Peter Jack­son’s new doc­u­men­tary series Get Back allows its view­ers to spend about eight hours watch­ing the Bea­t­les at work in the stu­dio. In that time, a fair few non-Bea­t­les linger in the frame as well: from Yoko Ono to key­boardist Bil­ly Pre­ston to a cou­ple of grumpy young police­man try­ing to shut down the cli­mac­tic rooftop con­cert. If you’ve seen Get Back, you’ll also have noticed one fel­low some­what taller, old­er, and more taste­ful­ly dressed than every­one else, who, though often in the stu­dio, seems not to have had much to do. This, as every Bea­t­les afi­ciona­do knows, is George Mar­tin: the EMI record pro­duc­er who, sev­en years ear­li­er, had been tasked with help­ing the not-yet-Fab Four start prop­er­ly record­ing their songs.

From then on Mar­tin kept work­ing close­ly with John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and that, as Poly­phon­ic argues in the video above, grants him right­ful claim to the cov­et­ed title of “Fifth Bea­t­le.” Mar­tin, he explains, “was the pro­duc­er, com­pos­er, and arranger for most of the Bea­t­les’ career, and his con­tri­bu­tions are direct­ly respon­si­ble for some of the band’s most icon­ic songs.” Take “Yes­ter­day,” a sim­ple gui­tar-based num­ber enriched, at Mar­t­in’s sug­ges­tion, by a string quar­tet. Though Paul ini­tial­ly balked at this no doubt square-sound­ing addi­tion, he was per­suad­ed by the results. For the first time but not the last, the con­trast between the musi­cal back­grounds of band and pro­duc­er — the for­mer being obsessed with Amer­i­can rock-and-roll and the lat­ter hav­ing come out of the BBC’s clas­si­cal-music depart­ment — paid off.

The fol­low­ing year, Mar­tin con­tributed an even more pow­er­ful (and Psy­cho-inspired) string arrange­ment to “Eleanor Rig­by” as well as “all kinds of stu­dio exper­i­men­ta­tion,” includ­ing the run-in-reverse gui­tar solo on “I’m Only Sleep­ing” and the hyp­not­ic tape loops on “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows.”  Despite not belong­ing to a gen­er­a­tion espe­cial­ly invest­ed in the psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ence, he made pos­si­ble the mind-blow­ing son­ic tex­tures of songs like “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” and “I Am the Wal­rus.” The unusu­al vari­ety of sound in the lat­ter owes a great deal to Mar­t­in’s tech­ni­cal know-how and will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment: “If I said ‘I want the radio on it,’ George would make it so that I could mix it in, and the radio would be com­ing through the machines,” John remem­bers in the 1975 inter­view clip below.

John acknowl­edges that Mar­tin did­n’t just real­ize the Bea­t­les’ uncon­ven­tion­al musi­cal ideas, but con­tributed his own more tra­di­tion­al but no less effec­tive ones: “He’d also come up with things like: ‘Well, have you heard an oboe?’ ” Because “he taught us a lot, and I’m sure we taught him a lot,” not much in the Bea­t­les’ record cat­a­log is ascrib­able sim­ply to him or them. By the time of Get Back, the Bea­t­les had decid­ed to return to their live-per­form­ing roots by record­ing an album with­out stu­dio over­dubs, and much few­er orches­tras and back­ward tape loops. Those ses­sions put Mar­tin in the back­ground, but there­after he “returned tri­umphant­ly” on Abbey Road. From the orches­tra­tion on “Here Comes the Sun” to the “ethe­re­al harp­si­chord riff” on “Because” to “some of the great­est moments ever record­ed” on the side-two med­ley, that album stands as per­haps the most com­pelling tes­ta­ment to the achieve­ments of the Fab Five. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Unique, Orig­i­nal Com­po­si­tions of George Mar­tin, Beloved Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er (RIP)

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

George Mar­tin, Leg­endary Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er, Shows How to Mix the Per­fect Song Dry Mar­ti­ni

Break­ing Down the Bea­t­les’ Get Back Doc­u­men­tary: Stream Episode #111 of the Pret­ty Much Pop Pod­cast

The Beach Boys’ Bri­an Wil­son & Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er George Mar­tin Break Down “God Only Knows,” the “Great­est Song Ever Writ­ten”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

New York-born, L.A.-based record pro­duc­er Rick Rubin start­ed his musi­cal career as a gui­tarist, first in a short-lived high school band, then in the punk band Hose, tour­ing the coun­try with 80s hard­core stal­warts like Hüsker Dü and the Meat Pup­pets. It was an aus­pi­cious begin­ning for the major pro­duc­er Rubin would become in lat­er years, behind albums by Weez­er, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Slay­er, Danzig, Metal­li­ca… the list goes on. Not all of his work has been beloved, but hard­ly any of it has been ignored. Rubin’s won 9 Gram­my awards since 1998, includ­ing one this year for the Strokes’ The New Abnor­mal and one in 2009 for Pro­duc­er of the Year; in 2007 he appeared on the cov­er of The New York Times Mag­a­zine, cov­ered in a white blan­ket and sig­na­ture flow­ing beard, med­i­tat­ing over the head­line “Can Rick Rubin Save the Music Busi­ness?”

Rubin revi­tal­ized John­ny Cash’s career, cap­tur­ing the singer’s aching­ly poignant last record­ings in six clas­sic albums. He has appeared in doc­u­men­taries over the past few years with Cash, Dave Grohl, and Paul McCart­ney he’s been a guest of David Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Intro­duc­tion with David Let­ter­man; he’s had a four-part doc­u­men­tary made about him in 2019 called Shangri-La.…  And he is also – of course – all over con­tem­po­rary hip-hop, pro­duc­ing Jay Z’s “99 Prob­lems” and piv­otal albums by Kanye West and Eminem. This is no sur­prise, con­sid­er­ing he was a major fig­ure of the genre’s ori­gins, tak­ing time between Hose gigs to found and co-run Def Jam Records with Rus­sell Sim­mons and pro­duce sem­i­nal albums by LL Cool J, Pub­lic Ene­my, Run‑D.M.C., and the Beast­ie Boys.

Giv­en all of the above, in what sense can any­one claim Rick Rubin is “invis­i­ble”? Just such an argu­ment is made in the video above by Soulr. It’s a com­pelling one, due main­ly to Rubin’s pres­ence, a steady calm­ing force – the result of years of tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion and a relaxed approach to work that favors con­ver­sa­tion over con­trol. “Despite his rep­u­ta­tion as a sol­id-gold hit­mak­er,” a WNYC pro­file not­ed, “Rubin remains stub­born­ly mod­est. He attrib­ut­es his suc­cess to his one rule in the stu­dio. ‘We don’t talk about what’s going to get on the radio [or] how are we going to make our release date,’ he says. ‘We talk about how we make this song as good as it can be.’” In let­ting the artist’s vision emerge, Rubin lets him­self dis­ap­pear, play­ing the role of ther­a­pist, as he him­self describes it:

If you real­ly lis­ten to what peo­ple say, usu­al­ly they tell you every­thing. I just real­ly pay atten­tion to what peo­ple say, and through that I can reflect back thoughts that they’ve told me about them­selves that they don’t know about them­selves. And allow them to unlock those doors to get to the places they want to go artis­ti­cal­ly. 

In a clip tak­en from Shangri-La, we see star rap­per Tyler, the Cre­ator tell Rubin, “You’re so god­damn free.” As Judy Berman writes in a Time review of that Rubin-pro­duced doc­u­men­tary, “com­ing from an artist whose entire career has been a series of shocks to the main­stream, that’s high praise indeed.” The clip also sets the tenor for the fan-made doc­u­men­tary above. There isn’t a sig­nif­i­cant amount of crit­i­cism, to say the least, of Rubin’s role in the so-called “loud­ness wars” or charges from bands like Muse that he’s hard­ly involved in ses­sions at all. Those charges may indeed come from peo­ple who do not under­stand how a man “behind hun­dreds and hun­dreds of beloved records… does­n’t appear to do much, while doing every­thing at the same time.” Find out how Rubin has used his pow­ers of invis­i­bil­i­ty for the good of pop­u­lar music. His super­pow­er, the video’s nar­ra­tor tells us, is “sim­ply his abil­i­ty to lis­ten.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

Enter the The Cor­nell Hip Hop Archive: A Vast Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion of Hip Hop Pho­tos, Posters & More

How Jazz Became the “Moth­er of Hip Hop”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In Decem­ber 1967, The Mon­kees blew their audi­ence’s minds by host­ing Frank Zap­pa, “par­tic­i­pant in and per­haps even leader of” the Moth­ers Of Inven­tion.

Or did they?

The tidal wave of affec­tion that com­pris­es twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Mon­kees mania makes us for­get that chil­dren were the pri­ma­ry audi­ence for The Mon­kees’ tit­u­lar sit­com. (One might also say that The Mon­kees were the sitcom’s tit­u­lar band.)

But even if the kids at home weren’t suf­fi­cient­ly con­ver­sant in the musi­cal under­ground to iden­ti­fy the spe­cial guest star of the episode, “The Mon­kees Blow Their Minds,” we are.

It’s a joy to see Zap­pa and The Mon­kees’ supreme­ly laid back Michael Nesmith (RIP) imper­son­at­ing each oth­er.

Zappa’s idea, appar­ent­ly. He’s in com­plete con­trol of the gim­mick from the get go, where­as Nesmith strug­gles to keep their names straight and his pros­thet­ic nose in place before get­ting up to speed.

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that it’s not Frank, but Nesmith play­ing Frank who accus­es The Mon­kees’ music of being banal and insipid.

Zap­pa him­self was a great sup­port­er of The Mon­kees. “When peo­ple hat­ed us more than any­thing, he said kind things about us,” Nesmith recalled in Bar­ry Miles’ Zap­pa biog­ra­phy. Zap­pa attempt­ed to teach Nesmith how to play lead gui­tar, and offered drum­mer Micky Dolenz a post-Mon­kees gig with The Moth­ers of Inven­tion.

Their mutu­al warmth makes lines like “You’re the pop­u­lar musi­cian! I’m dirty gross and ugly” palat­able. It put me in mind of come­di­an Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis’ Between Two Ferns, and count­less oth­er loose­ly rehearsed web series.

After a cou­ple of min­utes, Nesmith gets his hat back to con­duct as Zap­pa smash­es up a car to the tune of the Moth­er’s Of Inven­tion’s “Moth­er Peo­ple.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Watch the Last Time Peter Tork (RIP) & The Mon­kees Played Togeth­er Dur­ing Their 1960s Hey­day: It’s a Psy­che­del­ic Freak­out

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday