If a bad workman blames his tools, the superlative artisan chooses their instruments with exquisite care. Thus it was with Sir George Martin, the “fifth Beatle”, whose great contributions to the group began when he signed them, and continued as he produced almost every track in their catalogue, and stretched the definition of arrangement to include composition of memorable bridges and middle eights. But as important as anything else that he ever did for the young Liverpudlians was to open their ears to the arsenal of the orchestra. Responding to Martin’s death, Paul McCartney recalled the audacious proposal that a gang of sarcastic guys with guitars back their next hit with a string quartet. That was Yesterday, and it proved such a success that a whole rush of instrumental experiments followed – the perky piccolo trumpet on Penny Lane, the mournful French horn on For No One, and the magisterial “harpsichord” solo on In My Life, in fact the re-speeded-up sound of Martin tapping out his own Bach-style refrain at the piano, recorded on a tape player running at half speed. Alongside such technical improvisation, there was a taste for the instrumentally exotic, such as the clavichord which Martin requisitioned for the boys as they made Revolver. The logical conclusion was reached when half a 40-piece orchestra was deployed on Sgt Pepper. What marked the Beatles out from the Stones and the others was the restless reinvention of their sound. But they only transcended the noise of four-piece rock after Martin had got them tooled up.
