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TL;DR:

  • George Martin hated The Beatles’ “One After 909” and early John Lennon-Paul McCartney songs.
  • He discussed why he had a positive view of the band in their early days anyways.
  • The Beatles rediscovered “One After 909” sometime after and put the song on a classic album.
The Beatles in black-and-white
The Beatles | New York Daily News Archive / Contributor

Producer George Martin hated The Beatles‘ “One After 909.” John Lennon revealed he wrote it when he was a teenager. Subsequently, The Beatles rediscovered the song when they were putting Let It Be together.

George Martin hated The Beatles’ ‘One After 909’ and some early Lennon-McCartney songs but he still saw the band’s potential

During a 2004 interview with Analog Planet, Martin discussed meeting The Beatles. “When I first met them in ’62, their material was terrible,” he said. 

“Their songs were … I mean, ‘One after 909?'” he said. “What the hell was that? It was silly stuff. Not very good, really. But they had this potential, and they had this charisma.”

Martin discussed his feelings about the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership. “John Lennon and Paul McCartney were two individuals: very alike, but creating rather different kind of music,” he said. “And if you’d got one of those in any lifetime, you were lucky. But here you had two of them working together. And the third guy called Harrison who wasn’t bad either. 

“They had a rough drummer who they got rid of [Pete Best],” Martin added. “And then we had another guy who was a much better drummer and also something of a quirky personality with a good talent for one-liners. And suddenly it becomes a group, who within the first few months of their working in the studio realized what it was all about, did their homework.”

John Lennon said he added the number 9 to the title of ‘One After 909’ for a very specific reason related to his birthday

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono contains an interview from 1980. In it, John discusses “One After 909.” He said he wrote the song when he was around 17. 

John said he included the number 9 in the title because he was born on October 9. He said the number 9 showed up repeatedly in his life. Notably, John gave the world the songs “Revolution 9” and “#9 Dream.”

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John Lennon Called 1 Song From The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ ‘a Piece of Garbage’

Paul McCartney had fond memories of the track even though he didn’t think it was 1 of The Beatles’ classics

According to the 1997 book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, John and Paul wrote “One After 909” before they wrote “Love Me Do.” Paul didn’t initially think “One After 909” was worth recording.

Subsequently, The Beatles recorded “One After 909” for the album Let It Be. Paul said the band rediscovered the song when they recorded the album. He felt “One After 909” wasn’t great but he had positive memories of it. He compared it to “Midnight Special” and other classic songs about trains.

Martin wasn’t a fan of “One After 909” but it eventually saw the light of day.

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