George Martin- The Musical Genius Who Created The Beatles

[acebackwords]

I think Martin's main contribution to the Beatles music was as editor and sounding board.  When he worked with McCartney on one of his solo albums, McCartney came to him with 15 songs. Martin listened to them and said (words to the effect) that 3 of them were good, 2 of them needed a lot of work, and 10 of them he should throw out.  McCartney was shocked.  I mean, nobody else would dare question the great McCartney.  Which is  probably why so many clunkers sneaked onto the McCartney solo albums. 

[Kylenz]

That's a bit unfair, maybe there were one or two clunkers per album but the majority of tracks on Macca's solo albums were pretty strong I thought. The only album that suffers from too-many-clunkers-in-a-row in my opinion is Side 2 of Pipes Of Peace. 'The Man' is great, but after that, it gets a bit dodgy - and I'm pretty sure George Martin was the producer of that album (as he was with Tug Of War).

I kinda wish people wouldn't bag Macca too much on his solo career - he's a guy that that so many hits and classic songs as a solo artist, as well as writing for other people. Many would kill for the string of hits he had in the early-to-mid 80s alone.. let alone the Wings catalogue which was phenomenal from Red Rose Speedway and Band on the Run, right up to Back to The Egg - which has become a favourite album for many Macca fans after all these years of underappreciation. Heck, the guy was even writing fantastic B-sides such as Daytime Nighttime Suffering that would've certainly made it to the Top Ten if the sides were reversed!

But yeah, I remember Nigel Godrich had the same kind of relationship with Macca, not being afraid to tell him which tracks worked and which ones didn't, like a kind of human BS-detector. Having said that though, Chaos was a splendid album all-round, and all the B-sides that were supposedly deemed 'no good' by Godrich, were even better!!!! (Comfort Of Love being one example)

[Paperback Writer]

Right!  Those C+C B-sides are the best Macca songs (virtually) no one has heard.

[acebackwords]

That's a bit unfair, maybe there were one or two clunkers per album but the majority of tracks on Macca's solo albums were pretty strong I thought.  even better!!!!

Well yeah, I agree with that.  I only meant "clunkers" in the sense of comparing them to Beatles songs.  I think the thing that made those Beatles songs so great was each song had to be approved by all three of the other Beatles as well as George Martin before they got onto a record.  Whereas solo Mac stuff (which is generally pretty great in my opinion) was watered down a bit because he only had to please himself really.  So the standard wasn't quite as high.

[Kylenz]

Fair point. Beatles albums are the pinnacle of all recorded music in my opinion, any artist will struggle to come close to matching that level of consistency, even solo Macca included.