Sound Pictures

by Kenneth Womack

  As Martin and his team completed the stereo remixes for A Collection of Beatles Oldies—or most of them, that is—the first weeks of November were characterized by a confluence of events in the personal and professional lives of the producer and the bandmates. The same week that the remixes were completed for the compilation, John attended an art exhibit at the Indica Gallery. Only the exhibit hadn’t opened quite yet. The occasion was an upcoming show by Yoko Ono, a Japanese performance artist who had immigrated to England by way of America, where she had studied with the likes of John Cage and other experimental, avant-garde artists of the day. Ono was loath for anyone to see the exhibition before it opened, but John Dunbar, McCartney and Peter Asher’s partner in the Indica Gallery and Bookshop venture, thought Lennon should be an exception. “He’s a Beatle. He’s got lots of money. He might buy something,” Dunbar pointed out. With nothing to lose, Ono’s filmmaker husband, Tony Cox, telephoned Lennon, who had only recently returned from Lester’s movie shoot in Spain, and invited him for a private showing of Ono’s exhibit.

  On Wednesday, November 9, Lennon made his private visit to the gallery, where he followed the tiny Japanese woman around the exhibition. At one point, John happened upon a ladder, above which hung Yoko’s Ceiling Painting. “It looked like a black canvas with a chain with a spyglass hanging on the end of it,” Lennon later recalled. At the top of the ladder, John peered through the magnifying glass at the canvas, which sported a single word: yes. Lennon suddenly found himself inspired by the spirit behind Ono’s art. One of the final works in the exhibition encouraged visitors to hammer a nail into a piece of white plasterboard. But Yoko would have none of it. It was all right for John to preview the exhibit, but the plasterboard should remain unspoiled for the opening. Dunbar pulled the artist aside: “I argued strongly in favor of Lennon’s hammering in the first nail,” he recalled. “He had a lot of loot—chances are, he would buy the damn thing.” Ono finally relented, given the wealth and stature of her distinguished guest. “Okay, you can hammer a nail in for five shillings,” she told him. “I’ll give you an imaginary five shillings, if you let me hammer in an imaginary nail,” Lennon replied, a sly grin growing across his face. It was the defining moment of the artist’s life. “My God,” Yoko thought to herself. “He’s playing the same game I’m playing.” Ono now saw Lennon as a potential patron, and she began pursuing him over the next several months, sending countless notes and letters, even sharing a copy of her book Grapefruit, which was half autobiography, half artistic philosophy. Lennon was duly impressed with the book’s Zen-like instructions, especially Cloud Piece, in which she entreated her readers to “imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.”8

  Meanwhile, the issue of the Beatles’ status as a working rock ’n’ roll band had continued to pick up steam in the media. The day after John met Yoko, the Daily Mail’s Don Short published an article in which he depicted the Beatles as being “at the crossroads” and reported on “mounting predictions of a split-up of the world’s most famous foursome.” In their interview with Short for the article, Lennon and Harrison denied that a breakup was imminent, stating that it was their intent to spend more time in the studio and devote less time to the road. But like much of the world, Short wasn’t buying it. And he wasn’t the only one. During the previous weekend, some two hundred angry fans had picketed outside of Epstein’s townhouse, demanding that their idols embark on another tour. By this point, it had become clear that, like the previous December, the Beatles would not be performing their annual spate of Christmas concerts to ring in the new year. In an interview after the protesters had dispersed from outside of his Belgravia home, Epstein attempted to temper any prevailing fears about the Beatles’ possible disbandment as best as he could, stating that “I don’t think they will split up because I’m certain that they will want to do things together for a long time.”9

  As it turned out, Epstein’s effort to quell the rumors fell decidedly flat. With the headline BEATLES GETTING BORED: DRIFT TOWARD BREAKUP, a syndicated United Press International (UPI) story flooded newspapers across the globe with the notion that the group’s disbandment was a fait accompli. According to the article, which was published on November 10, “The signs are that the Beatles, over the loyal opposition of thousands of fans, are moving toward an oft-voiced ambition: to develop their individual talents individually.” Citing Lennon’s appearance in How I Won the War, along with Harrison and McCartney’s extended foreign travels, the UPI report observed that “the obvious conclusion, supported by the Beatles’ own words and actions in the past months, is that they are bored with being the Beatles.” Having spent much of the fall months with his wife, Maureen, and their infant son, Zak, Ringo was the only Beatle available for comment. While Brian might have hoped for a much better showing from the Beatles’ affable drummer, Ringo went with the truth, telling the UPI reporter, in a moment of unvarnished sincerity, “I have no idea what our future plans are.” And the truth was, at that very moment, Ringo was in the dark about George and the bandmates’ immediate future as a working musical team. Within a fortnight, Brian’s fears would be allayed, and Ringo would have his answer.10

  The increasing rumors about an impending Beatles breakup were also stoked by an October 14 NME story reporting that McCartney had been commissioned to compose a film score for a movie to be titled Wedlocked, or All in Good Time starring Hayley Mills. The opportunity had come McCartney’s way after he asked Epstein to solicit soundtrack commissions for his consideration. Filmmakers Roy and John Boulting offered Wedlocked, and Paul jumped at the chance. Based on the 1963 play All in Good Time by Bill Naughton, the screenwriter behind Alfie, the film was eventually retitled The Family Way. Originally, Lennon had been under the impression that the songwriting partners would be sharing the commission. As he remarked from the film set of How I Won the War, “I know we’ve got music to write as soon as we get back. Paul’s just signed us up to write music for a film. I suppose it’s—off the plane, into bed, and then ‘Knock! Knock! Knock! Get up and write some songs.’” Shortly thereafter, John reported that Paul would be working with legendary songwriter Johnny Mercer of “That Old Black Magic” and “Moon River” fame on the project, and he dutifully stepped aside. Suddenly, Paul was alone at the helm, having only planned to compose a movie theme and not an entire film score.11

  Realizing that his first solo project might be more than he could handle, McCartney naturally turned to Martin, the man who had so deftly provided solutions for all of the Beatles’ musical dilemmas over the years. With only a brief piano motif in hand, Paul turned to George to expand his idea into a full-blown score. To his credit, Martin enhanced the kernel of a concept that McCartney had provided into some twenty-five minutes of incidental music. He accomplished this end by orchestrating Paul’s theme and then subjecting it to numerous variations in order to fill out the score. With McCartney receiving credit for composing the soundtrack, the Beatles’ producer invited a quartet of George Martin Orchestra regulars to perform the score. With Neville Marriner and Raymond Keenlyside on violin, John Underwood on viola, and Joy Hall on cello, Martin produced and conducted the score in a pair of sessions at CTS Studios, the London shop where he had kicked off the new year, on December 15 and, for the purposes of the soundtrack LP, February 1, 1967. Roy Boulting had originally planned for Martin to conduct the sessions associated with the soundtrack at Shepperton Studios, the massive soundstage and recording facility some twenty miles to the southwest of London. Martin managed to talk the Boulting brothers out of working at Shepperton, given the bureaucratic entanglements of mid-1960s union shops. As George later recalled, “Shepperton Studios at that time was not an ideal place for such novelties, however. Trade unions ruled the roost, and I would have been thrown out of the place if I had dared to touch a microphone. The first session there ended in disaster, and eventually I persuaded Roy that it would be more efficient and cheaper if we recorded the score in a normal recording studio.�
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  The lateness of the recording sessions was necessitated by McCartney’s recalcitrance. While he had been hungry for the commission several months earlier, he now seemed devoid of inspiration, much less the requisite inclination to finish out the work. While Martin had been miffed with McCartney at times, the experience of working on The Family Way had generally been a pleasant one. As Martin later recalled, “I enjoyed working with Roy Boulting, and he seemed to appreciate the new ideas we were giving him: using a brass band to give a Northern feel to the film, having a small section of strings and woodwind to convey the love themes.” But as work on The Family Way wore on, George found himself increasingly in the unusual position of having to cajole the cute Beatle into action. For his part, Paul saw their work on The Family Way as being akin to their Beatles efforts and his inability to finish the score as a form of writer’s block. As he told the Sunday Times: Martin “is the interpreter. I play themes and chords on piano and guitar, he gets it down on paper. I talk about the idea I have for instrumentation. Then he works out the arrangement. I tried to learn music once with a fellow who’s a great teacher. But it got too much like homework. I have some block about seeing it in little black dots on paper. It’s like Braille to me.” For George, it was becoming clear that Paul was simply not getting his “homework” done and, worse yet, that he was barely even trying. Martin found himself resorting to the schoolteacherly guise that he had adopted during his very first sessions with the Beatles, long before Revolver, during which they had seemed, for the moment at least, to have matured as professional, well-rounded musicians well beyond their years. As the Boulting brothers’ principal photography for The Family Way trudged forward, the need for a love theme emerged.13

  With Paul failing to deliver the goods, George was forced to hover over Paul, who sat at the piano in his Cavendish Avenue home, and entreat the Beatle to produce so much as a thread of another musical motif that the producer could expand into a full-blown composition. “I need a wistful little tune,” George exclaimed in a moment of frustration with Paul. “You’re supposed to be writing the music for this thing, and I’m supposed to be orchestrating it. But to do that I need a tune, and you’ve got to give me one.” Eventually, Paul came through with what George admitted was the germ of “a sweet little fragment of a waltz tune” titled “Love in the Open Air,” and he was off to the races. “If it sounds like it was done in a hurry,” Martin later pointed out, “it’s because it was done in a hurry.” Ironically, it would be McCartney who would earn an Ivor Novello Award for Best Instrumental Theme for his work on The Family Way. Knowing that McCartney and the Beatles were AIR’s most important clients—his rainmakers, in truth—Martin bit his tongue, as he had done many times before. But while George seemed, to the outside world, to be generous to a fault—the kindly tall fellow with the posh accent and a winning smile—he had his limits. Over the years, his colleagues rarely glimpsed the ego at play behind the producer’s regal comportment. But occasionally, his feelings of resentment got the better of him. Years later, Abbey Road engineer Ken Scott remembered a moment at the height of Beatlemania when he was waiting on the front stoop of EMI Studios for George to arrive. When he finally showed up, George joined Ken on the studio steps. Together they observed Epstein signing autographs for the phalanx of girls standing vigil just outside the studio gates. “That should be me,” said George, as he stared at Brian reveling in the glory of his celebrity.14

  It was during this same period—as the autumn of 1966 gave way to winter—that the “arms race” at the heart of the contemporary rock scene perceptibly grew even more competitive than it had already been. Like Martin, Lennon had felt tremors in the record business in recent months, remarking to Beatles Book Monthly that “I think that within the next couple of years there will be someone very big, perhaps even bigger than us. It might be another group or it might be a solo artist.” For his part, George had felt a shift in the industry over the past several months, and he astutely traced it back to Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and Pet Sounds. As he later remarked, Pet Sounds “became the criterion of excellence in our world. His [Wilson’s] genius seemingly encompassed everything.” With Pet Sounds, Martin later observed, Wilson “gave the Beatles and myself quite a good deal to think about in trying to keep up with him.” And the Beach Boys weren’t the only competition on the horizon. Eric Clapton had formed the rock supergroup Cream with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, while industry stalwarts like the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Who were continuing to up their game. And there were new faces in the mix, including Jimi Hendrix, the American guitar virtuoso who had arrived in London in late September. On November 25, Lennon and McCartney took in Hendrix’s lunchtime performance at the Bag O’Nails club. As he showcased such tunes as “Foxey Lady” and “Hey Joe,” the two Beatles were blown away by the guitar player’s energy and style. When the set concluded, they were the first to congratulate the new kid in town. As Noel Redding later recalled, “Afterwards, in the dressing room, which was like a closet, John Lennon walked in. He said, ‘That’s grand lads.’ Then McCartney walked in and that freaked me out even more.” They may have been the first to wish Hendrix well, but they were also clearly on hand to scope out the competition. For Hendrix, the impromptu meeting was the thrill of a lifetime. Like seventy-three million other Americans, he had watched the Beatles’ bravura February 1964 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show—only in Jimi’s case, it had been in the company of the Isley Brothers, for whom he was auditioning to play guitar.15

  But while they were clearly wowed by the American whiz-kid guitarist, Lennon and McCartney didn’t perceive him as a threat. Throughout the production of Revolver and beyond, Martin had recognized that “Brian [Wilson] was the musician who challenged them most of all,” who beckoned Lennon and McCartney especially to raise the already high level of their artistry and to venture into previously unexplored vistas of creativity. By November 1966, “no one made a bigger impact on the Beatles than Brian,” in George’s estimation, not even the likes of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, or Bob Dylan. By November, the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” had finally come home to roost. Released in the United Kingdom back on October 10, the innovative single had risen to the top of the charts in England and America alike. When he first heard the song, Martin knew that in Wilson the Beatles had met their match, and for the moment—as “Good Vibrations” ruled over the airwaves—they may have even been bested by the Californian. After all, Wilson was accomplishing exactly what Martin and the Beatles aspired to do in the studio. To Martin, “Good Vibrations” depicted Wilson in the act of “pushing forward the frontiers of popular music.” In the single’s grooves, George registered a heightened sense of “instrumental color” merged with “a profound understanding of record production.” Years later, Martin would pronounce “Good Vibrations” to be “the greatest single of its day. One of the most remarkable recordings ever. In making it, he [Wilson] developed a brand new style of production. A song in which he stitched together independently recorded themes to make one masterwork.” For Martin, even the song’s title was a source of inspiration, serving as Wilson’s musical imprimatur and defining the essential “spirit behind all his music.”16

  The ramifications of Pet Sounds and “Good Vibrations” were felt most acutely by George and the bandmates toward the end of 1966, when the music trade magazines began parceling out their annual awards. NME was up first, announcing that “show business will vibrate with the sensational news that the Beatles have been outvoted by the Beach Boys as the World’s Outstanding Vocal Group.” For his part, Ringo didn’t miss a beat, remarking soon thereafter that “we’re all four fans of the Beach Boys, maybe we voted for them.” Worse yet, Lennon had been unseated as Best British Vocal Personality by none other than Cliff Richard, the one-time beat-music phenom whom Martin and the Beatles had vastly overshadowed for the past several years. In its December issue, Hit Parader took things a step further. Having previewed Smile, the unfinished, much
-ballyhooed follow-up to Pet Sounds, the magazine’s editors threw down the gauntlet, proclaiming that the Beach Boys were poised not only to eclipse the artistic heights of Revolver but to assert their dominion—Wilson’s, really—over the whole of the pop world: “The Beach Boys’ album Smile and single ‘Heroes and Villains’ will make them the greatest group in the world. We predict they’ll take over where the Beatles left off.” Back in the United States, Billboard took things a step further, proclaiming that the Beach Boys’ recent success should be “taken as a portent that the popularity of the top British groups of the last three years is past its peak.”17

  By this point, the Beatles’ epitaph had been writ large in entertainment magazines and trade journals across the Western world. In the December 3, 1966, issue of KRLA Beat, the question of the Beatles’ future seemed to have been rendered moot: “Three years after instigating an entire era, the Beatles are breaking up. At least, that’s the consensus among London music observers and those close to the princes of pop. The word came as a whisper at first, but subsequent statements by Brian Epstein and the Beatles themselves have given the speculation certainty.”18