Fifth Beatle

People seem very keen to dub George Martin "the fifth Beatle". Several people have been connected with this title. Here are ten

 

1 Stuart Sutcliffe (friend of Lennon's, member of the original group)

2 Pete Best (original drummer)

3 Brian Epstein (manager)

4 George Martin (producer)

5 Neil Aspinall (chief roadie, etc)

6 Derek Taylor (media man)

7 Billy Preston (keyboard player on Let it be, etc)

8 Tony Sheridan (singer with the band in the early days)

9 Klaus Voorman (bassist from Hamburg days, on all the solo albums, etc)

10 George Best (long haired footballer from the sixties)

George Martin Footnote

The death of George Martin is being widely reported. One tiny footnote. In the book on Focus by Peet Johnson there is a fascinating half a paragraph that reads thus:

 

The Spring of '75, saw former Beatles overseer, George Martin, arrive in Holland to discuss the possibility of producing the next Focus LP. One account, printed in 2002, was to suggest that Jan was so rudely dismissive of the legendary producer that Martin immediately walked out and headed for the nearest airport, but Thijs fiercely refutes this: "Quite the contrary, Jan was friendly, modest and full of humour. Martin had come to stay with us at Kasteel Groeneveld for the weekend and he was more than willing to work with us. But we had to wait a year as he was already busy with the band America and Jeff Beck. Stupidly, we decided not to wait. We had missed the chance of working with this genius."