George Martin Said The Beatles' Creative Freedom Went Too Far on 1 Album
George Martin liked the creative freedom The Beatles expressed on 'Sgt. Pepper.' He thought they took it too far on a later album.
Beatles producer George Martin worked with the band extensively on each of their albums. He got to know the band and their working style well as they grew as artists. While he was typically happy to see their growth, he said they began taking too many creative liberties beginning with one album. He shared why this became a problem for the group. George Martin said The Beatles lost focus on one album
In 1967, The Beatles pushed the limits of what was possible with an album when they released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They continued to push boundaries with their later albums, which Martin viewed as a problem.
“During Magical Mystery Tour I became conscious that the freedom that we’d achieved in Pepper was getting a little bit over the top, and they weren’t really exerting enough mental discipline in a lot of the recordings,” Martin said in The Beatles Anthology. “They would have a basic idea and then they would have a jam session to end it, which sometimes didn’t sound too good.”
Martin believed this problem bled over into the making of The White Album. He thought the band had too many ideas and was unwilling to try to make the album more cohesive.
“I complained a little about their writing during the later ‘White’ album, but it was fairly small criticism,” he said. “I thought we should probably have made a very, very good single album rather than a double. But they insisted. I think it could have been made fantastically good if it had been compressed a bit and condensed.”
John Lennon said he felt resentful of the same Beatles album
Source: Emma McKee/cheatsheet.com
