The Beatles Overruled George Martin When George Harrison Made a Change to ‘She Loves You’
Not every Beatles song was a massive success. The band gave up on one tune when they couldn’t sing it. Still, the misses were few and far between. If George Martin had his way, he would have shelved “She Loves You” because of George Harrison’s last-second change. The Beatles overruled Martin and scored one of their biggest hits.
George Harrison added a guitar chord to The Beatles’ song ‘She Loves You’ that George Martin hated
The Beatles had a No. 1 hit in England with “From Me to You” in April 1963, but they weren’t yet the dominant force they became after they recorded “She Loves You” in July of that year. They were still relative upstarts. Martin insisted the band ditch Harrison’s nearly imperceptible addition to “She Loves You.”
Harrison played a sixth interval chord (with the sixth note above the standard I-IV-V added, so a I-IV-V-VI chord) at the end of the opening and closing choruses. Each time the Fab Four sang, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” four times (a lyric Paul McCartney’s dad suggested changing), George played his sixth interval chord.
Martin hated it.
Harrion’s added chord was barely perceptible. It’s hard to hear it underneath the vocal harmonies, Ringo Starr’s crashing cymbals, and Paul’s bass. Still, the producer felt it didn’t belong in the song. He tried to persuade the band to remove it. McCartney admitted it was “corny” (per Express), but he and his bandmates pushed to keep George’s change in the song.
“It was corny. [Martin] thought we were joking. But it didn’t work without it, so we kept it in, and eventually, he was convinced.”
Paul McCartney
The difference of opinion probably came down to a generational divide.
Harrison’s added chord went against what the older and classically trained composer in Martin had learned. The Beatles didn’t write classical music, though. They penned beat tunes for a young audience that didn’t care about sixth interval chords or minor triads or pentatonic scale as long as the music sounded good. And it did, as The Fab Four’s scores of fans proved to Martin.
“They blossomed like an orchid in a hothouse,” he once said (via Express). “Once they had their first success, they realized they had a way of writing that would appeal to the public.”
The Beatles overruled Martin and got their way with “She Loves You.” It wasn’t long after before the producer tasted some humble pie.
How ‘She Loves You’ performed on the charts in England and the United States
McCartney’s dad didn’t understand the lyrics. Martin hated Harrison’s unusual chord at the end of the choruses. None of that impacted the success “She Loves You” achieved.
The Beatles wrote it for their fans who skewed young, and they responded in a major way. Peter Asher called it the greatest song he had ever heard when Paul and John Lennon played it for him after writing it in his basement.
You could make a case that “She Loves You” was The Beatles’ most successful No. 1 hit of them all.
The non-album song was a revelation in England. It was No. 1 on the charts for six weeks, spent 21 consecutive weeks in the top 10, and lasted 33 weeks in the top 100 (per the Official Charts Company). It simmered on the Billboard charts for 15 weeks and held the top spot for two weeks in 1964, a year when they had an incredible 31 tunes become top 100 songs on the charts.
Martin didn’t approve of Harrison’s last-minute change to “She Loves You” and asked them to leave it out. The Beatles overruled him, they scored a massive hit, and the legendary producer realized the effect they had on their music had on their fans.
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