{"id":264635,"date":"2025-11-15T17:15:05","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T17:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/264635\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T17:15:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T17:15:05","slug":"the-beatles-song-george-martin-thought-was-too-boring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/264635\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles song George Martin thought was “too boring”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"George<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ TIDAL \/ George Martin)<\/p>\n

Sat 15 November 2025 15:39, UK <\/p>\n

The Beatles<\/a> probably would have never made it to legendary status without the help of George Martin. The producer didn\u2019t just suggest different arrangements of their songs. <\/p>\n

His immaculate ear for melody helped the band go from a rough-and-tumble garage band to one of the most sophisticated musical acts of their time, making sonic adventures whenever they walked into the studio. Although Martin saw the potential at the start of their career, he felt that one of their first attempts at original material would never work.<\/p>\n

When looking at the construct of the band\u2019s development, Martin could have qualified as a band member. Compared to the kind of music that they were making in their early years compared to the late 1960s, the band had grown up exponentially thanks to Martin\u2019s involvement, turning ordinary tunes like \u2018A Hard Day\u2019s Night\u2019 feel like miniature films being played out in the listener\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

Before the Fab Four had gone in to audition for a recording contract, they had already been passed up by some of the best in the business. When shopping their material around to different labels, manager Brian Epstein couldn\u2019t get anyone to go for the band, infamously being told by one Decca executive that guitar groups were \u201con the way out\u201d.<\/p>\n

By the time that he had met with Martin as a potential taker, though, even the producer felt that Epstein was desperate. Recalling in Living in the Material World<\/a>, Martin thought that the band weren\u2019t suited to the comedic sounds of the label, saying, \u201cI had built Parlophone [Records] as a comedy label. So when Brian came in with The Beatles, my sense was that he had hit rock bottom. He had been to so many places, and now he was ending up on a comedy label\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Paul<\/a>Paul McCartney and John Lennon on stage with The Beatles. (Credits: Bent Rej)<\/p>\n

Even though Martin saw the potential in The Beatles, he had to make one small suggestion about drummer Pete Best, thinking that he wasn\u2019t up to recording qualifications. Although the band acquiesced by bringing drumming legend Ringo Starr behind the kit, Martin still wasn\u2019t on board with the band\u2019s original material.<\/p>\n

While they were able to cut their debut single \u2018Love Me Do<\/a>\u2019, Martin was initially not impressed by what they had to offer on \u2018Please Please Me\u2019. Sculpted in the vein of Roy Orbison\u2019s ballads, Martin thought that the initial version of the song was too plodding, ultimately offering for them to record the Mitch Murray song \u2018How Do You Do It\u2019 instead.<\/p>\n

When talking about the first pass at the song, Martin said it would benefit from a tempo change, saying<\/a>,\u00a0 \u201cI listened to it, and I said: \u2018Do you know that\u2019s too bloody boring for words? It\u2019s a dirge. At twice the speed, it might sound reasonable.\u2019 They took me at my word. I was joking, and they came back and played it to me, sped up and put a harmonica on it, and it became their first big hit\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe almost abandoned it as the b-side of \u2018Love Me Do\u2019\u201d, remembered Lennon in 1963. \u201cWe changed our minds only because we were so tired the night we did \u2018Love Me Do\u2019. We\u2019d been going over it a few times and when we came to the question of the flipside, we intended using \u2018Please Please Me\u2019. Our recording manager, George Martin, thought our arrangement was fussy, so we tried to make it simpler. We were getting very tired, though, and we just couldn\u2019t seem to get it right. We are conscientious about our work and we don\u2019t like to rush things.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Please Please Me\u2019 is my song completely,\u201d explained Lennon of the track in 1980, \u201cIt was my attempt at writing a Roy Orbison song, would you believe it? I wrote it in the bedroom in my house at Menlove Avenue, which was my auntie\u2019s place\u2026 I remember the day and the pink coverlet on the bed and I heard Roy Orbison doing \u2018Only The Lonely\u2019 or something. That\u2019s where that came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whereas the first version of the song may have sounded too slow at the initial tempo, the energy of the recorded version captured the spirit of Beatlemania in the best way possible, paving the way for future masterpieces like \u2018She Loves You\u2019 and \u2018I Want To Hold Your Hand\u2019. The Beatles may not have seen the subtle flaws in their songwriting, but it took George Martin to take them from a standard rock and roll outfit to musical geniuses in a few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ TIDAL \/ George Martin) Sat 15 November 2025 15:39, UK The Beatles probably would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,65449,25396,128,6470,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-264635","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-john-lennon","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-paul-mccartney","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264635","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=264635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}