The Beatles single George Martin regretted for the rest of his life: “The biggest mistake”

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The Beatles single George Martin regretted for the rest of his life: “The biggest mistake”

(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)

Thu 13 November 2025 16:17, UK

Towards the end of 1966, The Beatles didn’t need to rely on their live shows. They had already given their audience more than their fair share of time, and their final performance at Candlestick Park marked a turning point in their career, coming off the road for good. Rather than spend time at home reflecting on their legacy, the Fab Four returned to Abbey Road Studios to create musical magic.

After working on the film How I Won the War, John Lennon returned to the sessions with the makings of a folk tune called ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Stemming from his memories of playing in the Salvation Army garden of the same name as a child, the rest of the group was stunned that Lennon had created something so adventurous.

Looking to work beyond their standard capacity, The Beatles began using the studio as an instrument, creating different loops and recording countless takes of the song before finding a formula that worked. Though producer George Martin got the sounds they wanted for ‘Strawberry Fields’, he recalls it being quite a difficult job to put together.

While Lennon liked the recorded versions, his request to splice two takes together meant Martin would have to meld two versions of the track in different keys and tempos. Through masterful studio trickery and slowing both versions down, Martin created the slightly hypnotic feel heard in the single today, almost like the audience is being pulled down into the fictional world that Lennon had created.

When it came time to release the song to the public, the band couldn’t include it on any of their albums. Since it had been so long since their last single was out in the world, the band would release it as a double A-side alongside Paul McCartney’s ‘Penny Lane’, also a trip down memory lane of McCartney’s childhood.

George Martin in the studio. (Credits: Far Out / TIDAL / George Martin)

Though Martin may have understood the need for a single out in the wild before the group’s upcoming album, he didn’t always feel comfortable putting such an adventurous track out as a standalone piece, recalling to Rolling Stone that it was “the biggest mistake of my musical career”.

While most artists wouldn’t complain about having a single like ‘Strawberry Fields’ in their arsenal, Martin wanted the song to be a fixture of the album Sgt Pepper. Considering the band’s foray into psychedelia was captured perfectly on that one album, ‘Strawberry Fields’ does feel like it belongs in that same company, having the same off-the-wall energy that birthed songs like ‘A Day in the Life’ and ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’.

Martin eventually got his wish for ‘Fields’ to end up on an album, though. Following The Beatles’ much-maligned movie Magical Mystery Tour, the accompanying soundtrack included a handful of singles, putting ‘Fields’ next to the zany sonic experiments, like ‘I Am the Walrus’ and ‘Blue Jay Way’.

“‘Strawberry Fields’ was psychoanalysis set to music,” explained Lennon of the track. In 1980 he explained, “Dick Lester offered me the part in this movie, which gave me time to think without going home. We were in Almería, and it took me six weeks to write the song. I was writing it all the time I was making the film. And as anybody knows about film work, there’s a lot of hanging around.”

Regardless of how fans heard the song, Martin’s attention to detail in the studio paved the way for the next generation of rock and roll. Though The Beatles were following their muse, this one song would become the clarion call for where rock and roll would be going in the following years.