Yeah, but the story as I've heard it is that the Beatles only became successful after signing with that label, and completely changing their style, adopting those stupid bowl cuts, and playing really simplistic formulaic music, all because the label convinced them to. After they achieved a lot of commercial success with this, they started going in the more artistic direction they really wanted to, because they had the money, popularity, and leverage with their label they needed to do so. That's how they went from pop crap like "I want to hold your hand" to "While my guitar gently weeps".
- Those bowl cuts came years before any success, specifically during the summer of 1960 in Hamburg from a friend of the band.
- The suits were insisted upon by their manager, not the label, in an effort to help get them signed.
- When they first got attention they were doing and playing exactly what they wanted to, mostly because they were singularly focused on being successful. Their set list was mostly comprised of ~500 popular cover songs from the time. You can hear much of this on several of their early albums which were heavily loaded with these - those were the same songs you could find them doing back before they made it, that they played in the Cavern Club and strip clubs in Hamburg. George Martin was the one who pushed them to be bold with the material, get creative with the arrangements, etc, and then the London scene pushed them further forward from there.
Yet they still brought in session musicians and George Martin still made enormous contributions. Ironically for your statement, Eric Clapton was a session musician to play lead guitar for "While my guitar gently weeps."
Their pre-label original tunes just weren't that good. They played mostly covers. Can you suggest a pre-label Beatles original tune that was worthy?
They only brought in session musicians for instruments they could not play (ie. orchestral pieces).
They never brought in session musicians to play their own pieces. All guitar, drum, bass, piano, etc parts were played by the members of the band and on very few occasions piano pieces by George Martin.
Eric Clapton was not a "session musician", he was doing an uncredited solo for his best friend George Harrison's song.
If he was paid for it, he was technically a session musician. The fact that he was uncredited shows he was never a band member.
George Martin did a lot more than just play a few piano bits - he had a lot of creative input. Here's what "The Beatles" by Spitz has to say about it:
"Two weeks later, on his way to the Studio from Sussex, scheduled to give the song another shot, he was explaining to Eric Clapton how something radical was needed to light fire under the Beatles. "We were in George's car, driving in London," Clapton remembered, "and he said, 'Do you want to come and play on this record?'" It was an astonishing invitation. The Beatles had used plenty of Session musicians on other albums, but no one capable of upstaging them, certainly never rock 'n roll virtuoso on the level of Eric Clapton. Clapton hesitated, unsure of what to do. He knew the other Beatles "wouldn't like it," but George brushed aside his reservations. "It's nothing to do with them," he insisted. "It's my song, and I'd like you to play on it."
Before anyone had chance to object, Clapton was already in Studio Two, strapping on his Les Paul guitar and listening to the rhythm track mixed down from their work on the sixteenth. The song was pretty much there, creating an effortless, affecting groove, but it lacked dramatic device to liberate the emotional tension that is never far from George's caged expression. Clapton's poignant guitar riff provided everything it needed. The way it weeps and moans, held in check by Eric's incisive phrasing, creates the longing that gives the song its emotional center. George's vocal couldn't have been more enchanting as he squeezes the mournful lyric of all its desperation, until by the end, he seems to be just barely hanging on, just riding atop the surging guitar as it works to strangle his overlapping cries."
