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The fifth Beatle is an informal title that various commentators in the press and entertainment industry have applied to people who were at one point a member of the Beatles, or who had a strong association with the "Fab Four" (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr) during the group's existence. The "fifth Beatle" claims first appeared in the press immediately upon the band's rise to global fame in 1963-64. The members have offered their own beliefs of the "fifth Beatle": Lennon was critical of individuals who claimed credit for the Beatles' success, including the individual Beatles themselves, saying in his 1970 interview with Jann Wenner, "I'm not the Beatles. I'm me.

George Martin produced nearly all of the Beatles' recordings (except for the Let It Be album, produced by Phil Spector, and the songs "Real Love" and "Free as a Bird," produced by Jeff Lynne) and wrote the instrumental score for the Yellow Submarine film and soundtrack album, and the string and horn (and even some vocal) arrangements for almost all of their songs (with the famous exception of Spector's re-production on Let It Be, and "She's Leaving Home", which was arranged by Mike Leander). His arrangement of the string octet backing for "Eleanor Rigby" was widely noted.  Martin's extensive musical training (which he received at the Guildhall School of Music) and sophisticated guidance in the studio are often credited as fundamental contributions to the work of the Beatles; he was without question a key part of the synergy responsible for transforming a good rock-and-roll group into the most celebrated popular musicians of their era. Writer Ian MacDonald noted that Martin was one of the few record producers in the UK at the time who possessed the sensitivity the Beatles needed to develop their songwriting and recording talent. Martin's piano playing also appears on several of their tracks, including "Misery" and "In My Life". Martin himself deflected claims of being the "fifth Beatle" to Beatles' manager Brian Epstein. In 2006, Martin inadvertently strengthened his image as the "fifth Beatle" by contributing the only piece of new music on the Love soundtrack: a string arrangement on top of George Harrison's solo acoustic demo of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" from Anthology 3.  Lennon disparaged Martin's importance to the Beatles' music. In his 1970 interview with Jann Wenner, Lennon said, "[Dick James is] another one of those people, who think they made us. They didn't. I'd like to hear Dick James' music and I'd like to hear George Martin's music, please, just play me some." In a 1971 letter to Paul McCartney, Lennon wrote, "When people ask me questions about 'What did George Martin really do for you?,' I have only one answer, 'What does he do now?' I noticed you had no answer for that! It's not a putdown, it's the truth." Lennon wrote that Martin took too much credit for the Beatles' music. Commenting specifically on Revolution 9, Lennon said, "For Martin to state that he was 'painting a sound picture' is pure hallucination. Ask any of the other people involved. The final editing Yoko and I did alone." In a tribute to George Martin after his death, Paul McCartney said "If anyone earned the title of the fifth Beatle, it was George. From the day that he gave The Beatles our first recording contract, to the last time I saw him, he was the most generous, intelligent and musical person I've ever had the pleasure to know."  Julian Lennon called him "The Fifth Beatle, without question". According to Alan Parsons (2016), Martin had "great ears" and "rightfully earned the title of "Fifth Beatle".
Fifth Beatle