George Martin made us what we were in the studio. He helped us develop a language to talk to other musicians.
Beatles Quotes
My only regret with The Beatles is that I was wrongly advised and signed away my royalties to their records — about half a penny per title but, with them, that would have been an enormous amount.
We were just writing songs a la Everly Brothers, a la Buddy Holly, pop songs with no more thought to them than that–to create a sound. And the words were almost irrelevant.
I was rung one day by one of the blokes at the office, who said, “Hey, there’s a rumour started by a DJ in America that you’re dead.” I said, “You’re kidding – just tell him I’m not.” He said, “No, that won’t do. You’ve got no shoes on on the cover (of the ‘Abbey […]
“Sgt. Pepper” is called the first concept album, but it doesn’t go anywhere. All my contributions to the album have absolutely nothing to do with this idea of Sgt. Pepper and his band; but it works ’cause we “said” it worked.
On the “Pepper” stuff, I got into the more melodic bass lines. In fact, some of the best-paced bass playing I ever did was at that time.
Boomers can be tiresome when they natter on too long about the fun-swollen fabulousness of the 1960s. I mean, I was there: ‘Flower power’? Patchouli oil? Peter Max posters? Please. But even the mistiest of such geezers is likely to be right about the rock and soul music of that decade: Who could overstate its […]
I was quite interested in America – I still write about the different aspects of America – and to me, something was slipping away, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on how to express it. I was sitting up in this little house where I lived, and I just started to write this first […]
They would play (a song) in every kind of feel they could think of that would more or less suit that song. They would do it faster and slower and in 3/4 and 4/4 and 6/8. They’d try a whole bunch of things, drifting in and out of these with a lot of craziness in […]
It (-Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) was like throwing down a hat in the center of a ring, it was a tremendous challenge… It seemed like an almost insurmountable task to come up with anything even in the same ballpark.
