Off the Beatle Track: George Martin Steps Out From Behind the Glass
To mark what would have been Sir George Martin’s 100th birthday, Warner Music will reissue three of Martin’s orchestral albums on November 6: Off The Beatle Track, Help! and ...And I Love Her.
Overseen by Giles Martin, all three have been recut from the original master tapes and will return to vinyl for the first time in decades. They will also be available on CD in the U.K. for the first time and on streaming platforms worldwide.
Martin’s legacy will always be most closely tied to The Beatles, and understandably so. But I’ve always enjoyed his orchestral records as well. They reveal the same instincts that made him such an important part of The Beatles’ sound: strong arrangement, musical imagination and an ability to hear possibilities in a song that might not have been immediately obvious.
Think about the piano solo in “In My Life,” which Martin played and manipulated in the studio to create that distinctive, almost harpsichord-like sound. Moments like that help explain why the “Fifth Beatle” description has endured. He brought musical training and studio experience to the band’s youthful energy and increasingly ambitious ideas.
These three albums offer another side of that sensibility.
Originally released in 1964, Off The Beatle Track was Martin’s first album under his own name and features orchestral interpretations of songs including “All My Loving,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “This Boy” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
Help! followed in 1965 with arrangements of material including “Ticket to Ride,” “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “Yesterday.”
The most varied of the three, ...And I Love Her, expands beyond The Beatles with Martin’s interpretations of “Downtown,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “Time Is on My Side” and Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” alongside Beatles selections and Martin’s own “All Quiet on the Mersey Front.”
For collectors, there is another reason to pay attention.
Albums by George Martin, along with plenty of well-made instrumental pop records from the 1960s and 1970s, remain surprisingly inexpensive on the secondhand market. Dig through those bins and you can find inventive arrangements, excellent studio work and genuinely fun interpretations of familiar songs for very little money.
And yes, some of them are relaxing.
What’s wrong with that?
Not every record needs to change your life. Sometimes it just needs to make the room sound better.
Off The Beatle Track, Help! and ...And I Love Her will be released November 6 on vinyl, CD and streaming platforms.
