The Beatles fans have dubbed Paul McCartney’s “lovely little dog” the “fifth Beatle”.
Martha, McCartney’s dog, even featured on a track from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, with barking heard on Good Morning, Good Morning, coming from the canine who lived with Macca from 1966 to 1981. Martha had also been the inspiration for Martha My Dear, from The White Album. Fans of The Beatles took to the Reddit subforum and praised the dog, which they have dubbed “the fifth Beatle”.
A post of John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and McCartney with Martha, was titled “Martha is the fifth Beatle”. Fans appear to agree with the tongue-in-cheek post, and were full of praise and stories about the dog, which lived at McCartney’s home in Mull of Kintyre.
In an interview with McCartney for the book Many Years from Now, the Wings frontman shared: “I got Martha and she was a lovely little dog. I just adored her. One of the unlikely side effects was that John became very sympathetic towards me. When he came round and saw me playing with Martha, I could tell that he liked her.
“John was a very guarded person, which was partly where all his wit came from… Seeing me with Martha, with my guard down, all of a sudden he started warming to me. And so he let his guard down too.” Another user pinpointed the part of Good Morning, Good Morning where you can hear Martha. She can be heard two minutes and eight seconds into the song.
One user disagreed with labelling Martha as “the fifth Beatle,” and instead dubbed the dog a “muse” for the band members. Another added: “Dogs are just so great. We spend our lives micro-analyzing these guys, and there’s just this whole other layer of their pets who were with them through all their hardest times loving them unconditionally.
“Every time I see a post like this, I go find my dog and give him a big hug. My dog loves me just as much as Martha loved Paul and that is just beautiful to think about.” McCartney’s other dog, Eddie, can be seen nibbling at Lennon’s finger.
Martha’s work on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band comes as McCartney confirms the album was made as a response to The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. He said: “The Beach Boys I think was a big influence on the harmony. There was a little intercontinental rivalry. Mainly Brian. His writing, I think he’d heard one of our albums and thought ‘I’ve got to do better’ and that was Pet Sounds which I loved. It’s still one of my big albums.
“It was so atmospheric and different and yet it was The Beach Boys still and we heard Pet Sounds and thought ‘right, we’ve got to do something better than that,’ so we did Sgt. Pepper’.”
Discover more from Cult Following
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
