead, had a hilarious solution to Martin\u2019s issues. <\/p>\n

\u201cI agree that we should have put it out as two separate albums,\u201d Starr said. \u201cThe \u2018White\u2019 and \u2018Whiter\u2019 albums.\u201d <\/p>\n

McCartney, predictably, had no issue with the sizable length. However, he did admit that his usual effort toward pushing the band to the limits of their capabilities wasn\u2019t exactly as fun as it had always been. In the making of Get Back, McCartney seemed to pull some of the Beatles\u2019 best riffs out of thin air. A man with a cheeky grin and a dream. <\/p>\n

As albums go, the White Album, he admitted, \u201cWasn\u2019t a pleasant one to make\u201d. At least he didn\u2019t think it was a mistake. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sun 26 October 2025 19:00, UK The Beatles, famously, didn\u2019t always agree. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,65449,128,24566,10447,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-227125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-george-martin","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-ringo-starr","12":"tag-the-beatles","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}