History: Early Years Of The Beatles

Looking back on the making of Sgt. Pepper, Martin said, "'Sergeant Pepper' itself didn't appear until halfway through making the album. It was Paul's song, just an ordinary rock number and not particularly brilliant as songs go. ... Paul said, 'Why don't we make the album as though the Pepper band really existed, as though Sergeant Pepper was making the record? We'll dub in effects and things.' I loved the idea, and from that moment on it was as though Pepper had a life of its own." Recalling how strongly the song contrasted with Lennon's compositions, Martin spoke too of his own stabilizing influence:
Compared with Paul's songs, all of which seemed to keep in some sort of touch with reality, John's had a psychedelic, almost mystical quality. ... John's imagery is one of the best things about his work—"tangerine trees", "marmalade skies", "cellophane flowers." ... I always saw him as an aural Salvador Dalí, rather than some drug-ridden record artist. On the other hand, I would be stupid to pretend that drugs didn't figure quite heavily in The Beatles' lives at that time. At the same time they knew that I, in my schoolmasterly role, didn't approve. ... Not only was I not into it myself, I couldn't see the need for it; and there's no doubt that, if I too had been on dope, Pepper would never have been the album it was.
Harrison echoed Martin's description of his stabilizing role: "I think we just grew through those years together, him as the straight man and us as the loonies; but he was always there for us to interpret our madness—we used to be slightly avant-garde on certain days of the week, and he would be there as the anchor person, to communicate that through the engineers and on to the tape."