THE BEATLES AS MUSICIANS BY GEORGE MARTIN

Melody Maker Magazine: When you first met them, did you consider them seriously as musicians at all? As guitarists or composers?

George Martin : As composers, they didn't rate. They hadn't shown me that they could write anything at all. "Love Me Do" I thought was pretty poor, but it was the best we could do - they hadn't got anything else, and I hadn't got anything else to offer them either. As players they were quite adequate - they could play guitar pretty well and they had an uninhibited sound. The question of them being deep minds or great new images didn't occur to me - or to anybody, or to them, I should think. It was after we made "Love Me Do" that I was determined to find a hit song for them. I was scouring the publisher's office looking for material on our group, which nobody wanted to know about. EMI heard the Beatles, which they thought was a silly name anyway, and they didn't attach too much importance to it. "Comedy man tries to get into pop field," you know. We hit number 17 in the chart, which raised eyebrows but only just, so I found them this song by Mitch Murray which I thought was just ideal for them to learn for the next session. When they turned up on the session they said they didn't like it.